Kojak: A Need to Know (1976)
Season 4, Episode 5
7/10
Diplomatic Immunity
20 February 2013
This Kojak episode opens with the Manhattan South Detectives conducting a sting operation to get a pedophile. Stavros really looked right at home selling ice cream from a cart. But their quarry strikes soon enough and as he starts shepherding a kid out of the Tribeca park they're staked out in the trap is sprung.

Who's caught in it is Hector Elizondo and he's got a big surprise for the Manhattan South squad. Turns out he's a chauffeur for some Eastern European country and has diplomatic immunity. Al Freeman, Jr. of the Feds comes huffing and puffing to spring Elizondo.

But to deport, definitely not. They're working on something with him and the safety of New York's kids apparently isn't their top priority. Not like that stops Telly Savalas.

Before the death of J. Edgar Hoover you could never portray and FBI man as anything less than a straight arrow saint. After that there was an overeaction. It was almost SOP to portray Feds as dumb and arrogant. Freeman's part had some shades of gray in it, he's not real happy about letting Elizondo indulge his pedophilia, but orders are orders.

An interesting Kojak episode to say the least.
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