As promised, here’s Balladeer’s Blog’s review of the final 7 episodes of this 13-episode miniseries. Each installment ran 50 minutes.
EPISODE SEVEN: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, DIPLOMAT (Mar 2nd, 1976) – From 1809 t0 1814 John Quincy Adams (David Birney) serves as U.S. Minister to Russia. Showing much more tact than his father, John Quincy charms Tsar Alexander (CHRISTOPHER LLOYD in his television debut!) and manages fairly favorable treatment of the United States by Russia during the Napoleonic Wars.
Adams and his wife Louise-Catherine (Pamela Payton-Wright) mourn the death of their only child in St. Petersburg. Later 1814 finds John Quincy in Ghent helping to negotiate the peace treaty ending the War of 1812 between America and Great Britain on advantageous terms for the U.S. Ken Kercheval again plays (now President) James Madison, Steven Krey is Charles Francis Adams, Valerie French is Countess Rostov and George Hearn plays Henry Clay.
EPISODE EIGHT: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, SECRETARY OF STATE (Mar 9th) – In 1818 John Quincy Adams – now played by William Daniels – is serving as President James Monroe’s (Henry Butler) Secretary of State. Among his accomplishments he smooths over the international incident stemming from General Andrew Jackson (Wesley Addy) hanging two British subjects as spies in Spanish Florida during the First Seminole War.
More significantly, Secretary Adams is the chief architect of what is ironically called the Monroe Doctrine and engineers America’s purchase of Florida from Spain. In 1824 John Quincy runs for president against Andrew Jackson, who wins the popular vote and the electoral vote but did not reach the necessary total for victory. Once again, the presidential election goes to the House of Representatives to choose from Adams, Jackson and Henry Clay. Clay throws his support behind Adams, and John Quincy becomes the 6th President of the United States. Continue reading
SHOCK ARMSTRONG, THE ALL-AMERICAN GHOUL bore a name that was a play on the old radio series Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Even in 1964 that was an obscure reference, so it’s possible that many fans of this Bad Movie Host were oblivious to the connection. At any rate, from 1964 to 1968 Shock Armstrong hosted Double-Features on Shock Theatre Friday nights at 11:30pm on WTVT out of Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, Florida. 
Reynolds donned a quasi-Frankenstein Monster mask worked up by the station’s art department and an old University of Tampa Spartans football jersey sporting the number 13. Paul was already in his 30s by 1964 and remembered the old Jack Armstrong radio show, so that inspired his character’s name. 
DISCLOSURE DAY (2026) – Did Steven Spielberg forget what he accomplished with the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind? How does he think that an elderly alien getting brought out in a wheelchair even compares, let alone equals, the wonder of his earlier film? Maybe if Disclosure Day ended with Richard Dreyfus’s character having returned to Earth and standing there beside the alien, he might have had something noteworthy. 
THE ADAMS CHRONICLES (1976) – This mini-series of 13 50-minute episodes looked at historical giant John Adams and his descendants from the American Revolution up to the 1890s. Michael Tolan narrated 8 episodes. 
EPISODE ONE: JOHN ADAMS, LAWYER (Jan 20th, 1976) – As a young man, John Adams (George Grizzard) suffers setbacks in his career as a lawyer, so he returns to the farm his father left him. His fiery cousin Samuel Adams (W.B. Brydon) tells him he made a mistake and should go back to practicing law. John meets Abigail Smith (Kathryn Walker), daughter of a Reverend (Addison Powell). He marries her and as they raise their children he returns to his career as an attorney. 
Yes, it’s the 16th of June, better known to James Joyce geeks like me as Bloom’s Day. The day is named in honor of Leopold Bloom, the advertising sales rep and Freemason who is one of the major characters in Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The novel also brings along Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of his earlier novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
THE NOSTOI aka THE RETURNS is a neglected epic in the Trojan War cycle. It is attributed to Agias or to Eumelus of Corinth. In the Epic Cycle, The Nostoi comes after 
My, how time flies! It’s already been a year since anti-Donald Trump loons were claiming that celebrating the army’s 250th anniversary was Trump supposedly “acting like a dictator” by having a military event “celebrating his birthday.” It was wrong, of course, like roughly 90% of the shrill accusations against President Trump always turn out to be. Here’s my post from 2025 addressing that situation: 
I’m still laughing over the way that anti-Trump fascists are so ignorant, uninformed and emotionally unstable that they idiotically believed that the parade last weekend was for Trump himself. 
Last weekend was NOT a case of military strength shown off for a national leader but to mark the TWO HUNDRED FIFTIETH birthday of America’s army. Birthdays/ anniversaries being celebrated for the 25th, 50th, 100th, 200th, and 250th time ALWAYS get special celebrations. 
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