Finally! After a run of lifeless, listless mopeathons, an episode w/ a little energy.
This was a good one. Ironpants and the gang stumble into a hornets' nest of small-town police corruption and soon find themselves looking down the wrong end of a lot of rifle barrels. Ed gets taken hostage, Mark gets a beatdown, Eve hotwires a car, and even the Chief has to go hand-to-hand (though, alas, not foot-to-foot) with the local constabulary.
There are several familiar faces guest-starring here, but my fave was southernly slurrer Louise Latham, an actress whose real-life career path seems in some ways to echo that of the character she plays in "Poole's Paradise"; a lady with marquee talent who nevertheless ended up a 2nd string player in other people's stories. IMDB describes her as "careworn"! You know she's gotta be beaming with pride at that one.
This episode is also notable for seeing the end of Ironside's old gray battleship of a van and the debut of his shiny, new, state-of-the-art handi-mobile, with side entrance wheelchair lift. Outwardly he accepts the transition w/ his usual grumpy diffidence, but you just know that secretly he's wishing more than ever that he could do some backflips.