Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing The Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984.  The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, The Master comes to an end.

Episode 1.13 “A Place To Call Home”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on August 31st, 1984)

The Master ends in much the same way that it began, with Max and John Peter McAllister in a small town that is controlled by an evil businessman.  In this case, land developer Mark Richards (Jock Mahoney) wants to run the local orphanage out of town so that he can steal the land and expand his uranium mine.  Max and McAllister not only help Kim Anderson (Susan Woollen) save her orphanage but they also provide some much-needed mentoring to two of the orphans, Mike (Doug Toby) and Bobby (played by Kane Kosugi).  Bobby, it turns out, has some martial arts skills of his own!  It’s amazing how McAllister and Max were always traveling to small towns that just happened to be home to other people who knew karate.

Though his son plays Bobby, Sho Kosugi does not appear in this episode, which is a shame considering that it would be turn out to be the show’s finale.  For that matter, the show ends with McAllister having yet to find his daughter.  In fact, Terri McAllister is only mentioned briefly at the end of the episode, when McAllister says that he and Max have to get back on the road because “I’m looking for my daughter.”  Considering that the whole premise of the show was that McAllister was searching for Terri while Okassa was searching for McAllister, it seems like neither was really in a hurry to accomplish their goals.

A Place To Call Home feels like a greatest hits package, duplicating the plot of the pilot while tossing in a bit of the union episode‘s political subtext.  Even the scene where McAllister attempts to hop onto a helicopter feels a bit reminiscent of the ghost town episode.  The Master ended with an episode that resolved nothing and didn’t really bring anything new to show’s format.

Why did The Master end after thirteen episodes?  When taken as a whole, the show wasn’t as bad as its reputation.  While the stunt doubles did most of the work, Lee Van Cleef and Tim Van Patten still managed to develop a likable chemistry over the course of 13 episodes.  At first, the show’s writer stried too hard to play up the idea of Max Keller being a rebel with a chip on his shoulder but, after the first few episodes, it appears that they realized that Van Patten’s greatest strength as an actor was that he had a sort of amiable goofiness to him.  The stories were predictable but the fight scenes were usually (if not always) well-choreographed and entertaining.  The stunt people earned their paycheck.

In the end, though, I think The Master never quite figured what it wanted to be.  Did it want to be a straight action show?  Did it want to be a goofy buddy comedy?  In some episodes, McAllister was apparently a famous and well-known figure.  In others, he was a total unknown.  In some episodes, finding Terri was the most important thing in his life.  In others, he really didn’t seem to care.  The best episodes were the ones that winked at the audience and acknowledged just how ludicrous the whole thing was.  But, far too often, The Master became a generic crime show that just happened to feature martial arts.

The Master is finished and, to my surprise, I’m going to kind of miss it.  It had potential.  But, it’s time to move on to a new series.  Get ready because next week, it’s time for T & T!