And Now, Back to Mannix
by JoAnn M. Paul is a great resource for fans of Mannix seasons 2-8. The author
loves Joe Mannix and Peggy Fair and clearly delights and thrives on writing
about them and their complex relationship. It’s a truly fascinating read.
Still, I have to admit that I was thoroughly
disappointed that she omitted any discussion of one of the other most
intriguing relationships on the series: that of Joe Mannix and Lew Wickersham
in season 1. Upon reading the book last Autumn and discovering the lack of
season 1 information, I determined to write a book myself on season 1,
detailing the elements, the characters, and the episodes. I still plan to do
that. But for now, let’s have a brief look at what makes season 1 so special.
I should start off by saying that I was a skeptic at first. I loved seasons 2-8 and I did not like what I’d heard about season 1: mainly, that the format was different, Peggy wasn’t there yet, and Joe was working at Intertect for a boss he often clashed with. I figured it would be the same old clichés that populate shows such as McCloud. And honestly, that sounded quite tiresome to me. Sometimes employer and employee arguing is amusing, but sometimes I just get bored of it and wonder why they can’t just get along.
But I was fresh out of Mannix to watch and I
decided that what the heck, we should really check out season 1 too. So I
rented the first disc from Netflix.
I knew right from the first episode that I had been
seriously misinformed. Joe’s first scene with Lew has Lew sighing and bemoaning
Joe getting into a fight and asks, “Did you have to hit him?” Joe shrugs and
says, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Despite Lew’s displeasure over the fight, he
actually isn’t angry. There’s an undercurrent of both resignation and
amusement. He knows Joe is his best agent and puts up with his behavior because
of that. At the end of the episode, when Joe peeks into a meeting to tell Lew
that he solved the case, the other people in the meeting are puzzled. “Who’s
that?” one of them asks. Lew smiles as he replies, “The name is Mannix.”
Not only had I been misinformed, I knew then that
Lew, and his relationship was Joe, was something special. As I watched the
other episodes on the disc, those realizations only came to light all the more.
One of my most favorite season 1 episodes is Nothing
Ever Works Twice, where Joe is framed for the murder of his old
girlfriend’s husband. Normally I’m not a big fan of plots where one of the good
guys is framed (which is odd coming from a Perry Mason fan, I know).
This episode, however, will forever be an exception. Lew bends over backwards
to try to help Joe clear himself, running all over town to keep up with him and
be there for his phone calls. And he does all this while dealing with a splitting
headache.
Lew certainly didn’t have to become so involved. He
could have either called the police and explained the mess or washed his hands
of the whole deal. He wanted to call the police, feeling that was in Joe’s best
interest, but when Joe wanted to solve the case himself and not be behind bars
while the police and Intertect tried to clear him, Lew threw himself full-force
into helping Joe every step of the way.
One aspect that a lot of people don’t seem to
seriously think about is that out of all of Joe’s friends throughout the
series, it’s Lew who believes in and trusts Joe the most. How many times has
Art or Adam scoffed at Joe’s theories and told him he’s crazy? Even Peggy gets
into that act sometimes. They all truly care about Joe and believe in him to
varying extents, yet oddly enough, after all this time they still don’t trust
many of Joe’s ideas and hunches.
We don’t know how long Joe and Lew have known each
other. IMDB says they fought in the war together, but there’s nothing in any of
the episodes that says that. But regardless of the length of time they’ve known
each other, Lew has a belief in Joe that’s really quite unshakable. Oh, there
are times when he is alarmed and horrified over some of Joe’s methods, and
sometimes he can’t permit Joe to pursue a particular investigation on company
time, but he knows Joe is his best agent and he knows why. When Joe has an
idea, Lew listens to it and encourages others to listen as well. He doesn’t
tell Joe he’s crazy for his ideas, but gives serious consideration to the
concept that Joe might be right, because he knows Joe often is right. He
gives his support to Joe and many times, he becomes personally involved in
solving the case right alongside Joe. One time they even concoct a bizarre
scheme where they pretend to fight and Lew pretends to fire Joe, just to make a
scene for the bad guys to see. In reality, they’re continuing to work together
on the case. Lew has saved Joe’s life at least twice, and according to Joe,
there have been other times when they’ve saved each other.
Lew is definitely more than just Joe’s boss. It’s
obvious without actually acknowledging it, but they do, several times in the
scripts. Both The Cost of a Vacation and Deadfall, Part 2 have
them come right out and admit they’re friends.
This isn’t to say the characters don’t ever have
conflicts. They do, many times. Often they disagree on the proper method of
detective work. Joe favors old-fashioned methods like interviewing witnesses,
using the telephone, and getting into fistfights if he has to. Lew prefers letting
the high-tech supercomputers handle much of the work, which saves time and, he
hopes, eliminates the human error. However, many of their arguments about these
things are handled as though it’s friendly banter. They don’t stand there and
scream at and insult each other very often.
The Deadfall two-part saga is one exception
to that. It’s one of the most intense and heartbreaking Mannix
adventures and one of only three two-part episodes throughout the entire series
run. In it, Lew is suffering from an infection and is taking prescribed
steroids to try to deal with it. But he has a bad reaction to them and becomes
angry and delusional, snapping at Joe in ways he doesn’t ordinarily and seeing
hallucinations of a supposedly dead agent wherever he goes. Joe, meanwhile, is
highly occupied with the case of the dead agent and what he’s learning that
points to the idea that the man is both alive and a traitor. He’s so focused on
that, that he doesn’t realize what’s happening to Lew and that Lew isn’t
himself. Instead, he becomes furious when he thinks Lew deliberately abandons
him to a fight. The conflict eventually culminates in a knockdown, drag-out
fight between them in a darkened Intertect office.
Part 2 has Joe telling the Intertect doctor about
the fight while the doctor treats Joe’s battle wounds. The doctor realizes
what’s wrong and tells Joe, who immediately becomes stricken with guilt that he
didn’t realize and actually physically fought with Lew in his ill state. Lew
ends up abducted by the traitorous agent and his wife, but manages to escape
once the pills wear off and he can think clearly again. Joe comes to the docks
looking for Lew and ends up nearly being killed by the traitor. Lew staggers
upon the scene just in time and fires, killing the traitor and saving Joe. The
saga ends with the girlfriend of the episode leaving Joe after Joe angrily and
suspiciously questions her motives in shouting his name and drawing the bad
guys’ attention to him. Lew, meanwhile, is at the point of collapse and tells
Joe he’s sorry for everything he did. Joe welcomes him back and catches him as
he swoons. The episode ends there. Girls may come and go, but it’s the
friendship that lasts, even when hurtful things happen.
Joe stays with Intertect throughout season 1. The
last scenes of the final season 1 episode, The Girl in the Frame, have Joe
and Lew once again teamed to solve a case. Although Joe quits Intertect in an
earlier episode, he comes back by the end. They always intended for him to come
back. They never thought of having Joe really strike out on his own, despite
his threats to do so, until the show was in danger of cancellation and they
decided they wanted to overhaul it.
So the question remains, why does Joe come back,
aside from the fact that the script called for it? He isn’t a team player. He
doesn’t like working with most of the other agents or relying so heavily on
computers. Apparently he already has his mandatory three years of working under
someone else; he could go off and get his independent license if he really
wanted to.
He stays because of Lew. He knows he’s Lew’s best
agent and doesn’t want to let him down. And he just plain likes Lew and likes
working with him, even though he doesn’t agree with everything Lew says and
does. That’s really the only answer that makes sense, all things considered.
And although it is a natural progression of the character to have him finally
decide to leave anyway, part of me feels that it makes him look
out-of-character since it goes against all the original intentions for him.
Sometimes I like to picture an alternate version of
the series where Joe doesn’t leave, but Peggy comes to work there, since I
don’t like Joe leaving Intertect but I love the dynamic between him and Peggy.
Still, then I miss Joe’s combination office and home, which is really almost a
character in and of itself in seasons 2-8. When following the actual series, I
insist on believing that Joe and Lew remain friends after Joe’s departure. Joe
doesn’t forget his friends; he certainly wouldn’t forget Lew.
The early season 2 episode Pressure Point
makes it sound like Joe’s parting from Intertect was not pleasant and that
bitter feelings remain on both sides. That’s more or less in keeping with the
situation in the season 1 episode where he temporarily quits under
not-so-pleasant circumstances. But it’s too sad to imagine that such a scenario
continues for the rest of the series. If Joe and Lew finally parted because of
ill feelings, I insist on believing that they soon mended their problems and
renewed their friendship. They’re too close to allow something so ridiculous to
split them apart, especially after Deadfall.
The actors themselves had a beautiful rapport,
which carried over to the characters and is certainly one reason why they’re
such a joy to watch. The two-part interview with Mike Connors and Joseph
Campanella on the first two season 1 discs is glorious and shows their
continuing friendliness in the present-day. They also provide commentary on an
episode from disc 5, and although normally I don’t care for commentary on
episodes, I was overjoyed by that venture.
In season 6 they brought Joseph back for a
guest-spot in the episode The Crimson Halo. He didn’t play Lew, but the
purpose of the episode was very clearly to celebrate the interaction between
him and Mike Connors. Throughout the episode, the mystery takes a back seat to
how Joe Mannix and Dr. Graham Aspinall go from mutual dislike of each other to a
healthy respect and even the beginnings of a friendship. And even though I
regret that we didn’t get to see Lew again, I love that episode for its
profound message of two very different people slowly coming together in a
growing bond of friendship and love.
For
all we know, maybe that’s also the basic story of how Joe and Lew met, too.
