Phil Plait’s blog is the first mention I’ve read that actor Darren McGavin had passed away. Phil and I must have been watching the same TV shows as kids, because I loved Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and have recently found through the miracle of TIVO that the episodes still hold up fairly well, which can hardly be said of most of the television produced in the 1970s.
The thing that I found most remarkable about the show is just how unheroic Kolchak really was. He wasn’t Clark Kent, secretly fighting crime with superpowers at night. He was just an average, middle age reporter, whose only talent seemed the ability to irritate everyone he came into contact with. It was a great character, and a great set of performances by McGavin. Lots of fun, and well worth watching on DVD.
[tags]Darren McGavin,Kolchak,Night Stalker[/tags]
I remember you and I watching this in our bedroom with a mirror propped up against the door so we could see moms TV in the reflection.
You, mom and I were all hooked. 1972. You were 8 and I was ten. We thought we were pretty clever with our mirror trick, but mom musta known 🙂
Remember trying to destroy that TV set?. Dad wouldn’t buy a new one. He thought TV was a waste of time and that our 1952 Zenith was just great. I remember one day sitting there with you poking the speaker with paper clips and dropping pennies into the back of it to try to short it out. No luck.
We tried to destroy that thing for years, but dad would have gotten mad if he detected that we killed it on purpose.
Looking back on it, I think he wanted us to kill it too.