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!
I don’t even know where to start this week.
Episode 2.20 “The Son Also Rises”
(Dir by Stuart Gillard, originally aired on March 8th, 1987)
For what seems like the 100th time since I started watching the second season of this show, Edna is going on vacation. Technically, she’s going to be taking a computer course but everyone refers to it as being a vacation. Not that it matters because, knowing this show, we’ll never hear another word about this class that Edna is taking or the promotion that she’s hoping to get.
No sooner has Edna left then Howard’s ex-girlfriend, Molly Maguire (Diana Barrington), shows up. As Howard explains it to his employees (though why they would care, I have no idea), Molly was the great love of Howard’s life when he was in college and studying hotel management. (We often hear about all of these wonderful things that Howard did in the past, which leads me to wonder why, in his mid-50s, he’s just the manager of a middling grocery store in Canada.) Howard is excited to reconnect with Molly. It’s hard not to notice that, for all the episodes that have portrayed Howard as being the perfect boyfriend, he always tries to hook up with someone else whenever Edna is out of town. Oddly, it appears that none of her friends at the store have ever told Edna that Howard isn’t particularly faithful when she’s away.
Howard’s plan to hook up with Molly is to invite her over to his apartment and to have Viker dress up like a butler in order to fool her into thinking that he’s rich. However, when Molly shows up, she reveals that she doesn’t want to rekindle any sort of romance with Howard. Instead, she wants Howard to give her child support because, according to Molly, he’s the father of her “teenage” son, Mickey (Keith Knight).
(Teenage is in quotes because, despite everything that Howard and Molly say to the contrary, Mickey is clearly not a teenager. Actor Keith Knight, who appeared in a number of classic Canadian films including My Bloody Valentine and Class of 1984, was 31 years old when he appeared in this episode.)
Howard and Mickey bond. Mickey turns out to be a pretty nice and intelligent “kid” and Howard starts to think that maybe he would like to be a father. (Good luck explaining any of this to Edna, Howard.) Howard worries about paying child support. Leslie the cashier offers to loan him the money. (What?) But then Molly shows up and reveals that — ha ha! — Howard’s not Mickey’s father after all. She just said that to get some money from Howard but since Howard obviously doesn’t have any money, never mind.
Well, that was …. interesting. Seriously, what a weird episode. Howard’s a jerk and, after bonding with 30-something Mickey, he discovers that he’s not Mickey’s father. Edna comes back from her trip and asks Howard if anything happened while she was gone. Howard says he doesn’t know where to start. Roll credits! There have been many inconsequential episodes of Check It Out! but none as inconsequential as this.
Through the Shattered Lens 