Ironside Let My Brother Go (1967–1975) Online

Highly satisfying episode. No really great sleuthing, but a heavy focus on the warm fuzzy side of the chief, as Ironside desperately seeks to protect the slum neighborhood kids from being dragged into the gangs by developing an after-school football program in the neighborhood, with football star Bart Masterson as the coach. However, he refuses to help because his brother, a parolee with a suspicious present, claims the police are after him for no reason. Things get messy on all ends, and the conflicting pressures of inner city life are played out very nicely and realistically, with the good brother/bad brother issues inside the family, the anti-police suspicions, the gangs not wanting any police programs to succeed, the youths afraid or unwilling to join these programs, and the good brother being pulled every which way as he must decide what is the correct way of being "good" to his brother, family and community. Very moving and real.

***SPOILERS*** Special police consultant Robert T. Ironside, Raymond Burr, gets himself involved with local gang violence as well as the Masterson family who's older son star NFL running back Charles "Bat" Masterson, Ivan Dixon, is involved with Ironside in curbing the violence by providing the boys in the hood lessons in playing winning football. It's Bat's kid brother Joe, Don Marshall, who's the black sheep in the Masterson family in him having a criminal record and facing serious jail time by breaking his parole. Being a sick and compulsive gambler and in hock to local bookie Ed Harris, Curtis Harrington, has Joe end up playing poker in a illegal gambling den. It's there when as his big brother Bat tried to get him to leave that he ended up killing, in self defense, mobster Georgie Main, Peter Mamakos, who clubbed Bat from behind.

It's Bat who covers up for his kid brother who ends up getting the short end of the stick here. Not just in his football career being put on hold but in him possibly getting a 3 to 5 years sentence behind bars, for 2nd degree homicide, for killing Georgie. Which in fact it was his brother Joe who killed him. Joe for his part is far more interested in saving his own behind then his big brother Bat's reputation football career or even if convicted freedom.

****SPOILERS**** Claiming that he'll turn himself in Joe in fact plans to knock off a wear-house together with his gangster friends that will not only put him behind bars for life if caught but ruin everything that big brother Bat did in possibly sacrificing his both career in football and his freedom to straighten the wild and crazy guy out! We do get a happy ending to all this but not on Joe's but on Bat and his good friends Ironside and his assistant and former and now reformed boy in the hood Mark Sanger, Don Mitchell part.

Refusing to do the right thing Joe had to have the right thing stamped or belted into him which in the end was the best thing that could have happened to him. It saved big brother Bat football career and gave the boys in the hood a chance to become law abiding and productive citizens in the sports program that both Ironside and Bat provided for them. But most off all it cut Joe's time behind bars to three instead of thirty three years or even worse a possible one way ticket to the San Quentin gas chamber.

An old friend of Don Mitchell's can be the key to Chief Ironside's pilot program to reach inner city youth. Ivan Dixon, late of Hogan's Heroes plays a pro-football star who grew up in the same neighborhood as Mitchell did. But he's reluctant to help out.

Dixon has a brother played by Don Marshall who didn't quite turn out the same as Dixon. On parole he's a low level numbers runner who is looking to move up in the criminal world. He also has a nasty gambling addiction.

Raymond Burr sees Dixon as the way to reach kids before they make the same bad choices Marshall did. And Dixon does fine in this episode about a very conflicted man.