Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, Jack falls in love but, unfortunately, someone is stealing brains.

Episode 1.18 “Brain Drain”

(Dir by Lyndon Chubbuck, originally aired on April 25th, 1988)

Jack, Ryan, and Micki go to the Natural History Museum of Ontario to try to retrieve a trephinator, which is a device that the ancient Greeks apparently used to measure the size of people’s heads.  The belief was that the bigger head someone had, the more intelligent they were.  While at the museum, Jack runs into a former girlfriend, Dr. Viola Rhodes (Carrie Snodgress).  Jack is so happy to run into Viola that he soon seems to forget about the trephinator but instead finds himself planning their upcoming wedding.

(Just to make clear, Micki canceled her engagement so she could spend the next few years of her life tracking down cursed antiques but Jack can apparently just decide to get married out-of-the-blue without it being an issue.)

Well, Jack may have other things on his mind but that trephinator is still out there and it’s dangerous!  It has been incorporated into a chair that allows a formerly developmentally challenged man to steal the brain fluid of others and use it to increase his own intelligence.  Stewart Pangborn (Denis Forest) used to be a test subject but now he’s a scientist.  When he decides that Viola will be his next victim, Jack’s wedding plans are put in danger.

Even after watching this episode, I have no idea what a trephinator is, what it looks like, or how it was incorporated into the big bulky chair that Pangborn used to steal other people’s brain fluids.  Was the trephinator the big needle that would be forcibly inserted into the base of the skulls of Pangborn’s victims?  I don’t know but I do know that the whole point of Friday the 13th was that Chris, Jack, and Micki were searching for cursed antiques.  Overall, it’s helpful to actually be able to look at the screen and say, “Oh, there’s the antique.”

The episode had quite a few flaws, from the bulkiness of the chair to the apparent ease by which Pangborn was able to set himself up as a scientist at the museum.  (Do they not do background checks in Canada?)  The episode’s dialogue had a “It’s only first draft, we’ll think of something better later” quality to it and the performances, even from the usually reliable Denis Forest, felt subpar.  The idea of Jack meeting an ex-girlfriend and falling in love had potential but there was very little chemistry between Chris Wiggins and Carrie Snodgress.  If anything, Jack’s romance reminded the viewers of how strange it was that neither the handsome Ryan nor the beautiful Micki ever seemed to have any amorous admirers.

It was a disappointing episode this week but apparently, next week will feature Ryan joining some sort of Amish death cult.  That sounds promising!