Daily Archives: July 27, 2025

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi High 2.12 “Three’s a Crowd”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991!  The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi

This week, the formal is approaching,  Spike needs a date and so does Snake.

Episode 2.12 “Three’s A Crowd”

(Dir by Philip Earnshaw, originally aired on February 4th, 1991)

The graduation formal is approaching!  Spike has got a crush on Snake (who has finally returned to school after finding Claude’s body).  When Spike asks Snake out, he says yes.  Yay!  But then Spike overhears Michelle asking out Snake and Snake explaining that he would love to go with her but he already said yes to Spike (who he considers to be just a friend).  Spike makes up a lie about having “a family thing” the same night as the dance so that Snake can go with Michelle.

How sad!

This is a minor episode of Degrassi High but it’s significant to those of us who discovered Degrassi by watching The Next Generation.  We know that Spike and Snake are eventually going to get married and Snake is going to become Emma’s stepfather.  (Three year-old Emma makes an appearance in this episode, encouraging her mom to not be depressed.)  As sad as it is to see Spike overhear Snake talking about how much he likes Michelle, we know that Spike and Snake are eventually going to end up together as adults.  Of course, by that point, Spike will be known as Christine and Snake will be known as Archie.

While Snake and Spike were dealing with the realities of high school attraction, Tessa was falling for Yick Yu despite the fact that she was already dating Alex.  Dorothy (Annabelle Waugh) told Tessa that she had to tell Alex the truth.  Tessa couldn’t bring herself to do it but Yick, thinking that Tessa and Alex were broken up, told Alex that he didn’t mean to make Tessa dump him.  Alex confronts Tessa.  Tessa says, “I hope we can still be friends.”  “I don’t see how,” Alex replies.  OUCH!

And again, this is a storyline that means a lot more if you know what’s going to happen in the future.  Tessa may like Alex now but, in just a year, she’s going to get impregnated by Joey Jeremiah and then run away from Toronto, never to be seen again.

Degrassi’s about to get dark!

Next week, Degrassi High comes to an end.  Don’t worry, though.  Degrassi will go on forever.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special 1991 Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we pay tribute to the year 1991!  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 1991 Films

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991, dir by Jonathan Demme, DP: Tak Fujimoto)

JFK (1991, dir by Oliver Stone, DP: Robert Richardson)

Until the End of the World (1991, dir by Wim Wenders, DP: Robby Muller)

The Sect (1991, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Franco Fraticelli)

Six Gun Gospel (1943, directed by Lambert Hillyer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) are sent to the frontier mining community of Goldville to determine who is responsible for hijacking all of the gold that should be coming out of the town.  Not surprisingly, it’s all the work of another dastardly saloon owner (Kenneth MacDonald) who is planning on stealing all the gold, chasing off all the settlers, and then selling their land to the railroad company.  While Sandy goes undercover as the town’s new preacher, Jack agrees to ride shotgun on a gold shipment, along with with Dan Baxter (Eddie Drew).  Dan is in love with Jane Simms (Inna Gest), the daughter of honest miner Bill Simms (Kernan Cripps).

Johnny Mack Brown made a countless number of westerns for several different production companies but it seems like they always featured a crooked saloon owner and a plan to sell the land to a railroad company.  Luckily, nobody watches these movies for the plots and that was probably true even when they were first released.  People watch these movies for the nostalgia value of watching a movie where it’s good vs evil and good always triumphs without leaving any sort of lingering doubt about whether or not the heroes did the right thing.  Johnny Mack Brown is as authentic on a horse and carrying a gun as he ever was and there’s a scene where he manages to get a gun despite being tied up that’s pretty cool.  The appeal of Johnny Mack Brown was that he always seemed like he could do the things that he did in the movies in real life as well.  Raymond Hatton provides comic relief, pretending to know the hymns being sung by his congregation and providing some songs of his own.  There’s enough gun fights and horse chases to provide nostalgic happiness for fans of the genre and that’s the important thing.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.19 “Colors”

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 Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC!  It  can be viewed on Peacock.

This week …. is the Homicide Unit cursed?

Episode 3.19 “Colors”

(Dir by Peter Medak, originally aired on April 28h, 1995)

A Turkish teenager who is dressed and made up like a member of KISS is lying dead on a front porch.  Jim Bayliss (David Morse) claims that the teenager was banging on his door and acting aggressive.  He says that he grabbed his gun to protect his family and that he ordered the teenager to get off his porch before he shot him.  The teen’s friend, who was standing a few feet away, says that the victim raised his hands before he was shot and that he was only at the house because he was trying to go to a party and got the wrong address.

Pembleton thinks that Jim shot the teenager even though he knew the teen was no longer a threat and because he was angered by the teen’s broken English.  It’s true that Jim did once get into a fight in a bar with someone who was visibly Middle Eastern.  Jim’s wife mentions that Jim gets annoyed with people who can’t speak English.  Pembleton says that Jim is so prejudiced that he doesn’t even think twice about assuming the worse about anyone who isn’t white.

Complicating things is that Jim Bayliss is the cousin of Tim Bayliss.

Tim spends almost the entire episode trying to defend his cousin.  He asks Giardello for permission to be in the Box during the interrogation,  (Giardello refuses, rightly pointing out that Tim has a conflict of interest.)  Later, while watching the interrogation, Tim gets so angry that he breaks a two-way mirror.  Oddly, the one thing that Tim doesn’t do is tell his cousin to ask for a lawyer, which would have ended the interrogation before it could even get started.  Eventually, Ed Danvers, who we haven’t seen much of this season, takes Jim before a Grand Jury and the Grand Jury declines to indict.  Everyone in the courtroom applauds but Tim is left to wonder if Pembleton was correct about his cousin.

At one point, Bolander says that he fears that the Homicide Squad may be cursed and then he lists all of the things that have happened over the course of the third season — Crosetti committed suicide, three detectives were nearly killed in a shooting, Munch opened a bar, and now Bayliss and Pembleton are fighting.  Bolander has a point.  It’s a bit much, particularly when you compare it to the first two seasons.  Homicide took a melodramatic turn during the third season.  That doesn’t mean that the show hasn’t been good.  The acting continues to be amazing.  But it’s still quite a contrast to how the show started.

As for this episode, David Morse kept you guessing as Jim Bayliss.  At first, Jim just seems like a harried home owner who wanted to protect his family.  As the episode progresses, his anger becomes more and more pronounced until the viewer is left feeling that Jim was destined to eventually shoot someone.  That said, this episode was occasionally a bit too much on the nose in its storytelling.  It also left unaddressed something that should have been a bigger issue.  Should Pembleton have been allowed to investigate the case or lead the interrogation, considering that Tim is his partner?  Giardello was rightly concerned about Tim’s conflict of interest but he never addressed the fact that Pembleton potentially had one as well.

Next week, season 3 comes to an end.