Route 66 (TV Series) Kiss the Monster - Make Him Sleep (1964) User Reviews

Strong Episode

[rmj142 · 8/10 · 11 November 2013]

This is one of the better episodes of Season 4 and has some of Linc's most moving scenes.

Linc and Todd are working for a young but quite successful businessman (James Coburn) who has a blonde sister (Barbara Mattes) that is quite upset with him. Linc pulls the sister from the water after her attention seeking dive and commences to try and save the damsel from her brother's domineering influence.

While this series is replete with troubled (albeit beautiful) females to the point where it became somewhat ridiculous, viewed in isolation this episode is quite well done as it delves into various weaknesses of the human condition.

A sister who talks of killing her brother, a man who can't forgive his father for old sins, a brother confused by his sister's mind games, that same sister picking up a strange man (with a bad comb-over no less) in a bar, was rather heavy material for American episodic TV in the early 60s. It is to this show's credit that here it is done with both subtlety and clarity.

Finding Peace With The Past

[AudioFileZ · 6/10 · 1 January 2013]

Tod and Linc are in Minneapolis working for Hamar Neilsen, a young powerful civic leader, building river locks for a promising and profitable future. There's trouble between Hamar and his sister Nola and she's full of angst resulting in an attempted suicide plunge in which Linc proves to be her rescuer. Linc falls for the troubled Nola during which Linc's mother decides to pay a surprise visit. As Linc is running away from his past he's lands with a thud smack dab into it even as he desperately hopes to save Nola from hers. The trouble with such a relationship is two people, together, can't find what each one can't singularly. So, instead of helping one another, and finding a love that unifies, Linc and Nola exacerbate their own pathos all while clinging to the hope of each being a healing force for the other. Nola's family troubles center around her commandeering brother while Linc's revolves around his father's expectations. They're both running away without a life preserver between them. The bottom line is that when people feel caged they rebel in spite of those who only wish believe they are fighting for their best interests. The question is posited: "is no man an island"? The answer is no man has, or should, be. Still each person can only find their own peace and until that happens running away is the primal "knee-jerk" reaction as Linc learns when Nola runs away with a nobody. In that Linc must also face his own mother truncating her peace-making visit in her knowledge that he is yet to reach his own internal peace with his dad. Linc, however, hints at a personal crucial turn when in his lonely introspection he calls and half-heartedly reaches out to his estranged father.

This episode is another in the lesser, yet sometimes poignant, run of latter day Route 66 episodes. It guest stars the usually commanding James Coburn who here is a bit of a waste as his character is generally both unremarkable and, basically, unlikeable. Barbara Mattes fairs slightly better as the tortured Nola bringing the strong undercurrent of chaos to all in her orbit. Martin Milner is so far in the background it is hard to say he even adds the usual "wake-up" counterpoint to Linc's impulsiveness. Perhaps, this episode is worth watching to the faithful Route 66 viewer, but it is, largely, dispensable to the more casual type - or those who believe after season two the show "jumped the shark".

1/24/64 "Kiss the Monster- Make Him Sleep"

[schappe1 · 24 February 2016]

This one also involves looking at things from different perspectives. Linc saves a woman, (Barbara Mattes, (who is very good- this is one of only three credits she has on the IMDb, so she must have found something she was even better at), from drowning after she jumps off a bridge the company he works for is building. She's the sister of their employer, (James Coburn). She's rebelling against her controlling brother. Linc falls for her. Her brother is wary of Linc, being unsure if he legitimately cares for her as he does.

Meanwhile, Linda Watkins returns as Linc's mother, (making her the only character other than Julie Newmar's Vicki and the regulars to appear in more than one episode, not counting two-parters), to try to get Linc to talk to his own father on the phone. She feels Linc's resentment of Coburn is related to his feelings toward his own father.

Eventually Linc realizes that his girlfriend is emotionally unstable and that Coburn, despite his gruffness, really cares about her. He severs that relation but then re-connects with his own father over the phone, warming his mother's heart and closing a loose dramatic end as this series was nearing its end. .

More "Troubled Young Lady" stuff-- almost saved by the ending.

[lrrap · 5/10 · 27 April 2020]

Another tangled mess of familial psychosis into which our heroes unwittingly step.

There are, I suppose, some relevant parallels between the young lady's troubled relationship with her brother and that of Linc and his father, but I felt it difficult to care about. I was glad to see Linc and Coburn settle things with their fists--the best way to deal with all that damn'd flighty speech-making and abstruse philosophizing; just kick the CRAP out of each other. (I thought Coburn's dialogue delivery after the fight was pretty bogus and unconvincing).

And what's with that creepy, reptilian guy that the girl picked up at the bar? She actually threw Linc over for this turd (who didn't even get screen credit at the end)? At least everybody was driving '63 Chevys, hopefully making this episode worthwhile for the sponsors.

Then there's Linda Watkins--who usually plays unsavory characters, walking around in that pathetic, dork-y hat; I GET IT, already---she's a rube out of her element, who's come to mend fences between Linc and his father (Linc and his mother's scene in "50 Miles From Home" worked much better).

But I must say that Linda Watkins' final speech at the train station was really nicely written and delivered, and this made Linc's final scene all the more effective.

So, not a total loss. LR