Daily Archives: April 20, 2023

Retro Television Reviews: City Guys 4.16 “Jamal X” and 4.17 “Subway Confessions”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Let’s check in with the neat guys.

Episode 4.16 “Jamal X”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, Originally aired on November 11th, 2000)

In this episode, we learn that Jamal has an uncle who is a fairly prominent academic and activist.  This seems like something that would have come up in the past but this is the first time that he’s ever been seen or even mentioned on City Guys.  When Ms. Noble invites him to give a guest lecture at Manny High, he stops by the diner to visit with his favorite nephew and to meet Jamal’s “best friend, Chris.”  After initially assuming that L-Train is Chris, Jamal’s uncle is shocked to discover that Jamal’s best friend is a rich white kid.

After listening to his uncle speak on systemic racism and realizing how little his three white friends understand about what it’s like to have to deal with racism on an everyday basis, Jamal goes militant.  He wears his hair in an afro.  He refers to Ms. Noble as being “my Nubian queen.”  And he tries to start a school club only for black students.  After Ms. Noble tells him that she won’t allow a blacks-only club at the school, Jamal instead holds his meeting at the New York Diner.  When Chris attempts to attend the meeting, Chris explains that he’s only there because he wants to understand what the black students are having to deal with.  Despite this, Chris is kicked out by the other club members.  A guilt-stricken Jamal realizes that he’s been going about things the wrong way.  He apologizes to Chris and they become friends again.

This seems to be the episode of City Guys that everyone remembers from when it first aired and it’s not badly done.  Wesley Jonathan, in particular, gives a good performance as Jamal.  Though the episode ends with Jamal reaffirming his friendship with Chris, it also doesn’t deny the everyday realities of racism.  (An early scene in the episode features a cop spotting L-Train’s new watch and baselessly accusing him of having stolen it.)  If nothing else, this episode is a bit more honest about prejudice than Saved By The Bell’s infamous Running Zack episode.  That said, I get the feeling that, if this episode aired today, it would be criticized for taking an All Lives Matter approach to the issue.  In the end, this episode is most noteworthy as a reminder that the issues of today are many of the same issues of the 90s and all the decades before.

Episode 4.17 “Subway Confessions”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, Originally aired on November 18th, 2000)

Chris, Jamal, Al, L-Train, Cassidy, and Dawn are preparing to enter the school when they hear that Funkyfest tickets are going on sale.  Convinced that they’ll be able to get the tickets and get back to school in time for Ms. Noble’s class, they leave school grounds and head for the subway.  When they return 3 hours later, Ms. Noble is so angry that she sentences them to three weeks of detention.  Ms. Noble also confiscates the Funkyfest tickets, which is another way of saying that Ms. Noble steals them.  Seriously, just because the tickets were bought while skipping school, that doesn’t change the fact that those tickets were not Noble’s to take.

Everyone has a different story about what happened on the train to make them late.  Dawn and Cassidy claim that they were giving a homeless woman a makeover.  L-Train and Al claim that they were fighting Russian spies.  Chris and Jamal claim that a woman in clown makeup went into labor and they had to deliver the baby.  Ms. Noble doesn’t believe a word of it, even after the homeless woman shows up, introduces herself as an undercover cop, and reveals that a clown really did go into labor.  (That said, she also reveals that Chis and Jamal did not deliver the baby.)  Everyone still has detention for skipping school because Ms. Noble is a harsh taskmaster.

This was a funny episode, though it’s hard not to notice that it’s also an episode that’s totally dependent on every character being an idiot.  Still, I’m not ashamed to admit that Al and L-Train fighting the spies made me laugh.  I’ve learned not to expect too much from City Guys and, with that in mind, this episode delivered.

The TSL Grindhouse: Beyond Desire (dir by Dominique Othin-Girard)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1995’s Beyond Desire tells the story of Ray Patterson (William Forsythe).  He’s spent the last 14 years in jail, convicted of a murder that he says he didn’t commit.  He likes to sing.  He’s obsessed with Elvis.  He claims that he doesn’t know how to drive because he’s been in prison for the last 14 years but he appears to be in his mid-40s so you have to kind of wonder if maybe Ray just wants other people to drive him around.  After all, Elvis never drove himself.

Perhaps because everyone is sick of listening to him as he sings Amazing Grace in his cell, Ray is released from prison.  Since he was serving his time in Nevada, this means that Ray now has to walk down a desert road and hope that someone gives him a ride.  Fortunately, for Ray, a woman named Rita (Kari Wuhrer) pulls up in fancy red car and asks him where he’s going.  Rita explains that she’s always had a fantasy about picking up someone who has just been released from prison.  Ray accepts her offer of a ride and soon, they’re at a desert motel, engaging in saxophone-scored, Vaseline-on-the-lens softcore sex.  Ray may have forgotten how to drive but apparently, he didn’t forget everything during those 14 years he spent in prison.  If nothing else, this film reveals more of William Forsythe than most viewers probably ever thought they’d see.

Soon, Ray and Rita are head to Vegas.  Of course, it turns out that Rita wasn’t quite honest about why she picked up Ray.  Rita is a high-priced escort and she works for a local crime boss named Frank (Leo Rossi).  Frank wants Ray to reveal the location of some stolen money.  Ray, meanwhile, feels that Frank is the key to clearing his name and catching the real murderer.  At first, it seems like everyone is just manipulating everyone else but Rita and Frank do eventually end up falling in love.  Can their love survive bullets and hints of betrayal?

Like many 90s crime films, Beyond Desire is one of those films that was obviously made to capitalize on the success of Quentin Tarantino.  The characters of Ray and Rita are such obvious copies of True Romance‘s Clarence and Alabama that the film comes close to turning into a self-parody.  Ray is a big Elvis fan and occasionally quotes lyrics at inopportune times.  The soundtrack itself is full of Elvis songs, though the budget apparently wasn’t big enough to actually get the rights to any of Elvis’s recordings.  Instead, we get cover versions, the majority of which feel rather wan.  The film emphasizes the garish glitz of the Vegas Strip but none of the quirky beauty of it.  Las Vegas, an adult playground sitting in the desert, is pure Americana.  That was something that was captured by Francis Ford Coppola in The Godfather, Martin Scorsese in Casino and David Lynch in Twin Peaks: The Return.  The film uses Vegas as a convenient backdrop but it has nothing to say about the location itself.

Like the majority of road movies, the film tends to meander a bit.  Ultimately, the road leads to nowhere.  That, in itself, is not necessarily a problem.  The same could be said of Tony Scott’s True Romance or any number of films directed by Wim Wenders.  Unfortunately, this film wasn’t directed by Tony Scott or Wim Wenders.  Instead, it was directed by the guy who did Halloween 5 and the end result is a film that, even when taken as a purely stylistic exercise, still feels rather empty.  It’s a shame because William Forsythe shows off a lot of quirky, bad boy charm in the role of Ray and Kari Wuhrer make Rita into a far more complex and conflicted character than one might expect.  But, unfortunately, the film itself just doesn’t live up to their performances.