One of the beauties of the multi-channel cable/satellite world we now enjoy is the chance to go back to see the shows that we remember as kids.

       Classics like "All In The Family" still hold up.    Others don't.

       I tried injesting an episode of "Route 66" on a Friday night a few months ago on "Me TV".     Despite the classic theme song and the premise of two jobless guys going rogue in a hot car along a stretch of American highway in the early 60's, the show turned out to be...well, really boring.     The dialogue went on forever.     Shots lingered way too long for our modern tastes (count how long the camera lingers on ANYTHING these days in a modern television drama--our short attention spans can't deal with visual loitering).    The storyline wasn't all that compelling, and I found myself flipping channels about halfway in.

       Maybe I just didn't see the right episode.      In fact, there's one that I'm now dying to see.    It's the one that was supposed to air the night of November 22nd, 1963 but never made it to air for reasons both obvious and subtle.

       The networks suspended regular programming that afternoon as word of President Kennedy's shooting and eventual death dominated the day.    CBS, which aired "Route 66", went non-stop news right in the middle of my mom's favorite soap opera, "As The World Turns".     Walter Cronkite read wire copy over the "CBS News/Bulletin" slide until the newsroom studio camera could be warmed up (they weren't plugged in and on-air ready when the first word hit New York--an oversight that would never be duplicated again).     As the situation grew more tragic, the obvious decision was made: CBS and other networks stayed with the story until sign-off that night.    It stayed that way right through the Kennedy funeral Monday afternoon.

       One of the Friday night prime-time casualties was this episode of "Route 66".     And, because of it's storyline, it never saw the light of day, even after the President's murder.    That's because the show was about an attempt on the life of a visiting Arabian dignitary who was paying a visit to Niagra Falls, a man targeted for death by a gunman using a rifle.     Apparently, there was even a scene involving a motorcade.

       CBS, according to the link above, apparently thought it was a little too much, too soon.     The series got cancelled at the end of the season, and the episode stayed in the closet.

        You may already know the back-story on "The Manchurian Candidate"--the 1962 classic about a miltiary man programmed to kill a presidential candidate.    Frank Sinatra starred in it, and legend has it that he had the clout to have it pulled from distribution after Kennedy's death.     The myth was that he was so shaken by the similarities between the movie's plot and what had happened to JFK that he didn't want it shown anymore.     That's what I thought, too, until I did a Snopes check and found out otherwise.    "The Manchurian Candidate" did, indeed, fall off the face of the Earth after the assassination, but the murder had nothing to do with it.    It was timing,  combined with Sinatra's personal business interests.     

      The "Route 66" coincidence is eery--what are the odds of  a show with such a plot line being on a network's prime-time schedule the very night of one that a political assassination would  happen earlier that very day?      That pegs the creepy-meter.      There were only three networks back then, so the viewer's plate was hardly as full as it is today with it's satellite and cable options.     

      Maybe, some Friday night, this very episode will pop up on Me-TV or on one of the other nostalgia networks.     And, even if the shots linger too long and the dialogue seems a bit wooden, I'll stick with the show the whole way, knowing the compelling backstory and incredible coincidence that no Hollywood writer could've imagined.