Daily Archives: February 17, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out 1.18 “Store Wars”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, both Cobb’s and Edna get some competition!

Episode 1.18 “Store Wars”

(Dir by John Bell, originally aired on February 12th, 1986)

Odd episode, this week.

After having a fight with Howard, Edna abruptly leaves town for Florida.  Apparently, this is something that she does frequently.  (We are 18 episodes in and this show has yet to come up with a consistent portrayal of Howard and Edna’s relationship.)  I have to admit that I’ve never worked retail so I’m not totally sure how these things work but can you just stop going to work whenever you feel like it and still have a job?  It seems like this is the sort of thing that would get most people fired.  Maybe it’s different when you’re sleeping with the boss.

Anyway, Howard gets a new secretary and he is shocked to discover that Irene (Cynthia Belliveau) is young and attractive and totally into him.  Soon, Howard is wearing an earring, sunglasses, and dressing like Bruce Springsteen.  Irene even teaches Howard how to do yoga.

All of this leads to Howard getting distracted from the latest work crisis.  A new store has opened up across the street.  Just Food sells …. well, just food.  There are no bag boys or special displays or anything else that would cost any extra money so Just Food can lower their prices.  Soon, all of Cobb’s customers are going to Just Food!  Even when Christian lowers the prices at Cobb’s, Just Food lowers their prices even more.  Is it possible that Just Food could have a spy in the store?

Yes, there is a spy and, as you probably already guessed, the spy is Irene.  (How did Irene get the job?  Didn’t she have to go through a background check?  Do they not do that in Canada?)  Howard eventually figures it all out but he feels a little better when Irene tells him that, even though she was a spy, she truly did fall for him.  They share a passionate kiss and the audience applauds.  Then Irene leaves and Howard calls Edna to ask her to come back home.  “Awwwww!” the audience says.

Uhmmm …. yeah.  Thanks for the mixed signals, studio audience.  Howard basically cheated on Edna while she was gone but apparently that’s okay because, afterwards, Howard asked her to come back home.  Is Howard ever going to tell Edna about Irene?  She’s going to find out as soon as she asks either Marlene or Jennifer about what happened at the store while she was gone.  Unless Edna was hooking up with a 21 year-old life guard in Florida, Howard’s screwed either way.

This episode just felt off.  Howard can be a jerk but he’s always been loyal to Edna, even when they’ve fought in the past.  The “Store Wars” storyline had potential but it was pretty much overshadowed by Howard trying to be Springsteen.  This episode just didn’t work.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 2/11/24 — 2/17/24

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This was another week in which I didn’t watch much television, beyond what I usually review.  A lot of that is because I was preoccupied with exercising my ankle (which is doing much better) and Valentine’s Day!  And some of it is because I guess modern television just doesn’t interest me that much right now.  All the game shows and the self-conscious prestige dramas are just kind of boring.

Anyway, here’s some thought on what I did watch this week!

Abbott Elementary (Wednesday Night, ABC)

I felt that this week’s episode was a clear improvement over the premiere, though the show still seems to be struggling to find its footing in the third season.  I liked Gregory as the cool teacher and I enjoyed the return of Tariq but I’m still not a fan of Janine working for the district.

Bubblegum Crisis (Night Flight Plus)

The action moved to Houston in the episode that I watched on Saturday morning.  As usual, I couldn’t really follow the plot but it was fun to watch everything explode.  Bubblegum Crisis takes place in 2033 so I guess we’ve got nine years left.

Diocese Of Dallas Catholic Mass  (Sunday Afternoon, Channel 27)

For various reasons, I really wanted to go to Mass on Sunday but with my sprained ankle, I really didn’t feel like having to hop all the way down to St. Joseph’s.  Fortunately, television to the rescue!

Dr. Phil (YouTube)

I watched an episode on Monday night.  A woman falsely accused her ex-husband of using their child to make pornographic movies.  Her husband passed a lie detector test and, as Phil pointed out, the woman’s story was full of inconsistencies and never made any sense.  Despite being exposed as being a liar, the woman refused to apologize.

On Saturday, I watched an episode that featured an online gambling addict who, having lost all of his money, was now living in his mother’s basement.  “We are staging an intervention,” Dr. Phil said, in that ultra-dramatic way of his.

Night Flight (Night Flight Plus)

This Friday, I watched an episode about famous people who made cameo appearances in 80s music videos.

The Super Bowl (Sunday Night, CBS)

I have to admit that I was really rooting for the 49ers by the end of the game.  I always like it when the underdogs win.  But still, congratulations to the Chiefs on their victory.  As usual, I was mostly watching for the commercials but I got kind of bored with them this year.  The one with Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon was amusing.

The Vanishing Shadow (Night Flight Plus)

I watched another installment of this old timey serial on Saturday morning. Our heroes spent most of this episode being pursued by gangsters.  Fortunately, they had a vanishing ray!  This old 30s serial is a lot of fun.

Watched and Reviewed Elsewhere:

  1. Baywatch Nights (YouTube)
  2. Check It Out (Tubi) — Review Dropping In 30 Minutes
  3. CHiPs (Freevee)
  4. Degrassi Junior High (YouTube)
  5. Fantasy Island (Daily Motion)
  6. Friday the 13th (YouTube)
  7. Highway to Heaven (Freevee)
  8. Lookwell (YouTube)
  9. The Love Boat (Paramount Plus)
  10. Miami Vice (Tubi)
  11. Monsters (Tubi)
  12. T and T (Tubi)
  13. Welcome Back Kotter (Tubi)

14 Days of Paranoia #2: Deep Throat Part II (dir by Joseph Sarno)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1974, Deep Throat II (also known as Linda Lovelace, Secret Agent) is the R-rated sequel the legendary X-rated film, Deep Throat.  I should, at this point, confess that I have never seen Deep Throat, though I have seen the 2005 documentary about the making of the film and its subsequent cultural impact, Inside Deep Throat.  I’ve also read Legs McNeil’s oral history of the adult film industry, The Other Hollywood.  Perhaps most importantly, I’ve watched Boogie Nights a dozen times.

Anyway, Deep Throat II….

The star of the original film, Linda Lovelace, returns as …. Linda Lovelace!  Linda is working as a nurse for a perpetually turned-on sex therapist (Harry Reems) who, when told that he got laid just last night, whines, “Last night was a long time ago!”  Among the therapist’s patients is nerdy Dilbert Lamb (Levi Richards), who is obsessed with black lingerie and his aunt, Juliet.  Dilbert has built a giant super computer named Oscar.  In its electronic voice, Oscar says stuff like, “Why do you want to talk to me, baby?”

The plot is not particularly easy to follow but, as far as I could tell, the head of the CIA (played by adult film vet Jamie Gillis) is concerned that Dilbert has been compromised by either the Russians or by a bunch of do-gooder activists led by a Ralph Nader-style journalist named Kenneth Whacker (David Davidson).  (The journalist’s followers call themselves Whacker’s Attackers.)  The decision is made to recruit Linda Lovelace to investigate because Lovelace apparently has a mysterious technique that she can use to get men to tell her anything.

When Linda is first approached by the CIA, she thinks that she is being drafted into the Army so that she can fight in Vietnam.  “But I have asthma and I need new reading glasses!” she says.  Hey, me too!  Anyway, Linda is relieved to discover that she will not being going to Vietnam and that her new codename is Agent — wait for it — 0069.  (Just in case you were wondering what the level of humor was in this particular film….)

Despite the film’s cast of veteran adult performers and the fact that it’s a sequel to the movie that some people went to jail for transporting across state lines, Deep Throat II is an incredibly tame movie.  The film is edited so haphazardly that it feels as if at least half of it was left on the cutting room floor.  At first, I assumed that I was watching a heavily edited version of the original film but a few minutes of research online revealed that I was watching the original.  (Apparently, director Joe Sarno directed the film so that more explicit scenes could be directed by another filmmaker and inserted into the action but, for whatever reason, those scenes were never filmed.  Sarno was usually one of the more aesthetically interesting and thematically daring of the directors working in the adult film industry.  You would not necessarily know that from his work on this film.)  The actors struggle to keep a straight face while delivering their lines, Harry Reems enthusiastically jumps up and down in almost every scene in which he appears, and Linda Lovelace seems to be trying really hard but she just has a blah screen presence.  Unlike Marilyn Chambers in Rabid or Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience, Linda Lovelace does not come across as having been a particularly good actress.

That said, there is one interesting aspect to Deep Throat II.  Kenneth Hacker worries that Oscar could become smarter than the human being who programmed it and that the computer’s creation could be the first step to the creation of a permanent surveillance state, one in which even private thoughts will be used against the citizens of the United States.  In the film, everyone laughs him off.  50 years later, it no longer sounds that fanciful.

14 Days of Paranoia:

  1. Fast Money (1996)

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back Kotter 3.10 “Barbarino In Love: Part One”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, the Sweathogs are on the verge of actually accomplishing something but Barbarino is distracted by love.

Episode 3.10 “Barbarino In Love: Part One”

(Dir by Bob Claver, originally aired on November 3rd, 1977)

At the new apartment, Gabe asks Julie if he’s ever told her about his ancestor, Bart Kotter.  Bart was a prospector who let his friend Jesus die of snakebite because the only way to save him would have been for Bart to suck out the poison himself.  Julie finds the joke to be amusing, probably because it just gave her a new idea about how she could escape from her loveless sham of a marriage.

But enough with the Kotters.  It’s time to meet….

THREE DO’S AND A DON’T!

Okay, it’s actually just the Sweathogs again.  Three Do’s and a Don’t is what Vinnie has named their boy group.  They are competing in the regional semi-finals of the New York talent competition and, if they win, they’ll move on to the statewide contest.  Mr. Woodman isn’t a huge fan of their music, leading Washington to tell them that Three Do’s and a Don’t are not for the “over 30 crowd.”

And yet, when the group performs, they turn out to be a 50s do-wop group that performs a version of Jeepers Creepers.  Vinnie Barbarino sings in falsetto while the others do the acapella thing in the background.  1977 was the year of disco in the U.S. and punk rock in the UK.  It was not a decade known for its love of barbershop quartets.  Three Do’s and A Don’t appears to be very much for the over 70 crowd.

Still, the audience at the show goes crazy for them and I imagine that entirely has to do with Vinnie Barbarino.  Seriously, when you watch this episode and watch all of the Sweathogs performing together at the same time, it’s easy to see why Travolta went on to become a film star while some of the others — like Ron Pallilo — spent their post-Kotter career making cameo appearances in stuff like the sixth Friday the 13th film.  Travolta dominates the talent show, bringing a smoldering quality to even something as hackneyed as Jeepers Creepers.

Cassy (Amy Johnston) is impressed.  Cassy is the “winner from upstate.”  (“You’re a winner downstate as well,” Barbarino replies.)  Since the Sweathogs win their semi-final, that means that they’ll be facing off against Cassy at the final competition.  However, Barbarino is smitten with Cassy, especially after she instructs him on how a gentleman talks to a lady.  Instead of rehearsing with his group, Barbarino spends the weekend showing her around Brooklyn.  He even takes her to the local diner, where they run into Gabe and Julie, who are having a typically awkward date night.

Speaking of awkward, Barbarino’s date is crashed by the other Sweathogs, who demand to know why Barbarino has been blowing off rehearsal.  Washington explains that winning this competition would mean a lot to the rest of them.  Barbarino realizes that Cassy is the competition and that he can’t compete against the woman he loves.  The disgusted Sweathogs walk out on him as three dreaded words — “TO BE CONTINUED” — appear on the screen.

As easy as it is to be snarky about Three Do’s and a Don’t and their glorified barbershop music, this episode was enjoyable because it allowed to John Travolta to have center state and it also featured some very nice chemistry between Travolta and Amy Johnston.  Barbarino and Cassy are a cute couple, with Barbarino’s earnest stupidity matching up well with Cassy’s earnest intelligence.  Personally, I totally think that Barbarino should ditch his old friends for his new relationship.  I mean, how much happiness can you sacrifice for Arnold Horshack?

Next week, we’ll see if Barbarino finds happiness or if he returns to the Sweathog fold!

Live Tweet Alert: Watch Harpoon With #ScarySocial!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 2019’s Harpoon!

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  The film is available on Prime!  I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Music Video of the Day: Round and Round by Ratt (1984, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

How did Milton Berle come to appear in a music video with one of the bands that epitomized 80s hair metal?  It probably had something to do with Ratt being managed by his nephew, Marshall Berle.  Milton was not only helping out family but letting the 80s kids know that he knew where they coming from.  In this video, he appears as both the patriarch and the matriarch of a wealthy family, a call-back to his days on Texaco Star Theater.  Presumably Milton’s cameo in this video led to a better result than the Saturday Night Live hosting gig that led to Milton Berle becoming one of the first people to ever be banned from appearing on the show.

The woman who goes up to the attic is played by Lisa Dean, who later appeared in Michael Jackson’s video for Dirty Diana.

This was one of Ratt’s biggest hits.  The band has broken up and re-formed many times over the years but, as of now, they appear to be on an indefinite hiatus.

Enjoy!