66 Kicks: When Buz Left Route 66

I suppose we cling on and rehash reasons for things happening in the past because somehow we hope by reliving it to change what happened. More realistically, we hope to understand what happened and, with understanding, to better accept it. That all sounds rather over-dramatic when it comes to an actor leaving a television series – but really, George Maharis leaving Route 66 seems like a television tragedy. It would be like Spock leaving Star Trek. All those plans for Star Trek Phase 2 in the seventies, sans Spock – and we ended up with a film instead, with Spock where he should be, because Star Trek isn’t Star Trek without Spock. That film just proved that you couldn’t break up the team. Some programmes manage – Mission: Impossible survived the loss of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain – but it was never quite the same, even though the new characters were good ones.

Today's Catch? (Don't Count Stars)

In The Mud Nest we get a fine display of Tod and Buz's friendship.

Sleep On Four Pillows. Pyjama buddies.

But Buz leaving Route 66 – and being replaced with a lazy replacement, a ‘he looks like George Maharis’ replacement – just seems like something too enormous to forgive. Route 66 was never a lazy programme. The scripts, the on-location filming, the direction of the photography, the subjects tackled and the actors sought – that was never lazy. But in the 'A Chat With George Maharis' interview Maharis reveals that in Route 66’s early stages, before the programme was even known by that name, the plans were for the series to star Maharis together with Bobby Morris as a character named ‘Linc.’ It’s hard not to suspect that the personality as well as the name were transposed to Glenn Corbett’s character when he replaced Maharis, considering the complaints that Linc is too much like Tod to keep the edgy dynamic we see between Tod and Buz. If this is the case, again, it seems like a lazy decision.

Milner and Maharis as Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock

Milner and Glenn Corbett as Tod Stiles and Linc Case.Perhaps Corbett looks similar to Maharis - but better to cast for chemistry than looks.

In my journey through Route 66 I haven’t yet reached the point where George Maharis leaves for good. True, it was a slow tailing-off, but I don’t own Season 3 of Route 66 yet so I haven’t seen those final episodes. Speaking from a largely ignorant position, I think that the explanations of Buz ‘being in the hospital’ could have been expanded into some better explanation. Perhaps some episode could have been filmed that explained the loss of Buz and the advent of Linc. I’m glad it’s left hazy rather than a drastic action like killing him off, but again, the transition seems lazy, and Route 66 is not lazy. In my mind there is a reunion episode immediately after the final episode where Buz returns after his battle with illness and takes his seat in the car again. But wanderlust can’t last forever, and neither could Tod and Buz.

Would a Route 66 reunion work?

I'm not sure. A well-written update could be interesting, but probably unsatisfactory and a little sad.

It’s hard to offer a proper opinion when one hasn’t seen all of the shows. A season and a half of Buz and Tod travelling together has left me with the feeling that Route 66 can’t survive without Buz – and yet ‘Hell is Empty, All The Devils Are Here’, filmed entirely without George Maharis, is an excellent, poetic, dramatic episode with some of the most beautiful lines I have come across. So perhaps Linc will be all right. Perhaps Tod will hold his own. Perhaps, even if George Maharis had stayed on, the series would have waned. It’s hard to keep up something of that quality for a long time. We’re left with a few years of bright, glorious television instead of something that carried on far too long.

Hell Is Empty, All The Devils Are Here. It worked without Buz, but could probably have worked without Tod, too.

The explanations behind George Maharis’s departure range from his battle with hepatitis (apparently contracted from a doctor’s contaminated needle after his ice-cold session in the water in Even Stones Have Eyes), through to clashes with the production team, Herbert B. Leonard having issues with his sexuality, and unreasonable demands on Maharis’s part. Perhaps it will never be clear. Perhaps it was a mix of all of these things. I would like to believe that the main reason was the hepatitis. I hate to think of something as personal as sexuality being an issue even for a moment, although I know that in this era it is hardly surprising that it was. I would like to ignore tales of friction and difficulty. I would rather think of everyone as a big happy family who loved what they did to make the show what it was.