Monthly Archives: September 2024

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 9/15/24 — 9/21/24

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have spent most of this week getting ready for the annual October Horrorthon, which means that I’ve been watching a lot of horror movies and not a lot of television.  As a matter of fact, I haven’t watched one episode of Big Brother this year and I didn’t even realize that Survivor started last week.

(Most years, I blog about Big Brother for another site but, due to my father’s passing, I took a leave of absence of this year.  I may, however, write about Survivor because it’s only a once-a-week show as opposed to a 7-day a week gig.)

Here’s a few thoughts on what I did watch this week:

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez (FX)

I watched the first two episodes of the latest Ryan Murphy-produced true crime miniseries on Saturday.  This show deals with the life and crimes of Aaron Hernandez, a pro football player who ended up going to prison for murder and who is suspected of carrying out a lot more murders over the course of his short life.  The first two episodes followed Aaron in high school and college, struggling to live up to his father’s ambitions and also with his own sexuality.  The episodes were well-directed but I have to admit that the culture of sports remains extremely odd to me.  So far, the defining image of the series is a bunch of naked football players hugging on each other while loudly talking about how much they hated anything that they considered to be gay.

So far, Josh Andres Rivera is believable as Aaron, even if he doesn’t exactly have the most exciting screen presence.  Then again, Aaron Hernandez appears to have been kind of an idiot so maybe it makes sense that he would be kind of a blah person.  The best performance so far has come from Tony Yazbeck as Aaron’s college coach.

The Emmy Awards (ABC)

Jeff and I watched the ceremony on Sunday but we muted it fairly early on.  From what I saw, it was a pretty boring ceremony, up until Hacks beat The Bear for Best Comedy.  I’m not really a huge fan of Hacks but it’s definitely more of a comedy than The Bear.  That said, and this may be my film snobbery coming through, The Emmys have always felt a bit pointless when compared to the Oscars.  Maybe that’s the Oscars have different nominees every year whereas the Emmys will nominate Only Murders In The Building until it finally ends its run.

Get Judged By Byron Browne (Nosey)

I watched an episode on Friday, in between horror movies.  A guy called in, upset because his father sold his childhood home.  (The guy had been led to believe, by his grandmother, that the house belonged to him.)  Byron basically told the guy that promises from grandma have no legal standing.  Poor guy.  I felt bad for him.  GIVE THE MAN HIS HOUSE!

The Jerry Springer Show (Nosey)

The episode I watched on Monday featured Jerry interviewing the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Hebrew Israelites (which, despite the name, is a Black supremacist group) at the same time.  Needless to say, none of them were happy about being on stage together and the whole thing devolved into a bunch of shouting.  One white woman in the audience shouted that black men received the right to vote before white women.  A black woman then said that the Bible says that women are not supposed to vote because men were created first.  It was a strange episode.

The Love Boat (Paramount Plus)

Read this week’s review here!

Miami Vice (Prime)

Read this week’s review here!

Monsters (YouTube)

I binged and wrote reviews of several episodes of Monsters.  Read this week’s review here!

Night Flight (Night Flight Plus)

This Friday, I watched an old episode of this 90s music show.  It was all about guitar rock and it was pretty cool.  Of course, the whole thing was pretty much just videos of Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Jeff Beck but they all sounded good.  This EDM girl enjoyed listening to them.

One Step Beyond (YouTube)

I watched a few episodes of this paranormal anthology show on Thursday as I prepared for this year’s Horrorthon.

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 3.27 “Class Encounters of the Carvelli Kind”

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 third season comes to an end.

Episode 3.27 “Class Encounters of the Carvelli Kind”

(Dir by Robert Hegyes, originally aired on May 18th, 1978)

At the Kotter apartment, Gabe tells Julie a joke about his Uncle Bruce, the dressmaker.  Julie responds by slamming the bedroom door in his face.  Poor Gabe!  Julie, if you hate his jokes that much, just get a divorce!

The next morning, Gabe steps into his classroom and finds Mr. Woodman sitting at the window and watching the rain falling outside.  “Being alive is overrated,” Woodman says.  “Try telling that to a dead person,” Gabe replies.  Woodman reveals that, when he was young, he dreamed of being a podiatrist.  “I love feet but I hate socks …. Sock stood between me and happiness!”

Woodman has every reason to be depressed.  There’s some sort of weird student exchange program going on.  Epstein is spending the week at another high school.  (In real life, Robert Hegyes was not available to play Epstein because he was busy directing this episode.)  Meanwhile, Carvelli (Charles Fleischer) and his buddy Murray (Bob Harcum) are going to Buchanan.

When Carvelli and Murray tell a story about being abducted by aliens and taken to the planet Yorksl, Gabe takes them to the vice principal’s office so Woodman can straighten them out.  To Gabe’s surprise, Woodman not only believe Carvelli’s story but he decides that he wants to go live on another planet.  He gives Carvelli permission to invite the aliens to land in the school’s courtyard.  Gabe is even more shocked with the alien does show up and it turns out to be Julie!  Julie explains that she’s a Yorsklite and then she agrees to Woodman away with her.  “You look like a nice little fella….”

Wow, I guess the show’s over.  I mean, Woodman is gone.  Julie’s an alien.  How do you do another episode about homework after that….

Oh wait, it was all a daydream.

Okay, never mind!

Usually, I hate it when a show does the whole “It was all a dream” thing but I actually enjoyed this episode because it gave John Sylvester White a chance to be totally unhinged as Woodman.  White’s performance as Woodman has been one of the few things to remain consistently strong through the first three seasons of Welcome Back, Kotter.  Watching him lose his mind, piece-by-piece, has truly been entertaining.

The episode and the third season ends with Washington tells Mr. Kott-air a joke about how ugly his aunt is.  Gabe is impressed enough to write the joke down on a notepad.

And that’s it for Season 3!  This was definitely an uneven season, with the humor ultimately getting a bit too broad for its own good.  The Sweathogs themselves are all obviously adults now.  This was something that Gabe Kaplan himself noticed.  He reportedly suggested setting the next season at a community college and having Gabe get a job as a professor.  (His students would, of course, be the graduated Sweathogs.)  ABC disagreed, which resulted in Gabe not appearing in several season 4 episodes.  Meanwhile, John Travolta also only appeared in a handful of episodes as he was now busy being a movie star.

What would all that mean for Season 4?

We’ll start finding out next week!

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for The Wolfman!

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, at 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial!  The movie?  2010’s The Wolfman!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  I’ll be there tweeting 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.

The Wolfman is available on Prime!

See you there!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.10 “Night Hunger”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, we’ve got the saddest episode of Friday the 13th yet!

Episode 2.10 “Night Hunger”

(Dir by Martin Lavut, originally aired on January 9th, 1989)

As a young boy, Michael Firono was constantly told by his father, Dominic (Nick Nichols), that he should always play to win and that, if he lost, it was because he was a wimp.  Needless to say, once Mike became a teenager, he did not have a great relationship with his father.  Seeking an escape from his abusive household, Mike spend all of his time at the local antique store where, on his 16th birthday, the store’s owner, Lewis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong), gave him a special silver chain.

Mike (played by Richard Panebianco) has grown up to be an angry young man.  He always wears the chain around his neck.  Hanging on the chain is the key to his car.  Mike loves to race his car and, far from being the loser that his father claimed he would grow up to be, Mike cannot be beat.  His car is amazingly fast and Mike is incredibly (one might even say supernaturally) skilled behind the wheel.  His main goal is to defeat his childhood rival, Deacon (Real Andrews), who is now a street racer himself.  Deacon is hesitant to race Mike, precisely because Mike seems to be so driven to win that racing with him can be even more dangerous than usual.  To Deacon, street racing is fun.  For Mike, it’s an obsession.

Of course, Mike has a secret.  As long as he’s wearing the silver chain, he can’t be defeated.  But he has to kill people and dip the key in their blood for the chain to work.  Jack, Micki, and Ryan set out to reclaim the silver chain but an accident results in both the chain and the key being absorbed into Mike’s body.  With the chain and the key now sitting next to Mike’s heart, Mike’s eyes not only glow red but his car seems to have a mind of its own….

This is another one of those episodes of Friday the 13th where the villain is himself a victim.  Even before he met Lewis and received the silver chain, Mike was doomed.  His abusive father left Mike feeling so insecure and so obsessed with winning that there was really no way Mike wasn’t going to end up snapping eventually.  In the present day, Dominic finally understands how much he hurt Mike and he feels guilty about it but it’s too late to undo the damage that’s been done.  Like a pusher befriending people most likely to get addicted to his product, Uncle Lewis saw Mike as someone who would easily succumb to a cursed antique.  Mike becomes addicted to using the key and that leads to him doing a lot of bad things.  But the real curse here is not the silver chain but instead Mike’s abusive childhood.  Mike never had a chance.

This is a genuinely sad and well-acted episode, with Mike’s obsession eventually destroying him.  As happen so often with this show, Ryan and Micki are left with the knowledge that, while they can reclaim the cursed objects, they can never repair the damage that they’ve done.

Retro Television Review: T and T 3.15 “The Butler Duet”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990.  The show can be found on Tubi!

This week …. oh my God, it’s a surprisingly good episode of T and T!

Episode 3.15 “The Butler Duet”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on April 14th, 1990)

Sometimes, one screenshot tells you everything that you need to know about an episode.

In this episode, T.S. is indeed hired to bodyguard a parrot.  The parrot, named Higgins, has been named the sole beneficiary of Mrs. Wells’s will.  Mrs. Wells’s children (one of whom is played by comedian Colin Mochrie) want to declare their mother incompetent.  While Terri does her best to defend Mrs. Wells in court, T.S. works with Mrs. Wells’s butler (Ian White) to protect the parrot.

How does T.S. protect the parrot?  By putting on a tuxedo and working as the Butler’s assistant.  “Dinner is served,” T.S. Turner growls at one point.  Of course, to the surprise of no one, it turns out that the Butler is really the one whom is behind the effort to make Mrs. Wells look mentally incompetent.  “It’s always the butler,” Turner growls after grabbing the Butler in the courtroom.  Turner, it should be noted, does a lot of growling in this episode and I was happy about that.  What’s the point of casting Mr. T if he’s not going to growl at anyone?

With the Butler exposed, Mrs. Wells is ruled to be mentally competent and I guess that means that Higgins is going to be one rich bird.  Good for Higgins.  I like parrots.  I could never own one, of course, not with my love cats and my dislike of hearing my own words repeated back at me.  But still, they’re good for television shows and movies.  I think it’s a shame that Higgins didn’t have more of a Canadian accent but whatever.  You can’t have everything, I guess.

(How do parrots learn to talk?  And how difficult would it be for me to teach a parrot to like give an hour long speech or something?  I think next year’s state of the union address should be delivered by a parrot.  I mean, if a parrot were president, there would be no war.  There would be no government and things could go bad really quickly.  It would probably work better as a TV show than a real-life thing.)

This was an incredibly silly episode but it was also oddly likable.  For one thing, the judge in the courtroom was fascinated by the parrot and it was hard not to smile at him trying to get the parrot to talk while the witnesses testified.  As well, the episode was smart enough to realize that there’s no way that Mr. T cannot be amusing while wearing a tuxedo.

By T and T season 3 standards, this was a surprisingly good episode.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Labyrinth

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 and Mastodon.  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, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix presents 1986’s Labyrinth, starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Labyrinth is available on Prime and Tubi!  See you there!