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, Ryan and Jack go to a carnival!

Episode 2.7 “Wax Magic”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on November 14th, 1988)

Unable to get a date, loser Ryan convinces Jack to go to a traveling carnival with him.

(Okay, maybe “loser” is a bit harsh.  I like Ryan and I think John D. LeMay did a pretty good playing him on the series but seriously, in this episode, Ryan is oddly whiny.  Then again, I would think that Ryan would be more careful about trying to date anyone, considering that everyone with whom he falls in love either dies or is his cousin, Micki.)

Ryan and Jack discover that the carnival has been rocked by a series of decapitations.  Ryan suspects that it might involve the creepy wax figure exhibit that is run by Aldwin Chase (Angelo Rizacos).  Aldwin is incredibly jealous of but also very abusive towards his wife, Marie (Susannah Hoffman).  Whenever someone shows too much interest in Marie, they are visited by a wax figure of Lizzie Borden.  Guess who Ryan develops an obviously doomed crush on?

This was an effectively creepy episode and, with its scenes of carnival goers losing their heads, it felt like it had more in common with the Friday the 13th movies than some of the other episodes.  Towards the end of the episode, Jack and Ryan are actually attacked in the antique shop and it’s actually a bit jolting, a reminder that nowhere is safe.  The show ends with a twist about Marie that’s not particularly but it’s effective nonetheless.  In the role of Jack, Chris Wiggins gets to deliver another one of his monologues about the nature of evil and, as always, he pulls it off wonderfully.

That said, Micki is not in this episode and that’s unfortunate.  Micki is the character to whom I relate, mostly because we’re both redheads with big boobs and, therefore, we share the same struggle.  There have been plenty of episode where Jack was said to be off on another mission and, in those cases, that actually raised the stakes because it left Micki and Ryan without their mentor.  But not having Micki present just felt weird.  Unlike Ryan, I guess she was actually able to get a date.