The Six Million Dollar Man: The White Lightning War


episode number: season 3, episode 11 (1975)
viewing setting: home DVD, 3/27/11

episode synopsis: Steve heads south to stop an illegal moonshine operation and uncover its political connections.

impressions: Steve comes down to Georgia, which according to this episode is a place of cowboy hats, accents, and good old boys. Steve's handling of them was almost comical at some points, despite them being shown to be vicious killers. In fact, this was the second consecutive episode in which a good friend of Steve's was murdered and he still took it easy on the bad guys who were responsible. Changing the subject, Steve did do a good job of pretending to be a rival gang, including bluffing a negotiation with the lawyer who was the Washington connection. At one point, a map of Atlanta was shown, which provided an interesting perspective on what it looked like in the past (I'm writing this in 2011, no less than 36 years later than that map was made.)

notable guest stars: Austin Stoker (who was the lead protagonist in the original Assault on Precinct 13) is a shady DC lawyer in this episode. Veteran television and movie actor Robert Donner returns for a different bad guy role, that of the #1 henchman. Red West (who was the shop owner in Road House13 years later) is a customer of the bad guys here. Veteran television actor Hugh Gillin is the corrupt town sheriff.

significant bionic antics: Steve lifts a guy up with one arm, beats three guys in a barfight, and bends jail bars. Then he embarks on a one-man spree, destroying a still, turning a car on its side, and punching through steel valves to sabotage a shipment. Later he spots a gun-wielding assassin in the dark and disarms a bad guy really, really fast. Then he lets himself be lowered into a hole containing a rattlesnake (whose bite can't hurt his legs) before tricking bad guys, bending a metal bar to trap them, and doing some more wrecking of distillery equipment.

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