Favorite TV Episodes: Route 66: The Mud Nest | Syracusefan.com

Favorite TV Episodes: Route 66: The Mud Nest

SWC75

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A year ago I did a series on this board called “The Steves”, citing my favorite movies for each year since the Oscars began. I was urged to do something similar for television. Since I just bumped my original post for the previous series because the movie I picked for 1927 was on TCM tonight, I decided it might be a good idea to start a TV project.

I thought of doing my favorite shows that debuted each year. The problem is that I’ve developed such a large collection of beta, VHS and DVD tapes,(plus a few blue-rays)that, when not watching sporting events I’m usually watching something from my library and I’ve missed much of what has gone on since the 90’s. there are very few show, even the most popular ones, that I’ve seen much of since. I thought of picking my favorite series in each genre but there aren’t that many genres so the series wouldn’t last long. Instead, I thought I’d talk about my favorite individual episodes of series. That’s also a tribute to the series themselves, especially fi there multiple episodes that I really admire. I’m not going use a rigid hierarchy like a top 25 or something. That would require too much thought and too many judgements. Instead I’ll post them as I think of them. if I can find a link to an episode on You-Tube or through the IMDB, (I’m not on Netflicks or Hulu or any of those services but you might find them there), I’ll post a link. If I’ve done a review on the IMDB, I’ll quote that or post a link. I invite other posters to post their own reviews of episode they like of the series mentioned or of others, (somebody else will have to cover the last couple of decades). I suggest doing one a day at the most, as I am doing.

My first choice is the episode that has always bene my favorite since I first saw it on reruns on nick at Night back in the 1980’s: Route 66: The Mud Nest. Route 66 has always bene one of my favorite shows, with my all-time favorite musical theme. I’m not the only one who liked it:

My family watched it when I was a kid and I remembered the show but not any individual episodes until it turned up on Nick at Night. Years later I got a DVD set of the entire show and was moved to post reviews of every episode on the IMDB. Here is my review of the best of the best:

“This is my favorite episode of this series- or any other. The final scene is the finest dramatic scene I've ever seen in any TV show, movie or play. And again, its' the type of story very few TV series could have or would have told.

The boys are headed for Baltimore but run out of gas in the town of Hester. The people there take one look at Buz and announce to him that he's one of the much-feared Colby clan. Tod suggests to Buz he might actually be a Colby: he was a foundling, left with an orphanage in New York City. He convinces a reluctant Buz to search out the Colbys, who do not disappoint. The head of the clan is played by Lon Chaney Jr., (the first of three appearances on the show) and three of the four siblings are played by George Maharis' actual bothers and a sister. They set upon Buz to see how tough he is and he beats them up, once by one. Chaney says "You're a Colby all right" and the grim fight for survival turns into a warm homecoming. They find out that 25 years ago Dorothea Colby left the farm for the big city: Baltimore and give Buz a picture of what she looked like then. That's the first of three parts of the show. The second part is a sort of procedural that takes place in Baltimore.

That has some significance for fans, (like me) of "Homicide: Life on the Streets" that was filmed there thirty years later. Once wonders if some of the same locations appeared in that show. The same poster who had shots of "First Class Mouliak" locations has some for this episode as well: The Mud Nest - Route 66
Ed Asner, (making his third of five appearances), plays a detective in the Bureau of Missing persons who gives the boys a crash course in how to look for someone in a big city. He's a guy who takes pride and pleasure in his work. I can relate. I used to work for the Social Security Administration and one of my jobs was to find people who might be entitled to benefits. We also occasionally got requests to help locate long lost relatives and we could help so long as we didn't give out any information without permission: we'd try to use our records and other sources to locate the person and if we could, we'd contact them and find out if they wished to hear from the interested party. If they did, we transmitted the necessary information. It was probably the most fun and interesting part of the job.

The boys poke around Baltimore and find a veteran stripper, (played by Sylvia Miles, who later had a similar role in "Midnight Cowboy". She was actually only 28-29 when this would have been filmed, per the IMDb but you know about actresses' birth dates. She looks more like 45- 50. (Buz finds out 'he' was born in September 1937 and says he's "about 25". George Maharis was born 9/1/28, so he was 33 at the time). Miles wants to make friends but blows it when she makes an insensitive comment about how much Dorothea "hated that kid". The boys leave the strip joint with their heads down, Tod apologizing for getting Buz into this. As they walk down the street, they pass a religious mission with a big neon sign saying "GOD IS LOVE", a great piece of direction by James Sheldon.

Then comes the final scene. Asner had had the picture "aged" and it looks just like a famous local resident, a woman surgeon. He takes them to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, where she works. Buz goes into the operating theater alone to meet the woman he has come to believe is his mother. He starts with one of Sterling Silliphant's poetic analogies. Somehow the surgeon, (Betty Field), senses why he's there. They look at each other intently and Buz stops with the poetry and tells of his longing for his mother, how he'd like to meet her and help her. He doesn't quite ask why she gave him up, why she "hated that kid". Field waits patiently and then goes into her story. She had no money and hated the father of the child, (it suggests he was a child of rape). She hated to look into his little face and see the father. She kept him warm and fed, but couldn't love him. Then comes the bombshell: One day her son died in his crib. She felt so guilty that she went to the head of nursing at the hospital and just said that she wanted to spend the rest of her life helping people and never hating anyone again.

They again look at each other, Buz realizing that this woman is not his mother and also that he is not her son. But he is the image of the man her son could have been and she was what his mother, whoever and wherever she is now, was when she gave him up. She puts her hands on Buz and tells him to see and feel them as if they were the hands of his mother, asking for forgiveness and expressing her pride in the man he has become. The scene is never maudlin due to the excellent writing and the way the lines are delivered so we can read between them. I have literally never seen anything better.”

Here is the IMDB page for this episode:
"Route 66" The Mud Nest (TV Episode 1961) - IMDb

You can watch “The Mud Nest” on Amazon prime video for 99 cents.
Amazon.com: Watch Route 66 | Prime Video

You-Tube has it for $1.99:
The Mud Nest
 
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