"The Mud Nest" is chiefly remembered as the episode where Buz is mistaken for a Colby by the entire fearsome Colby clan, led by Lon Chaney as the patriarch, calling out all his grandsons to fight Buz to prove he's really one of them, with each played by the actual siblings of George Maharis. Chaney is in and out fairly quickly, the remainder of the episode taken up by the search for the missing Dorothea Colby, who fled the family some 25 years ago for the big city (Baltimore), gave birth to a son, and promptly disappeared off the face of the earth. A sympathetic investigator is played by Edward Asner, with a full head of hair, and the big revelation features Betty Field as the missing mother, whose picture I identified as soon as I saw it. Although they share no scenes together, both Chaney and Field are reunited from 1939's "Of Mice and Men," and coincidentally, both passed away within two months of each other in 1973. This was Lon Chaney's first appearance on ROUTE 66, followed by the more famous "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing" and "Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!"
8 Reviews
Where's the mud nest?
cwjonesfam13 July 2020
I've searched everywhere for clues to why it is named "The Mud Nest". We're lines cut from Buzz's dream tale so that he felt he was alone in a mud nest? Or was Dorthea the one who abandoned her mud nest after her son's death? Ideas?
11/10/61: "The Mud Nest"
schappe14 May 2015
Warning: Spoilers
This is my favorite episode of this series- or any other. The final scene is the finest dramatic scene I've ever seen in any TV show, movie or play. And again, its' the type of story very few TV series could have or would have told.
The boys are headed for Baltimore but run out of gas in the town of Hester. The people there take one look at Buz and announce to him that he's one of the much-feared Colby clan. Tod suggests to Buz he might actually be a Colby: the was a foundling, left with an orphanage in New York City. He convinces a reluctant Buz to search out the Colbys, who do not disappoint. The head of the clan is played by Lon Chaney Jr., (the first of three appearances on the show) and three of the four siblings are played by George Maharis' actual bothers and a sister. They set upon Buz to see how tough he is and he beats them up, once by one. Chaney says "You're a Colby all right" and the grim fight for survival turns into a warm homecoming. They find out that 25 years ago Dorothea Colby left the farm for the big city: Baltimore and give Buz a picture of what she looked like then. That's the first of three parts of the show. The second part is a sort of procedural that takes place in Baltimore.
That has some significance for fans, (like me) of "Homicide: Life on the Streets" that was filmed there thirty years later. Once wonders if some of the same locations appeared in that show. The same poster who had shots of "First Class Mouliak" locations has some for this episode as well: http://www.ohio66.com/mud_nest/ Ed Asner, (making his third of five appearances), plays a detective in the Bureau of Missing persons who gives the boys a crash course in how to look for someone in a big city. He's a guy who takes pride and pleasure in his work. I can relate. I used to work for the Social Security Administration and one of my jobs was to find people who might be entitled to benefits. We also occasionally got requests to help locate long lost relatives and we could help so long as we didn't give out any information without permission: we've try to use our records and other sources to locate the person and if we could, we'd contact them and find out if they wished to hear from the interested party. If they did, we transmitted the necessary information. It was probably the most fun and interesting part of the job.
The boys poke around Baltimore and find a veteran stripper, (played by Sylvia Miles, who later had a similar role in "Midnight Cowboy". She was actually only 28-29 when this would have been filmed, per the IMDb but you know about actresses' birth dates. She looks more like 45- 50. (Buz finds out 'he' was born in September 1937 and says he's "about 25". George Maharis was born 9/1/28, so he was 33 at the time). Miles wants to make friends but blows it when she makes an insensitive comment about how much Dorothea "hated that kid". The boys leave the strip joint with their heads down, Tod apologizing for getting Buz into this. As they walk down the street, they pass a religious mission with a big neon sign saying "GOD IS LOVE", a great piece of direction by James Sheldon.
Then comes the final scene. Asner had had the picture "aged" and it looks just like a famous local resident, a woman surgeon. He takes them to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, where she works. Buz goes into the operating theater alone to meet the woman he has come to believe is his mother. He starts with one of Sterling Silliphant's poetic analogies. Somehow the surgeon, (Betty Field), senses why he's there. They look at each other intently and Buz stops with the poetry and tells of his longing for his mother, how he'd like to meet her and help her. He doesn't quite ask why she gave him up, why she "hated that kid". Field waits patiently and then goes into her story. She had no money and hated the father of the child, (it suggests he was a child of rape). She hated to look into his little face and see the father. She kept him warm and fed, but couldn't love him. Then comes the bombshell: One day her son died in his crib. She felt so guilty that she went to the head of nursing at the hospital and just said that she wanted to spend the rest of her live helping people and never hating anyone again.
They again look at each other, Buz realizing that this woman is not his mother and also that he is not her son. But he is the image of the man her son could have been and she was what his mother, whoever and wherever she is now, was when she gave him up. She puts her hands on Buz and tells him to see and feel them as if they were the hands of his mother, asking for forgiveness and expressing her pride in the man he has become. The scene is never maudlin due to the excellent writing and the way the lines are delivered so we can read between them. I have literally never seen anything better.
The boys are headed for Baltimore but run out of gas in the town of Hester. The people there take one look at Buz and announce to him that he's one of the much-feared Colby clan. Tod suggests to Buz he might actually be a Colby: the was a foundling, left with an orphanage in New York City. He convinces a reluctant Buz to search out the Colbys, who do not disappoint. The head of the clan is played by Lon Chaney Jr., (the first of three appearances on the show) and three of the four siblings are played by George Maharis' actual bothers and a sister. They set upon Buz to see how tough he is and he beats them up, once by one. Chaney says "You're a Colby all right" and the grim fight for survival turns into a warm homecoming. They find out that 25 years ago Dorothea Colby left the farm for the big city: Baltimore and give Buz a picture of what she looked like then. That's the first of three parts of the show. The second part is a sort of procedural that takes place in Baltimore.
That has some significance for fans, (like me) of "Homicide: Life on the Streets" that was filmed there thirty years later. Once wonders if some of the same locations appeared in that show. The same poster who had shots of "First Class Mouliak" locations has some for this episode as well: http://www.ohio66.com/mud_nest/ Ed Asner, (making his third of five appearances), plays a detective in the Bureau of Missing persons who gives the boys a crash course in how to look for someone in a big city. He's a guy who takes pride and pleasure in his work. I can relate. I used to work for the Social Security Administration and one of my jobs was to find people who might be entitled to benefits. We also occasionally got requests to help locate long lost relatives and we could help so long as we didn't give out any information without permission: we've try to use our records and other sources to locate the person and if we could, we'd contact them and find out if they wished to hear from the interested party. If they did, we transmitted the necessary information. It was probably the most fun and interesting part of the job.
The boys poke around Baltimore and find a veteran stripper, (played by Sylvia Miles, who later had a similar role in "Midnight Cowboy". She was actually only 28-29 when this would have been filmed, per the IMDb but you know about actresses' birth dates. She looks more like 45- 50. (Buz finds out 'he' was born in September 1937 and says he's "about 25". George Maharis was born 9/1/28, so he was 33 at the time). Miles wants to make friends but blows it when she makes an insensitive comment about how much Dorothea "hated that kid". The boys leave the strip joint with their heads down, Tod apologizing for getting Buz into this. As they walk down the street, they pass a religious mission with a big neon sign saying "GOD IS LOVE", a great piece of direction by James Sheldon.
Then comes the final scene. Asner had had the picture "aged" and it looks just like a famous local resident, a woman surgeon. He takes them to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, where she works. Buz goes into the operating theater alone to meet the woman he has come to believe is his mother. He starts with one of Sterling Silliphant's poetic analogies. Somehow the surgeon, (Betty Field), senses why he's there. They look at each other intently and Buz stops with the poetry and tells of his longing for his mother, how he'd like to meet her and help her. He doesn't quite ask why she gave him up, why she "hated that kid". Field waits patiently and then goes into her story. She had no money and hated the father of the child, (it suggests he was a child of rape). She hated to look into his little face and see the father. She kept him warm and fed, but couldn't love him. Then comes the bombshell: One day her son died in his crib. She felt so guilty that she went to the head of nursing at the hospital and just said that she wanted to spend the rest of her live helping people and never hating anyone again.
They again look at each other, Buz realizing that this woman is not his mother and also that he is not her son. But he is the image of the man her son could have been and she was what his mother, whoever and wherever she is now, was when she gave him up. She puts her hands on Buz and tells him to see and feel them as if they were the hands of his mother, asking for forgiveness and expressing her pride in the man he has become. The scene is never maudlin due to the excellent writing and the way the lines are delivered so we can read between them. I have literally never seen anything better.
Synopsis and Spoilers-- The Mud Nest
rodamer2 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Each and every episode of Route 66 was unique, but none more than this one. What makes it special is the fact that many of George Maharis' six sisters and brothers are in the episode.
As Buzz and Todd travel about they suddenly come to this particular town. Every person they encounter looks at Buzz as if they are seeing a ghost. When Buzz and Todd decide to find out why, they come across a family...where all the people in the family look just like Buzz. Buzz, having been raised an orphan, starts to look into the possibility that one woman, played by Betty Field, is his mother.
Not only is it a story about him trying to find his mother, it looks into his feelings about his childhood and what he has become.
As Buzz and Todd travel about they suddenly come to this particular town. Every person they encounter looks at Buzz as if they are seeing a ghost. When Buzz and Todd decide to find out why, they come across a family...where all the people in the family look just like Buzz. Buzz, having been raised an orphan, starts to look into the possibility that one woman, played by Betty Field, is his mother.
Not only is it a story about him trying to find his mother, it looks into his feelings about his childhood and what he has become.
Buz Looks For His Mom
dougdoepke10 October 2016
The climactic scene between Maharis and Field is a gem of restrained feeling. Each is groping emotionally but can't know for exactly what. All in all, Maharis gets to show a more sensitive side than usual. Superior acting was an often overlooked series strength, but is shown regularly by the two leads and their guest cast. Even bleary-eyed Lon Chaney Jr. fits in here. Too bad the fight scene is so clumsily staged, the only performance flaw in an otherwise well- mounted hour.
Seems the rough-house Colby clan that the guys stumble upon thinks Buz is the son of a missing Colby girl. Seeing his physical resemblance to clan members, the orphaned Buz is immediately interested, spending the rest of the episode trying to track down what may be his mysterious mother. Then too, I've got a new appreciation for the complexities of tracking down a missing person, especially after 25-years. All in all, the series strengths are on display here, even though guys have to navigate without the usual romantic interests.
Seems the rough-house Colby clan that the guys stumble upon thinks Buz is the son of a missing Colby girl. Seeing his physical resemblance to clan members, the orphaned Buz is immediately interested, spending the rest of the episode trying to track down what may be his mysterious mother. Then too, I've got a new appreciation for the complexities of tracking down a missing person, especially after 25-years. All in all, the series strengths are on display here, even though guys have to navigate without the usual romantic interests.
Baltimore - 1961
mlbroberts7 October 2021
One of the best episodes of the series. Other reviewers have explained it well as Buz searches the city for a woman who might be his mother and may have deserted him when he was a baby. He doesn't have anger and isn't looking for a way to get even - he just want to know, "if she needs anything, needs me." The most powerful line I think in the whole series of Route 66.
I also remember it for a personal reason. As Buz and Tod leave a strip joint where someone who knew the woman they're looking for just blithely says the woman had a baby but "probably left him on somebody's front porch," Buz is crushed because in reality that's what happened. Tod apologizes for pressing him to look for the woman, and the pass under a neon sign, up high, that just says "God is Love." My grandfather put that sign up long, long ago, and put up others like that around town. One is still on a church in northeast Baltimore.
I also remember it for a personal reason. As Buz and Tod leave a strip joint where someone who knew the woman they're looking for just blithely says the woman had a baby but "probably left him on somebody's front porch," Buz is crushed because in reality that's what happened. Tod apologizes for pressing him to look for the woman, and the pass under a neon sign, up high, that just says "God is Love." My grandfather put that sign up long, long ago, and put up others like that around town. One is still on a church in northeast Baltimore.
Baltimore when I was young
Lorenzo195017 February 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I remember as a kid of 12 hearing about this episode being filmed in and around Baltimore. I was living in Baltimore County at the time. As I got older I worked several jobs in Baltimore City and I visited many of the locations filmed in this episode. Mount Vernon Place especially. The last ten minutes of this episode is very well done. It is sad to meet someone that you would hope could be your mother, someone who turned her life around. You hope she would be the long lost mother that Buz never met. It was said with a quiet embrace and a kiss on the forehead from two strangers that will probably never meet again. It doesn't exactly offer any closure but it allows two lonely strangers to communicate on a very deep level. A very touching ending to a great episode.
I don't remember Mama
lor_12 March 2024
A landmark episode, "The Mud Nest" begins comically with our heroes having literally run out of gas, confronted by Maryland rubes who are sure that George is a long-lost grandson of Lon Chaney Junior, who so famously made "George.." his catch phrase for Burgess Meredith when he played Lennie in the classic "Of Mice and Men".
This sets our modern nomadic couple George and Martin on a trek to Baltimore in search of Betty Field (from that same movie). With tremendous, subtle performances by Maharis and Field, this emerges as a touching tale of self-discovery, without relying upon any easy "Hollywood Ending" cliches or answers.
Ed Asnrer as an unusually sympathetic and helpful police lieutenant who guides our heroes in genealogy investigation completes a classic Silliphant screenplay.
This sets our modern nomadic couple George and Martin on a trek to Baltimore in search of Betty Field (from that same movie). With tremendous, subtle performances by Maharis and Field, this emerges as a touching tale of self-discovery, without relying upon any easy "Hollywood Ending" cliches or answers.
Ed Asnrer as an unusually sympathetic and helpful police lieutenant who guides our heroes in genealogy investigation completes a classic Silliphant screenplay.
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