When I saw the preview for “Revenge Of Broken Jaw,” episode 13 of Life on Mars, I thought that we might be subjected to another dopey treatment of late 60s/early 70s political radicalism, much like the lamentable “Things To Do In New York When You Think You’re Dead” episode that awkwardly soldered together white cop/black cop buddy shtick, simplistic re-telling of 70s black nationalist militancy, and a Whoopi Goldberg cameo.

The 60s/70s radical terrorist group Weather Underground makes an appearance in the 125 precinct in “Revenge Of Broken Jaw,” and the Life On Mars creative team did a much better–but still not exemplary–job of using real period history in the unfolding Sam Tyler saga.

Save for an occasional book or obscure documentary film, Weather Underground had been all but forgotten by the mainstream of American media and politics until last year’s presidential election.  Detractors of candidate Obama attempted to portray his some-time interactions with Bill Ayers , a former Weather Underground member, as evidence of his secret radical, anti-patriotic agenda (they were on a community board in Chicago together, well after Ayers’ terrorist stint).

In reality–and this point pertains to this episode of Life On Mars–Weather Underground was one of history’s least effective and poorly led terrorist groups, ever.  They managed to inflict the most casualties on themselves via their incompetent bomb making, and were riven by internal power struggles and personal animosity.  What the episode got wrong was that Weather Underground was really good at targeting and killing jackbooted imperialist cop swine.  What it got right was that the high-falutin’ intellectualized revolution talk was a cover for more base motivations of key Weather Underground figures.

Anyways, the Weather Underground show up at the 125 precinct, blowing up Gene Hunt’s old cop buddies in the days before the big Ali-Frazier fight in 1973.  The 125 detectives deduce that a radical leftist college professor, Pat Olsen, is connected in some way to the series of bombings.  The steely, revolutionspeak-spewing Olsen is modeled loosely on the real life Weather Underground figure Bernardine Dohrn, who is married (in real life) to the above mentioned Bill Ayers.  During interrogation, Olsen lets on that the bombings against Hunt’s old cronies is revenge against a “Red Squad” of old McCarthy-era cops, whom Olsen believes poisoned an up-and-coming charismatic revolutionary, Rodney Slaven, the year before. Some detective work by Sam and Annie turns up indications that Slaven’s poisoning was not a heroin overdose staged by the Red Squad, but more likely by a physician.

Not coincidentally, Olsen’s long-suffering husband is a physician, and when it becomes clear that Olsen’s daughter shares Slaven’s peculiar eye coloring, the 125 squad realizes that the husband–not the Red Squad–killed Slaven out of jealousy.  In a fit, Olsen’s husband dashes out out of the station and into Gene Hunt’s car, which had been rigged with a bomb.

Meanwhile, the 125 detectives don’t have a place to watch the Frazier-Ali fight, which was shown on closed-circuit television.  And all of Gene’s buddies had been killed by the Weather Underground, so Sam arranges for the whole lot of them end up in a strip joint that is showing the fight.  Gene even brings along the grown son of one of his fallen buddies, an embittered Vietnam vet who had been disabled in war.  The moment of the fight signifies Sam’s embrace of his 1973 life and his 1973 workplace family, per the advice of a therapist that Sam has been visiting.

A bonus moment of poetic justice: Sam bets big against the obnoxious philistine Ray on the fight, using his future knowledge of the outcome.

In other Life On Mars news, ABC has announced the show will be cancelled.  Show producers, citing the ratings, actually pushed for cancellation, with an eye to actually bringing the show to an actual conclusion, and not just abruptly ending it.  So far, there’s no indication how Life On Mars will end. Is it a coma-induced dream? An elaborate conspiracy? Mental illness?

This was a servicible, though not excellent, episode that made good use of actual 1973 history and advanced the development of the Gene Hunt and Sam Tyler characters.  Unfortunately, melodrama weighed it down.  “Revenge Of Broken Jaw” gets a gentleman’s Four Harvey Keitel Fists of Fury.