IMDb > "Police Woman" (1974) > Episode list

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Episodes: All (91)

Season: 1  |  2  |  3  |  4
Year: 1974  |  1975  |  1976  |  1977  |  1978

Season 1

Season 1, Episode 1: The End Game

Original Air Date—13 September 1974
The police are after a gang of bank robbers made up of 3 men and 2 women. The gang has been very successful and done very little to identify themselves. They have very few leads until Pepper uncovers a clue which leads them to Las Vegas where they believe the gang is from. Soon Pepper, Crowley and other officers are undercover staking out various banks in the hopes of being inside when they strike next.

Season 1, Episode 2: The Beautiful Die Young

Original Air Date—20 September 1974
A complaint from a distressed mother leads the police to investigate the Classic Modeling Agency. It's run by Ted Adrian and is actually a front for his business of supplying young girls to the porn business and overseas white slave trade. Pepper and Crowley use a young trainee to go undercover and pose as a young model to get close to Adrian's business.

Season 1, Episode 3: Warning: All Wives...

Original Air Date—27 September 1974
A rapist/killer terrorizes a hospital. His targets are the wives of patients staying at the hospital. Pepper and Bill go undercover to try to flush him out and immediately they think that a very amorous parking attendant is the prime suspect. However, they soon find out that it is someone who is the least likely to commit the crimes.

Season 1, Episode 4: Seven-Eleven

Original Air Date—4 October 1974

Season 1, Episode 5: Anatomy of Two Rapes

Original Air Date—11 October 1974
Pepper and the squad investigate a pair of alleged rapes. The first involves a wealthy woman who claims that she was attacked on the eve of her daughter's wedding. The second involves a the rape and murder of a married woman, who was known for being very wild. The squad then arrest a black man for the first rape, but serious questions arise about his guilt and whether a rape took place in the first place.

Season 1, Episode 6: It's Only a Game

Original Air Date—25 October 1974

Season 1, Episode 7: Fish

Original Air Date—1 November 1974

Season 1, Episode 8: Flowers of Evil

Original Air Date—8 November 1974
Pepper goes undercover as a nurse-on-the-run to gain employment at an old folks' home where the female patients are being knocked off for their checks by a trio of homicidal lesbians. Eventually obtaining a confession from one of the culprits, Pepper confesses that her female college roommate had a crush on her, and, therefore, "I know what a love like yours can do to a person" - Pepper's relationship left intentionally ambiguous.

Season 1, Episode 9: The Stalking of Joey Marr

Original Air Date—22 November 1974

Season 1, Episode 10: Requiem for Bored Wives

Original Air Date—29 November 1974
Bob Crane plays a freewheeling disk jockey with a chat-show atmosphere in his studio (which he had in real life). The disk jockey's wife is found fatally shot with his gun, and the DJ himself is the prime suspect, since he knew of her affair with another man. The audience saw the dead woman and her lover wrestling over the gun and a shot being fired, but the film editor took a few extra frames off the film immediately after the shot being fired -- a crucial plot point later on when the cornered lover claims the bullet went wild and didn't hit anybody. So if the struggle didn't result in the wife's killing ... what did? An eerie precursor to the scandal that arose over Bob Crane's sex-crazed life which most people believe led to his murder (depicted in the movie "Auto Focus," with Greg Kinnear as Crane). Features a high-octane powerboat chase in Los Angeles Harbor ending in a spectacular crash.

Season 1, Episode 11: Smack

Original Air Date—6 December 1974

Season 1, Episode 12: The Child Buyers

Original Air Date—13 December 1974

Season 1, Episode 13: Shoefly

Original Air Date—20 December 1974

Season 1, Episode 14: Target Black

Original Air Date—3 January 1975

Season 1, Episode 15: Sidewinder

Original Air Date—17 January 1975

Season 1, Episode 16: Blast

Original Air Date—25 January 1975
When politician Edward Littel's car is found bombed and dumped in a lake, a single fingerprint on the dashboard proves he was accompanied by an exotic dancer named Paris Palmer when the explosion occurred. Pepper dons a thong and the unlikely moniker of "Flaxy Dupree" and hits the go-go joint where the dead girl worked. Charming the establishment's owner, Andrew Simms, with her aloof, hard-to-get charms and hip-grinding employment audition, Pepper initiates an immediate rapport with him. Crowley questions Littel's wife, Christina, and Littel's in-laws, the powerful Van Dyke dynasty of California, and eventually learns from the Special Prosecutor's Office that the Van Dykes despised the son-in-law for his political desires to clean up corruption. Suspicious that widow Christina's grief may be disingenuous at best, Crowley leaks that Pepper is an agent with the police department. Startled at this revelation, Littel's wife shoots Simms to keep him quiet, with Simms confessing to Pepper in his last breath that Christina, having learned of her husband's affair with the dancer, hired Simms to kill them both, using Simms' criminal record from Tennessee and the possibility of extradition as blackmail. Pepper makes a poetic (though looped) comment about the weather, and she and Crowley get a great freeze frame in the sunset as it filters through the sidewalk foliage.

Season 1, Episode 17: No Place to Hide

Original Air Date—31 January 1975

Season 1, Episode 18: Nothing Left to Lose

Original Air Date—14 February 1975

Season 1, Episode 19: The Company

Original Air Date—21 February 1975
Following the gangland killing of a mafia thug during which an imprisoned don's name is uttered, Pepper makes an undercover trip to a clandestine, high-class gambling casino and witnesses first-hand the game "taken" by the henchman from this new circle of crooks. After the man who ran the illegal casino is blown up in his car in front of Pepper and Crowley, the unit tries to flush out this gang once again by setting themselves up for "protectionism". Eventually, the kingpin falsely blamed for the series of takeovers sends his assistant out on the streets, learning that a local, corrupt mafia lawyer has brainstormed the scam, using the kingpin's name for purposes of leverage. Warned that the police were about to bust him, the lawyer moves to dispose of his incriminating records - but not before Crowley and Pepper can stop him. Tossing his box of important paperwork into the wind, the gusts from the nearby docks scatter the records in a thousand different directions, leaving Pepper and Bill to scramble to recover them.

Season 1, Episode 20: Ice

Original Air Date—28 February 1975

Season 1, Episode 21: The Bloody Nose

Original Air Date—15 March 1975

Season 1, Episode 22: The Loner

Original Air Date—14 March 1975

Season 2

Season 2, Episode 1: Pawns of Power

Original Air Date—12 September 1975

Season 2, Episode 2: The Score

Original Air Date—19 September 1975
A small time druggie commits suicide and Pepper poses as her sister to nab the dealers, until it turns out they've seen her photo - and they've realized it isn't Angie. So the squad moves in on the bad guys who have Pepper in the meth-shack, and she jumps through a glass window before a shell hits the building and the whole place blows up.

Season 2, Episode 3: Paradise Mall

Original Air Date—26 September 1975

Season 2, Episode 4: Pattern for Evil

Original Air Date—3 October 1975

Season 2, Episode 5: The Chasers

Original Air Date—10 October 1975
Ian McShane plays an insurance scammer and Ida Lupino is his partner. They fake and contrive accidents to collect the dough. Pepper "foils" a purse-snatching by getting knocked-down in a parking lot, falling in a pool and getting hit by a truck within a matter of a few seconds. In the hospital with a rag on her head, Pepper overhears the ambulance chasers pressuring the other patients on the ward. Pepper intuits a plot and once Bill finds her, they scheme to scam the scammers. Pepper charms McShane instantly into telling her all their secrets and, just as fast, a security guard quite unconvincingly blows her cover by insisting he hadn't seen her since he retired from the police force - all within earshot of Lupino. Exposed but unawares, Pepper still thinks she's undercover despite being told by an aging and suicidal lawyer in this "firm" that they're onto her. And, the revelation that she's got a badge doesn't guide them to get out of town but instead to kill her with a vat of gasoline in the trunk of a car. So when she tells the driver they're being set up for death, he just pushes her out the door onto the street and then angrily drives into oblivion. Conflagrations ensue on the highway. Pepper then goes to the apartment of the wife of the now-dead driver (one of the firm's partner/victims) and promptly gets shoved in a closet and the room is set on fire. Crowley arrives just in time, shooting the arsonist, and breaking Pepper out of the closet in the back of the smoke filled room. They meet Lupino in a darkened mall who starts shooting at them. Pepper being Pepper, she has no gun. An unconscious person on the floor literally trips Lupino and she falls, and is promptly arrested - By Crowley. Pepper and Crowley show up at a "fancy" restaurant and arrest McShane.

Season 2, Episode 6: Cold Wind

Original Air Date—17 October 1975

Season 2, Episode 7: Above and Beyond

Original Air Date—31 October 1975

Season 2, Episode 8: Farewell, Mary Jane

Original Air Date—4 November 1975

Season 2, Episode 9: Blaze of Glory

Original Air Date—11 November 1975
Pepper is undercover as president of the United States, when she's kidnapped during a bank hold-up; Pepper charms one of the robbers and his brother to survive, while the police force chases them into the desert.

Season 2, Episode 10: Glitter with a Bullet

Original Air Date—18 November 1975

Season 2, Episode 11: The Purge

Original Air Date—25 November 1975

Season 2, Episode 12: Don't Feed the Pigeons

Original Air Date—2 December 1975

Season 2, Episode 13: The Hit

Original Air Date—9 December 1975

Season 2, Episode 14: Silence

Original Air Date—16 December 1975
An angular blonde gets off the plane at LAX and takes a cab to her brother in law, Julian's house. She's looking for her sister, Beth, missing six weeks. In his study, there's the woman's portrait, looking suspiciously like a brunette version of Pettet - they are sisters after all. Mute from a childhood growth and resulting surgery, the sister can only communicate through sign-language. Her brother-in-law's secretary, his lover, makes their relationship obvious by her unsuspecting, "Darling!", as she enters the study, and Beth's sister leaves in a huff. While in the middle of another fur-heist case Pepper gets drawn into the case of the missing Beth as she can understand sign language. When the blonde sister winds up stabbed in the shoulder in her hotel room and found by a maid, she claims her brother-in-law is responsible. In interrogation by Pepper and Crowley, the brother-in-law irks the pair by calling the sister "pathetic" and questions Crowley's authority and competence. The brother-in-law denies responsibility for the stabbing. The sister reveals letters that Beth wrote to her which seem to implicate the brother-in-law in something unwholesome. These lead the squad to find a decomposed, decapitated body buried in Northern California they think may be the sister, Beth. During an inquest, the DA verifies that Robert Webber sometimes has the opportunity to use lye in his business, the substance used to speed up the body's decomposition. Webber looks pretty guilty, until Pepper, at home with Pettet downstairs on the couch, gets a call from Crowley: the forensic lab has determined the body is that of an elderly woman. That, and a phone bill revealing a call to the Pettet's native Nova Scotia, prompts Pepper to dial it. The fussy Nova Scotian housekeeper is irritated by the late-night call and when Pepper asks for the sister, she's informed she died six months ago but that her sister, Beth, is out in California. Pepper smells a rat, and goes downstairs to find the sister off the couch doing midnight dish duty. Pepper realizes that the sister is, indeed, Beth herself, and has dyed her hair and adorned contact-lenses in order to pull the ruse. Unable to coax her to put down the loaded gun she's had stuck in Pepper's face for several minutes, Pep jumps her, they fall behind the couch; the gun goes off, and Pepper gets up - and promptly collapses. The guys get there and receive an improbable call from the airport revealing that the sister's flight out will be delayed by a few minutes. Everyone recognizes this as the unlikely plot device it is and they rush for LAX, leaving Pepper behind. There, they spot Joanna Pettet and chase her down, Crowley pulling the fake scar from her throat, thus permitting her to scream.

Season 2, Episode 15: Incident Near a Black and White

Original Air Date—23 December 1975

Season 2, Episode 16: The Melting Point of Ice

Original Air Date—6 January 1976

Season 2, Episode 17: The Pawn Shop

Original Air Date—20 January 1976

Season 2, Episode 18: Angela

Original Air Date—27 January 1976

Season 2, Episode 19: Wednesdays Child

Original Air Date—3 February 1976

Season 2, Episode 20: Generation of Evil

Original Air Date—10 February 1976

Season 2, Episode 21: Double Image

Original Air Date—17 February 1976

Season 2, Episode 22: Mother Love

Original Air Date—24 February 1976

Season 2, Episode 23: Task Force: Cop Killer: Part 1

Original Air Date—2 March 1976

Season 2, Episode 24: Task Force: Cop Killer: Part 2

Original Air Date—9 March 1976

Season 3

Season 3, Episode 1: The Trick Book

Original Air Date—28 September 1976
The series' only two-hour one-part episode centers on the theft of a madam's client list, which will be worth a fortune in the hands of someone unscrupulous enough to blackmail the various Johns on the list. A seedy, elderly private eye (Jack Gilford) is the first to get his hands on the book. The English reviewers of this episode (which was shown in two parts in the United Kingdom) loved the first hour but thought the second one only a little above average.

Season 3, Episode 2: Tender Soldier

Original Air Date—5 October 1976
When a patrol cop is shot to death just before dawn in a Los Angeles neighborhood which turns out to be a hot-bed for cult activity, and Monica Dunlap - the daughter of a powerful California businessman - is arrested in a nearby safe-house for the P.C.U. (the Peoples' Combat Unit) Pepper poses as a mysterious '60s activist/terrorist on the lam for years who surfaces in order to infiltrate the group.

Season 3, Episode 3: Trial by Prejudice

Original Air Date—12 October 1976

Season 3, Episode 4: Sarah Who?

Original Air Date—26 October 1976

Season 3, Episode 5: Broken Angels

Original Air Date—9 November 1976

Season 3, Episode 6: Brain Wash

Original Air Date—16 November 1976

Season 3, Episode 7: The Lifeline Agency

Original Air Date—23 November 1976

Season 3, Episode 8: Tennis Bum

Original Air Date—30 November 1976

Season 3, Episode 9: Bait

Original Air Date—7 December 1976

Season 3, Episode 10: The Death of a Dream

Original Air Date—14 December 1976

Season 3, Episode 11: Father to the Man

Original Air Date—21 December 1976

Season 3, Episode 12: Night of the Full Moon

Original Air Date—28 December 1976

Season 3, Episode 13: Once a Snitch

Original Air Date—4 January 1977

Season 3, Episode 14: Barney

Original Air Date—11 January 1977

Season 3, Episode 15: Banker's Hours

Original Air Date—18 January 1977

Season 3, Episode 16: Disco Killer

Original Air Date—25 January 1977

Season 3, Episode 17: Shadow of a Doubt

Original Air Date—1 February 1977

Season 3, Episode 18: The Killer Cowboys

Original Air Date—8 February 1977
Frank Converse plays an airline pilot from Pepper's past who comes back to get her just a year or two after his wife's death.

Season 3, Episode 19: Shark

Original Air Date—15 February 1977

Season 3, Episode 20: Solitaire

Original Air Date—22 February 1977
A liquor-store stakeout for two robbers goes bad when one of the two cops is blown away by a shotgun before his partner can take down the two robbers. The crooks escape and wind up in Los Angeles, where the surviving cop joins Pepper's team. The cop goes right up the leader's shotgun barrel to knock him unconscious. While Pepper and Crowley wonder about the visiting cop's stability, they get word that a terrorist is planting bombs. This becomes an issue when they take the crooks to the airport and the crooks escape. Pepper and Crowley learn that one of the bombs is in the airport and might take out innocent people, so they have three people to catch. The visiting officer knows it too, and for undisclosed reasons he seems hell-bent reckless on taking down the bad guys if it's the last thing he does. Diana Muldaur literally phones in her part as the visiting officer's wife in New York City.

Season 3, Episode 21: Bondage

Original Air Date—1 March 1977
An actress involved in making "provocotive" movies turns up dead. Pepper goes undercover to find out more about the late woman's employers. Eventually, she is found out, causing a foot chase with Pepper clothed in lingerie. Things look bad until the brother of the dead woman saves her life.

Season 3, Episode 22: Silky Chamberlain

Original Air Date—8 March 1977

Season 3, Episode 23: Deadline: Death

Original Air Date—22 March 1977

Season 4

Season 4, Episode 1: Do You Still Beat Your Wife?

Original Air Date—25 October 1977

Season 4, Episode 2: Guns

Original Air Date—1 November 1977

Season 4, Episode 3: Means to an End

Original Air Date—8 November 1977

Season 4, Episode 4: The Inside Connection

Original Air Date—22 November 1977

Season 4, Episode 5: Screams

Original Air Date—6 December 1977
A serial rapist preys on hitchhikers and records their screams.

Season 4, Episode 6: The Buttercup Killer

Original Air Date—13 December 1977
When a Greek shop owner is found gunned down, Crowley is surprised to learn that robbery wasn't the apparent motive -- the victim was petrified with terror even before the fatal shot was fired. The killer dons a nun's habit and walks with a profound limp. The only clue is a dried buttercup flower dropped next to the victim. When another family member is killed in the same manner, the team realizes a serial killer is at work, and the clues are designed to remind the victims of a dead or absent woman back in the old country, someone whom they wronged terribly and are now to pay the price.

Season 4, Episode 7: Merry Christmas, Waldo

Original Air Date—14 December 1977
In this remake of a "Police Story" episode from that show's first season (but with a different outcome), an old pensioner celebrates the Christmas season by robbing banks through trickery, usually donning a Santa suit and passing a note claiming he has an armed partner (or, in one case, getting a sidewalk Santa to stand by while he robs the bank in civilian clothes). The old man lives very quietly, except that he's a forceful advocate for the elderly. Pepper and Crowley begin to suspect that he's not pulling the robberies for himself, but to benefit other old people.

Season 4, Episode 8: Death Game

Original Air Date—21 December 1977
It's hot and the air keeps going out in the police station. A street kid threatens Pepper while she drags him into a prison cell, making her wonder why the guys seem to take their rage out on women, if there's one around. Then, frustrated that their latest drug bust (Nehemiah Persoff) has already made bail before they can finish their drinks at Vinnie's, Pepper leaves the bar and almost gets run over on purpose in the parking lot, but, being a good cop, she just goes home and doesn't tell anybody about it until later. When she finally does, Bill is pissed, and they suspect Persoff, who just grins in interrogation. She then wakes up in the middle of the night with a cloaked figure hovering over her with a knife (later shown to be a toy) to her throat who swears he could kill her whenever he wants. She "wrestles" it out of his hands and he escapes through an open sliding glass door in her disco bedroom and into the night. She's placed in protection, and when she goes to meet her snitch and someone in a sluggish, 15 year old hearse car (which can't be caught) takes a shot at her, Crowley literally picks up a screeching Danny DeVito and hauls him off to jail under Pepper's gasping protestations. Later still, someone blows up a talcum powder bomb in the garage of the building she's being protected in. Pepper goes and vacations in a cabin with no phone in the mountains. She gets chased by an "old" man with a rifle until Angie trips and he catches her. Turns out his son died in prison after Pepper sent him up for rape, and Mr. Valerie Harper gives an 18th century speech about how women "ask for it" with their wily ways and plunging necklines. As usual, a ranger out of nowhere appears to save Angie, so when Mr. Valerie turns in response to the approaching uniform, she slips a Freudian log into his belly. Pep and the guys have a beer back at the cabin and Pepper swoons over the hot ranger and makes a funny accent.

Season 4, Episode 9: Ambition

Original Air Date—28 December 1977
An icy lawyer (Foster Brooks in a rare "sober" role, showing remarkable talent) and his lackey, a music producer (Paul Williams), both of whom are shaking down criminal suspects for money to buy off the charges against them, see the chance to pin their crimes on a young cop (Michael Burns) who's too eager to bust suspects and rise in the ranks. Features two good gunfights.

Season 4, Episode 10: Blind Terror

Original Air Date—4 January 1978
Sandra Dee is a blind mom in the desert whom Pepper is protecting. But, being the desert, Angie's also got big dark sunglasses, so when the mob shows up to grab Sandy while she's inside, they mistake one for the other, chasing Pepper into the yucca, baby in tow.

Season 4, Episode 11: Tigress

Original Air Date—11 January 1978

Season 4, Episode 12: Sunset

Original Air Date—18 January 1978

Season 4, Episode 13: The Young and the Fair

Original Air Date—25 January 1978

Season 4, Episode 14: The Human Rights of Tiki Kim

Original Air Date—1 February 1978
The Korean mob (led by Philip Ahn in his last role) tries to put muscle on Koreatown by extortion and murder. An immigrant organizes a neighborhood association to fight them, so the gang targets the honest man's cute 8-year-old niece for kidnapping, with the price for her safe return being that he remain silent. They then arrange for her to be "adopted" and sent back to Korea by a native family they've hired, using their Washington connections to threaten the man with arrest for violating immigration laws if he, Pepper or a friendly journalist interfere. The title comes from a Jimmy Carter speech denouncing the South Korean regime (at the time) for violating the rights of its citizens. Plays very much like a "Lou Grant" episode until the final 10 minutes. This was the only major role for young actress Shang-Hur.

Season 4, Episode 15: Sixth Sense

Original Air Date—8 February 1978
Stopped at a traffic light while driving to work, Crowley notices the driver of the next car is unusually nervous and sweaty, and apparently has "made" Crowley as a cop. Crowley shows his badge and orders the driver to pull over, which he does. After questioning the man, Crowley forces his car trunk -- and finds a woman inside, unconscious from multiple stab wounds. The driver flees on foot, but Crowley tackles him. But Crowley had no legal justification to search the car, as a furious police captain reminds him, and the man -- who was the assailant -- is released from custody. The woman dies without regaining consciousness. Pepper and Crowley soon find evidence that the man is a totally psychotic woman-hater and that the woman in the trunk (played by a pre-"Vegas" Phyllis Davis in one very short scene) was his third victim after insulting him. With the boss still breathing down their necks, Pepper and Crowley dog the man, his wife and his "real" mistress, hoping to get one or the other to break down and force the killer's hand again. Contains an incredibly stupid final chase scene.

Season 4, Episode 16: Sons

Original Air Date—15 February 1978

Season 4, Episode 17: Murder with Pretty People

Original Air Date—22 February 1978

Season 4, Episode 18: Battered Teachers

Original Air Date—1 March 1978

Season 4, Episode 19: A Shadow on the Sea

Original Air Date—8 March 1978
Pepper, a waterfront cop and an old sea dog go after two boat hijackers who murdered a honeymooning couple and seem willing to steal and kill more to set up a smuggling operation.

Season 4, Episode 20: Sweet Kathleen

Original Air Date—15 March 1978

Season 4, Episode 21: Flip of a Coin

Original Air Date—23 March 1978

Season 4, Episode 22: Good Old Uncle Ben

Original Air Date—29 March 1978
Pepper meets up with her childhood mentor, now an elderly cattle rancher. The rancher, facing mounting expenses due to the illness of his wife, has linked up with a beef company that steals cows. But the rancher becomes disgusted with the operation when it murders two subordinates and when a young-punk assistant rustler, in business on his own, draws down on him in an argument. The rancher decides to break the gang on his own.

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