Simon & Simon Got Surprisingly Bittersweet in a Las Vegas Christmas

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We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at a surprisingly bittersweet Simon & Simon Christmas episode in Las Vegas.



We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at a surprisingly bittersweet Simon & Simon Christmas episode in Las Vegas.

Simon & Simon was a fun brother detective TV series that ran almost the entire decade of the 1980s (1981-1988) about two very different brothers who work together in their detective agency in San Diego. Jameson Parker played the younger brother, AJ, who was slick and a fan of modern technology, while Gerald McRaney was the older brother, Rick, who was rough and tumble and very much an old fashioned guy (Rick was also a Vietnam veteran, while AJ had protested the war at the time).

The main recurring character throughout the series was Mary Carver, who played the Simons’ mother. The show was helped a lot when they gained a police “liaison,” Detective “Downtown” Brown, played by the great Tim Reid (he obviously was just a friend of theirs, but a close enough friend that he was BASICALLY like a liaison for them) in Seasons 3-6 (Reid left the show to do the excellent sitcom, Frank’s Place, which I will feature in this series).

In any event, in this episode, Rick is playing Santa Claus at a police charity thing when a little girl reveals that her father is missing. Her dad is a major gambler who owes a gangster a lot of money, and is GOING to be killed. Rick and AJ and Downtown have to find him before the gangster kills him.

Rick promises the little girl that they’ll bring her dad back safe and sound. It all comes down to a confrontation in Las Vegas where the man is gambling whatever money he has left trying to get the money he needs to pay off the mobster. It seems like he is screwed, but Rick then tries to appeal to the Christmas spirit of the gangster, who listens to his big dramatic speech and then says, “Nah.”

Rick, AJ, Downtown, and the man try to fight off the gangsters, but in the middle of the fighting, the man learns that he might have a chance of winning his way out of the debt. You see, the man earlier had asked a waitress to bet $500 on the biggest longshot she could find, hoping that SOMEONE would have some luck, and he ends up with a chance to win $50,000.

Hilariously, the gangsters are all so into gambling that they all end up rooting for him to win, as well, and in the end, the team the waitress bet on (who was down four touchdowns at halftime) wins the game.

It is a nice and happy ending, except that there are only two seats left back to San Diego, and the man and Downtown head back, so the man will be able to spend Christmas with his family, but Rick and AJ have to spend Christmas in a depressing Vegas airport.

It was such a nice and bittersweet ending for a show that RARELY ever went bittersweet. It was mostly just a nice and cheesy show.