Retro Television Review: Welcome Back Kotter 4.15 “Barbarino’s Baby”

Posted on January 25, 2025 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 can be purchased on Prime.

This week, a longtime Sweathog makes his final appearance.

Episode 4.15 “Barbarino’s Baby”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on February 3rd, 1979)

This episode was John Travolta’s final appearance as Vinnie Barbarino. That means no more visits to his ugly apartment, no more confusion as to whether or not Barbarino is actually still enrolled in high school, and no more of John Travolta trying his best to give a good performance while the rest of the cast sleep walk through their roles. Seriously, you have to admire that Travolta was still trying to give a good performance even under the weird circumstances of the fourth season. The studio audience was going to cheer no matter what Travolta did. Travolta could have just shrugged off the entire show and character. I’m sure the temptation to do so was there. Instead, he did his best.

His final episode really isn’t worth the effort, though, Barbarino wants to get promoted from scrubbing the floors of the hospital to working in the emergency room. The head nurse says that there’s no way someone as dumb as Barbarino could be trusted in the ER. Barbarino asks Mr. Woodman to write a letter. Julie takes it upon herself to call the hospital and put in a good word for him. As for Gabe …. he’s not in this episode. Gabe does nothing!

Maybe Barbarino would get promoted if his idiot friends weren’t always hanging out at the hospital. Seriously, does that group have nothing better to do than hang out in the world’s ugliest medical facility? Couldn’t they go hang out on Christopher Street with Horshack or something? Remember when the Sweathogs were an actual gang who committed crimes? Epstein was once voted most likely to kill someone. Freddie used to get accused of stealing every other week. Beau showed up and they all got wimpy.

Anyway, Barbarino and the Sweathogs get on an elevator with a pregnant woman. The elevator stops between floors. The woman goes into labor. Time for Barbarino and the Sweathogs to deliver a baby …. *sigh*. Seriously, there is nothing more stress-inducing than the idea of a bunch of 30 year-old high school students delivering a baby. The important thing is that the head nurse is able to talk Barbarino through the delivery and Barbarino gets his promotion! Barbarino is going to the ER! That’s good news for Horshack because there’s no way he’s not going to end up getting his stomach pumped in the ER eventually.

And that’s John Travolta’s final episode of Welcome Back, Kotter. It’s a bit of a let down, considering how important the character of Vinnie Barbarino was to the success of the show. Imagine if The Office finale only allowed Michael Scott to appear for two minutes and only gave him one line of dialogue? THAT WOULD BE INSANE!

I can only wonder what the rest of this show is going to be like without Kotter and Barbarino. My fear is that it’s going to involve a lot of Horshack, We’ll find out. There’s only a few episodes left!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.25 “The Prisoner”

Posted on January 24, 2025 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week, Johnny goes to prison!

Episode 2.25 “The Prisoner”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired on June 5th, 1989)

After Johnny Ventura’s father is killed by an invisible man….

Wait, what’s Johnny doing here?

No, don’t get me wrong. I understand why Johnny’s there, mostly because I have the benefit of hindsight. I know that Johnny is going to replace Ryan during the third season and this episode was obviously designed to get the audience used to the idea of Johnny being a part of the show. The majority of the episode follows Johnny as he’s sent to prison, having been framed for murdering his own father. The culprit is another prisoner, Dayton Railsback (Larry Joshua). Dayton has a kamikaze pilot’s jacket that allows him to turn invisible whenever blood is spilled on it. Whenever Dayton’s invisible, he sneaks out of the prison and searches for some money that he stole ten years earlier. Johnny is the only person in the prison who knows what Railsback is doing so soon, he’s being targeted by the invisible man.

While Johnny is dealing with life in prison, Micki, Ryan, and Jack are attempting to prove that Railsback is the murderer. It’s a bit odd because the three of them — our stars! — are barely in the episode and, when they do appear, they’re just hanging out in the antique shop. They talk about all of the investigating that they’ve been doing but we don’t actually see them doing it. Watching the episode, one gets the feeling that John D. LeMay, Robey, and Chris Wiggins all shot their scenes in one day and then left on an extended vacation. They showed up just long enough to establish this as being an episode of Friday the 13th, despite the fact that almost the entire episode is about Johnny.

Needless to say, it was a bit of a disjointed episode. The show kept jumping from Johnny in prison to Railsback killing people outside of prison to everyone hanging out in the antique shop and it was a bit difficult to keep track of who was planning what. Myself, I was surprised at how quickly the show went from Johnny’s father being murdered to Johnny getting tossed into prison. We don’t even see Johnny’s trial. Johnny was passed out when his father was shot and, quite frankly, it seems like he could have made a very credible argument that he was framed. (The invisible Railsback puts the gun in Johnny’s hands but he doesn’t manipulate Johnny into pulling the trigger so it’s not like there would have been any powder residue on Johnny’s fingers.) Johnny and his father appeared to have a pretty good relationship so you really have to wonder what type of case the prosecution made. The episode ends with Johnny killing Railsback and then being released from prison. So, is Johnny going to have to on trial again? I mean, he just stood there while Railsback burned to death.

Weird episode. It didn’t do too much for me. I’m going to miss Ryan once season 3 starts.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 3.14 “Cuba Libre”

Posted on January 20, 2025 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, everyone’s moved on from Zito’s death.

Episode 3.14 “Cuba Libre”

(Dir by Virgil W. Vogel, originally aired on January 23rd, 1987)

A routine drug bust at the mansion of Armando Rojas (Willie Colon) goes wrong when a group of masked gunmen show up and demand that Rojas give him all their money. The gunmen kill a young vice cop and get into a gunfight with Crockett and Tubbs (who are, as usual, pretending to be Burnett and Cooper). The gunmen make their escape but Crockett suspects that this was more than just a fight amongst drug dealers. As he tells Castillo, the gunmen acted more like “Quantico than Colombia.” Since the dead vice cop was a protegee of Crockett’s, Crockett is taking this one personally!

Unfortunately, for Crockett, the FBI doesn’t want him to take this one personally. The gunmen work for Paco Zamora (Joe Urla), a Cuban refugee who has been working for the government ever since the Bay of Pigs. Zamora is looking to raise money so that he can overthrow Fidel Castro. (Boo! Castro! Boo!) Crockett and Tubbs go — *sigh* — undercover as Burnett and Cooper to discover Zamora’s plans. “Burnett” says that he wants to rip off “Cooper.” I know I kind of harp on this but I always have to roll my eyes whenever Crockett and Tubbs do the whole Burnett and Cooper thing. After three seasons of them arresting and killing everyone who falls for the Burnett/Cooper con, you would think the Miami underworld would have caught on by now! I mean, wasn’t Frank Zappa going to tell everyone in Miami not to trust Sonny Burnett? Do people in Miami just not share information with each other? Are they just that easily fooled? No wonder Fidel Castro hung onto power for all those years. (Boo! Castro! Boo!)

Anyway, it turns out that there is a member of Castro’s (boo!) government visiting Miami and Zamora and his army are planning on assassinating him. Crockett and Tubbs and the Vice Squad have to stop an international incident from happening in Florida. Or — considering all of the people that Castro had assassinated over the years (Boo!) — maybe they could have just stayed out of it and let Zamora do his thing. Seriously, in what world is a Southern good old boy and former CIA-connected football player like Sonny Crockett going to be so concerned with protecting the lives of communist diplomats? Is that was Larry Zito died for!? Regardless and as usuasl, everything ends with a shoot-out in which Sonny makes his final argument with a bullet. Pauline Kael once wrote that Oliver Stone had left-wing politics but a right-wing sensibility and that’s certainly true of Miami Vice as well.

This episode felt pretty routine. Especially after all the emotional drama of the previous two episodes, Cuba Libre felt like an example of the show on autopilot.

Scenes I Love: The Final Scene of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return

Posted on January 20, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“What year is this?”

The final scene of Twin Peaks: The Return has haunted me ever since I first watched it 2017. I’m still not sure what the ending meant or where Cooper and Laura were but somehow, as enigmatic as it all was, it felt like the only proper way to end the saga of Twin Peaks.

And really, this is a scene that only Lynch could have made work. Another director would have tried too hard to tell the audience what to think or how to react. Of course, many directors probably wouldn’t have had the guts to end things on such on open-ended note. But Lynch not only had the courage to stick to his vision but he also had the faith to trust his audience to figure it out for themselves. Courage and faith are two of the main reasons why David Lynch was one of the greatest directors of his time.

Great Moments In Television History #37: Eisenhower Hosts The First Televised Press Conference

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

“Well, I see we’re trying a new experiment this morning. I hope that doesn’t prove to be a disturbing influence.”

With those words, President Dwight D. Eisenhower opened the first ever televised (though pre-taped) presidential news conference. For the first time, viewers at home could watch as the President took questions from the members of the press and answered them in his own words. Today, we take it for granted and we even get bored with televised news conferences and speeches. But seventy years ago today, on January 19th, 1955, what Eisenhower did was considered to be revolutionary and a little dangerous. How would the public react to actually seeing the man who led the country answering questions in person.

Eisenhower was asked about the dangers of Communist China, the new budget bill, and his own opinion about how his first term had gone and whether had any plans for a potential second term. Eisenhower laughed at the last query, saying, “It looks like a loaded question.”

Obviously, the new experiment worked. The pubic continued to like Ike and, when he did run for a second term, he was elected just as easily as the first time. The Democrats didn’t even bother to put a new candidate and instead just brought back Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower would be succeeded by John F. Kennedy, who went on to perfect Eisenhower’s “new experiment.”

Previous Moments In Television History:

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 2.4 “A Many Splendored Thing”

Posted on January 19, 2025 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, season 2 of Homicide comes to a close with an episode directed by John McNaughton, of Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer fame.

Episode 2.4 “A Many Splendored Thing”

(Dir by John McNaughton, originally aired on January 27th, 1994)

The second season finale of Homicide opens with Bolander in a good mood and Munch feeling that life is pretty much pointless. It’s a reversal from what we’ve seen over the last few episodes of Homicide and, as annoyed as I got with all the storylines about Bolander’s private life, I was still happy to see Bolander happy in this episode. As an actor, Ned Beatty’s performance is a lot interesting when Bolander is looking forward to the future. By that same token, Richard Belzer always seemed to be trying to hard whenever it came to playing Munch’s happiness. Belzer was born to play a cynic and, in this episode, he delivers his lines with a bitterness that is both funny and authentic.

Bolander is dating Linda and I have to admit that, despite my initial weariness, I really like Ned Beatty and Julianna Margulies as a couple. Bolander and Linda go on a double date with Kay and Danvers. Awwww, two couples in love and having dinner together! How sweet! Uh-oh, here comes Munch….

While Munch is ruining Bolander’s date, Bayliss is getting in touch with his own dark side. An investigation into the S&M-related death of a young woman leads to Bayliss and Pembleton arresting a man who killed her during rough (but consensual) sex. Bayliss and Pembleton spend their investigation in Baltimore’s red light district. Bayliss claims to be disgusted by the whole scene, leading to Pembleton calling him out for being judgmental. Pembleton tells Bayliss that he can’t be a good detective unless he’s really in touch with every aspect of his existence. After the murder is solved, the woman’s co-worker, Tanya, gives Bayliss the gift of a leather jacket. Tanya is played, in a very good performance, by the actress Adrienne Shelley. Tragically, Shelley herself would, 12 years later, be murdered in her New York apartment. And while it’s tempting to write about the irony of Shelley appearing on a show like Homicide, I’d rather recommend that everyone see Waitress instead. It was the second feature film that Shelley directed and it is very good.

Finally, Lewis investigates a man who committed murder because he felt someone had taken his favorite pen. Lewis searches for a deeper motive but in the end, it really was all about a pen. Lewis, I’ve noticed, always seems to get the cases that show just how random life and death can truly be.

The second season of Homicide ends with Lewis giving Felton a pen, Bayliss putting on his new leather jacket and walking the streets of Baltimore, and Munch, Bolander, and Linda watching fireworks explode over the harbor. It’s a good way to end a season. As dark as the show was (and as dark as this particular episode was), the season ends on a note of hope. There is happiness out there for those willing to look for it.

Scenes That I Love: Vincent Price Performs The Raven

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As today is the anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, today’s scene that I love features Poe’s most famous interpreter, Vincent Price, reciting and performing The Raven. This scene comes from a 1985 television special that was called The Teller and the Tale.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 3.4 “I’m Okay, You’re A Spy”

Posted on January 18, 2025 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 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!

This week, Howard’s paranoid and with good reason! They are all out to get him….

Episode 3.4 “I’m Okay, You’re A Spy”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on October 17th, 1987)

After the new stockboy, 12 year-old Brad (played by T and T‘s Sean Roberge), shows Howard a newspaper article about how the company that purchased Cobb’s has been sending corporate spies into its stores to evaluate management, Howard gets extremely paranoid. He becomes convinced that there must be a spy in the store. He gathers Brad, Leslie, Christian, Viker, and Marlene into the stockroom and asks them if they’ve noticed anyone strange in the store. He also suggests that any one of them could possibly be the spy.

Or maybe — just maybe — the spy is the new butcher who keeps asking Howard all sorts of questions about the other employees. He would seem to be the most likely suspect and we know it’s him because the episode opens with him getting his assignment and talking about how he can’t wait to get Howard Bannister fired. Howard, of course, is so paranoid about the possibility of there being a spy in the store that he expresses all of his fears and frustrations to the spy. In other words, this is yet another episode episode where Howard is a complete moron. The previous season was split evenly between episodes where Howard was competent and episodes where Howard was an idiot. The episodes featuring stupid Howard were always funnier than the episodes featuring smart Howard so I think the showrunners made the right decision to focus o Howard’s stupidity in the third season. No one wants to watch a show about a good boss. What fun is that?

(It’s kind of like how we loved The Office when it was all about Michael screwing up but, when it became about new boss Andy proving himself, we all tuned out.)

It turns out that not everyone at the new corporation is supportive of the whole spy thing. T.C. Collingwood comes to the store and informs Howard that his butcher is the spy. Howard replies by giving the spy a lot of work to do. I guess that’s one way to handle it but it doesn’t change the fact that Howard told the spy that everyone at the store was incompetent and should be fired. This episode makes less and less sense the more that I think about it. Can’t corporate just look at whether or not the store had made any money and use that to determine whether or not Howard’s doing a good enough job? This episode didn’t make much sense.

Incidentally, Edna was on vacation during this episode. How many vacation does Edna get in the year? It seems like she’s never at the store. I have a feeling that Howard is going to run off with T.C. Collingwood at some point in the new future. Maybe that’s for the best. At least then Edna wouln’t have to flee to Florida every month.

Next week …. Howard wants to be a TV star! We’ll see what happens.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 1/12/25 — 1/18/25

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Brandon, you are not ready to be my head chef.”

Oh my God, did Chef Ramsay really just say that!? I’ve watched a lot of episodes of Hell’s Kitchen but I don’t think any elimination has taken me as much by surprise as the elimination of Brandon this week. Brandon is who I expected to win this season and I know that I’m not alone in that. That said, Brandon did struggle at service. Of all the chefs to receive black jackets, Brandon struggled the most and, even more importantly, Brandon was really the only one to struggle. Ramsay didn’t have much of a choice but I have a feeling Brandon will return in a future season.

Speaking of Chef Ramsay, I also caught the second part of the Kitchen Nightmares premiere. I’m glad that Ramsay apparently thinks that he’s fixed that restaurant but I can promise that there is no way I would ever voluntarily eat at any establishment featured on this show. I don’t care if it’s clean now. Once a rat trap, always a rat trap.

This week’s episode of Abbott Elementary surfaced in comparison to last week’s but that’s to be expected considering the brilliance of last week’s show. I still laughed at Ava trying to figure out what it’s like to “date the poors.”

On Peacock, I watched the three episode documentary Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story and yes, that was certainly disgusting and disturbing, It was even worse than Hulu’s Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, which I also watched. I guess I felt like catching up on some sordid history this week!

Speaking of sordid, Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire is on YouTube. I watched it and I have to admit that I laughed when the “millionaire” came lurching out and started speaking in a voice that sounded exactly like Bill Hader’s. Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire was a one-time, two-hour special that aired in 2000. The man behind this fiasco (the marriage was annulled, the millionaire was not a millionaire but just a guy who was the subject of multiple restraining orders) went on to create The Bachelor.

Also on YouTube, I found all six episodes of The Starlet, a reality competition show where aspiring actresses competed for a walk-on role on One Tree Hill. Stop laughing, it was a real show. I vaguely remember watching it when it first aired. I watched it a second time on Monday because I was bored. One of the judges was Faye Dunaway. Faye was surprisingly nice. The mean judge was Vivica A. Fox.

Case and I are continuing to watch Dark, on Netflix. What a fascinating and macabre show! I recommend it to anyone reading.

I watched the latest episodes of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test but I don’t remember a damn thing about them, other than it amused me how everyone pretended to be taking everything so seriously.

And, as always, I watched the shows that I review on a weekly basis. I’m not going to sit here and list them all because I’m tired. But you can find all my reviews on this site. Yay!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 2.24 “The Shaman’s Apprentice”

Posted on January 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Micki is faced with a moral dilemma.

Episode 2.24 “The Shaman’s Apprentice”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on May 29th, 1989)

Micki’s friend, Blair (Isabelle Mejias) is in the hospital. She’s been having serious chest pains and, as Micki puts it, she’s too young to be suffering from them. Blair finds out that she has a sarcoma and the doctors are not giving her much chance to live. Dr. Lamar (James B. Douglas), the arrogant head of surgery at the local hospital, doesn’t seem to really care whether Blair lives or dies. All he cares about is taking care of the wealthy patients who might be moved to donate some of their money to the hospital.

However, Blair has found a reason for hope. There is a Native American doctor named John Whitecloud (Paul Sanchez). He has his own clinic, one that is funded by a rich man who Dr. Lamar said couldn’t be saved. Dr. Lamar hates Whitecloud, largely because Lamar is a racist who views Whitecloud’s “shamanistic” techniques with scorn. However, Whitecloud appears to be capable of saving anyone. Of course, the doctors and the nurses who have failed to treat Whitecloud with respect have a habit of mysteriously dying, usually right before Whitecloud manages to save a terminal patient.

Whitecloud does indeed have an objects that Jack and Ryan are interested in retrieving. It’s not a cursed antique. Instead, it’s a rattle that Whitecloud stole from his grandfather, Spotted Owl (Gordon Tootoosis). Whitecloud is using the rattle to cure his patients but, for every cure, he also has to use it to kill someone else. Whitecloud even uses it to kill Spotted Owl, though Whitecloud seems to feel bad about doing it. When Jack realizes that Whitecloud’s next target is going to be Dr. Lamar, he and Ryan are determined to stop him….

….except, as Micki points out, stopping Whitecloud will mean that her friend Blair will die. Why, Micki wonders, should Lamar get to live while Blair dies? Micki argues that they should at least let Whitecloud cure Blair but Jack gently explains that it doesn’t work that way. Jack says that their job is not to play God.

Long story short: The spirit of Spotted Owl shows up to drag Whitecloud into the afterlife. Jack gives the rattle back to the tribe, despite Ryan feeling that it should be in the vault. (“It’s not ours to take,” Jack explains in that reasonable and reassuring way of his.) Micki is angry and depressed that Blair is probably going to die. Blair stands on a street corner and stares at Whitecloud’s now empty clinic. Roll the end credits!

Wow, that was depressing! But it was really the only way the episode could end and I respect the fact that the show had the courage and the integrity to stay true to itself and end on such a down note. Not many shows would have had the courage to resist coming up with some sudden, miracle solution. This episode had some really cheap looking special effects and some not-so-great acting from some of the guest stars but Chris Wiggins, Robey, and John D. LeMay were as strong as always. This episode was especially an effective showcase for Chris Wiggins, who played Jack with just the right amount of weary gravitas. This was a depressing episode but it was a good one.