This is the fifth post of a series. The previous posts are:

#1: The Howdy Doody Show
#2: 77 Sunset Strip
#3: The Edge of Night
#4: The Defenders
#5: 
#6: 
#7: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
#8: 
#9: 
#10: 

I wrote about The Defenders on an earlier version of my blog back on April 28, 2012. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote then:

Today, April 28, 2012, is the fiftieth anniversary of a rather important event in my life. It was 50 years ago today that the television series The Defenders broadcast the episode entitled “The Benefactor”.

I was 13 at the time and The Defenders was one of my favorite shows. As best as I can tell, it was the first television program that I encountered that dealt with moral ambiguities rather than simplistic notions of good and bad, moral and immoral.

E.G Marshall and Robert Reed played a father and son defense team that each week defended an accused who may or may not have been guilty and who, if guilty, was often as much a victim as a perpetrator.

The Defenders aired on Saturday nights (from 8:30pm to 9:30 if I recall correctly), and I tried never to miss it. In those days Saturday night was bowling night for my parents, and at 13 I was old enough to no longer have to accompany them everywhere they went. So I had the house to myself on Saturday evenings.

From the promos I knew that this Saturday night’s episode was going to be especially controversial, as parents were warned about not letting impressionable children watch; plus, I had read that the sponsors were staying away in droves. CBS ended up selling air time at cut rate prices.

But what I wasn’t clear on was just what the controversy was about. Something to do with abortion, whatever that was.

Because up to that point in my 13 years in April 1962, I had never heard of the concept of abortion; I had no idea what it was.

I went on to describe aspects of the plot of that episode, and a few years later when the DVD set of the the first season of The Defenders was released, even though I had only ever seen that episode a single time, I remembered it pretty well, although I did jumble a few of the details. 

Sadly, I must be one of the very few people who loved that series, as the remaining seasons of the show have never made it to DVD.

“The Benefactor” is not the only episode that I recall. There are several others that stuck in my memory as well, and some of them are on that first season’s DVD set.

They did a hilarious whodunit episode,“Gideon’s Follies”, with guest stars Gloria DeHaven, Eva Gabor, and Julie Newmar among the suspects. Conrad Bain (Maude’s future next door right-wing nemesis) was the DA.

And there was “The Last Six Months”, whose cold opening I found unforgettable. Here it is: