Last Day, First Day begins with some criminals staging the death of a drug dealer by giving him a fatal overdose of cocaine and then sending his car off a cliff to make it look like an accident. The body is thrown clear from the vehicle, though, and before they can do anything about it another car approaches and they flee the scene. This leaves a loose end, and their boss comes up with another way to make sure that the death is ruled accidental by threatening the son of one the pathologists in the Los Angeles coroner lab, Dr. Gilbert Moore (Harry Townes). Although the case is assigned to Dr. Quincy (Jack Klugman), a desperate Dr. Moore takes it over and begins falsifying tests to support the accidental death determination, but when a young medical assistant, Dr. Harriett Bowlin (Sarah Rush), whom Quincy is mentoring runs her own tests they contradict his findings.
This is a pretty decent episode featuring a crime as well as an "inside job" plot where somebody gets to a respected member within the medical examiner office and influences them to alter autopsy results to close a murder investigation which is interesting and not something we usually see. There is also a good blend of comedy thrown in involving a Rabbi camped out in the refrigerated vault of the coroner's office where the bodies are held and some funny moments where a slide show of photos featuring Quincy's poor performance during a softball game is shown instead of a case study during the pathologists meeting.
My only criticisms of this episode are that it lacked mystery as we see right at the start who is responsible for the crime and what they are doing to cover it up, and I also found it a little too convenient that the murderers just happened to be drug dealing associates of the son of a pathologist and had incriminating evidence on him. It worked for the story, but what are the odds? These two factors caused it to lose a point with me.
That aside, this is a pretty entertaining and interesting early Season 6 episode which is different from the norm and well worth watching.
This is a pretty decent episode featuring a crime as well as an "inside job" plot where somebody gets to a respected member within the medical examiner office and influences them to alter autopsy results to close a murder investigation which is interesting and not something we usually see. There is also a good blend of comedy thrown in involving a Rabbi camped out in the refrigerated vault of the coroner's office where the bodies are held and some funny moments where a slide show of photos featuring Quincy's poor performance during a softball game is shown instead of a case study during the pathologists meeting.
My only criticisms of this episode are that it lacked mystery as we see right at the start who is responsible for the crime and what they are doing to cover it up, and I also found it a little too convenient that the murderers just happened to be drug dealing associates of the son of a pathologist and had incriminating evidence on him. It worked for the story, but what are the odds? These two factors caused it to lose a point with me.
That aside, this is a pretty entertaining and interesting early Season 6 episode which is different from the norm and well worth watching.