Mark C. Tinker Movies
All of the regular cast members seen during Season One of The White Shadow are on deck for Season Two, with a pair of new additions. Joining the Carver High School basketball team under aegis of coach Ken Reeves (Ken Howard) (nicknamed "The White Shadow" by the largely black student body) are player Nick Vittaglia (John Mengatti) and team manager Phil Jefferson (Russell Phillip Robinson). No sooner has the season begun when one of Reeves' best players, Curtis Jackson (Milton Reese), unwittingly falls in with a gang of bookies who want him to shave a few points. Later, an embittered transfer student tries to turn the team against Reeves for making a joke that the student has misinterpreted as a racial slur; Reeves is racked with guilt when a rookie player dies of a hitherto undetected heart condition during practice; it's an inner-city "Odd Couple" when the temporarily homeless Warren Coolidge (Byron Stewart) is forced to share living quarters with the hapless coach; Coolidge and Morris Thorpe (Kevin Hooks) both get a sexually transmitted disease from the same girl; "Salami" Pettrino (Timothy Van Patten) runs afoul of the authorities when he innocently shares his prescription painkillers with his teammates, and later has a brief affair with an attractive young teacher; Reeves suspects that Ricky Gomez (Ira Angustain) is the victim of domestic violence; and the team challenges a group of volunteer workers to a pickup game, little imagining that their opponents are none other than the Harlem Globetrotters! The season ends on a truly shattering note: After helping his team win the LA City Basketball Championship, and on the brink of his graduation, Curtis Jackson is shot down and killed while witnessing a liquor store holdup. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ken Howard
In the Emmy-winning debut episode of The White Shadow, Chicago Bulls forward Ken Reeves (Ken Howard), forced to retire after a series of injuries, bypasses the offers of several more prestigious jobs, accepting instead an invitation from college buddy Jim Willis (played by Jason Bernard in the opener, Ed Bernard thereafter) to coach the mediocre basketball team at Carver High, the inner-city-LA high school where Willis is principal. Reeves is hardly welcomed with open arms by taciturn vice principal Sybil Buchanan (Joan Pringle), nor does he immediately win over the largely black student body. He does, however, have better luck bonding with his team members, beginning with James Hayward (Thomas Carter), whom Ken talks out of quitting school. As the team begins to win games under Reeves' tough-but-fair tutelage, the kids come to both respect and revere "The White Shadow." All the while, however, Ken's sister Katie (Robin Rose) and brother-in-law Bill (Jerry Fogel) nag him to stop trying to save the world and take a safer, more secure, and better-paying job at one of the suburbans schools. A subsequent episode finds Reeves having a showdown with player Curtis Jackson (Eric Kilpatrick) when he finds a liquor bottle in Curtis' locker. Another player, Milton Reese (Nathan Cook) may have to give up both the team and a scholarship when his girlfriend turns up pregnant. Briefly dropped from the team, Ricky "Go Go" Gomez (Ira Angustain) rejoins his old street gang. Player Abner Goldstein (Ken Michelman) undergoes a crisis of faith when his teammates seem indifferent to his grandmother's illness. And in a basically serious episode with comic undertones, the team decides to form a singing group--excluding the sensitive Morris Thorpe (Kevin Hooks), whose ear-piercing rendition of "My Girl" must be heard to be disbelieved. The problems tackled in the first season of The White Shadow go beyond the regular characters: A talented transfer student faces persecution because he is rumored to be homosexual; a hot college prospect turns out to be illiterate, a product of the "slide 'em through and no one will notice" school of athletic promotion; and while subbing for another teacher, Reeves finally comes to grips with the fact that not every troubled student is capable of being "saved"--especially after one such student tries to rape Ms. Buchanan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ken Howard
- 1978
Bob and his fellow doctors look forward to honoring Carol as "Secretary of the Year." Their enthusiasm is dampened when Carol, hoping to expand her professional horizons, quits her job and goes to work for Bob's pet patient, real-estate agent Elliot Carlin. Featured in the cast are Madeline Fisher as Miss Pringle, Jerry Terry Bell as Gary Johnson, Joe George and Mert Rich as the Angry Men, and Neil Flanagan as Mr. Stevens. Written by Lloyd Garner, "Carol Ankles for Indie-Prod" originally aired on March 4, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bob Newhart, Suzanne Pleshette, (more)
