"Quincy M.E." An Ounce of Prevention (1979)

Director:

Kenneth Gilbert

Writers:

Steve Greenberg (teleplay) &
Aubrey Solomon (teleplay) ...

TV Series:

"Quincy M.E." (1976)

Original Air Date:

22 March 1979 (Season 4, Episode 21)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Crime

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Coroner | Murder | Cult Favorite | Courtroom | Amateur Detective

Cast

Jack Klugman	...	Dr. R. Quincy, M.E.
Garry Walberg	...	Lt. Frank Monahan
John S. Ragin	...	Dr. Robert Asten
Val Bisoglio	...	Danny Tovo
Robert Ito	...	Sam Fujiyama
Joseph Roman	...	Sgt. Brill
Skip Homeier	...	Paul Sellers - Health Dept.
Michael Anderson Jr.	...	Attorney Todd Johnson (as Michael Anderson)
Lin McCarthy	...	Dr. Bellson
Dennis Patrick	...	Tony Larson
Jordan Rhodes	...	Attorney Kent (as Jordon Rhodes)
Mel Carter	...	EPA Official
Barbara Baldavin	...	Mrs. Roselli
Gino Ardito	...	Frank Roselli
Joseph V. Perry	...	Carl Leyton (as Joseph Perry)

Decent moralistic Quincy episode that still works today.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Quincy M.E.: An Ounce of Prevention starts as lowly construction worker Frank Roselli (Gino Ardito) loses his grip while working on the building of a skyscraper, he falls to his death. Los Angeles coroner Quincy (Jack Klugman) performs the autopsy & while there is no doubt the fall killed him there are questions over what made him fall, after running several tests it turns out Frank's blood was loaded with some sort of oregano phosphates. Quincy traces the chemicals to tomato's he had eaten & back to his home town of Rosewood where he wife (Barbar Baldavin) grew them in their backyard, after testing the soil the health department find it is loaded with the dangerous chemicals & that it is contamination from a nearby disused landfill full of deadly waste organic pesticide chemicals. An entire community is under threat unless the waste can be cleaned up, the only problem is no-one wants to pay for it...

Episode 21 from season 4 this Quincy story was directed by Kenneth Gilbert & is one of those Quincy episodes which is split between a race against time to save lives & a moralistic message. The one thing that stands out in An Ounce of Prevention is that the message about dumping waste, the ever-growing problem of pollution & more importantly who is responsible for it is never more appropriate than today, in fact you could say the writers of this episode were pretty forward thinking as pollution & associated green issues are big news these days. It also foresees that the constant, unmonitored & unregulated dumping of waste will one day have an impact, even if it's not the day it's dumped but ten years down the line when it's had a chance to do some real damage. What I also liked about An Ounce of Prevention beside a very real & topical moral issue is that it doesn't forget that at heart it's a show designed to entertain & a such there's a pretty good sub-plot about leaking barrels of waste dumped at sea & it also has some trademark Quincy humour with Asten trying to get Quincy to talk to some Japanese tourists & Quincy picking a girl up no-one else could. A good episode then, maybe not the most original or intriguing but still relevant & entertaining.

An Ounce of Prevention is probably the only Quincy episode ever to feature a submarine, it also tries to claim that skyscraper construction workers only use bits of rope to attach themselves to high buildings they are working on which doesn't seem plausible to me. I mean what if they slipped or something? Surely they would wear a harness of some sort actually attached to the steel beams rather than a manky old rope tied around it? The acting is OK in this one, the Japanese tourists overdo it a bit though.

An Ounce of Prevention show's that we didn't really take these Quincy episodes that seriously back in 1979 since pollution is still a huge problem, it's an entertaining enough episode considering there's no murder mystery angle to it.