Mar 3, 2015 4 min read

I was 22 in 1971, and television wasn’t much older. If that means nothing to a younger reader, here’s how old I am: I remember when Pittsburgh had only one TV station – WDTV, Channel 3, on the old Dumont Network. When I once told a niece (who’s now 40) that my family had only a black-and-white set, she asked, earnestly, “Why? Were you poor?” I can only hope now her kids ask, straight-faced, why her family couldn’t afford cellphones in the dark ages of the early 1980s. But I digress. Now that the set has warmed up, I’ll continue with today’s programming.

The death of Leonard Nimoy prompted me to take the three-hour tour back to 1971 last weekend. MeTV, a network that specializes in retro programming, was running a tribute featuring Nimoy in a variety of dramatic guest appearances. His portrayal of a murderous doctor on “Columbo” was a delightful departure from the ever-logical, unemotional Spock that Trekkies came to idolize. So was his turn as a master of disguise after replacing Martin Landau in “Mission: Impossible.” But what really took me back 45 years were the two programs that preceded the Nimoy tribute: “The Mod Squad” and “Hawaii Five-O.”

“The Mod Squad” is evocative of a simpler time, when a black man in the White House was a burglar and a network could use “One white, one black, one blonde” as the tagline for a TV series and not worry about receiving a visit from the ACLU. The premise of “TMS” is this: Faced with jail time, three errant young hippies agree to be a police undercover squad to help take down criminals preying on our nation’s vulnerable youth. Linc (black) had a great Afro; Pete (white) had the Caucasian equivalent of Linc’s ‘fro and, to prove he was truly a criminal, often wore bell-bottoms with a matching short-waisted jean jacket; the ultra-slim Julie (blonde) wore vertically striped bell-bottoms and some sort of usually diaphanous top over which her long, straight hair tumbled. I forget the plot of Sunday’s story, but I’m pretty safe in summarizing it thusly: There was a lot of running around, Linc used the term “solid” at least 15 times and the bad guys lost. Stereotyping, I suppose, but the show ran for six years and, in some schools in Oklahoma, is still part of the history curriculum.

Following “TMS” was the original “Hawaii Five-O” with a show, again from 1971, in which hippies played prominent parts. In this case, a pre-“Three’s Company” John Ritter played a street-dweller (Ryan) whose sole means of support was begging. Ryan was hooked up with – you guessed it – Chloe, an ultra-slim runaway blonde who wore a diaphanous calf-length frock and love beads in her long, straight hair – which tumbled, etc. Ryan, who preached love to Chloe, nevertheless slugged a tourist who turned out to be an embezzler, then lifted his briefcase, which contained a cool quarter-million in cash. Ryan also proved to be a cad by attempting to abandon Chloe at the airport after the sluggee grabbed her and threatened to kill her unless Ryan surrendered the twice-pilfered money.

Still, everyone lived happily ever after: Steve McGarrett shot the embezzler in the thigh, and Ryan lost both Chloe and the cash. All this is pretty heavy stuff, man. But comic relief came in the form of the surfable tsunami of hair cascading over McGarrett’s forehead and the width of his ties, which contained roughly the same amount of material used in the sails of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

All in all, it was a refreshing return to the thrilling days of yesteryear. Back then, you could turn on the TV and see something other than pundits denying global warming, and people were more offended by a jihadist’s threat to lop off the heads of, oh, say, everyone, rather than the fact that the wanna-beheader was wearing a Pirates baseball cap.

Yeah, I know … we all shook out heads and rolled our eyes at 22 when our parents said, “Things were better when we were young.”

Out of the mouths of codgers.