Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958. The show can be viewed on Tubi!
This week, it’s the next-to-last episode Decoy!
Episode 1.38 “First Arrest”
(Dir by Arthur H. Singer, originally aired on June 30th, 1958)
Casey meets with a new, rookie policewoman (Ellen Madison) at Coney Island. The rookie just made her first arrest and is now in tears because she’s worried that she’s ruined someone’s life. Casey tells the story of her first assignment and what it was like to make her first arrest.
Flashback time!
The NYPD believes that a fencing operation is being run out of a Coney Island carnival sideshow. Young and eager, Casey gets a job as an exotic dancer at the carnival. (Calm down, boys. She wears one of the least-revealing costumes of all time.) Shy and insecure Willie Graff (Joshua Shelley) develops a crush on Casey. Casey, suspecting that Willie is the fence, plays along but she starts to feel guilty as she realizes that Willie isn’t some sort of dangerous criminal. He’s just a down-on-his-luck guy who is cutting a few corners. He even introduces Casey to his mother (Ruth McDevitt).
When Willie gives Casey a diamond necklace, she assumes that it must be stolen but it turns out that it’s his mother’s necklace and that Mrs. Graff wants Casey to have it. Casey is actually relieved because it seems like Willie isn’t the fence that she’s looking for. However, then Willie gives her a mink coat and admits that he bought it from someone who had stolen it. Though saddened, Casey forces herself to arrest Willie.
In the present, Casey assures the rookie that she will soon get used to arresting people and she won’t care about them anymore. Yikes!
As you may have guessed, I didn’t really care much for this episode. That idea of Casey being someone who doesn’t care about the people who she arrests pretty much goes totally against everything we’ve seen over the past 37 episodes. The thing that always set Casey apart was that she does care. She has to do her job but she also understands that sometimes, people just make mistakes. Unless it’s case in which she was threatened, Casey usually doesn’t take any joy in slapping the handcuffs on someone.
As much as I hate to say it, Beverly Garland is not particularly convincing in the flashback scenes. Young Casey is written as being continually breathless and unsure of herself. There’s nothing about Beverly Garland’s screen presence that suggests insecurity.
This was a disappointing episode. Next week, we’ll be finishing up Decoy and I hope it goes out on a better note than this.
Through the Shattered Lens 