Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
Welcome to season 3 of Hang Time! Two cast members leave and two join. The theme song remains the same.
Episode 3.1 “Team Captain”
(Directed by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 13th, 1997)
A new school year begins at Deering High and …. wait a minute? Where’s Josh!? Where’s Amy!? Two members of the cast have vanished without warning. The new head cheerleader is Kristy Ford (Amber Barretto), who apparently is good friends with everyone on the show even though the viewers have never seen her before. And replacing Josh as the new player who is obviously destined to become Julie’s boyfriend is Michael Manning (Adam Frost). Michael has transferred to Deering and, unlike Josh, he can’t wait to play on the team!
Mary Beth spent her summer at space camp (even though there’s never been anything about Mary Beth that has suggested she would have any interest in space camp) and, while there, she met and kissed Saved By The Bell‘s Ryan Parker! When the guilt-stricken Mary Beth tells Vince about what happened, Vince dumps her. But then Vince decides to take Mary Beth back on the condition that Mary Beth basically do a bunch of things to prove her love for him. This sounds like the set-up of a 70s porn flick but, since this is a TNBC show, Vince just asks Mary Beth to wait in line to buy tickets to the new Jim Carrey film. Seriously, Mary Beth, don’t take that from him! I would have picked Ryan over Vince too!
At the movies, Vince is approached by a girl with whom he cheated on Mary Beth over the summer. Mary Beth responds by dumping a bunch of nachos on his crotch, once again proving herself to be the coolest girl in Indiana.
Meanwhile, Julie is angry because everyone on the team loves Michael and wants him to be team captain. Julie gets upset that no one wants her to be team captain, despite the fact that she never bothered to tell anyone that she wanted the position and she expected that they would just give it to her. This was a typical Julie storyline, in that Julie was totally self-centered but it was okay because she’s Julie. Eventually, everyone on the team told Julie that they couldn’t possibly win without her and Julie got over being angry.
Episode 3.2 “Sexual Harassment”
(Directed by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 13th, 1997)
In a sure sign that this episode was from the 90s, the men on the team agree to get tattoos but all of the guys get scared and change their minds. Naturally, Julie takes this is an opportunity to make everyone else feel like crap by getting a fake tattoo and then scolding the guys for once again not making her feel like a part of the team. Of course, as the last two seasons have shown, Julie is the only good player on the team and all of her teammates literally worship the ground that she walks on so I’m starting to feel that Julie just likes to complain about stuff.
Fortunately, that was only the B-plot. In the main plot, Mary Beth accidentally spent the team’s entire budget in just one weekend. In order to pay the team back, she got a job as a waitress at The Warehouse. Her boss was the Warehouse’s assistant manager, Tom (Jeremy Vincent Garrett), a former Deering basketball star who apparently used to play for Coach Fuller even though we’ve never seen the character before and the show literally started with Fuller showing up the first day of his coaching job. Tom turns out to be a total creep who is always giving Mary Beth unwanted back rubs and pressuring her to stay late with him. The storyline was handled in a surprisingly mature fashion, considering that this was a TNBC show. A lot of credit for that goes to Megan Parlen and Jeremy Vincent Garrett, who both gave believable performances even when the show itself threatened to get a bit cartoonish. At the end of the episode, Fuller ordered Tom to leave his gym and, for once, the audience’s applause felt earned.
Through the Shattered Lens 