Welcome to Late Night 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 the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Canada goes on strike!

Episode 1.2 “Labor And Other Relations”

(Dir by Stan Harris, originally aired on October 9th, 1985)

I am two episodes into Check It Out and my favorite character is Marlene, the cashier played by Kathleen Laskey.  She’s my favorite specifically because she has the same attitude that I would have if I was working as a cashier.  She doesn’t care about the customers, she doesn’t worry about showing up for work on time, and she takes her first break ten minutes after the store opens.  Plus, out of everyone who works at the store, she has the best fashion sense.

This episode also established that Marlene is the “shop steward” of the Cobb’s union.  No one has ever joined the union, other than Marlene.  But that changes when mean old Mrs. Cobb (Barbara Hamilton) announces that employees of Cobb’s will, from now on, only be allowed to take two coffee breaks a day.  Marlene declares this to be an outrage and invites everyone — except for manager Howard (Don Adams) and assistant manager Christian (Jeff Pustil) — to a union meeting at her apartment.  Soon, every employee of the store is outside, picketing.  Meanwhile, Howard and Christian are forced to bag groceries and deal with customers.

Frustrated by the fact that everyone has joined the union, Howard goes outside to confront the picketers.  Murray (Simon Reynolds), the young bagger who has a crush on Marlene, asks Howard to hold his sign so that he can run into the store and use the bathroom.  (Wouldn’t that count as crossing the picket line?  I’ve never been a member of a union so I’m not really sure how all of this works.)  Howard agrees to hold Murray’s “Cobbs Is Unfair” sign.  Of course, a local reporter snaps a picture of Howard and soon, he’s on the front page of the newspaper.

Howard is just not having a good week.  First off, we learn, in a scene that goes on for way too long, that he’s still struggling with impotence and hasn’t had sex with Edna (Dinah Christie) for weeks.  (Edna is also Howard’s secretary and a member of the union so really, it seems like there’s all sorts of issues here.)  And now, he’s on the front page of the newspaper, picketing his own store.  Ms. Cobb shows up to fire him, saying that she was also responsible for “firing the Shah of Iran” back in 1979.  (What?)

Fortunately, the other employees of Cobb’s come to the rescue by barging into Howard’s office and announcing that they’ve voted him into the Union and therefore, Ms. Cobb can’t fire him for picketing.  Howard gets to keep his job, even though I was under the impression that members of management are not allowed to join a union.  Howard agrees to give everyone back their coffee breaks, even though that was a corporate policy and it was established early on that Howard didn’t have the power to change it.

This was a weird episode.  I’m going to guess that it was not at all a realistic depiction of a labor dispute.  There was way too much time devoted to Howard and Edna discussing their lack of a sex life.  That said, Marlene’s attitude saved the episode.  Even though she didn’t care about her job, she still brought the company to its knees.  Woo hoo, you go, Marlene!