As I was editing this one, I realized it wasn't living up to my memory of it. "A Good Smack in the Mouth" is from the second season. Watching in order, it stands out because of its over-the-top melodrama and Quincy's righteous crusade to save a kid from child abuse even if it means kidnapping the kid and having the police cover for him. When I first watched it, I tweeted that it would have been more subtle to have Jack Klugman stare directly into the camera and scream, "CHILD ABUSE IS BAD!" for 50 minutes straight.

However, after seeing some of the later episodes from the fourth and fifth seasons, "A Good Smack in the Mouth" is rather discreet.

Most off-putting about this episode is the creepy vibe to Quincy's compassion for the abused Joey. Jack Klugman's interaction with child actors always come off like borderline pedophile. Go watch his interaction with Timmy's sister after her birthday party is ruined. It's even more disturbing when you watch multiple episodes and realize how many women Quincy dates, but never touches or kisses or hugs. I don't know if this was Jack Klugman being overly friendly with child actors or if it was a character trait chosen to illustrate how ill-suited Quincy is to human interaction thus explaining his decision to become a doctor for dead people.

As I watched this episode, I began to wonder how much editing one would need to do to manipulate the scenes of this episode into a disturbing story about a pedophile who becomes obsessed with a boy named Joey but then finds himself competing with the boy's pedophile father for the kid. And in the end, once he wins the boy, he gets bored and sells him to a couple that wants to have sex with a kid.

Answer: Surprisingly little. Many of these scenes are unaltered.Also, they say Joey's name a lot in this episode. Unfortunately, this isn't all of them because I didn't download all 50 minutes of raw footage. This is from about 60% of the episode.