Pete Malloy Gets Paired Off Adam-12's Final Season

Pete Gets Paired Off

Suddenly Dirty Old Man Malloy does a 180 from checking out girls while on duty to pairing off with a single mom his own age in Season 7. We hear about her first and then get to see her twice, in episodes 16 and 24.
 
Possibly they named her "Judy" as a thank you to the real Mrs. Freckles, else it was just easier for Freckles to remember. Not sure how they chose Aneta Corsaut. 

Ms. Corsaut was a fine actress, but just not who I would have cast as Malloy's serious love interest. 

Here’s the short list I would have had, counting down # 5 to # 1.
 
My fifth choice would have been

Judy Milner. They had already done Bring Your Daughter to Work Day for Amy Milner and Kristen McCord. Why not Bring Your Wife? Think how much fun it would have been for the Freckles clan to watch Mom and Dad together on Adam-12 reruns years into the future.
 
My fourth choice:

Vera Miles. The last we saw her with Freckles, he was pretending to be Mr. Nice Guy, only to have her hauled away for a psychiatric evaluation. I always like a good Twilight Zone reunion.

My third choice:

Patty Duke. This could have been a shocker as Patty Duke shows up at the station as Pete’s ex-wife. Reed’s eyes would have opened wide for that one! They had married young and split up because of her drug addiction. Now she’s back and hopes to patch things up, but it turns out she’s still in the drug scene, which could disrupt Malloy's shot at making sergeant. A conflicted ending, leaving that little opening for a spin-off. That’s how I would have written it.

My second choice:

Barbara Baldavin. This lovely actress had put in three Adam-12 appearances: once with her baby threatened by Zalman King, the king of TV psychos for a while; once as Wells’ wife – yeah, right! – and once as Pete’s nurse girlfriend. Remember how she held the gun on the burly biker creep in the backlot Western town? She was a good match. [She will show up in a bit part on my Murray Hamilton blog, but she’s not there yet.] She had a fairly regular gig on Medical Center with hunky Chad Everett and film noir bad girl Audrey Totter.

And my top pick for who they should have cast to be the future Mrs. Malloy:

Barbara Eden. For starters, they might have still been married for the past decade! They could have thrown in lines like, “Malloy get married? He’d rather be thrown off a bridge!” She would have been perfectly age-appropriate, she’s cute as can be, and she was used to a man in a uniform.
 
But instead they cast Aneta Corsaut as Female Pete: red hair, a bit overweight, smoky voice. Female Pete. Given the show had Malloy chasing after the much younger Tina Sinatra, I’m surprised they didn’t give the final lady friend role to young Kelly Harmon. They’d already featured her siblings Kristin and Mark. Why not three for three of the Tom Harmon children? When Adam-12 went off the air, Kelly Harmon was already divorced from John DeLorean. Yes, that John DeLorean! Wild world of show-biz.
 
Sadly, Ms. Corsaut passed away at only 62 (curses to cancer), and she is buried in, yes, North Hollywood. Donations could be made to Richard and Diana Basehart’s foundation, Actors and Others for Animals, also based in NoHo.