Mr and Mrs North (Richard Denning, Barbara Britton) take a trip to his
old college for some reunion festivities, and he is especially thrilled
about meeting his old friend Barton (Douglas Kennedy) again, who has since
become a nuclear physicist and professor at the college. But Barton has
also gone off the hook, apparently, shocked by the nuclear bomb he has
helped to develop to such an extent that he plans to glow up the
university if all the plans for the bomb are not scrapped. Of course, in
1950's USA, there is nothing quite as good as a good nuclear bomb, so
every attempt is made to dissuade Barton from doing anything foolish
without giving in to his crazy pacifist demands, until in the end, only
seconds before Barton's bomb is set to go off, Mr North persuades him to
disarm the thing because an explosion would only leave a hole in the
ground, with no pacifist message reaching anyone ... In its
best episodes, Mr. and Mrs. North is a very amusing crime
series, but in this episode, dealing with big themes like nuclear warfare
vs pacifism (given the typical 1950's treatment of course that seems a bit
odd from today's point of view), neither the writers nor the actors find
the right way to handle the story, and thus the whole thing fails to
convince or even reasonably entertain.
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