Route 66 (TV Series) Where There's a Will, There's a Way: Part One (1964) User Reviews

get over the negativity

[hsherwood2 · 10/10 · 2 December 2014]

You people that compose all these negative things about this series make me laugh ! This show was one I was brought up on in my early teens and I took Tod, Buzz, and Linc's adventure myself in the late 70's after going through the hellhole in Nam and I can tell ya this, I enjoyed my almost 3,000 mile excursion across this country of ours with many different jobs and adventures and I enjoyed every single minute of it, the only difference being I had a 68 Mustang Fastback and I was gone for five years, not four like this series was run.

So to all you know it all's out there who cast negativity about Stirling Silliphant's fantastic series, take a five year jaunt across this country yourselves and learn what Mr Silliphant was trying to tell us. One of my all time favorite shows, and to hell with those who think otherwise

3/6-13/64 "Where There's Will There's A Way" (spoilers)

[schappe1 · 4 March 2016]

And now the series, after a memorable four year run, comes to an end with a two-parter. This was innovative at the time as it's a wrap-up episode. In those days, most shows just disappeared from the TV listings with nothing resolved. We don't just leave the boys on the road, looking for the next adventure. There's some talk of a realization that they can't continue being nomads all their lives. They have to settle down to something more 'meaningful', as Linc puts it. The question is: how 'meaningful' is this story?

This episode has been much maligned by Route 66 fans over the years. It's still another of the comic episodes that dotted the final season and there are some awkward sequences in it but I still found it more entertaining than the rather lame "Where are the Sounds of Celli Brahms?", "A Long Way from St. Louie", "Come Home Greta Inger Greunschaffen" and "This is Going to Hurt You More than It Hurts Me".

A family of con men and women learn their brother has died and left $4 million to one of them- at the choice of the executor, (played marvelously by Chill Wills). The more nefarious family members- Roger C. Carmel, Patrick O'Neal, Alex (Cord) Viespi and Nina Foch must have looked familiar as they'd all been in prior episodes of Route 66. The one who hadn't, Barbara Eden, plays the "nice girl" of the family, who is required to get married to inherit. The deceased has encountered Tod Stiles and decided he'd be the perfect young man for Barbara. Meanwhile, the cut throats scheme to eliminate rivals, including Tod. Shockingly, the first half of the finale ends with Tod being blackjacked and thrown off a bridge to his apparent death. Even more shockingly,. Tod has actually gotten married to Barbara. That never happened before in this show full of lost- or at least elusive- loves.

The second half of the episode features Tod suddenly turning up, burning for revenge, (which is how he survived the ordeal of his near drowning, he says). He, Linc, Barb, (who really loves him) and Chill, (who really likes him), then become a sort of comic "Mission Impossible" team that pulls off one sting after another to get the cut- throats out of the picture. Then they refuse the inheritance and leave it to Wills. Why?

Easily the worst scene and the worst scene in the show's history is the one where O'Neal is trying to sell Tod and Linc, (in absurd disguises as Germans with thick accents, thick mustaches and wearing lederhosen in the Everglades!), some swampland. He gets out of the boat to prove the ground is solid, sinks into the mud and, apparently, gets devoured, (off screen) by alligators. We just see his helmet floating away in the river. It supposed to be funny, but I don't know how or why. The other revenge scenes come off a little better, especially one where Tod acts like Fidel Castro.

All the of the nonsense becomes irrelevant in the final scene where Tod and Linc say goodbye to each other. Tod and Barb are going to go off on their honey moon in the corvette and "That's only a two seater, Buddy", as Linc tells him. It's impossible not to shed a tear when Linc puts their bags in the car and then walks away and the music plays for the final time. (But you wonder where Buzz is.) A weird way to end a great show.

Satisfying End of the Road

[PretoriaDZ · 10/10 · 17 August 2022]

The episode is amusing, if a little silly with how convoluted it becomes with all the siblings assuming other nationalities. However, I found it very satisfying for a series character, particularly Martin Milner's Tod, to actually find true love and marry without his true love either being killed or dying of a dreaded disease. During the 1950's and 60's, that always happened with lead series regulars (to keep them single for future love stories). On Bonanza, it was practically a death sentence to fall in love with one of the Cartwright boys or Pa! Also, I enjoyed seeing Milner and Barbara Eden have a conversation and a kiss while riding up the 'Stairway to the Stars', a huge escalator that used to take tourists up to the top of the. Anheuser Busch brewery (before you walked down on a tour of the brewery). The brewery and the escalator are long gone but not forgotten by long time Tampa natives.