THE OUTSIDER “Periwinkle Blue.” NBC, 02 April 1969 (Season One, Episode 24). Darren McGavin (PI David Ross). Guest cast: Lois Nettleton, Ellen Corby, Douglas Dick, Bill Quinn, Richard Benedict. Series created by Roy Huggins (as John Thomas James). Teleplay by Edward J. Lakso, based on a story by Gene Levitt. Directed by Richard Benedict. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below).

   For beginners, if you’ve never read Michael Shonk’s overview of the series, or you haven’t in a while, let me steer you there first before you read on back here.

   This, however, is an excerpt from his first two paragraphs:

   The Outsider tried hard to be loyal to its noir roots but it was born at the wrong time. From Broadcasting (8-19-68) article entitled “1968-69: The Non Violent Season”:

   Actually no show has had a rougher time of it in the anti-violence climate than the Universal Television–Public Arts Production of The Outsider. It was bought by the network and in production long before the [Bobby] Kennedy assassination.

   The shooting death of Bobby Kennedy is what had happened between the showing of the pilot episode, which Michael reviewed here, and the TV networks were under fire for showing too much violence in their offerings, and The Outsider, once picked up as a series, took the brunt of it.

   Here’s Michael’s opening statement on the pilot film:

   The Outsider is a story suitable for Black Mask magazine, a noirish tale of a loser PI on a simple case that spins out of control with a lying client, violence, betrayal, drugs, seedy L.A. music club life, a femme fatale, and doomed characters.

   
   In reviewing the series, Michael went into detail about the episodes that were available to him at the time, but “Periwinkle Blue.” was not one of them. Filling in the gap, Mike Doran left a comment talking about it as an episode he still remembered, but no more than that.

   At the beginning of this episode Ross turns down a client who thinks his wife is trying to kill him, thinking that the man was exaggerating several incidents that had recently occurred. Later on, discovering from a newspaper that the man had been killed in a hit-and-run accident, he decides to take the death as a sign that perhaps he was wrong.

   Attending the man’s funeral, he meets the wife (the wholly delightful Lois Nettleton), as obvious a suspect in a case of murder as there could ever be, but yet, over the next few weeks, he is not quite sure. He is attracted to her and her flirty but quietly quirky ways, but there is no way he can dispel the suspicions he has of her. He is puzzled and perplexed, in a role that only a completely bewildered Darren McGavin could play.

   This is, as you can plainly see, not your usual TV PI drama, and to tell you the truth, I think this episode, at least, is all the better for it. If I’ve intrigued you at all, do watch this one.