As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1997’s Crackerjack 2! Selected and hosted by Bunny Hero, this movie is a sequel to a film that didn’t even need one! So, you know it has to be good!
Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet. We will be watching Top Gun: Maverick! The film is on Prime!
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Crackerjack 2 on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to Twitter and Prime, start Top Gun: Maverick, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
This video of a 1982 concert in St. Louis is probably as close as we will ever get to a music video for Remember the Heroes, Sammy Hagar’s tribute to the men and women who have fought and died in America’s wars. I know that some people think this is a pro-war song but the lyrics are actually a plea not to forget the soldiers once the war is over and they’ve returned home. The song calls out those who expect the military to fight for them but who then “turn their back” once the fighting is finished.
This song was co-written with Jonathan Cain, the keyboardist from Journey.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1996’s Dark Angel! It can be viewed on YouTube!
Eric Roberts is Walter D’Arcangelo!
Walter was raised in the Louisiana foster system and eventually a series of Catholic orphanages. With a last name like D’Arcangenlo, it’s hard not to feel that Walter was destined to eventually become an eccentric homicide detective who does things his way and that’s exactly what happened. After starting his career in Baton Rouge, Walter has recently transferred to New Orleans. He arrives just in time to help investigate a series of gruesome murders, the victims of which are all women who cheated on their husbands. Walter even starts to get phone calls from someone who claims to be the murderer.
Unfortunately, for Walter, he’s somehow become a suspect in the murders. The rest of the homicide division doesn’t quite know what to make of the somewhat nervy Walter. When they discover that he went missing for several months while working in Baton Rouge, that makes him even more suspicious in the eyes of his new colleagues. Even while she personally is falling for him, Detective Anna St. Cyr (Ashley Crow) investigates Walter’s past and discovers that Walter does indeed have a link to the murders but not in a way that anyone was expecting.
Dark Angel was clearly intended to be a pilot for a weekly detective show. I imagine that Detective D’Arcangelo would have spent every week investigating a different murder in New Orleans. The show is full of moments that don’t have much to do with the case but which seem to have been included to make viewers say, “Wow, Eric Roberts is a really interesting guy! I wish he was starring in TV series that I could watch every Tuesday night!” Roberts does give a pretty good performance as Walter, hinting that, even if he isn’t a killer, the detective is still someone who could snap at any minute. Roberts plays Walter as if Walter himself is a little bit scared of the darkness that’s lurking inside of him. Walter’s an interesting character, though one gets the feeling that the demands of a weekly show would have led to the character becoming a bit less enigmatic if Dark Angel had been turned into a series.
The film takes place in New Orleans and it’s somewhat shameless about indulging in every “Big Easy” cliché possible. Yes, Walter listens to jazz. Yes, there are scenes of rain and shots where the steamy humidity seems to be rising from the French Quarter. Yes, Walter visits a voodoo priestess and yes, there’s even a scene set during Mardi Gras. Though there’s nothing unexpected about the show’s portrayal of New Orleans, the pilot does do a good job of capturing the city’s unique atmosphere. Eric Roberts and New Orleans feel like a perfect match,
Of course, Dark Angel did not become a series. Still, the pilot is entertaining and Eric Roberts gives another memorable performance. Dark Angel is a enjoyably macabre diversion.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
The 2013 film, Grace Unplugged, is about Grace Trey (AJ Michalka) and her father, Johnny Trey (James Denton). Back in the 80s, Johnny was a rock star who had one hit song and then basically wasted away with his career with drugs and alcohol. Eventually, he got clean and turned his back on rock stardom. Instead, he started writing and performing faith-based music. Like her father, Grace is musically talented but, at the age of 18, she is chafing at the idea of living under his strict rules. Though she plays in his band, she resents the fact that he won’t left her play the songs the way that she wants to.
One day, Johnny is visited by his former manager, Mossy Mostin (Kevin Pollack). (Never trust anyone named Mossy.) Mossy explains that, because it was performed by the winner of an Australian singing competition, Johnny’s one hit is suddenly popular again. Mossy wants Johnny to start recording again. “None of the religious stuff, obviously,” Mossy says. Johnny turns Mossy down but Grace, looking for an escape, records her own version of her father’s song and sends it to Mossy.
After she ditches youth group so that she can go to a movie and subsequently gets yelled at about it by her father, Grace decides to leave home and go to Mossy. Mossy offers to manage Grace. He also tells Grace that he will be totally taking over her image. Soon, Grace finds herself in a phony relationship with a vapid television star (Zane Holtz) and she’s told that she has to be willing to sex up her image if she’s going to be a star. Johnny continually asks her to come back home. Mossy continually pressures her to stop thinking and just listen to her management.
On the positive side, Grace Unplugged avoids the many of the cliches that one might normally expect to come along with a film like this. Grace, for instance, doesn’t get hooked on pills or any other drugs. At worse, she has too much to drink one night and then wakes up with a bad hangover. Grace may often feel confused about what she wants to do with her career and she doesn’t appreciate her father’s strict ways but she never becomes self-destructive or strung out or any of the other things that usually happen in movies like this. As well, Mossy is portrayed as being a bit insensitive but he’s not some sort of a mustache-twirling villain. In fact, the film is smart enough to understand that Grace does have a point about her father. Johnny is too over-protective and over-controlling, especially when it comes to her music. He fears that she’ll make the same mistakes that he did but the viewers never have any doubt that she’s not going to. Grace is often naïve and unsure of what she should do but she’s never portrayed as being weak and I appreciated that.
That said, the film ends on a bit of a heavy-handed note as it reveals itself to be yet another adaptation of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The film’s script conspires to only leave Grace with two options, which is either abandon her family or abandon stardom. In the end, the film’s conclusion feels just a little bit too simplistic.
I didn’t watch much this week. For whatever reason, I really wasn’t in a television mood. Still, I did catch a few shows and here are my thoughts on them!
Barry (Sunday Night, HBO)
Monroe “The Raven” Fuches has his own compound. NoHo Hank is discovering that being a legitimate businessman still means doing a lot of illegal stuff. The FBI is now convinced that Cusineau was Barry’s accomplice. And Sally and John have been kidnapped. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous about how all of this going to wrap up on Sunday night. I’m hoping for a happy ending but I don’t know if there is such a thing in the world of Barry.
Beavis and Butt-Head (Paramount Plus)
Oh no! Beavis and Butt-Head are dead! Well, actually, I’m sure they’ll find a way to survive being in that car that just got tossed into the car smasher thing. I mean, Old Beavis survived having one of his kidneys explode so it might just be that the boys are immortal and incapable of dying. That’s kind of a scary thought.
Black Bird (Apple TV+)
I finished up this excellent miniseries on Sunday. Paul Walter Hauser chilled me to the bone. Ray Liotta broke my heart.
Bubblegum Crisis (Night Flight Plus)
I watched the fourth episode of this anime on Saturday morning. It features a black car shoving a bunch of motorcyclists out of the way. That was actually kind of neat because everyone knows the frustration of getting stuck behind a motorcyclist (or, even worse, a freaking bicyclist) in heavy traffic.
Robin Givens talked to teenagers who felt that they had been let down by their mothers. Wait …. where’s Mother Love!?
Great Performances (Monday Morning, PBS)
Danai Gurira played the title role in a Shakespeare in the Pak production of Richard III. Gurira was certainly able to capture the character’s ruthless determination but there still wasn’t much depth to either her performance or the overall production.
Max Keller, union activist! The third episode of The Master was pretty silly and I wrote about it here!
The Office (Peacock)
“Hey there, Mr. Scott, what you gonna do? What you gonna do? Make our dreams come true!” Can you guess which episode of The Office I watched on Friday afternoon?
Red Dwarf (Monday Morning, PBS)
The long-running British science fiction comedy is now airing on my PBS station so I watched an episode on Monday. Apparently, the last Earthling in existence gave some false memories to his companion, a hologram. The hologram was disappointed to learn that his memories weren’t real. It was funny but it was also kind of sad, to be honest. It made me wonder what I would so if I woke up one day to discover that I was the last remaining person on Earth (or in space, as the case may be).
Survivor (Wednesday Night, CBS)
Another season of Survivor has come to a close and I am off the reality show beat until Big Brother returns in August. Yam Yam, to be honest, got on my last nerve because he was so whiny and petulant. He played a good enough game that he deserved the victory but still, I would have preferred to have seen either Carolyn or Carson take home the money. What was up with Carolyn getting zero votes? That sucked! You can read my thoughts on Survivor here!
Yes, Minister (Monday Morning, PBS)
This week, Jim Hacker caused a panic when he threatened to withhold honours from civil servants who did not reduce their budgets. Of course, no civil servant would ever willingly reduce their budget but what’s the point of being a civil servant without the honours? It was all very British but it was also universal. Bureaucrats love to be rewarded for not doing anything.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing California Dreams, which ran on NBC from 1992 to 1996. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This is it. This is the last gig This is the end of California Dreams.
But first….
Episode 5.14 “The Fashion Man”
(Dir by Kevin Sullivan, originally aired on December 7th, 1996)
This episode opens with the Dreams performing at Lorena’s loft, except there’s something off. Everyone looks a year or two younger than they did in the previous episode. Sam is singing that old “Hey Baby” song that we haven’t heard since season 3. Sly is hitting on the girls at the Loft, despite the fact that he and Lorena were a couple the last time we saw them. Later, in the episode, Sam will go crazy over a model named Samson and Tony won’t even raise an eyebrow. And, of course, all of the Dreams are still going to high school despite the fact that we saw them graduate a few episodes earlier.
Yes, this is yet another case of NBC showing episodes out-of-order. In this case, The Fashion Man was filmed for the third season but, for whatever reason, it wasn’t aired until the end of the fifth season. The Fashion Man is silly and a bit derivative of Saved By The Bell and it feels very much like a third season episode. It would be a totally acceptable third season episode but seeing it at the end of the fifth season only serves to remind viewers of how much better most of the fifth season episodes were from the episodes that were made for earlier seasons.
Anyway, in this episode, Sly and the Dreams get conned by a fake modeling agency. The rest of the Dreams figure out that it’s all a scheme but Sly is so desperate that he gives the head of the agency five hundred dollars and ends up with a bunch of useless photographs as the only thing to show for the cost.
Poor Sly! Eventually he does figure things out but only after he spends an additional $250 to cover a fashion show at Sharky’s. The Dreams sabotage the show. They say that they’re doing it to help out Sly but I think they mostly just enjoy humiliating the poor dope. This episode is okay but a bit cartoonish. Let’s move on to …. THE LAST GIG!
Episode 5.15 “The Last Gig”
(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on December 14th, 1996)
Wipe away those tears. The Dreams are playing their last gig.
This is it. This is the final episode of California Dreams. Everyone has graduated from high school. Everyone is making plans for the future. Many will be going away to college. But Jake is determined to keep the band together. And there’s one last gig on the pier to play!
And wouldn’t you know it …. there’s a producer in the audience! He wants to sign Jake but Jake insists that the producer sign the entire band. The band, though, tells Jake that they are ready to move on and that this is his dream. Even though the producer eventually agrees to sign the entire band, the rest of the Dreams turn down the contract so that they can go off to college and start their lives. With the band’s encouragement, Jake eventually signs.
For the record:
Tiffani went to the University of Hawaii.
Sam moves to England to study physics at Oxford. She and Tony amicably break up. They lasted the longest of any couple on this show and it was interesting to watch their relationship develop.
Mark goes to Julliard to study music and specifically states that he will never have time to return to California. So, I guess he managed to take care of all that community service that he got for nearly killing Tara Reid in the Graduation episode.
Lorena and Sly go to Pacific University together.
And Jake, presumably, goes on to become your grandparent’s favorite rock star.
You know who isn’t mentioned? Matt Garrison, the founder of the band! Oh well. Hopefully, things worked out well for him and Jenny, wherever they are.
Consider just how dismissive I was of this show when I started writing these reviews, I have to say that no one is more surprised than I am about how genuinely touched and moved I was by the final episode. Both the show and its cast really came into their own during the fifth season and it was hard not to feel a bit emotional as they said their final goodbyes to each other. The show ended on a mature and realistic note. Nothing lasts forever, to quote Hang Time‘s Coach Fuller.
Well, that’s it for California Dreams. Next week, a new show will be reviewed in this slot. But I’ll never forget surf dudes with attitude….
Through the Shattered Lens 