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January 23, 2013

Many readers will recall the Route 66 TV series of the early 1960s. Yesterday I came across this interesting episode: To Walk With the Serpent. It's set in Boston and shot there. It opens at the Bunker Hill Monument, where our heros Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock encounter an odd group of people who offer to lead them on a tour of historical sites. Well, you got me right there. I was expecting a sort of weird 1962 black & white documentary on historic sites of Boston narrated by someone who was trying to do a Boston accent.

Next we see them heading up Mass Ave in Cambridge, only to arrive at Old Ironsides which, oddly, is just a few blocks away from Bunker Hill. They could have walked. Next they head out to Lexington Green where he gives the standard tour guide narrative. The next logical stopping point, of course, would have been where the shit really went down, Old North Bridge in Concord, but the tour guide develops some sort of illness and excuses himself. I'm sure it's due to the amyl poppers his "nurse" keeps handing over to him.

From there the tour guide goes to the Paul Revere Mall while our boys find themselves in front of the Boston Garden being tailed by a mysterious black car. A high speed car chase ensues in, of all places, the North End, where you're lucky to find a street that runs straight for more than one block. Our intrepid heros have, of course, their Corvette, while the tailer is driving something like a Pontiac sedan. So Tod and Buz have little trouble cornering him and confronting him right in front of Paul Revere's house.

There the story segues into the real plot, which involves a semi-incompetent FBI and a racist hate group that is about as subtle as a Nazi club in the Westboro Baptist Church would be. Our boys infiltrate the group as spies for the FBI, during which period they learn that while Tod has good, clean American blood, Buz is a "mongrel," not fit for the society of the pureblooded.

Climactic scene comes at the Paul Revere Mall where Buz's mongrelized bravery saves hundreds and preserves the Paul Revere statue and Old North Church for future generations. I've left out all the juicy parts.

Filed under History,Television | permalink | January 23, 2013 at 09:22 AM

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