The Adventurer (1972) episode 26: Somebody Doesn’t Like Me

So 26 episodes, around 50, 620 words and 28 blog posts later, we’ve finally reached the last stop for Gene Bradley, and I find myself in the likely position of having written more about The Adventurer than any other person. I don’t know if I deserve a medal or I deserve being put out of my misery. In all honesty though documenting the whole insane saga of The Adventurer has been tons of fun, and I can only hope these blog posts have managed to reflect that. The Adventurer is a mad, bad world to hide out and get lost in for a couple of weeks, and deserves to be the chief exhibit in the museum of 20th century egomania. Should such a museum ever open, I’d be happy to chip in towards a bronze statue of Gene Bradley.

Although every week has brought with it slight fears and anxieties that this is the week that I’ll dry up and run out of things to say, only a couple of episodes have proved to be such an obstacle. I’ll happily hold my hands up and be the first to admit that with ‘Love Always, Magda’ and ‘Deadlock’ you can tell I was floundering when it came to finding much entertainment value in those dud episodes. For someone prone to writers’ block though, writing up Adventurer episodes has proved remarkably easy. As if by magic hitherto unknown information…the existence of the Adventurer compilation ‘movie’ …the tie-in novelisation…has dropped into my lap, and kept fuelling this long, late night journey into the past…but now it’s early morning and we’ve reached our final destination. I’ll miss ‘em all…Mr Parminter…Diane…Brandon…Vince…or whoever was standing in for Vince that week.

Call it Stockholm syndrome but I’ll even miss Gene. Appalling as the behind the scenes stories get, I can’t really seem to work up any genuine hatred for the man. The lifelong lunacy over other actors’ height…those God-awful trousers…that whiney, room clearing voice that Catherine Schell does such a spot on impersonation of on the DVD extras…it’s all just too amusing a combo. Should anyone be under the illusion that Gene’s behaviour during The Adventurer was merely a brief moment of madness, I suggest you fast forward twenty odd years later to the 1994 revival of Burke’s Law, Aaron Spelling’s attempt to drag Gene into the Baywatch/Beverly Hills, 90210 era. The passing of time did little to diminish Gene’s ego…in one episode Gene accidently becomes a backing dancer in a music video for an Axl Rose type rockstar, in the next episode Gene is showing off his ice skating skills, another sees him KO a karate expert who is at least three times younger than him. Elliott Gould guest stars in one episode, only to have to sit down whenever he and Gene share the screen…old habits die hard. Burke, 90210 (as I like to call the 1994 version of Burke’s Law) has its moments, but it’s not The Adventurer, then again what is? I guess I’ll just have to accept that there is a Gene Bradley sized hole in my life that will never be filled.



It is not all over yet though, we’ve still got one more episode to go, the supremely appropriately entitled ‘Somebody Doesn’t Like Me’. One more episode, and one more trip to The Adventurer’s beloved docklands settings, where low-level criminal Johnny gets himself into serious trouble when he accidently overhears a group of men from the worlds of business and crime plotting to assassinate Gene Bradley. Narrowly escaping death (by hiding under a Chevrolet car) Johnny tries to capitalise on this information by attempting to sell it to Gene via Krista Magnus (Penelope Horner). Gene is rather sweet on Krista, but as she has scammed him before, senses another con and dismisses her claims that a price is on his head. Soon Gene discovers that Krista’s claims aren’t without foundation though, as attempts on his life start coming left, right and centre. “From now on I look twice at any guy with two hands in his pocket” Gene tells Parminter. Gene narrowly avoids death when a few nuts and bolts are removed from 88 Delta, forcing Gene to make an emergency landing. Gene can’t even visit a trendy hair salon without a hitman (Robin ‘Zeta One’ Hawdon) pulling a gun on him.

Drastic measures are called for, so Gene makes the decision to fake his own death by having Gavin pretend to shoot him outside of ATV studios (this series was certainly determined to go out in a blaze of self-publicity). The Adventurer then resurrects the long forgotten ‘Gene, master of disguise’ storyline as Gene goes about disguising himself as his own assassin and attempts to make contact with the men who put the hit out on him.



Words fail me when it comes to describing Gene’s very last disguise in the series. The best I can come up with is to ask you to imagine a mixture of Elvis and Charles Bronson (circa Death Wish 4 or 5), but with a put on raspy voice worthy of an obscene phone caller. Gene is so ‘method’ that he insists on wearing this elaborate get-up even when he is talking over the phone to the man who wants him dead, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the man on the other end of the phone can’t see what he looks like!! As tends to be a puzzling theme running throughout The Adventurer, Gene spends much time prepping and getting into his disguise, then never actually puts it to any practical use. Here Gene arranges a docklands meeting with the men who put the hit out on him, but prefers to hide in the shadows, rasping excuses to them from the darkness “I’ll stay here…I like to keep my eyes on you”. The moment Gene steps into the light, he removes his disguise, thereby negating any reason for him to be in disguise in the first place!!

Somebody Doesn’t Like Me benefits from some top drawer character actors as Gene’s final adversaries in the form of Reginald Marsh and an especially menacing Peter Vaughan. There is also no shortage of action or product placement. As well as the self-congratulatory ATV references, Gene’s silver Chevrolet makes a return from the dead, proving to be as indestructible as the killer in a slasher movie franchise. Somebody Doesn’t Like Me is a far darker Adventurer episode than we’re used to…its landscape is one of wintery nights, brutalist buildings, cheap rooms with dead bodies in them, corrupt businessmen, assassins for hire and with a less than whiter than white heroine in serial con-woman Krista. Britain just doesn’t seem like a nice, friendly place anymore. It is as if The Adventurer saw the writing on the wall for its type of TV action series, foresaw the shift towards the gritty cynicism of The Sweeney, Target, The Professionals, and made an eleventh hour attempt to move with the times.

Quite what qualifies as the very last episode of The Adventurer is the source of some confusion. The 2006 DVD release ends with this episode which does appear to be the last ever filmed. The IMDB, which seemingly has the episodes listed in broadcast order, has ‘The Good Book’ down as the final Adventurer episode, which was presented as the very first episode on the DVD release. While the US Amazon prime service has a different episode running order to both the DVD and the IMDB, and suggests ‘Mr Calloway is a Very Cautious Man’ was Gene Bradley’s grand finale.



Of all the potential final episodes of The Adventurer, ‘Somebody Doesn’t Like Me’ is the one that feels most worthy of that honour. The danger of death that hangs over Gene in this episode, his faked demise half way through, and the last scene in which Gene and Parminter discuss Gene’s obituaries, has about as much an air of finality as the series has to offer. Should it have ended that way? Personally I would have liked to have seen the series go out a la ‘Newhart’, with Amos Burke being woken up in 1960s Los Angeles by a blonde girlfriend and realising that the entirety of The Adventurer had just been a bad dream. That explanation is really the only way The Adventurer makes any sense. It might have gone down a little like this….



“Amos, Amos, wake up” 

“what, huh, hey you’re quite a doll…but honey I’m Gene…the movie star…the multi-millionaire… and since you’re pretty I’ll let you into a little secret…I’m a secret agent as well. You seem confused…you must have seen one of my movies… ‘The Man Who Could See Through Everything’… ‘La Vallee du Funnerre’… I’m Gene Brady…or is it Gene Bradley?” 

“Amos, quit acting all weird on me, you’re Amos Burke, the captain of the Los Angeles police homicide division and a millionaire…remember you go around Los Angeles solving all those kooky murder cases…. And remember you have that adorable little Filipino guy who chaperones you around everywhere in your Rolls Royce” 

“I’m a millionaire and a police captain? Gee, my life’s a funny thing…but it all seemed so real…I was in London…and I was a secret agent, movie star and millionaire ….and I went around all of Europe saving the world from these people who were like…giants!!!...but I dressed really weird…I don’t even want to think about those trousers…it was like I was meant to be a fairy or something”

“Gee, Amos, this Gene Bradley fella, sounds kinda interesting” 

“Yes, but he wasn’t as handsome as me, he certainly wasn’t as tall as me, that’s for sure. I also had an assistant …Vince, that was his name, only…his name seemed to change every other week and he kept getting shorter and shorter as well. Guess there must have been something wrong with him”

“You probably dreamt that on account of that guy you had working for you a couple of weeks back…he was named Vince…remember it really bugged you that he was taller than you…then you discovered he was just wearing those special built up type shoes that make people look taller...and you had him fired because of that” 

“Now that’s starting to make sense, one thing I can’t figure out though is why…wherever I’d go they’d always be these men in front of me…and they were holding these boards up with words on them, and these words were exactly what I was about to say…well not exactly because sometimes I didn’t read them correctly” 



“Gee Amos, those Brits sound an awfully weird bunch, imagine asking you to dress like a fairy” 

“And you know in Britain its considered impolite to refer to a woman as a ‘dame’ the correct term there is ‘bird’. Speaking of which there was this dame there, and she kept throwing men around and hitting them with her handbag” 

“Kinda like Honey West?” 

“Yeah, sorta like Honey, but she was Hungarian…and a giant too!!” 

“Amos, I know you don’t like taking advice from dames, but maybe you should lay off eating cheese at night. I wonder if this could all be because of that offer you got recently…remember that government guy ‘The Man’ wanted you to quit the force and work for the government as a secret agent. Maybe this is like…a warning”

 

“I don’t know ‘Amos Burke-Secret Agent’ has kind of a ring to it, don’t you think?” 

“No, it sounds kinda stupid, Amos. One thing that bothers me, Amos, when you were asleep you kept calling out a woman’s name, and saying things like ‘Parminter, just let me take you in my arms and kiss you’. I mean, do I have reason to be jealous? …what does this Parminter dame look like?”

 “Parminter? He…errr she…looked sort of like Rita Hayworth, but with allot less hair…but really doll-face you got nothing to worry about, you know you’re the only one for me…by the way, just remind me…what’s your name again?” 

Later that day Amos Burke stepped out onto his balcony with a prairie oyster in his hand to settle his nerves. Maybe becoming a secret agent wasn’t such a great idea after all, maybe he should just settle for the simpler things in life, like being a millionaire and a police captain. As Amos Burke surveyed the gorgeous sight of 1960s Los Angeles, he was met with a sense of relief and reassurance that Gene Bradley had just been a figment of his overworked, overactive imagination, and that there was no one in this town who was taller than he was - and that’s Burke’s Law !!!!