15 | June | 2023 | Through the Shattered Lens

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. Almost the entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, on City Guys, Ms. Noble attempts to kill the neat guys! Who can blame her?

Episode 5.5 “Red Dawn”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on September 29th, 2001)

Ms. Noble is upset that all of her students keep looking at their phones so she decides that the perfect solution is to take Chris, Jamal, and L-Train and force them to compete for the title of Manny High Survivor. How do they win that title? By spending three days in Central Park without food and shelter.

Uhmmm….

This episode is yet another example of Ms. Noble proving herself to be the worst principal in New York and her students blindly obeying her every whim. I mean, Central Park is not exactly the safest place in the city and Ms. Noble is basically abandoning her students there for 72 hours. Did she ask their parents beforehand? If one of them gets killed by a mugger, wouldn’t Ms. Noble and Manny High and the entire New York City school system be legally liable? Fortunately, Chris, Jamal, and L-Train are not mugged but a bear does escape from the zoo and chases them out of the park. The bear then shows up at Manny High, interrupting the school dance.

Speaking of that school dance, Dawn is upset because Al is already dating a new girl. She befriends Al’s new girlfriend and then tells her a lot of lies in order to make her and Al break up. Fortunately, Dawn sees the error of her ways and, after Dawn comes clean, Al forgives her and then goes off and dances with his new girlfriend. This is one of those storylines that would have been more effective if not for the fact that Dawn and Al as a couple never really made much sense to begin with.

Then again, this is a show where a high school principal forces three of her students to live in Central Park. Nothing has to make sense anymore!

Episode 5.6 “Dances With Malcolm”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on October 6th, 2001)

According to Wikipedia, here’s the plot summary of Dances With Malcolm:

Jamal teams up with Malcolm, his dance nemesis to audition as backup dancers for a group called six-street. Dawn and Cassidy ask Al and El-Train to secretly take over their advice column for women temporarily. So they can attend a taping of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The column becomes a bigger success, but it proves to be an unfavorable double-edged sword for the two when Al and El-Train decide to manipulate the column for their own purposes.

I’m giving you the Wikipedia summary because this is one of the episodes that is not on YouTube. That’s a shame because it sounds like it involved dancing and I always love any show that features dancing. That said, this is City Guys so they would have found someway to screw it up. I will say that I doubt Conan O’Brien made an appearance on this episode. If he had, he probably would have been shown taping his show on the roof of Manny High. As for Al and L-Train manipulating the column to their own purposes, that sounds more like a Chris and Jamal subplot.

Next week, we will be one step closer to the final episode of City Guys and that day I’m finally free from having to review this show.

Rest in peace, Blackie Onassis. Onassis joined Urge Overkill as their drummer in 1991 and he played with the band until their first break-up in 1997. He was the drummer who played on their cover version of Neil Diamond’s Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon. The song became a hit for the band when it was featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and, even today, hearing it brings to mind memories of Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace.

Though Onassis would collaborate with Urge Overkill’s Nash Kato on the latter’s 2000 solo album, Onassis was not a part of the band when it reformed in 2004. Instead, Onassis largely stayed out of the public eye, with the band announcing his death yesterday.

The video for Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon mixes clips from Pulp Fiction with clips of the band performing the song at the type of establishment that would probably be frequented by Tarantino’s characters. In a 1992 interview with Spin Magazine, Onassis said that the mission of Urge Overkill was to “resurrect the era of the swinger” and that describes the feel of this video.

Director Drew Carolan also directed the video for Living Color’s Cult of Personality and The Mighty Might Bosstones’s Don’t Know How to Party.

RIP, Blackie Onassis.