Lorne Greene once quipped (and I paraphrase) that in all of Bonanza's fourteen years, he was proud of the number of very good episodes they did and then he added that in order to full a season there were, of course, scripts which should never have been filmed.
That's the case with this Mannix two-parter. One reviewer previously mentioned that he felt both the original Hawaii Five-0 and Mannix ran out of story concepts. I realize that it may seem so but (I'm a member of the Writers Guild) the real reason for these long-running detective shows losing story impact was the network trimming them to fit in more commercials and also trimming budgets. The format and storytelling style established in these programs suffered tremendously when CBS insisted on the reduction in their running time. Mannix, without it's pre-credit teaser doesn't have time to adequately establish a premise and resolutions are forced to be rushed---quite unsatisfactorily so. Even the end title music and credits are faster! It seems that five to ten pages of what would have comprised earlier scripts are chopped out of later scripts. It causes stories in the style of that day to suffer. If this had been the first or second season, this ridiculous premise would have fit into just one dreadful episode; instead we got two stinkers in a row.
That's the case with this Mannix two-parter. One reviewer previously mentioned that he felt both the original Hawaii Five-0 and Mannix ran out of story concepts. I realize that it may seem so but (I'm a member of the Writers Guild) the real reason for these long-running detective shows losing story impact was the network trimming them to fit in more commercials and also trimming budgets. The format and storytelling style established in these programs suffered tremendously when CBS insisted on the reduction in their running time. Mannix, without it's pre-credit teaser doesn't have time to adequately establish a premise and resolutions are forced to be rushed---quite unsatisfactorily so. Even the end title music and credits are faster! It seems that five to ten pages of what would have comprised earlier scripts are chopped out of later scripts. It causes stories in the style of that day to suffer. If this had been the first or second season, this ridiculous premise would have fit into just one dreadful episode; instead we got two stinkers in a row.