Father Knows Best "Orchid for a Lady" 02/15/51
I always forget, but this is a lot weirder than The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. You'd think it's a typical '50s show (and it is, for the most part), but it is in no way some paradigm of perfect families.
Anyway, it's the Valentine's Day show & Kathy (the youngest) has got 75¢ and she's going to buy a bunch of Valentine's Day cards for herself just because she wants the most & doesn't see why she has to wait for anybody else to get her one. Bud, the father, has acted like he doesn't know what day it is when he's actually bought his wife an orchid. And because of that, all the men in the neighborhood are in a fever to buy orchids for their wives. I can't remember dad getting mom anything particular on Valentine's Day. I remember the year that, either on V-Day, or on her birthday (September) dad got her glow-in-the-dark golf balls. Mom didn't golf. But he then went & got her some bling the next day or so.
And now Father is telling his kids off for not trusting him enough (not trusting that he loved his wife more than they did). They bought an orchid for their mother. "Daddy, do you trust me?" Kathy asks. "As far as I can throw this piano," Father answers.
At one point, there were 3 orchids in the house, then none, and so Father bought his wife a box of candy. I think the thought counts in this case, personally (or at least Mother should have heard the story).
Boston Blackie: "The Wind Blows West" 02/11/48
3 men who are reading The Wind Blows West have been murdered. This brings Boston Blackie into it. And some man is shooting off a rifle in the backyard. Reminds me of Mr. Evers down the block from me when I was a kid - shot tins cans on the back of the fence in his backyard. I was old enough to realize that I should just watch from behind him, on the other side of the fence.
Ah: Inspector Faraday (beloved + hated foil of Boston Blackie) has just come into Blackie's office, and they're off to go to the house of someone who thinks he's the next intended victim (the guy shooting in the backyard).
DAMN - I got distracted and missed what all this was about. It had to do with a bunch of guys going to Alaska, one was murdered & for some reason someone was then killing the rest of them. And Boston Blackie was actually kind of nice to Faraday. huh.
X-Minus One: "Field Study" 02/20/57
Damn - I listened but didn't write, in part because I didn't really understand it all. There was an alien who goes into other people's bodies as part of a field report.
I couldn't get the end - the man he takes along for his last night is married to this woman who complains that he doesn't like to go out at night; then the episode ends with this man leaving and going off to a village in Africa and mentioning in a letter that his wife loves it. What the hell.
Whistler: "Gateway to Danger" 02/26/45
I've no idea how writers for The Whistler consistently had the surprise endings: someone in the DA's office who's really a bad guy plans to have someone shoot the District Attorney when he opens the gate to his home. The secret bad guy gets pulled into driving home with him, and everything he does to try to avoid going home (figuring he'll get shot instead) goes wrong: he puts sugar in the gas tank, but that's not the car they're driving; he has them stop at a restaurant, calls the police department to try to get them to call them back & finds out later that the phone is out; runs the car off the road, & someone driving by after the "accident" just happens to have the equipment to pull the car out of the ditch.
When they get home, he has to help open the gate for the door, he hears a "bang" which (in the story) sounds like a gun going off. Instead it was someone's car backfiring. The person whose car backfires talks to the DA; it turns out that the man who would have committed the murder of the DA got into a shootout with police earlier that day and was killed. When the DA & the cop walk around the car, the man who had planned the murder is dead on the ground, without a mark on him. He was probably so freaked out and nerve wracked (thinking he was going to be shot) that he had a heart attack.