In the first episode, directed by Fielder Cook, it is learned that Benjamin Lassiter is a self-made multimillionaire who immigrated to Boston as a young man and married the daughter of one of the city's most prominent Irish families. He is shown to be heavily involved in local politics and at the dawn of Prohibition is buying a distillery in Scotland.
Lassiter is desperate to meet a visiting opera impresario, so at a lavish party in her studio she drinks too much when she learns he will not attend, and dances in her underwear.
Ben Lassiter is suddenly recognized by a socially prominent neighbor, who until now has snubbed the Lassiters, and suggests putting Ben up for membership in an exclusive club.
The below-stairs staff awaits the arrival ol another of Mrs. Hacker's nieces from Ireland who impresses everyone as a shy, timid soul until she seems to respond to Brian and upsets Rosamond.
Mr. Piper's son, Grant, a bookkeeper before he joined the Army, returns from World War 1 and refuses to bow to the Lassiters for a job.
There's a lot of substance about politics, morality, and intrigue in this vivid and occasionally frightening hour. Democrat Benjamin Lassiter wants to keep his hand in the political arena, and even though he believes the republicans will take over the White House, he's determined to get a Democrat elected to the House of Representatives. How his plan of action interferes with the new "nightclub" Harry Emmett is putting over on young wounded Rob Lassiter, and how Harry's dangerous affair with the Lassiter granddaughter Betsy affects Rob add up to quite a drama.
Things get down to the nitty gritty of life in prohibition Boston, in this thoroughly absorbing episode, during which young Rob Lassiter becomes an unwitting and furious dupe. Also, the Lassiter servants downstairs are so bewildered by the thought of a restaurant that doesn't serve food, that chauffeur Brian's curiosity is whetted to go barging into Harry Emmet's unscrupulous domain. The series is beginning to come into its own, as the characters, well played throughout, take on sufficient individuality to give the writers a better opportunity to improvise on their lives.
Lively, well played active episode, brimming with the life of the household, downstairs and up, written with a flair for the period and the series characters by Allan Sloane. Chauffeur Brian, beset with money troubles and ambition, becomes the dupe of a cool operator in the basement of the State House, and is arrested for illegally transporting films of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight across state lines. What is even more spectacular is the fact that Rob — self-pitying Rob — is actually talked into taking on Brian's case, the first time he's functioned as a lawyer since the war.
The best thing about this episode is its focus on Rosamond (Kitty Winn) as a young woman attractive to eligible men. In fact, watching Rosamond come alive under the attentions lavished on her by a handsome widower and an aggressive young bounder, is a particularly welcome change-of-pace from the "plain Jane" personality she's been stuck with on this series to date. Whether or not viewers will buy the contrived ending of the episode remains a question, but Rosamond aglow is a relief.
Movie buffs will get a special charge out of the best scene of the hour, when sappy dilettante Fawn get a choice opportunity to make a film test for a bit part in a D. W. Griffith movie. While arrogantly belittling cameraman Billy Bitzer's directions, she is magically interrupted by the great man himself who gives her a showstopping pointer or two. Roberts Blossom is particularly effective as Griffith, in an hour that also wakes brother Rob out of his alcoholic torpor on meeting a bright, sophisticated woman.
Just as the series has been given the ax, the characters of the Lassiter family have begun to jell, their problems deepened, and their relationships enriched. Tonight, for example, there's a touching scene between brother Rob and sister Fawn that goes to the very marrow of his wounding fear he'll never be acceptable to women. There's another that shows the mettle of Benjamin Lassiter faced with a snub from the Brahmins in his family; and still another calling the shots on an unscrupulous investment speculators.