Sorry, this movie sucks

Pretty Good

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I just finished watching the entire series in chronological order. It took me almost two years to the day to watch them. I bought the first three seasons on DVD one season at a time. Season 4 was not available on DVD unless you bought Route 66 The Complete Series but they did not make the entire series available until after I bought the first three seasons on DVD.BUT, MeTV was showing the entire series in chronological order so I just waited until the fourth season started.Within the last hour I watched the final episode. Is was part 2 of 2.Route 66 ran from fall 1960 to spring 1964. The premise of the series was Tod Stiles father passed away who owned a large business but was in tremendous debt. So his business had to be liquidated and sold. By the time all his debt and creditors were paid off, all his recent Yale graduate son (Tod Stiles) inherited was a brand new Corvette.One of the guys that worked for his father was an orphan raised in the tough streets of Hell's Kitchen named Buzz Murdoch, who had to learn to fight in one of the worst crime-ridden areas in the country just to survive.The two of them decided to take to the road and see the country in the new 1961 Corvette.The first two seasons were very good.At the end of the second season and at the end of the third season, George Maharis (Buzz Murdoch) missed several episodes. He was replaced at the end of the 3rd season with Lincoln Case (Glenn Corbett), a Green Beret/Vietnam Vet.As a whole, by the third season, the stories some times had little to do with the main characters; they were some times incidental characters in the stories.And the Lincoln Case character was not that well defined. They started off defining him well--a Green Beret that when attacked by four hoodlums, sends them all to hospital. Tod Stiles takes umbrage at this, thinking these hoodlums semi-innocent teenagers and challenges Case to a fight. Case agrees not to use his karate so they fight to a stand still. In fact, Case never uses his karate skills throughout the rest of the series taking away what could have been a character-defining gritty toughness.By contrast, Buzz Murdoch had his tough street-fighter side that defined him and made him interesting with a razor-sharp temper.Some of these episodes in the fourth season —and even the third--I had to suffer through. The music was sometimes contrived and corny, tried to make me feel differently than what the screen conveyed and oft times there were unrealistic characters that I could also care less about. And unrealistic dialog where one character goes on a poetic monologue.In the final episode reality was transcended: A character played by Patrick O'Neal dies and it's a joke with no investigation, no sorrow.A lot of these old shows did not have a definitive ending, perhaps because they did not know they were going to be canceled, one of the exceptions being "The Fugitive." But the final episode of Route 66 DID have an end to the series: Tod Stiles gets married (to Barbara Eden), Linc Case ships his stuff back home to Texas and when Stiles says, "Well we're going that way, straight to Houston" Case replies, "That's a two-seater you've got there old buddy."Case walks out to the Corvette, puts Stiles and Eden's luggage in the car, looks the Corvette over one last time, rubs his hands on it, smiles in reminiscing fashion then walks away into the sunset with the Corvette in the foreground and one final musical phrase of the Nelson Riddle/Gil Grau Route 66 theme song. Lincoln Case is saying goodbye to the road.The character most prevalent in this final scene of the series before it fades is the character most prevalent in the series—the Corvette. Fade Out.For the end credits, whilst the Nelson Riddle theme song played, Route 66 always showed a still from a scene from the episode. In this case it was the final shot of the episode/series—the Corvette but this time without Lincoln Case in the scene.The four year road trip had come to an end.Too bad they couldn't get a cameo by Maharis in the final episode.PS MeTV started Route 66 over with the first episode. Just for the heck of it I watched it again. The contrast in tension, character development and writing in watching the final episode immediately followed by the first was like night and day. Those early episodes were so much better.Executive Summary: First two seasons very good (inspired me to look up Maharis' work after Route 66). Third and fourth season hit and miss with the fourth season mostly miss even though I liked GLenn Corbett as an actor. He just did not get that many good scripts.

There are too many great episodes to go into and so many future stars to list. The episode with Julie Newmar, 'Vicki', sticks with me. It seemed like a set up for a spin-off. Maybe not. Many of the episodes had Buzz and Tod resolving others problems. Some dealt with their own search for female companionship. They weren't Lotharios, that is clear. There's a streak of conservatism in some of Buzz's basic outlook on life. The show is quite liberal in what it delivers to the audience. Tod, though a college grad hasn't gotten enough street smarts for some of the situations he encounters. Its also clear how shows like Twin Peaks, ER, Miami Vice owe a small debt to this program. Something must have happened in the second season because Martin Milner was doing introductory v.o. for many of the episodes in the latter part of that season. Many fascinating actresses passed through: Sylvia Miles, Marion Ross, Lois Nettleton, De Ann Mears and Inger Stevens among them. Big directors as well with Arthur Hiller, Sam Peckinpaugh and Robert Altman. A rich piece of television if you've been avoiding it because perhaps Milner might turn you off. These shows reveal that he could've gone on to better projects if fate were kinder to him.

The romance of the road is alive and well as Tod (Martin Milner) and Buz (George Maharis) cruise the country in their snazzy corvette convertible and get involved in the lives of the people they meet. The series opens by explaining that the boys are lost and a "long way from Route 66," when they find themselves in a backwater Mississippi town that harbors a grim secret. From there, they're on to Louisiana where they get involved with a lady shrimp boat captain and find trouble at the New Orleans waterfront before befriending a Nazi-hunter on an off-shore oil rig.This was the first drama to be filmed entirely on location (in 40 states and Canada) and the locations were really the key to the unique excitement of each show. The boys were mainly observers, albeit defenders of the underdog and good with their fists if need be. Each show featured many famous stars and well-known character actors; the quality of the acting and the scripts (most by Stirling Silliphant) were first-rate.Clean-cut and twenty-something Tod and Buz bear no resemblance to the leering sex, drug, and rock and roll-crazed young men we often see on the screen today. Dressed in their button-down shirts and freshly-creased slacks, they were upstanding good guys who solved a town's problems in strictly G Rated style. It's fun to remember the old days through this wonderful series. And who could ever forget that cool theme music?

Having watched Route 66 on Nick At Nite in 1985, I feel that the series was loosely based on Jack Kerouac's novel, On The Road which was written in 1957. The concept of the Beat Generation was certainly applied to this thought-provoking TV drama. While the two characters in the series were some what upgraded for television audiences, the basic concepts of the freedom to travel about, experiencing the lives of other people, and not settling into predictability produced a strong resonance that reverberates inside of many individuals. In some ways Route 66 could be considered a 20th century version of Mark Twain's classic novel Huckleberry Finn. In many ways. the series is very much a reflection of the human condition and of society looked at from the inside out. Striling Stilliphant was a true master at the craft of writing. May his work stand forever as an example of what solid truthful writing should be.