later in the series. Yet another LAPD contact was Lieutenant Dave Angstrom, played by Frank Campanella (real-life brother of Joseph Campanella). In the 1969 season, he also employs the services of a competitive private investigator, Albie Loos (performed by Joe Mantell), as a sort of investigative gofer. In the 1972 season, Albie returns, played by a different actor (Milton Selzer). While Mannix was not generally known as a show that explored socially relevant topics, several episodes had topical themes. Season two had episodes featuring compulsive gambling, deaf and blind characters who were instrumental in solving cases in spite of their physical limitations, and episodes that focused on racism against Blacks and Hispanics. Season six had an episode focusing on the effects that the Vietnam War had on returning veterans, including the effects of PTSD. Character Joseph R. "Joe" Mannix is a regular guy, without pretense, who has a store of proverbs on which to rely in conversation. What demons he has mostly come from having fought in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, where, as a Lieutenant, he was initially listed as MIA while he was a prisoner of war in a brutal POW camp until he escaped. Over the length of the series, a sizable percentage of his old Army comrades turn out to have homicidal impulses against him, as does his fellow running back from his college football days. (The episode that introduced police Lieutenant Art Malcolm portrayed him as a Korean War buddy of Mannix's, but that connection was generally ignored thereafter.) During the series, Mannix is also revealed to have worked as a mercenary in Latin America. Like the actor Mike Connors who played the title role, Mannix is of Armenian descent, and speaks fluent Armenian from time to time during the series, as well as conversational Spanish. Mannix is notable for the high level of physical punishment he withstands. During the course of the series, he is shot and wounded over a dozen separate times, and knocked unconscious around 55 times. He frequently takes brutal beatings to the abdomen; some of these went on quite a long time, particularly by the television standards of the era. Whenever he gets into one of his convertibles (in season one, Mannix drove a customized Oldsmobile Toronado, replete with a panoramic rear-view mirror; in seasons 2–6, he drove a Dodge Challenger or Plymouth Barracuda; in the final season.