Ironside (TV Series) Return of the Hero (1968) User Reviews

Should have looked into another motive

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 10 July 2013]

Today Ironside and his picked team take up the case of Gary Collins who is on death row in California after having allegedly killed his wife and her boyfriend. At least that's what the cops say happened, Collins was in a bad state of inebriation and didn't know what was going on.

Collins has a group of friends, fellow war veterans who are also looking into this and one of them is taking some direct action. The judge on the case is killed and Raymond Burr is threatened. But that's old news to Chief Ironside.

Of course Collins didn't do it, but the interesting thing is that the police were looking at it from the wrong end, taking a very obvious motive. The case as it turns out was deeper than that.

Burr and the cast perform well, this is an episode with a twist.

First we've got a robbery to cover at Candelstick Park. Willie Mays told me he's gonna steal 1st 2nd 3rd base and home!

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 11 July 2013]

****SPOILERS**** More like a "Perry Mason" instead of "Ironside" episode has Chief Ironside, Raymond Burr, use his legal & court room expertise to help his old friend and former fellow cop US Army paratrooper Captain David Larkin, Garry Collins. It's Captain Larkin who on trial for the double murder of his wife and her lover Frank Brycin. it was Larkin's old lady who was having an affair with businessman Brycin while Captain Larkin was serving two tours in "Nam", Vietnam, risking his life for his country in fighting the commies there. The war was some 10,000 miles away but like the saying went back in those days, the late 1960's, it we don't fight them, the commies, there we'll end up fighting them here in our own back yard. After coming back home on leave Captain Larkin finds that all his heroics and risking his life for his country were all in vain. His two timing wife had left him cold and shacked up with that draft dodging shyster Frank Brycin! And after getting himself good and drunk Larkin is found sleeping and unconscious outside the apartment or love nest of the two with them shot to death with his army service .45 automatic found in the bottom of the building's elevators' shaft!

Whatever it was worth Ironside's testimony in favor of his friend and former fellow cop David Larkin fell flat on its face with him being found guilty of first degree murder. It's soon that all those involved in Larkin's conviction as well as Ironside, who was held responsible for falling down on the job in getting him off, get threatening phone calls from Larkins fellow paratroopers in order to get them to change their testimony that convicted Larkin or else! The what else turned out to be was them getting blown to bits with explosives planted in their cars as well as homes and offices by the enraged paratroopers.

****MAJOR SPOILERS*** The big twist or surprise here is that it was the paratroopers who were doing the threatening but it was someone else who was in fact doing the killing or murdering. The killer used Captain Larkin's conviction to cover up what he had previously done: Murdered Frank Brycin & Mrs. Larkin and have the drunk and out of it Captain Larkin take the rap for his crime! It was Ironisde who realized what was going on in the killer having dealt with Frak Brycin in a failed business deal five years earlier. That now with Brycin's testimony was about to have him indited for stock wire & mail fraud. And to throw suspicion off himself not only did he implicate Larkin in the double murder that he committed but his fellow paratroopers as well in the cover up murders that followed that he committed as well!