Stingray season 1 episode 6: Abnormal Psych
episode number: season 1, episode 6 (1986)
viewing setting: home DVD, 7/5/11
episode synopsis: Ray goes after a college professor who's apparently found a way to turn students into brainwashed assassins.
impressions: Good stuff. It starts out with Ray thinking he's about to get his latest job, only the young lady tries to shoot him, then jumps in front of a bus. It ends with Ray facing off against a villain from his past. In-between, he calls in a favor from a recent episode and befriends the roommate of the dead girl.
notable guest stars: Veteran actor (and often bad guy) Robert Vaughn is the mysterious figure from Ray's past.
cool actions and tactics: Ray successfully avoids a barrage of gunfire, impersonates a college student, demonstrates computer/hacking skills (10-15 years before this was part of every movie and TV series involving technology), successfully endures some sort of stressful psychological test, hears a faint gun sound from within a room and is able to avoid an assassin's bullets, successfully fights off the same assassin, plants a phone tap and then bluffs the bad guy so that he'll call his boss, tricks the phone company to get an address, wears transparent gloves to avoid contact poison, survives a gunfight where he's outnumbered, talks a brainwashed person out of violence, disarms a gunman, chases down a limo with a bomb in it.
quotable:
bad guy: "That's one thing you always had difficulty with: morality. You never seemed to understand...morality has no place in politics.."
Ray: "My mistake."
bad guy: "Your mistake was judging me."
Ray: "My mistake was believing that the system was self-cleansing. I actually thought they'd, uh, deal with you."
bad guy: "That was your second mistake. Your employers didn't have your high standards."
Ray: "That's why I freelance. I have no one to account to but myself. Simplifies communications."
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