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MADIGAN: The Midtown Beat
The Racist Country Boy and the Black Gay Hit Man (8 of 10)
A crooked self-professed "country boy" comes to town hoping to make criminal connections, when his party is robbed by a 13-year-old black kid filling in as a busboy. Holding the crowd at bay at gunpoint, he insists on taking only $1,000. But it's enough to send the host into a racist rage, convinced his reluctant fellow crook will be impressed if he "takes care" of the kid... by hiring a HIT man.
This must be my 2nd-favorite MADIGAN story, as there's enough interesting characters and personalities to keep it from getting too serious and downbeat (as about half the episodes of this short-lived series were). Dan Madigan is tough, and intimidating, yet somehow, in this story, he's LIKABLE enough to get on a lot of people's good sides, and at one point even prevents a hooker from being arrested as a way of saying "thank you" for her help finding the youthful robber.
Charles Durning is "Sid Balinger", a crook so rough around the edges that his intended business partner wants nothing to do with him, and winds up hiring a BLACK hit man because, as Dan says, "Maybe he doesn't think he's prejudiced." I'd forgotten "Doc Hopper" was in this. I'm pretty sure this episode was my first exposure to Durning.
Nathan George is "Roscoe Blue", a noticably GAY hit man whose "hired help" is even more flamboyant than he is.
Marlene Warfield is "Clara Fix", the young boy's mother, who's trying to keep her son out of trouble, doesn't trust Madigan at first, but later teams up with him to scout Harlem for info on her son's whereabouts, especially once they realize someone's out to KILL the boy!
Gilbert Lewis is "Smokey Fix", the older brother who's in jail, and the one his kid brother stole the money for to hire a lawyer to get him out. It seems he once did time with Roscoe, who made the mistake of trying to make Smokey his prison boyfriend, and now Roscoe sees killing Smokey's brother as not just a way to make money, but also get revenge for Smokey using a knife on him earlier.
Cab Calloway is "Doc Pizer", the ghetto physician who regularly makes a habit of removing bullets from patients without reporting it to the cops. Between him and his nurse "Tina" (Joyce Walker), I was very much reminded of 2 of the characters from the earliest issues of LUKE CAGE HERO FOR HIRE, which actually debuted some months before this episode aired. Coincidence, or influence? (Who can say?)
I really wish this series had lasted longer than just one short season of TV-movies. It made me a fan of Richard Widmark, and was some of the earliest work I'd ever seen from executive producer Dean Hargrove (who became a huge fixture in TV mystery series in the 1980s & 90s).
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