Daily Archives: February 28, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 1.22 “Satan In The Suburbs”

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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Tubi.

Odd episode, this week.

Episode 1.22 “Satan In The Suburbs”

(Dir by Warner Shook, originally aired on May 13th, 1989)

Despite having graduated from Yale (and having the sweatshirt to prove it), Xantipe Finch (Deborah Strang) is struggling.  Unable to interest any publishers in any of her books and raising her son, Marty (Danny Gerard), alone, Xantipe is forced to make extra money through baking and selling cookies.  The bill collectors keep calling and threatening to turn off her electricity and to kick her and Marty out onto the streets.

Then a mysterious man (played by a young Chris Noth) materializes in her kitchen.  The man says that he’s come from Hell.  Because he won a football bet with Satan, the man has been allowed to come to Earth and to recruit Xantipe to write his autobiography.  If the book is published, the man will continue to be a happy demon.  If the book fails, he’ll be either demoted or turned into a low-level angel.  Huh?  What?  I don’t know.  It didn’t make any sense while the man was explaining it and it doesn’t make any sense now that I’m typing it up.

Reluctantly, Xantipe helps the man.  The man, for his part, deals with the bill collectors and also starts to corrupt both Xantipe and her son.  The book gets written and published but Xantipe rejects the devil’s influence, even though it means returning to a life of struggling to pay the bills.  The episode ends with Xantipe back in her kitchen, baking cookies.  The man is also there but he now has tiny angel wings on his back.

Yeah, I don’t know what any of it means either.  It makes even less sense when you watch it.

This was not a great episode.  It was never really explained why the book has to be written, why Xantipe had to be the one to help write it, or why the man turned into an angel.  The episode ended with a suggestion that Xantipe and the man were now in love but there was nothing in the 20 minutes that preceded it that would have set the audience up for that ending.  Chris Noth was adequate as the demon and Deborah Strang was likable as Xantipe but otherwise, this episode felt like filler.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.5 and 4.6 “The Mallory Quest/Julie, the Vamp/The Offer”

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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, it’s a special two-hour episode of The Love Boat!

Episodes 4.5 and 4.6 “The Mallory Quest/Julie, The Vamp/The Offer”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on November 15th, 1980)

This week, The Love Boat heads off on a two-week cruise that will take the ship, its crew, and its passengers through the Panama Canal.  There will also be stops at all the various islands on the way.  This is important because this is one of the episodes that was actually filmed on location.  Instead of the usual sets, we get to watch the action play out on an actual cruise ship.

Unfortunately, the actual cruise ship is kind of …. well, tacky.  Seriously, it’s hard not to notice that the hallways and the front lobby all look considerably more cramped and weathered than they have in other episodes of The Love Boat.  It’s also hard not to notice that the extras (who were apparently actual passengers) are all considerably older than the usual Love Boat background actors.

In fact, with the ship in such disrepair, it is any shocked that Captain Stubing is thinking of leaving?  When his old friend, Charlie (Dick Van Patten), boards the ship, he brings him a job offer.  If Stubing accepts the offer, he’ll be living in New York, he’ll be making three times the money, and Vicki will get to have a normal life.  Stubing loves the sea but he also wants Vicki to have a good future.  Vicki — in a scene that was well-acted by both Jill Whelan and Gavin MacLeod — tells him not to worry about her and that he needs to do what makes him happy.  And so, the Captain stays with the boat and I presume Vicki will continue to be taught by the tutor that we occasionally hear about but never actually see.

Meanwhile, Julie McCoy has been accused of being a vamp!  Maude Victor (Lani O’Grady) is convinced that Julie is trying to steal her fiancé, Roger (Bart Braverman).  Eventually, Roger himself become confused and Julie pretends to be interested in Roger just to get Roger and Maude back together again.  This was a dumb story and I don’t want to waste any more time on it.

Indeed, for all the Stubing drama and Julie silliness, this two-hour episode was dominated by one story.  Arrogant novelist Brian Mallory (Pernell Roberts) boards the boat with his long-suffering wife, Janet (Gayle Hunnicutt).  Brian has secretly bought tickets for three other passengers.  Peter (Skip Stephenson) is an insurance agent who is due to donate a kidney to his brother.  Marvin (Jimmie Walker) owns a bookstore.  Marcia Rand (Connie Stevens) brings along her fitness-obsessed boyfriend, Dave Porter (Peter Lupus).  Mallory reveals that Peter, Marvin, Marcia, and Gopher were the last four people to see his nephew, Tom.  Mallory has never met his nephew but he wants to track him down and apparently, Tom is living on one of the islands that the cruise is scheduled to visit.  Brian wants the four of them to help him look for Tom and he offers a $10,000 reward to make things interesting.  Why does Brian want to find his nephew?  Eventually, it is revealed that Tom is in possession of a family heirloom that Brian feels is rightfully his.  Sinister Lucius Kergo (Sorrell Brooke) is also on the cruise and he is determined to get the heirloom for himself.

Janet grows so tired of Brian’s arrogance and his obsession with finding his nephew that she declares that she’s leaving him.  Since the cruise is booked up, she ends up staying with Doc Bricker.  Doc falls for Janet but he realizes that she truly loves Brian and, when Brian starts to show some humility and some remorse for the way that he’s treated her, Doc encourages her to go back to him …. which she does because this is The Love Boat, not The Divorce Boat.

Anyway, Tom Mallory is eventually tracked down to a monastery in Puerto Rico.  Tom gives Brian the heirloom but the newly kind Brian gives it back to him so that he can sell it and use the money to build a free clinic.  Good for Brian!

Disheveled cruise ship aside and ignoring that terrible Julie plot, this was a fun episode.  The island scenery was gorgeous and the mystery of Tom’s location actually turned out to be a lot more intriguing than I was expecting it would.  Watching this episode made me want to take a cruise, even if it is a tacky one.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.16 “The Curator”

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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!

Yep, it’s another late review.  Sorry, I was exhausted last night.

Episode 1.16 “The Curator”

(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on March 9th, 1996)

When Garth Youngblood (Steven Culp) threatens to shoot himself in her lifeguard tower, Caroline Holdren (Yasmine Bleeth) begs him not to and tells him that he not only has a lot to live but his name isn’t half as stupid as he thinks that it is.  Deciding that Caroline is in love with him, Garth turns into a full-on psycho, the type of guy who chases Caroline across the beach, puts Lifeguard Newman (Michael Newman) in the hospital, flirts with Donna, and ultimately ends up locking Caroline in a cage made to resemble an apartment, much as what happened to Billy Pilgrim in Slaughter-House Five.

Caroline turns to Mitch and his detective agency for protection. Of course, as head lifeguard, Mitch is already Caroline’s boss so he already should be looking out for her.  Unfortunately, even after Garth is arrested, he’s released after he explains that he forgot to take his Prozac.  (That’s the actual excuse that they give!  Never mind that everyone’s favorite lifeguard, Newmie!, is in the hospital because Garth smashed his head through a window.)  Garth is given a restraining but, because Caroline works on the beach, it’s easy for Garth to watch her while standing 100 feet away.

Now, on the plus side, Steven Culp was believably creepy as Garth and this episode had no fear of embracing the storyline for all of the macabre melodrama that it could.  Yasmine Bleeth also does a good job portraying Caroline’s growing fear as Garth grows more and more unstable.  As an actress on Baywatch, I’m sure she had to deal with a lot of real-life Garths and, speaking as someone who has been stalked, I appreciated that both Bleeth and the show itself took her fears seriously.  The scene in which Caroline runs across the beach with Garth in pursuit was far more effective and scary than you would ever expect to find on an episode of Baywatch Nights.

That said, this episode highlighted one of the big problems with the second half of Baywatch Night‘s debut season.  This was essentially just an episode of Baywatch, with the extra addition of Angie Harmon flirting with Mitch and Eddie Cibrian’s Griff standing the background.  (I guess Griff is a part of the detective agency now.)  Baywatch Nights originally started as a show about Mitch spending his nights as a private investigator but this episode took place largely during the day and featured Mitch as a lifeguard.  Baywatch Nights without the nights is just Baywatch.

Fear not, though!  We’re just a few episodes away from one of the most radical reboots in television history!

Music Video of the Day: Obsession by Joywave (2019, dir by Laura Gorun, Cooper Roussel and Dimitri Basil)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

We all have our obsessions.  Right now, my obsession is trying to wake up and get back on my usual posting schedule.  Perhaps this song and music video will help.

Enjoy!