A con artist robbery team commits clever ruse operations where one of their group poses as a Highway Patrolman in order to trick those being held up, such as a bank manager, grocery clerk, and service station attendant. Ed Beale (Barry O'Hara), the disguised Highway Patrolman, and stickup man, George (Billy Nelson), essentially take orders from raven-haired Lorna (Cynthia Leighton), coordinating jobs where she cases joints posing as customers. Lorna encourages those robbed to hesitate slightly while her husband gets some distance, soon retrieving Ed to help the victims-or so they believe-before all three eventually get away with the loot from each robbed location. As each victim realizes that their comfort in Ed, the cop, is a charade, the cases start to accumulate, with Chief Matthews (Crawford) and his team of Highway Patrolmen hoping to orchestrate a trap to eventually nab the trio. The key to the demise of the ruse is the area for which the trio operates, failing to work outside a designated triangulation, allowing Matthews and his team to strategize a plan to eventually halt travel routes back to where they live. The best scene, to me, is the grocery store where the clerk actually undermines the much older George, scuffling successfully with him until he gets the gun away, with a worried Lorna going outside to grab Ed in order to fake arrest her husband and covertly grab the bag of cash! Matthews pinning them down after the third hold up of the episode gets a little too cute (George gets away in his car while Ed and Lorna follow after him) proves that no matter how clever the heists might be, eventually going to the well one too many times can get you caught. Still I found Lorna being the mastermind and strategist of the heists a nicely intriguing twist considering the time of when the series aired on television. I thought this was a lot of fun and gave Matthews a great challenge. Matthews pulling off the sticker from the door and wadding it up after the trio gave him a lot of headache mimicking highway patrols was a fine addendum to the story.
Review of Fake Cop
