The Greatest Rescues of Emergency

Who: Bill
What: The Greatest Rescues of Emergency
Where: Retro Television Network
Why: I used to watch Emergency! every week

One of the first television shows I remember watching as a young boy was Emergency! During the past few months, I’ve been catching some episodes on the Retro Television Network (RTN), which is available on Bright House Cable channel 1028 and over the air on digital channel 27.2. Whereas cable mainstay TV Land has added movies and original reality garbage… uh, programs to their schedule, RTN specializes in a lineup almost entirely of classic television shows, which is what TV Land used to do-- and should still be doing. But I digress.
Recently I contributed a review of the Emergency! pilot movie. So it is somewhat fitting to look at the movie that ended the series.

Originally aired on NBC Sunday, December 31, 1978, The Greatest Rescues of Emergency is exactly what the title says-- a clip show compiled of some of the most dramatic and a few amusing rescues performed by Firefighter/Paramedics John Gage (Randy Mantooth) and Roy DeSoto (Kevin Tighe). The opening credits are a montage of big fires and massive explosions that are simply over-the-top. But they grab your attention, which is the intent. After all, the show was called Emergency! with an exclamation point! Anyhow, Gage and DeSoto have been promoted to Captain, and are each assigned to their own fire stations. It is a bittersweet advancement. They can no longer work as Paramedics and thus no longer work together at fire station 51. But before parting ways, they reminisce over the six years they have been partners, beginning with how they met in training and the early days of being Paramedics. From there a variety of clips demonstrate the hazards and rewards of fighting fires, assisting accident victims and overall saving lives-- sometimes their own. Among the highlighted rescues include a paint factory fire, a plane crash landing, Gage being bitten by a rattlesnake and a young woman who gets her toe caught in a bathtub faucet. The final scene sums up the true friendship of Gage and DeSoto (and by that same token, the actors themselves) without needing to say a lot.

For syndicated reruns, The Greatest Rescues of Emergency was re-edited into a two-part format. Unfortunately this results in a very murky and scratchy film that was certainly not the case when first presented as a two hour movie. Compared with the relatively pristine-looking pilot film, this is a minor distraction to see. Some of the early episodes of Emergency! have been digitally re-mastered for DVD releases and RTN showings, while the later shows don’t yet look as good, although certainly watchable.

This movie was designed to serve as a wrap-up to the series, but two more Emergency! movies set in San Francisco followed in the summer of 1979. Their scheduling in rerun season only underscored how terrible NBC’s overall ratings were at the time. Ironically, Nielsen numbers perceived as awful then would probably be welcomed by the struggling network in 2008.