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 and Peacock!

This week, Jack Christian gets an episode of his very own.

Episode 3.15 “Make Room For Daddy Christian”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on December 27th, 1987)

In the role of the obnoxious assistant manager Jack Christian, Jeff Pustil was often one of the funniest people on Check It Out!  His comedic timing was always spot-on and he delivered his lines with just the right amount of attitude that they always made me smile even if the jokes themselves weren’t always brilliant.  This week, we get a rare episode that not only focuses on Christian but which also portrays him as being a somewhat decent human being.

Christian goes out with Barbara (Ann Turnbull), a friend of Marlene’s.  One thing leads to another and, the next thing you know, Christian is meeting Barbara’s ten year-old son while lying in bed in with her.  Christian, who had no idea that Barbara had a son, freaks out, makes some hurried excuses, and then leaves.  But later, he returns and apologizes and he and Barbara decide to continue seeing each other.  Neither one is ready to make a firm commitment but they both want to see where things go.  What a surprisingly mature attitude for a show that has shaken the Enda-is-miserable-with-Howard tree more times than I can count.

This was a pretty simple episode but it was a good one and I’m glad that, even if it was during the show’s final season, the show finally did a story that was centered on Christian but which didn’t feature him trying to cheat his friends or get someone fired.  This episode stayed true to Christian’s character — he does act like a jerk when he finds out that Barbara has a son — while also giving him something that he didn’t often get, a chance at redemption.  Jeff Pustil, Kathleen Laskey, and Don Adams were the only three regulars to appear in this episode and all three of them did a good job, especially Pustil.  (For his part, Adams was stuck with a pretty silly B-plot in which he tried to hire an animal performer to come to the store.)

This episode was simple but good.  Check It Out! really was a much show during its third season than during the previous two.