Out of the Frying Pan...

One of the saddest episodes in the history of the Kojak series was this one with Eugene Roche playing a street cop who used to be one of Kojak's in Midtown South.

Roche a former detective is now a foot patrolman who has been become an alcoholic. One night when he was off duty and boozing it up with a friend he sees a robbery in progress and tries to stop it. But the bad guys overcome him, take his weapon and shoot his friend.

It's too late for him in the NYPD, Telly Savalas gives him some good advice to just coast for the next two years and the pension will kick in.. But Roche can't be told what to do. He starts his own investigation and does good at it. But the end result isn't good for Roche.

This may be one of Eugene Roche's best performance. Usually Roche plays blowhard bragadocious types. This is a different twist and dimension to what we usually get from Roche. It dominates the episode.

"Out of the Frying Pan..." is an unusual episode because Kojak is less a part of the script. Instead, it mostly follows an alcoholic sergeant...one who is really rather dim.

The story begins with an off-duty cop, Sandy (familiar 1970s character actor Eugene Roche) and a friend leaving a bar late at night. Both are drunk. However, a robbery is going down and the cop tries to intervene to stop them. For his trouble, he's beaten up and his gun is used...to kill the cop's friend. Later, after he awakens, the cop is demoted...to foot patrol in uniform. But instead of taking to this, he spends most of the episode trying to punish those responsible for the robbery and killing...and making many, many dumb life choices in the process.

This is a decent episode though I think it would have been improved if they'd made the cop less dim. Again and again, he makes really bad choices...so bad you wonder how he ever was a cop in the first place! Not a bad episode but a rather weak one that is still worth seeing.