CAGNEY & LACEY {CAGNEY AND LACEY}: BETTER THAN EQUAL {SEASON ONE FINALE} (TV)
Summary
One in this series of dramas about two policewomen, Chris Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey. Cagney and Lacey are assigned to protect an outspoken anti-feminist conservative speaker named Helen Granger. Granger believes that women should be full-time wives and mothers and not seek jobs outside of the home, a belief which disgusts both Cagney and Lacey. Granger for her part is not comfortable with having women police officers protect her. She had to leave her lecture circuit due to a series of obscene phone calls she had been receiving on her various stops; the police departments of those various cities cannot trace the calls. They return to Granger's apartment and she receives another phone call. They also discover that the caller was in her apartment and left a jar of candy and searched through her clothing drawers. Later, while some of the officers at the station are engrossed with a boxing match on television, Lacey fields a call from Granger, who reports that the caller contacted her again and threatened to kill her. She is advised not to appear for her lecture but she elects to ignore this advice. Samuels sends Isbecki and LaGuardia to accompany Granger while Cagney and Lacey investigate the auditorium where the lecture is to be held. Meanwhile, Lacey struggles to think of a present for Harvey as their twelfth anniversary approaches. Cagney and Lacey investigate the auditorium and find the lock to the stage door broken. Inside they find the unknown caller defacing the stage with spray-paint. They chase him outside and he manages to escape. Granger gets another call from him and Isbecki and LaGuardia trace the call to a pay-phone. Cagney and Lacey rush there, but arrive too late to catch him. However, a nearby store owner claims she saw the man's face and agrees to go to the police station to describe the man to a sketch artist. Samuels orders the resulting sketch to be wired to every town Granger visited on her lecture tour. Granger does not recognize the sketch and is still determined to give her lecture despite the danger. The police begin to doubt the veracity of the sketch. However, Cagney and Lacey get a lead when a hot dog vendor near the pay-phone reports that the caller was on the phone for ten minutes; Cagney notes that all his calls to Granger were approximately a minute in length and suspects that he made a call to a different person beforehand. They check the phone records and discover he made calls to an apartment in Yonkers. They also discover his name: Mike Walker. At the apartment they meet Mike's mother, who denies that her son is involved in any wrongdoing and claims that neither she nor Mike have any knowledge of Granger. She is resistant to Cagney and Lacey's questions until she discovers that Mike's gun license is missing, arousing her suspicion. Mike calls Granger again and vows to kill her before she reaches her fundraiser. Samuels puts out an APB on Mike and sends Cagney and Lacey to accompany Granger. Lacey realizes that this will make her miss her anniversary with Harvey and calls him to explain. That night, the police surround Granger's apartment until Mike calls again. Lacey gets on the phone with him while they trace the call, keeping Mike on the line by reading a letter written to him from his mother. This gives Cagney, LaGuardia, and Petrie enough time to track him down and arrest him. This gives Lacey enough time to spend a little of her anniversary with Harvey, who asks that she give up smoking as a "present" to him. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: CBS
- DATE: April 29, 1982
- RUNNING TIME: 0:49:29
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:60770
- GENRE: Drama, police/private detective
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, police/private detective
- SERIES RUN: CBS - TV series, 1982-1988
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Barney Rosenzweig … Executive Producer
- Richard M. Rosenbloom … Producer
- Stanley Neufield … Co-Producer
- David Auerbach … Associate Producer
- Ken Wales … Associate Producer
- Ray Danton … Director
- Barbara Avedon … Created by
- Barbara Corday … Created by
- Bud Freeman … Writer
- Nelson Riddle … Music by
- Michael Stull … Theme Music by
- Marie Cain … Theme Music by
- Tyne Daly … Cast, Det. Mary Beth Lacey
- Meg Foster … Cast, Det. Chris Cagney
- Al Waxman … Cast, Lt. Bert Samuels
- Carl Lumbly … Cast, Det. Marcus Petrie
- Martin Kove … Cast, Det. Victor Isbecki
- Sidney Clute … Cast, Det. Paul LaGuardia
- John Karlen … Cast, Harvey Lacey
- Harvey Atkin … Cast, Sgt. Ronald Coleman
- Troy Slaten … Cast, Michael Lacey
- Tony La Torre … Cast, Harvey Lacey Jr.
- Julie Adams … Cast, Helen Granger
- John Walter Davis … Cast, Mike Walker
- T. J. Castronova … Cast, Mr. Aparicio
- Sylvia Walden … Cast, Mrs. Walker
- Johnny Haymer … Cast, The Interviewer
- Alfred Dennis … Cast
- Mike Finneran … Cast
- Kay Friedman … Cast
- John LaFayette … Cast
- Jimmy Lennon … Cast
- Alexander Zale … Cast