Heavy. The Mod Squad. Prior to getting the four-disc, 13-episode set, The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 1, I'll bet I hadn't seen an episode of the iconic "counterculture" cop show since it went out of heavy syndication back in the mid-70s. A particular favorite when I was in grade school (what kid didn't leap off a jungle gym at recess, imitating Linc bringing down a heavy?), I was psyched to revisit the series. So, imagine my surprise when I found The Mod Squad...just...okay. The clothes were cool, the attitude amusing, the So-Cal location work evocative, and the A-B-C mysteries easy to take. I really wanted to have a major nostalgia overload. So why didn't it make a bigger impression on me?

The Mod Squad looked at three youthful punks busted by the cops, and subsequently recruited into the police force. Alienated, sensitive Pete Cochran (Michael Cole) was a Beverly Hills rich kid whose parents, fed up with his "anti-everything" attitude, kicked him out of his cocoon of luxury. Lincoln Hayes (Clarence Williams III), an African-American born and bred in the Watts ghetto, was pissed off, driven, distrustful - and sensitive as well - when he wasn't running from the cops. And former San Franciscan Julie Barnes, "the sparrow with the broken wing," was a beautiful, sensitive blonde "flower child" whose hard-scrabble past (her mother was a prostitute) created a tough inner core. When the three youthful criminals are busted by Captain Adam Greer (Tige Andrews), the hard-assed but sympathetic (and sensitive, too - they were all sensitive) cop offered a job working with the police, rather than jail time. The hook for the suspicious kids was Greer's belief that their involvement would actually help the other people involved in crimes; the "mod squad" could possibly bridge the "generation gap" and make the world a better place.

From a reviewer's standpoint, it's extremely difficult to gauge the success or failure of a series - particularly the critical first season - when one is only able to view the first half of that season. Does The Mod Squad improve during those last 13 episodes for the first season? I don't know. Paramount, in a marketing move that's increasingly ticking me off, has split the first season in an effort to get more money out of the fans who would have willingly paid for an entire season (at a cheaper price, no doubt). So, I can only guess where the rest of Season One goes in terms of execution or themes. As it stands, these first 13 episodes are at best entertaining, but hardly a heavy-weight hitter that I was anticipating.

What struck me immediately about this first half of the first season (god, that's an annoying and unnecessary qualifier, isn't it?) is that the actual mysteries and police stories are at best, marginal. This isn't Columbo by a long shot. Most viewers will have more difficulty figuring out a Scooby-Doo mystery than your average Mod Squad plot (again, that might have changed later in the season, or in subsequent seasons). But then again, The Mod Squad was never really about cops - or hippies and the counterculture, for that matter. The Mod Squad was always about style. As Tyne Daly (a guest star on the series) states on one of documentaries included on this set, "Television loves young flesh, beautiful young people doing exciting things; running and jumping and leaping doesn't lose its appeal." It's obvious that good looking actors with a vast array of super-cool clothes, striking poses and breathing "heavy" thoughts were the prime elements of The Mod Squad. Plotting and suspense took a backseat to the producers' (Aaron Spelling - the king of junk - and Danny Thomas) desire to bring the counterculture safely into Middle America's homes. And what better way to do that than use three young, attractive, charismatic leads, call them "punks," and then show them converted over to "the Establishment's" side?

The Mod Squad premiered in 1968. The so-called "hippie movement" had already been officially declared dead the year before; what remained of the "counterculture" movement quickly morphed into a series of increasingly ugly, violent social encounters, on virtually every level of American life, no doubt heightened and exacerbated by the political fallout of Vietnam. On American television, the "youth movement" had been catered to over the years in various acceptable forms (perhaps starting with the eminently safe Ricky Nelson on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, moving on to the Borscht Belt-meets-Richard Lester antics of The Monkees). But by 1968, it was clear that the stakes had to be upped if "The Big Three" were going to stay "relevant." And by "relevant," I mean capturing that coveted 18-34 viewer demographic that advertisers salivated over. Make no mistake about it; despite the claims to innovation that supposedly fueled the inception of The Mod Squad, ratings were, and always will be, the single motivating factor in anything being put on commercial TV. If The Mod Squad featured a racially diverse cast of young actors play-acting at cops, so be it. But don't isolate that artistic decision outside commercial considerations.

For Mom and Dad and the Kids out in fly-over country (still the bulk of viewers back in the late 60s), the only way "hippies" on TV were going to be acceptable was to have them be, deep down, thoroughly conventional. And that's really the cleverest hook about The Mod Squad: not only did it make a case for viewers to like cops, it made it cool to be cops. Of course, this was preaching to the choir, though. All those nice kids and their families who watched The Mod Squad didn't really have a problem with the police or authority figures. After all: they were sitting home watching TV, not out rioting. 1968 Middle America was assured by The Mod Squad that despite the horrors they saw on their nightly news cast, the youth of America, deep down, were really just misunderstood kids who, with a little tough love from a kindly cop like Captain Greer, would not only blossom as responsible citizens, they'd also bust criminals who looked just like them. As Greer laments, "If only kids learned to run to cops, not away from them," the "mod squad," fully aware of their divided loyalties between Greer and the rest of their kind, side with Greer each and every week. The center holds, as cop and hippie punks join forces.

This being television, though, the "mod squad" didn't look like any hippies I remember from 1968. The hippies I remember (my brothers and their ridiculous friends) stunk to high heaven and dressed like war refugees. Pete, Julie and Linc, on the other hand, epitomized the very height of sartorial splendor in The Mod Squad. With carefully tousled coifs and expensive designer duds, all beautifully coordinated, the "mod squad" look like they just stepped off the pages of Esquire and Vogue, rather than Haight-Ashbury. Peter, frequently attired in a rakish turtleneck and tweed jacket (a tweed jacket on a hippie???), blended nicely with Julie's deceptively simple (read: expensive as hell), casual chic attire. And Linc, bold and almost soldierly in his high-buttoned windbreakers and perfectly tailored chinos and chuka boots, looked more like a future replacement for the Hathaway Man, rather than a fast-running, anti-establishment ghetto kid. If clothes like these went with being a cop (along with no paperwork, no police board reviews, no uniform duty, and basically no rules of conduct), no wonder so many kids thought it was cool to be in the "mod squad."

Playing into that fantasy world, the "mod squad" didn't seem to have to do too much as "cops" to earn whatever money they earned. Even that point is fuzzy in The Mod Squad. Money is never discussed, but one must assume they're paid for their services? Greer calls them when needed, but it's assumed their time is their own in-between special assignments. And are they even really true cops? Their training, detailed in the first episode, consists of some shady undercover exercises by Greer in an abandoned factory (my favorite - "survival training," where Greer tries to run them over with a truck! Try finding that one on the police academy roster), but it's never explained if they're full-fledged cops. Can you imagine the field day lawyers would have, whenever a case was brought up by these amateur, part-time flatfoots?

If you look at most TV shows too closely, fantasy elements become readily apparent, so I don't detail them from The Mod Squad to denigrate the show, but just to illustrate that despite its reputation for being some kind of ground breaker, it is in reality, a beautifully shot, moderately entertaining cop series that tweaked the formula - and threw in a lot of cool clothes, lingo and attitude - and came up with a winner in the ratings (28th for the year-end Nielsen's). And that's fine, actually. Always watchable, The Mod Squad is pure So-Cal TV fantasy, masquerading as "heavy drama," with beautiful people doing exciting things, just as Tyne Daly so aptly described. Cole, Lipton and Williams have a wonderful, instinctive quality together (even if they overdo "intense" on occasion), and while the dialogue they're given can be quite silly in that gauzy, dippy 60s manner ("I'll sell you Sunday. Real cheap." "Sorry, I've got a closet full of them."), when the directors let the cast loosen up and laugh a little bit at all the ridiculousness, a nice groove is produced. Watching The Mod Squad now, I wished the stories had been a little more involved, but the style always succeeded, episode after episode, so for what it was aiming to achieve, The Mod Squad regularly hit its target.

Here are the 13, one-hour episodes of the four-disc box set The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 1, as described on its insert. PLEASE NOTE: As with most vintage TV series released by CBS/Paramount, there is a small disclaimer at the back of the DVD slimcase that states, "Some episodes may be edited from their original network versions." There is no further explanation of what cuts, if any, were made. Most of the episodes time out at around 51 and a half minutes, which is about right or close for the original network run times. It's possible, though, that these are the syndicated versions, which may account for the minor cuts for time. Edited TV shows are one of the hottest topics concerning DVD releases, and as a reviewer, I've taken both sides of the issue, depending on what title I'm reviewing. It's usually a case-by-case basis, so it's up to you if you can live with the possibility that these shows might be edited. I've included run times and guest stars for all the episodes:

DISC ONE

The Teeth of the Barracuda (1:13:46)
New recruits Pete Cochran, Linc Hayes, and Julie Barnes probe the murder of a police officer. Implicated is a candidate's daughter who was being blackmailed.

Bad Man on Campus (50:59)
The team goes back to school - Linc and Pete as teachers and Julie as a transfer student - in order to investigate a car theft operation that resulted in murder.

My, What a Pretty Bus (51:57)
An older, charming ex-convict pulls the three detectives into an elaborate counterfeiting scheme, not realizing that they are cops.

DISC TWO

When Smitty Comes Marching Home (51:48)
Linc's best friend, a battle-weary Vietnam veteran, is accused of killing his service buddy, but can't remember anything about the night of the murder.

You Can't Tell the Players Without a Programmer (52:03)
A girl who is having problems with her over-the-hill swinger mother tells Pete about a computer dating service, where young men blackmail lonely older women.

A Time to Love - A Time to Cry (50:48)
The team helps a probation officer search for a parolee, a photographer who woke up from a bad acid trip with a dead model in his apartment.

Find Tara Chapman! (50:37)
Linc and Pete frantically search for a folksinger who's infected with meningitis. But since she's a witness to a mob hit, she thinks they're trying to kill her.

DISC THREE

The Price of Terror (51:40)
A man serving time has been getting others to terrorize Captain Greer, but vows that when he gets out of prison he'll finish the job himself!

A Quiet Weekend in the Country (51:15)
Pete and Julie pose as newlyweds, and Linc as a handyman, at a vacation trailer park that Captain Greer suspects may be a drop-off point for drug dealers.

Love (50:48)
Pete's cousin, a rich girl ignored by her parents, is caught robbing homes in Beverly Hills, and then kidnaps her baby brother in order to get attention.

DISC FOUR

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Starlet (51:29)
While a popular talk-show host attacks the police for not doing their job, Julie is used as bait in order to catch a killer who targets pretty blonde actresses.

The Guru (51:48)
When an underground newspaper is bombed, it boosts the paper's circulation. So the editor decides to take advantage of the situation...and then he is murdered.

The Sunday Drivers (51:40)
In Las Vegas, Linc watches an old friend die in a stunt car event. So he goes undercover as a driver at the show, convinced that his friend was murdered.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full-screen, 1.33:1 video image for The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 1 is absolutely beautiful, with deep, rich, candy-coated color and an admirable sharpness and clarity. Beautiful.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English sound mix is big, fat mono - which perfectly recreates the original broadcast presentation. Close-captioning is available.

The Extras:
There are a couple of nice extras included in The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 1 set. First up on disc one is Forming the Squad (14:41), a behind-the-scenes look at the inception and production of the series, with interviews featuring Cole, Lipton and other cast and crew (Williams' participation is conspicuously missing from all bonus extras). Next, there's Inside "The Teeth of the Barracuda," 1968, running 9:21, that looks to place The Mod Squad within its historical context of the turbulent late 60s. And on disc three, there's Friends of The Mod Squad, running 16:08, where Lou Gossett, Jr., Tyne Daly, and Leslie Ann Warren discuss their shots on the series.

Final Thoughts:
Too pseudo-serious at times for its own good, with mysteries that frequently fail to mystify, The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 1 still has plenty of soul and style for the nostalgically minded fans who want a solid trip back in time. The episodes look gorgeous; the stars look gorgeous; the cars and clothes look gorgeous. Does it really matter the show is only okay? Not at all: style trumps content every time on 1960s TV - a lesson that Mod Squad producer Aaron Spelling followed religiously throughout his career. I recommend The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 1 for committed fans, newcomers may rent first, and anyone who's had enough of split-season DVD releases (and I'm rapidly approaching that frame of mind), skip it, and call Paramount and complain. That's just what The Mod Squad would want you to do, man. You dig?