Kill and Kill Again (1981, directed by Ivan Hall)

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Martial artist Steve Hunt (James Ryan) is back!

When last we saw Steve, he was defeating a Nazi war criminal in Kill or Be Killed. In this sequel, James is recruited by Kandy Kane (Anneline Kristel) to rescue Dr. Horatio Kane (John Ramsbottom) from the evil Marduk (Michael Mayer). Marduk has forced Dr. Kane to develop a drug that allows him to control the minds of anyone who is injected with it. Marduk wants to put the drug into the world’s water supply but, for now, he is content to control the isolated town of Irontown.

Before Steve can rescue Dr. Kane, he has to put together a crew. Steve recruits four of his fellow fighters, Hot Dog (Bill Flynn), Gorilla (Ken Gampu), Gypsy Bill (Norman Robinson), and The Fly (Stan Schmidt). Along with Kandy Kane, the team infiltrates Irontown and faces off against Marduk’s champion fighter, Optimus (Edie Dorie).

If Kill or Be Killed owed a lot to Enter the Dragon, Kill and Kill Again is more of a martial arts-themed take on Mission: Impossible. Marduk, with his fake beard and his name that makes him sound like a cartoon dog, is never an intimidating villain and it turns out that it is laughably easy to defeat him. Instead, the movie’s emphasis is on Steve putting together his team and everyone playing their part to free the people of Irontown. Kill or be Killed‘s Olga is nowhere to be seen as Steve falls for Kandy Kane.

Unfortunately, the fights are pretty boring this time around and James Ryan doesn’t really have the screen presence to be a believable James Bond or Ethan Hunt-style secret agent. Especially when compared to the relatively serious Kill Or Be Killed, there is a good deal of broad comedy in Kill and Kill Again, which makes it difficult to any of Marduk’s plans seriously. The best action films convince you that only the hero has what it takes to defeat the villain but Marduk is such a weak bad guy that anyone could defeat him. Even if Steve and the crew hadn’t shown up at Iron Town, Marduk probably would have defeated himself in just a few more months.

Originally, there was supposed to be a third film about the adventures of Steve Hunt but Film Ventures, the company behind Kill and Kill Again, went bankrupt before filming could being. Steve Hunt’s adventures came to an end but the first two Kill films will live forever.

Film Review: M3GAN (dir by Gerald Johnstone)

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Gemma (Allison Williams) is a roboticist who works for America’s most successful Seattle-based toy company, Funki. Funki is the company behind the Purrpetual Pets, the really annoying Furby rip-offs that every child wants to have. Gemma has developed a child-sized humanoid robot that she calls M3GAN. She thinks that it could be the new big toy but her boss, David (Ronny Chieng), disagrees. David says to stick with what works and develop a new Purrpetual Pet.

While Gemma is trying not to lose her job, she also has to deal with a new arrival in her home. Following the tragic deaths of her parents and the destruction of her Purrpetual Pet, Gemma’s eight year-old niece moves in with her. From the minute that Cady (Violet McGraw) shows up, things are awkward. Gemma is more comfortable dealing with technology than with other humans. When Cady attempts to play with a toy on Gemma’s bookshelf, Gemma quickly explains that it’s not a toy. “It’s a collectible.” In fact, it’s not until Gemma introduces Cady to M3GAN (played by Amie Donald with Jenna Davis providing her voice) that Cady finally starts to become comfortable in her new home. M3GAN is the friend, older sister, and maternal figure that Cady is desperately looking for. And even though Gemma knows that M3GAN is still being developed and could possibly malfunction, Gemma is kind of happy that Cady finally has someone other than Gemma to look after her.

And, of course, M3Gan is happy too. M3GAN proves to not only be a quick learner but she also takes her duty to look after Cady very seriously. When the neighbor’s dog bites Cady, the dog vanishes shortly afterward. When the neighbor suggests that either Cady or Gemma had something to do with the dog’s disappearance, the neighbor ends up getting attacked in her garage. When a bully tries to push Cady around before then attacking M3GAN, M3GAN reacts by ripping off his ear. It may seem like it’s good to have M3GAN on your side but what about when M3GAN decides that Gemma isn’t doing a good enough job raising Cady? What about when M3GAN herself starts to suspect that Cady needs to be disciplined?

M3GAN came out in January and it was, to the surprise of many, the first big critical and commercial success of 2023. Some of that, of course, is because there really wasn’t much competition back in January. Audiences that didn’t want to rewatch the Avatar or Black Panther sequels really didn’t have many other options other than M3GAN and Plane.

That said, M3GAN is an undeniably effective mix of satire and horror. It works precisely because it captures what we all secretly fear, that AI is eventually going to kill us. M3GAN may look adorable and she gets to show off some pretty good dance moves towards the end of the film but she’ll kill anyone who gets on her nerves and, as both Gemma and Cady find out, it’s pretty much impossible to turn her off. It’s not just that M3GAN replaces Gemma as Cady’s primary caregiver. It’s that the viewer knows that it’s totally possible that there’s an army of M3GANs out there, waiting to replace all of us. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, at least 50% of the reviewers over on Rotten Tomatoes will actually be advanced AIs, programmed to overpraise studio productions while only giving negative reviews to films that don’t necessarily need good reviews to sell tickets.

M3GAN works as both a satire and a horror flick. The movie opens with a macabre Purrpetual Pet commercial that’s cringey specifically because it feels so accurate. As brought to life by Amie Donald and Jenna Davis, M3GAN is a wonderfully creepy character who is occasionally made sympathetic by the fact that, much like HAL in 2001 and the robots in Creation of the Humanoids, M3GAN seems to have more genuine feelings than the humans around her. Indeed, with the exception of Violet McGraw’s Cady, there are no sympathetic human characters. Gemma, for instance, is a very familiar type, someone who knows how to write code but who has no idea how to relate to anyone on an actual emotional level. In many ways, her relationship with Cady is just as a manipulative and destructive as M3GAN’s.

M3GAN is a strong movie up until the final 20 minutes, when M3GAN suddenly starts to target people who she really doesn’t have any reason to go after. But, overall, it’s an effective look at the future that we may have waiting for us.

Kill or Be Killed (1977, directed by Ivan Hall)

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Martial artist Steve Hunt (James Ryan) is offered a spot in a martial arts tournament that is to be held at a castle in the desert. Steve accepts but, once he reaches the castle, he thinks that something is off about the tournament’s sponsor, the German Baron von Rudloff (Norman Coombes). Could it be because the Baron wears a swastika armband, travels in a limousine the flies a Nazi flag, and spends his spare time talking about how much he misses Hitler?

Braon von Rudloff is a former Nazi general who is still bitter that his marital arts team was defeated by Japan’s team at the 1936 Summer Olympics. The tournament was just a ruse to recruit a new martial arts team that will take part in a do-over competition against the team led by Rudloff’s rival, Miyagi (Raymond Ho-Tong). Steve doesn’t want any part of that so, with the help of a former circus dwarf named Cico (Dani DuPlessis), Steven escape from the castle with his girlfriend, Olga (Charlotte Michelle). They return to Steve’s home in South Africa. The Baron sends his main henchman, Ruell (Ed Kannemeyer), to bring Olga back to him. After Olga is kidnapped, Steve joins Miyagi’s team and returns to the castle.

The best thing about this South African film is that there is rarely a moment when a fight is not breaking out. Steve and Ruell will fight at the drop of a hat. My favorite part of the movie is when Steve is trying to find a loophole in a contract that the Baron made him sign and Ruell grabs a torch and sets the contract on fire. Steve grabs another torch and the two of them spend several minutes swinging torches at each other. Later, Ruell and his friends turn on Chico for some reason and it turns out that Chico is just as good a fighter as anyone else in the movie. The plot is just an excuse for one fight after another but the fight choreography is pretty exciting and always entertaining to watch. Almost everyone in the cast was a real-life martial artist and it shows. The story is nothing special and it’s hard to have sympathy for Miyagi after it’s revealed that the Baron isn’t lying about Miyagi bribing the judges in 1936 but fight scenes make up for all of that.

Kill or Be Killed was a surprise success when it was shown in the United States. It was followed by a sequel, Kill and Kill Again, which I’ll review tomorrow.

Film Review: Champions (dir by Bobby Farrelly)

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Champions, Woody Harrelson plays Marcus Marakovich.

Marcus is a basketball coach. He believes that he has the talent and the ability to be a coach in the NBA and he’ll tell that to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, Marcus also has a reputation for being self-destructive and temperamental. He has sabotaged his career with too many public fights. As his friend and fellow coach Phil (Ernie Hudson) tells him, Marcus knows everything about basketball but he doesn’t know how to connect with the players. Marcus is so concerned with winning that he never gets to know the people that are playing for him.

Of course, Marcus has more problems than just his inability to connect with players. An on-court brawl leads to Marcus losing his assistant coaching job. A drunk driving incident leads to Marcus landing in jail. Phil bails him out but Marcus will still have to do community service to avoid serving time. Marcus is assigned to spend the next 90 days coaching The Friends, a basketball team made up of players who have learning disabilities. Though at first reluctant, Marcus doesn’t want to go to prison and, after a rough start, he and the Friends start to bond. Marcus becomes a better coach and the Friends become a better team and soon, it looks like they might even be playing in the North American Special Olympics Finals in Winnipeg. Along the way, Marcus also falls for Alex (Kaitlin Olson), the sister of one of his players.

Champions is a heartfelt film that suffers from the fact that there’s really not a single surprising moment to be found within it. As soon as Woody Harrelson shows up as a hard-drinking and cynical basketball coach who is looking for one more chance to make it to the NBA, most members of the audience will know exactly what to expect. It’s not a shock that he eventually bonds with his players. It’s not a shock that he falls in love with Alex nor that he eventually calls Alex out for using her brother’s needs as an excuse to not get close to anyone. It’s not even a surprise when Cheech Marin shows up as the cheerful manager of the rec center where the Friends practice. And it’s certainly not a surprise that Marcus’s work with the Friends leads to him getting an offer from an NBA team, an offer that might not be as altruistic as Marcus wants to believe. (The team is mired in a scandal and feels that hiring Marcus would bring them some good publicity.) Marcus is faced with a big decision and the choice that he makes won’t surprise anyone. At one point, Marcus specifically mentions the film Hoosiers, as if the simple act of acknowledging the fact that Champions isn’t exactly breaking new ground will somehow make up for the film’s predictability.

That doesn’t mean that Champions isn’t a likable film, of course. It’s a crowd pleaser. The actors playing the Friends actually are all learning disabled and the film portrays them all as individuals with their own unique personalities and abilities. It’s hard not to get excited for them when they succeed on the court and the film refuses to use any of their disabilities for cheap laughs. The film’s heart is in the right place and there’s always something to be said for that. But, as I watched Champions, I became very much aware that this was a film that I wanted to like more than I actually did. It was hard for me not to compare Woody Harrelson’s well-meaning but self-destructive coach to the similar character than Ben Affleck played in The Way Back. The Way Back worked because it took a familiar character type but then allowed that character and the story to go in an unexpected direction. Watching Champions, it was hard for me to not wish that the film had been willing to take a few more risks.

Radical Jack (1999, directed by James Allen Bradley)

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Billy Ray Cyrus is Jack, a tough-as-nails former CIA agent who is still traumatized by his actions during Desert Storm and the murder of his wife by the international terrorist, Riotti (Benny Nieves).

Stop laughing.

I’ll admit that the idea of Billy Ray Cyrus, the most mild and unthreatening of mullet-headed country music stars, playing a CIA burnout who has killed countless men may sound like something to laugh about but … forget it, I’ve got nothing. Laugh all you want because it is ridiculous casting and, throughout the film, Billy Ray looks increasingly uncomfortable with the character’s R-rated antics. Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do, though. When this movie was made, it’d been seven years since Achy Breaky Heart and even one-hit wonders need to pay the bills. In 1999, reinventing Billy Ray Cyrus as a second-tier action star probably seemed like a good idea. Billy Ray may not be the most convincing CIA agent but he’s still more likable than Steven Seagal.

Billy Ray is sent undercover to a small town in Vermont. Somehow, by working as a bouncer at the local roadhouse, Billy Ray Cyrus is supposed to find a way to expose two local arms dealers, Lloyd (George “Buck” Flower) and Lloyd’s good for nothing son, Rolland (Noah Blake). Lloyd and Rolland are selling weapons to Riotti so this is personal for Billy Ray. But Billy Ray is also romancing Rolland’s ex-girlfriend, Kate (Deedee Pfeiffer) so it is personal for Rolland too.

As both an action hero and a film, Radical Jack isn’t all that radical and Billy Ray Cyrus never looks comfortable in any of the action scenes or the scenes where he makes out with Deedee Pfieffer but there are still plenty of explosions, fights, and chase scenes. Though she doesn’t have much romantic chemistry with Billy Ray, Deedee Pfieffer gives the best performance in the film, playing Kate as someone who knows that she deserves better than what life has given her. Radical Jack was produced by the same people who did Time Chasers and fans of that film will be happy to visit the exact same landing strip and hangar that was featured so heavily in that sci-fi epic. There’s also a twist at the end, which you’ll see coming from miles away and Billy Ray does something unexpectedly cruel with a hand grenade. Radical Jack did not make an action star out of Billy Ray Cyrus but, two years later, he showed an unexpected talent for comedy with his small role in Mulholland Drive. Seven years after playing a burned-out CIA assassin, Bill Ray Cyrus found new fame as Miley Cyrus’s father and Radical Jack would never ride again.

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Drive and Top Gun!

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie ! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1997’s Drive! Selected and hosted by Sweet Emmy Cat, this movie features Mark Dacascos! So, you know it has to be good!

Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet. We will be watching 1986’s Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, and John Stockwell! The film is on Prime!

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Drive on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to Twitter and Prime, start Top Gun, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Film Review: Rumble in the Bronx (dir by Stanley Tong)

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1995, Rumble in the Bronx is known for two things.

First off, it’s the film that finally made Jackie Chan a star in America. Chan had been an international star for two decades before starring in this film but he had initially struggled to break into the American film industry. Before Rumble in the Bronx, no one in Hollywood was quite sure what to do with an actor who was both skilled at martial arts and who also had perfect comedic timing. Indeed, the very title of Rumble in the Bronx seems to designed to make Americans feel comfortable with the film. Jackie Chan may have been from Hong Kong and the film itself may have been dubbed and it may have been released internationally before New Line got around to releasing it in the States but it was a film about the Bronx! And what’s more American than the Bronx?

Except, of course, Rumble in the Bronx wasn’t filmed in the Bronx. The other thing for which this film is remembered was that it may have taken place in the Bronx but it was filmed in Vancouver. From the minute the audience sees Jackie walking through this film’s version of the Bronx, it’s pretty obvious that he’s in Canada. All of the extras are very polite. The city streets are surprisingly clean. Even the graffiti is rather mild in tone. (Reportedly, the production spray-painted the locations every morning and then cleaned up all the graffiti at night.) When the film shows us its version of an NYPD stationhouse, the building is so neat and clean that it seems like it should be in a Canadian tourism brochure. New York has never looked more inviting than when it was played by Vancouver.

Of course, the main giveaway that this film was shot in Canada was that there are mountains in the background. Majestic mountain ranges are one of the few things that you cannot find in New York City. When the bad guys drive someone out of the city so that they can threaten him, they end up in front of an absolutely gorgeous mountain stream. Seriously, I’m sure I’m not the only person who wanted to travel to Canada after watching Rumble in the Bronx.

But, hey …. it’s a Jackie Chan movie! If you can’t suspend your disbelief while watching a Jackie Chan movie then when can you suspend it? The film’s plot is not terribly complex. Jackie plays a Hong Kong cop who comes to New York for his uncle’s wedding. While his uncle is on his honeymoon, Jackie looks over his uncle’s store and protects it from the local gang. Jackie also befriends Nancy (Francoise Yip) and her wheelchair-bound brother, Danny (Morgan Lam). Both Nancy and Danny need someone to look out for them and to encourage both of them to reject the seedier temptations of the Bronx. They also need Jackie to protect them from the golf-loving crime lord, White Tiger (Kris Lord).

The plot is mostly an excuse for a series of increasingly elaborate fights and stunts. As always, it’s fun to not only watch Jackie Chan in action but to also try to spot all the moments in which he nearly killed himself performing his own stunts. Rumble in the Bronx is the film in which Jackie Chan broke his ankle while jumping onto a hoverboat. One can actually see the ankle bending at an extremely awkward angle. I actually covered my eyes when I realized what was happening because it was obviously very painful. If anyone had any doubt of how painful it was, Jackie included footage of him howling in pain during the end credits. That said, as painful as it was to watch Jackie’s ankle snap, it doesn’t change the fact that this film’s finale actually involves a hovercraft! Even without Jackie’s stunts, the action in this film’s finale would be enjoyably and shamelessly over the top. But knowing that Jackie was out there risking his life to make the film makes it all the more enjoyable. And it also helps that Jackie Chan is a legitimately good actor, one who gets a lot of laughs out of the fact that the characters that he plays are often as shocked by some of the things that he does (and survives) as the audience is.

Myself and a few others watched Rumble in the Bronx on Friday as a part of our weekly #FridayNightFlix get-together. We had a blast. Another film that we recently watched for #FridayNightFlix, Escape From The Bronx, is famous for its line of “It is time to leave the Bronx” but you know what? Why would anyone ever want to leave beautiful Vancouver?

Future Zone (1990, directed by David Prior)

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

David Carradine is back as super glove-wearing bounty hunter John Tucker in this sequel to Future Force!

Once again, it’s the future. In the future, everyone drives a car that was made in the 70s and spends most of their time in the abandoned warehouses that are meant to represent their places of business. Hard-drinking John Tucker meets and starts to work with the newest C.O.P.S. recruit, Billy (Ted Prior). Billy can shoot just as fast as Tucker and seems to know all about Tucker and his wife, Marion (Gail Jensen). That’s because Billy is from the future. As he explains it, some “friends of mine built a time portal,” and Billy used it to come back to the past and save Tucker from being killed by a bunch of criminals. Why is Billy so concerned about saving John Tucker? Did I mention that Marion is pregnant?

Future Zone is just as dumb as Future Force but it is set apart from the first film by its use of time travel. The best part of the movie is that neither John nor Marion are surprised to hear that Billy’s friends just happened to build a time portal. Nobody asks why they built a time portal or even how they built a time portal. The time portal is the most important thing about the movie but everyone shrugs off its existence. Are time portals a common thing in the future? Does everyone have a time portal? How does the time portal work? How is Billy able to go into the past at exactly the right moment? When it is time for him to go back to his time, how does he let his friends know? These are all good questions that no one asks.

The other thing that no one asks is why Tucker doesn’t wear his super glove all the time. His super glove can do anything, from shooting lasers to blocking bullets. If I had a super glove, I would wear it all the time. Tucker keeps it in the trunk of his car and only summons it at the last possible moment. Why even have a super glove if you’re not going to use it?

Retro Television Reviews: We’re Fighting Back (dir by Lou Antonio)

Posted on May 7, 2023 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 the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1981’s We’re Fighting Back! It can be viewed on YouTube!

We’re Fighting Back opens with a title card informing the viewer that the film that they are about to see is based on a true story and that the characters are based on the Guardian Angels, a group of New Yorkers who took it upon themselves to patrol neighborhoods and the subways. However, the film’s plot is fictionalized and all of the names have been changed and basically, the entire story is made up. It gets the film off to a strange start. This film is based on a true story, except that it’s not.

Morgan “Case” Casey (Kevin Mahon) is a young man living in New York with his father. When his father is mugged in the subway and ends up in the hospital, Case decides to take it upon himself to patrol the trains. He recruits his co-workers at the local hamburger place. Benny (Ramon Franco) says he is streetwise. Ling (Brian Tochi) claims that he’s good at fighting. Preacher (Paul McCrane) …. well, I’m not sure what Preacher’s special skill is but he’s recently moved to New York from Alabama. Case and his friends lose their first big fight against a gang of muggers, which leads to Case yelling at all of them and announcing that they need to recruit more members and get trained up on how to fight. Preacher thinks that Case is putting everyone’s life in danger but Case is determined to clean up the neighborhood.

Teaming up with some former gang members, Case forms the organization that will become the Guardian Angels. Among those who join are a tough waitress named Chris Capoletti (a young Ellen Barkin) and a Hungarian immigrant named Janos (an equally young Stephen Lang). At first, attorney Elgin Jones (Joe Morton) thinks that Case and his organization are going to be a bunch of lawless vigilantes but, after meeting Case and seeing Case refuse to allow an obvious psychopath to join the group, Elgin decides to become a part of Case’s anti-crime crusade.

And …. well, that’s pretty much it. There’s not much of a plot here. Case and Preacher are briefly estranged but they are friends again by the end of the movie. Eventually, Case faces off with Tony (John Snyder), the gang leader who mugged his father. For the most part, though, this is a film without much real conflict. In this film’s portrayal of urban crime, it turns out to be remarkably easy to clean up a neighborhood. Apparently, you just need to get a bunch of people to give a damn. One watches the movie and wonders why no one ever came up with this extremely simple solution in the past. The film goes out of its way to tell us that Case is not some sort of Charles Bronson-style vigilante but Case never has to face any muggers as dangerous as The Giggler. If Case lived in the Death Wish 3 neighborhood, who knows what type of approach he would have gone with.

Under the best of circumstances, this film would seem simplistic. Watching this film after the past few years, in which we’ve seen an increasing number of unarmed people getting hurt and killed by self-appointed vigilantes who felt that they shouldn’t have been in their neighborhood or train car, it’s hard not to feel that We’re Fighting Back is incredibly naïve and rather irresponsible. (The Death Wish films are so shameless and over the top that they’re difficult to take seriously as any sort of manifesto. We’re Fighting Back plays out with all the earnestness of a call to action.) Need to clean up your neighborhood? Just do it yourself! Just fight back! Obviously, that’s an idea that appeals to a lot of people but, in reality, it rarely seems to work out the way that it should.

I Watched The Promotion (2008, dir. by Steven Conrad)

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Dazzling Erin

Yesterday, after I got home from voting in my town’s city council elections, I wanted to unwind with a tennis movie. When I did a search for “tennis,” Tubi recommended that I watch The Promotion.

I don’t know why because there is no tennis in The Promotion. No one plays a game or even talks about tennis in The Promotion. Instead, the movie is about two men who work for a grocery store and who are both hoping to get promoted. The narrator is Doug (Seann William Scott), who is married to Jen (Jenna Fischer), a nurse. Doug wants to get promoted so that he and Jen can move into a new house and so that he can be the sole breadwinner. Doug also has to get the promotion because he has already lied to Jen and told her that he got it. Doug was feeling insecure because Jen’s boss, Dr. Timm (Bobby Cannavale) saves lives for a living while Doug just spends all day dealing with angry customers and the gang members who hang out in the store’s parking lot. Doug’s rival for the promotion is Richard (John C. Reilly), a recovering drug addict who listens to self-help tapes. Each of them tries to sabotage the other. Doug tries to make Richard look stupid at a company retreat and Richard files a false injury report after Doug hits him with a bag of frozen tater tots.

I think the movie was trying to make a point about how desperate people are for status and money that they’ll do anything to get it but I didn’t care because I didn’t find Doug or Richard to be in any way likable and I didn’t want either one of them to get the promotion. I would not shop at any store where they worked because grocery shopping is bad enough without having to deal with all of that extra drama. Both Richard and Doug were terrible as assistant managers so as far I was concerned, neither one of them deserved to be promoted. Jen should have left Doug for Dr. Timm.

Plus, there wasn’t any tennis.