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, things get trippy as Mr. T tells a story about a magical forest.

Episode 3.19 “Turner’s Tale”

(Dir by Patrick Loubert, originally aired on May 12th, 1990)

T.S. and Decker discover a little kid named Daniel (Amos Crawley), who is hiding out underneath the boxing ring at Decker’s gym.  Figuring that Daniel ran away from home after getting in trouble for something, T.S. tells Daniel a story while Decker tries to track down Daniel’s parents.

As you can guess from the episode of this title, the majority of the episode is a dramatization of the story that Turner tells.  (The story is also told in rhyme, just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.)  In Turner’s story, Daniel (Sean Roberge) and his sister Terri (Kistina Nicoll) move into a happy forest that is populated by people dressed up as mice, rabbits, and owls.  When Daniel enters a forbidden part of the forest and picks a flower, the police show up and Terri is taken away.  So, Daniel has to go to the police captain’s castle and admit what he did so that Terri can be set free and the forest can be happy again….

What?  No, I’m not kidding.  That’s the plot of this episode.

Okay, this is a weird one.  For 24 minutes, T and T goes from being a show about Mr. T solving crimes to a show about a teenager walking through a magic forest and trying to return a forbidden flower to the cops.  I can’t imagine that anyone really watched T and T for the action but if they did, this episode probably really pissed them off.

But I don’t know.  Maybe I’m getting sentimental as I mature but this episode was actually really sweet and kind of cute.  Mr. T really got into telling the story and there was a funny moment where Turner suddenly realized that he had no idea how the story was supposed to end.  One thing that has always remained consistent about T and T is that Mr. T was always at his most likable when acting opposite kids and trying to teach life lessons.  He and David Nerman made for a good team in this episode and watching them play off each other, it was easy to understand why Decker was the only one of the show’s supporting characters to appear in all three seasons of T and T.  There’s not really much else to say about this episode.  It was clearly made for kids and the lesson is that you should never be scared to tell your parents the truth, even if it means getting punished.  It’s pretty simple but the episode had a few funny moments and everyone seemed to be having fun.

Sometimes, that’s enough.