The Mod Squad
The Mod Squad is an American crime drama series that ran on ABC from 1968 to 1973. It starred Michael Cole as Peter "Pete" Cochran, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, Clarence Williams III as Lincoln "Linc" Hayes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer. The executive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas.
The counterculture police series earned six Emmy Award nominations, four Golden Globe nominations plus one win for Peggy Lipton, one Directors Guild of America Award, and four Logies. In 1970, the second season episode, "In This Corner... Sol Alpert," script by Rita Lakin and Harve Bennet, was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar Award in the category of Best Mystery Teleplay, losing to the TV-Movie Daughter of the Mind. In 1997, a 1970 episode "Mother of Sorrow" was ranked #95 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
Plot
They were The Mod Squad, described by one critic as "the hippest and first young undercover cops on TV". Each of these characters represented mainstream culture's principal fears regarding youth in the era: long-haired rebel Pete Cochran was evicted from his wealthy parents' Beverly Hills home, then arrested and put on probation after he stole a car; Lincoln Hayes, who came from a family of 13 children, was arrested in the Watts riots, one of the longest and most violent actual riots in Los Angeles history; flower child Julie Barnes, the "canary with a broken wing," was arrested for vagrancy after running away from her prostitute mother's San Francisco home; and Captain Adam Greer was a tough but sympathetic mentor and who convinced them to form the squad.The concept was to take three rebellious, disaffected young social outcasts and convince them to work as unarmed undercover detectives as an alternative to being incarcerated. Their youthful, hippie personas would enable them to get close to the criminals they investigated. "The times are changing," said Captain Greer. "They can get into places we can't." Examples included infiltrations of a high school to solve a teacher's murder, of an underground newspaper to find a bomber, and of an acting class to look for a strangler who was preying on blonde actresses.
More than a year before the release of the film Easy Rider, The Mod Squad was one of the earliest attempts to deal with the counterculture. Groundbreaking in the realm of socially relevant drama, it dealt with issues such as abortion, domestic violence, child abuse, illiteracy, slumlords, the anti-war movement, illegal immigration, police brutality, student protest, soldiers returning from Vietnam and PTSD, racism, euthanasia, and the illegal drug trade. Spelling intended the show to be about the characters's relationships and promised that the Squad "would never arrest kids...or carry a gun or use one."
The show was loosely based on creator Bud "Buddy" Ruskin's experiences in the late 1950s as a squad leader for young undercover narcotics cops, though it took almost 10 years after he wrote a script for the idea to be green-lighted by ABC Television Studios.
Impact
The shows ', I Spy, The Bill Cosby Show, Room 222, Mannix, ', Julia, The Flip Wilson Show, and The Mod Squad were among the first programs to feature African-Americans as stars since the stereotyped roles of Amos 'n' Andy and Beulah. Significantly, The Mod Squad presented an African-American character as being on an equal footing, as roles went, to the Caucasian characters. In one Mod Squad episode, the script called for Linc to give Barnes a "friendly kiss". Since the first interracial kiss on an American television show was in 1967, this was still fairly new territory in popular culture. The studio was frightened of a negative public reaction, so they asked Spelling to cut it:"You can't do that," I was told. "You can't have a black man kissing a white girl." I won and ABC agreed to let it in, but they warned me I'd receive thousands of complaint letters. I didn't get one.
Linc's famous "solid" and "keep the faith" were among the current-day slang used on the show, which included "pad", "dig it", and "groovy."
The "kids" traveled in Pete's famous "Woody", an old green 1950 Mercury Woodie station wagon, until it burned up in a fire after going over a cliff during a chase at the end of the second season episode "The Death of Wild Bill Hannachek".
Among the series guest stars were Spelling's ex-wife Carolyn Jones, Leslie Nielsen, William Windom, Ed Asner, Vincent Price, Sammy Davis Jr., Andy Griffith, Joe Don Baker, David Cassidy, Richard Pryor, Lee Grant, Richard Dreyfuss, Jo Van Fleet, Tom Bosley, Marion Ross, Danny Thomas, Tyne Daly, Anthony Geary, Sam Elliott, Martin Sheen, Desi Arnaz Jr., René Auberjonois, Stefanie Powers, Robert Reed, Cesar Romero, Meg Foster, Jack Cassidy, Tony Dow, Vic Tayback, Fritz Weaver, Harrison Ford, Clint Howard, Louis Gossett, Jr., Sugar Ray Robinson, Bobby Sherman, Billy Dee Williams, Victor Buono, Jim Backus, Fernando Lamas, Cleavon Little, Daniel J. Travanti, Barbara McNair and Rodolfo Hoyos, Jr..
Episodes
Broadcast history and Nielsen ratings
Syndication
In the U.S., MeTV reran the series from May 26, 2014 to August 29, 2014 and again on Sunday afternoons from January 4, 2015 to August 30, 2015.The Decades Network re-ran part of the series on the 24th and 25 February 2018 for their binge weekend.
Related productions
A television pilot was shot in 1968, with a running time of 74 minutes, but it was never aired in its entirety. The film was edited to 50 minutes and aired as the show's first episode. The uncut 74-minute version appears on the DVD set as the opening episode "The Teeth of the Barracuda".A TV reunion movie, The Return of the Mod Squad, aired on ABC May 18, 1979, featuring the entire original cast.
In 1999, the series was adapted into a film with the same title by MGM starring Giovanni Ribisi, Omar Epps, Claire Danes, and Dennis Farina. The film was not a box-office success, perhaps due to its R rating.
Home media
has released the first two seasons of The Mod Squad on DVD in Region 1.On August 20, 2013, it was announced that Visual Entertainment had acquired the rights to the series and would release season 3 on DVD on September 24, 2013. Season 4 would be released on October 1, 2013. In Canada, Season 3 was released on DVD a week earlier, on September 17, 2013, and Season 4 was released on October 8, 2013. Season 5 was released in Canada on November 19, 2013 and in the US on December 17, 2013. A complete series set was released in Canada and the US on November 12, 2013.
| DVD name | Ep # | Release date |
| Season 1, Volume 1 | 13 | December 18, 2007 |
| Season 1, Volume 2 | 13 | March 11, 2008 |
| Season 2, Volume 1 | 13 | November 25, 2008 |
| Season 2, Volume 2 | 13 | May 26, 2009 |
| Season 3, Volume 1 | 12 | September 24, 2013 September 17, 2013 |
| Season 3, Volume 2 | 12 | September 24, 2013 September 17, 2013 |
| Season 4, Volume 1 | 12 | October 1, 2013 October 8, 2013 |
| Season 4, Volume 2 | 12 | October 1, 2013 October 8, 2013 |
| Season 5, Volume 1 | 12 | December 17, 2013 November 19, 2013 |
| Season 5, Volume 2 | 12 | December 17, 2013 November 19, 2013 |
| Complete Series | 124 | November 12, 2013 |