Twenty-Three year old Suzanne Pleshette . . .

Really I could stop tight there, give the episode a 10, and move on.  Unfortunately, this great natural resource is somewhat wasted.

No-nonsense Charles Underhill has just picked his niece Anne up at the courthouse.  She was hanging out with a car thief, but got off easy because Underhill is a city council-man and the judge knows him to be a model citizen and honest public servant.  Except for using his office to get his gangsta kinfolk out of the hoosegow.  Honest except for that.

The judge lets Anne off so as not to damage the sterling reputation of the council-man.  Underhill tells her she should be grateful, and she grudgingly thanks him.  To straighten her out, he tells her he is pulling her out of college and sending her to work in an office for one of his friends.  Probably the one that needs a loading zone in front of his store.

He pulls his land yacht over and runs into a store to buy some cigarettes, so I guess the example-setting only goes so far.  While he is gone, Anne notices a cute guy hitchhiking.  She certainly has a type.  Their eyes meet, but Underhill breaks the mood by returning.  Before he can resume his lecture, the car ahead of him backs into his car.  “Look at her!  Can’t even pull out of a parking space!” he says and lays on the horn.

Unfortunately, the horn gets stuck in the F-U position and won’t stop blaring.  Anne is greatly amused at his inability to stop the horn, and his discomfort at becoming a spectacle in the downtown square.  The good towns-folk stop and stare, but the hitchhiker takes action.  He comes over and disconnects the horn.

Underhill, being a proper gentleman, thanks him.  The twitchy punk says, “A noisy horn, it bugs me.”  Underhill compliments his mechanical skillz, and he says, “Either you dig a motor or you don’t.”  Len, a hipster doofus of the type inexplicably considered cool at the time, hits Underhill up for a ride to San Francisco.  Two-time County Safety Award winner Underhill takes a dim view of hitchhikers, or it might just his presbyopia flaring up.  Len reminds him that he did help the old guy out of a jam.  After initially refusing, Underhill relents and gives him a ride.

Well, we get a lengthy exploration of the generation gap.  A new age had arrived in Hollywood, so the dialogue is written to let the cool Len score all the points against the geezer Underhill.  But, ya know, when you dig into it, Len is kinda full of shit.

• Len is the criminal here, let’s not forget that.  Sure, Underhill is old and stodgy, but Len is actually the parasite who stole the product of another man’s work.  They might present him as cool and charismatic, but he was in jail for theft.
• Len talks about his dream of building a car and racing it around the world.  A little out-there, but respectable, especially the part about building it himself.  But what has he done to make it happen?  Instead, he whines about “insiders” like Underhill who have worked 40 years for what they have.
• He goes on and on about knives.  Underhill understandably gets nervous and attracts the attention of a cop.  Len then complains that he had said he was talking about his cell-mate, not himself.  Granted, he did say his cell-mate was the knife aficionado.  But it seemed to have rubbed off on him, and Underhill was correct to be concerned, especially with his impressionable, dimwitted niece in the car.
• As part of his “insiders” vs “outsiders” rant, Len talks about poet Dylan Thomas.  He tells the geezer Underhill he could never understand a young guy like that.  Well Thomas was born only 7 years after Underhill, dumbass. ^[1]
• There is a twist in which Underhill compromises his “old-fashioned” values.  It is presented as a victory for the smirking Len, but really it is just a sad, early fracture of American standards.
• In the final shot, Len is shown tearing up paper and throwing it out the window of the moving car.  So add litterbug to his charges.

So Len is really just one of the first in a long line of sanctimonious hippie blowhards that finally took over popular culture in Easy Rider.  But in his short hair and button down shirt, he probably smelled a lot better.

And what I mean by all this complaining is that it is a great episode.  John McIntire is great as the stodgy, old-school geezer.  He was so good that I’m not sure he was acting.  Robert Morse can frequently be cloying and/or obnoxious as he hams it up.  His persona worked in this episode, though, as the counter-point to the older man’s rigidity.  Really both were caricatures as they somewhat have to be in a 30 minute show.  Sadly, Suzanne Pleshette is given little to do; but she is very cute doing it.

No, I’m not 80.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] Granted, their current ages are quite different.  But that is because the poet Len admires as the pinnacle of humanity drank himself to death at age 39 leaving behind a wife and children.
• Title Analysis:  Why Hitch Hike rather than Hitchhike?  Why Hitch Hike rather than Hitchhiker?  The Hitchcock/Hitch Hike similarity doesn’t make sense.  I’m baffled.
• The titular similarity to the dreadful Hitchhiker series also somewhat tainted the experience.
• My general crotchetiness possibly due to being stuck in traffic today beside two motorcycles.  OK, you’re already riding a 100 decibel boom box.  Do you really need to blast a stereo that you can hear above that?  Plus they were fat guys with no shirts.
• No, I’m really not 80.