Homicide: DR-22 (9 Jan. 1969)

Jack Webb must've liked Burt Mustin--- he employed him (undoubtedly at union scale) no less than 10 times across all of his shows. It's a little surprising that he never became a member of his stock company (think Virginia Gregg, Casey Harris, et al). The old guy was a spry 84 here and cast as a retired apartment manager who recently hit 91. This episode is, by color Dragnet standards, pretty explicit; the female victim is shown hog tied and very dead. Mustin plays it cagey delivering Webb's famous machine gun-clipped dialog that never steps over another actor's lines. There's an emphasis on depicting "modern" (circa 1969) police investigative techniques and Mustin plays the red herring bit to the hilt with a mildly surprising twist ending. Webb's economizing is always apparent in these later episodes; there's, I think, only 3 interior sets used here, along with the second unit-shot stock exteriors starring that '67 Fairlane. Here, I wanted to see the victim's now valuable Pontiac GTO... alas, unseen but much discussed.