What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #217: Degrassi: The Next Generation 3.16 “Take on Me” (dir by Phil Earnshaw)

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched a classic episode from the 3rd season of Degrassi: The Next Generation, Take On Me!

Why Was I Watching It, eh?

A few days ago, when I wrote my review of R.L. Stine’s Trapped, I started thinking about how much I love Degrassi‘s take on The Breakfast Club. That led to me getting out my Season 3 DVD and watching Take On Me!

What Was It Aboot?

This episode originally aired on February 16th, 2004. It’s the weekend in Canada but instead of watching a hockey game and studying the dual languages of their native country, five Degrassi high school students are serving detention. Ellie Nash (Stacey Farber) skipped school. Hazel Aden (Andrea Lewis) used the school computers to look up porn. Jimmy Brooks (DRAKE! — back when he was still known as Aubrey Graham) and Toby Isaacs (Jake Goldsbie) hacked into the school’s computers in an attempt to change Jimmy’s grades. And rebel Sean Cameron (Daniel Clark) is in detention because he’s suspected of being a part of a gang of thieves who are terrorizing the entire school!

Together, the five students talk about their different cliques, play truth or dare, and sneak up to the roof. Ellie and Sean start to fall for each other but how will Sean react when he discovers that Ellie has a secret motive for being in detention?

What Worked:

This is one of those episodes of Degrassi that you either love or you hate. You either can’t believe how blatantly the show ripped off The Breakfast Club or else you watch it and go, “Oh cool, they’re ripping off The Breakfast Club!”

Myself, I love this episode! Not only does it center on two of my favorite characters, Ellie and Sean, but it’s also the start of the Ellie/Sean romance! Unfortunately, the Ellie/Sean romance would only last a few episodes but they were a great couple. Stacey Farber and Daniel Clark had a really great chemistry in their scenes together, as can be seen in this episode when they go up to the roof and they talk about thievery and self-harm. The scene where Ellie shows Sean the scars on her arm is one of the best in the history of Degrassi.

This episode also features one of my favorite Degrassi exchanges. When Ellie says she’s in detention for skipping school, Jimmy deadpans, “Wow, that’s a great story, Ellie.” It’s just the way the line is delivered.

What Did Not Work:

There’s this really weird subplot involving the principal, Mr. Radish (Dan Woods). Radish is at the school to supervise detention. He brags about how it’s all a part of his new “no tolerance” policy for misbehavior. However, Archie “Snake” Simpson (Stefan Brogren), the media arts teacher, stops by the school and tells Mr. Radish that there’s more to life than just following rules. Sometimes, tolerance is a good thing.

At the end of the episode, a chastised Mr. Radish tells the detention kids that he’s just trying to do the right thing. He suddenly decides to show some tolerance and he lets everyone go home early. The thing is, though — Sean was stealing things from the school. And Jimmy did bully Toby into trying to change his grades and Toby did hack into the school’s computer. Hazel and Ellie were both in detention for minor reasons but the three guys actually did some serious things wrong. Their behavior was exactly the sort of thing that would get most students in a lot more trouble than just weekend detention. If anything, Mr. Radish was being nice by just having them give up a few weekends as opposed to calling the cops.

Finally, the end of the episode reveals that Ellie was actually working undercover for the local news station, for a story they were planning on doing about the thefts at the school. But why would a big city news station care about such a minor crime and whose bright idea was it to get the story by putting an emotionally vulnerable teenage girl in potential danger by sending her in with a tape recorder? And couldn’t they have at least given Ellie a less bulky tape recorder? It’s almost like they wanted her to get caught.

“Oh my God! Just Like Me!” Moments

Honestly, every single minute of every single episode of Degrassi is pretty much an “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment, as far as I’m concerned. That said, I always related the most to Ellie. We both have red hair. We both spent a good deal of high school dressed in black. We both went through a cutting phase and a rubber band on the wrist phase and I’ve always appreciated the sensitive way that Degrassi handled that subject matter. (Whatever flaws it may have had, Degrassi was way ahead of its time when it came to dealing with anxiety.)

I especially related to Ellie in this episode, both because I always ended up crushing on the sensitive rebels like Sean Cameron and I also got assigned detention a few times. Of course, I always skipped detention because I was really into the whole “No one’s going to tell me what to do” thing. Strangely, I never got in any trouble for not showing up to detention and I always wondered if everyone regularly skipped or if it was just me.

Lessons Learned

There’s nothing more fun and emotionally rewarding than weekend detention!

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.20 “Mesmer’s Bauble” (dir byArmand Mastroianni)

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the twentieth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

In tonight’s episode, an obsessive weirdo named Howard (well-played by Martin Neufeld) uses a curse antique to try to get close to a rock star named Angelica (played by real-life rock star, Vanity).

This episode originally aired on May 1st, 1989. Happy May Day, I guess.

Great Moments In Television History: Doctor Who Begins Its 100th Story

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Forty-three years ago, on October 28th, 1978, the first episode of the 100th story of Doctor Who was broadcast in the UK.

The Stones of Blood, as the story was named, was a part of the season-long quest for the separate pieces of the Key to Time. The Doctor (played, in his fourth television incarnation, by Tom Baker) and his companions, Romana (Mary Tamm) and K-9 (voiced by John Leeson) traveled across time and space, searching for the pieces. The catch was that each piece was disguised as something that didn’t look like it would be a part of a key. So, the Doctor would have to fight space pirates, space androids, and even space prisoners before managing to figure out what each piece was disguised as.

The Stones of Blood was a four-part story. The first two parts find the Doctor and his companions on Earth, investigating a set of standing stones in Cornwall and fighting a group of modern-day druids. The second half of the story moves the action to a prison ship, where the Doctor pursues an intergalactic thief who has stolen one of the stones. In fact, the thief has stolen the most important of the stones because it’s actually a piece of the Key of Time.

The Stones of Blood is middle-of-the-road Doctor Who. It starts out strong. My favorite episodes of the original Doctor Who are almost always the ones that bring the Doctor back to the UK. The earthbound episodes usually have more humor and they don’t suffer from the handicap of having to create an alien world out of cardboard and papier-mâché. The use of the standing stones especially gives this episode an even more British feel than usual. Once the action moves to the prison ship, things get much less interesting. Tom Baker is an acquired taste for some but he’s always been one of my favorite Doctors and whenever I see any of the Key of Time episodes, I always think it’s unfortunate that Baker and Mary Tamm apparently didn’t enjoy working together. She’s been overshadowed by Lalla Ward’s interpretation of the character but Mary Tamm’s Romana was intriguing as well. It was always interesting to see the Doctor have to work with someone who took the rules of time and space seriously.

It may be hard to believe now but, when Doctor Who began in 1963, it’s doubtful anyone expected that it would be still going strong in 1978. Certainly, no one would have expected it to still be as popular as it is in 2021. Much like the Doctor, Doctor Who has proven to be indestructible.

Previous Great Moments In Television History:

The Martian Chronicles: Episode 1: The Expeditions (1980, directed by Michael Anderson)

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

In 1980, NBC adapted the Ray Bradbury short story collection, The Martian Chronicles, into a three-part miniseries. Though Bradbury’s original book featured short stories that were only loosely connected by two shared locations (Earth and Mars), the miniseries connected most of the stories through the character of Colonel John Wilder (Rock Hudson), the NASA project director who headed up the project to colonize Mars and who later regretted his decision after it became clear that humanity was going to treat Mars just as badly as they treated their previous home. The miniseries was adapted by Richard Matheson and directed by Michael Anderson.

Unfortunately, the miniseries itself was not a hit with critics, who complained that the story moved too slowly. Audiences, having just experienced Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, were not impressed with the special effects, in which miniatures were used to simulate spacecraft flying through space. Despite all of that, though, The Martian Chronicles has built up a cult following. I can remember first catching the miniseries playing late at night on one of the local station in Baltimore. I’ve always liked it. It’s not as good as Bradbury’s original collection, of course. But the miniseries still has its strengths, despite the miniatures.

The first and best episode of the miniseries was The Expeditions. Starting with a recreation of Viking 1 landing on Mars in 1976, the episode jumps forward to the far future of 1999! The first manned spacecraft lands on Mars and the two astronauts aboard are promptly killed by the first Martian that they meet, an angry husband who thinks that one of the astronauts is going to have an affair with his wife.

The second expedition is led by Captain Arthur Black (Nicholas Hammond, best-know for playing Spider-Man in the late 70s TV series). When they land on Mars, they discover that the formerly Red Planet now looks like Black’s childhood home of Green Bluff, Illinois. All of their relatives are waiting for them! Falling into the belief that they’ve returned to the past, the astronauts are killed by their “families” that night. It turns out that the Martians were using Black’s memories to set a trap for them. As the Martian who disguises himself as Black’s brother explains it, they’ve seen, in the minds of the astronauts, what the humans are doing to their own planet and they can’t allow that to happen to Mars. “Forgive us,” the Martians says, “we were once an honorable race.” In one of the best scenes in both the book and the miniseries, the Martians still have an Earth-style funeral for the men that they’ve killed because they too got sucked into the world that they created and came to care about the men they felt they had to kill.

Years later, a third expedition arrives. This one takes up the majority of the episode. It’s led by Colonel Wilder himself and includes Sam Parkhill (Darren McGavin), Jeff Spender (Bernie Casey), Briggs (John Cassady), and McClure (Peter Marinker). Almost all of the Martians have apparently died, the victims of the Earth germs that were brought to the planet by the second expedition. While Parkhill plots to open a barbecue joint and Briggs gets drunk and tosses his empty beer cans into a waterway that he christens, “Biggs Canal,” Spender investigates a deserted Martian city. Unlike the others, Spender is in awe of the Martian civilization and angry that it’s been so casually destroyed. When Spender returns, he declares himself to be “the last Martian” and tries to kill the members of the expedition.

Of the three episodes, The Expeditions is the one that sticks closest to the stories on which it was based, in both content and theme. Not surprisingly, it’s also the best of the miniseries, with each vignette working as both a separate story and a part of a larger whole. It’s the episode that sticks closest to what Bradbuy himself was going for in his original collection. While the miniature spaceships are a distraction, the desolate Martian landscape is sharply realized and the first episode is full of striking shots, from the Martian husband walking through the red desert to “greet” the first expedition to the funeral for the second expedition to the final battle between Spender and the survivors of the third expedition. Among the members of the cast, Nicholas Hammond and Bernie Casey are the stand-outs but everyone plays their part well. Darren McGavin is always a welcome presece in any miniseries and John Cassady is so obnoxious as Briggs that it’s impossible not to see where Spender is coming from. (Back when the IMDb still has message boards, every message on Cassady’s board was someone posting about Briggs Canal.) Rock Hudson is as stiff as ever but it’s appropriate for his character. The scene where he and Bernie Casey debate whether humanity is worthy of a planet like Mars is well-acted by both actors, with the different opinions of their characters reflected in the different performing styles of the two actors. Though the miniseries never explicitly states it, it is perhaps not a coincidence that Spender, as the only black character in the miniseries, is the only one to truly understand what humans colonizing Mars could lead to.

The Expeditions ends with Spender warning that humans will destroy Mars if they’re allowed to colonize it. The next episode would explore whether he was correct. We’ll take a look at The Settlers tomorrow.

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.19 “The Butcher” (dir by Francis Delia)

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the nineteenth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

In tonight’s episode, Jack takes center stage as he finds himself forced to battle and repeatedly kill an evil from his own past. Nigel Bennett plays quite a frightening villain.

This episode originally aired on April 29th, 1989.

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.17 “The Mephisto Ring” (dir by Bruce Pittman)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the seventeenth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

In tonight’s episode, Denis Forest plays a gambler who gets an cursed 1919 World Series Ring! It allows him to pick all the winners but it’s fueled, as these cursed antiques often are, by murder! Anyway, consider how excited my sister is over the World Series starting tonight, I had to go with this episode!

This episode originally aired on April 15th, 1989.

Great Moments In Television History: Apaches Traumatizes The UK

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

From the end of World War II to 2007, the UK’s Central Office of Information used to produced Public Information Films (known as PIFs), which would often air on television during children’s programming. These were the British equivalent of the “More You Know” PSAs that appear on American television. A typical PIF would deal with a safety issue, warning children to be careful crossing the street or while visiting a farm or when thinking of sticking a fork into an electrical socket.

One of the most notorious PIFs was first broadcast in February of 1977 and aired for several years after that. Apaches traumatized an entire generation of British children while teaching them about what not to do while visiting a farm. Danny tells the story of how six young children played “Apaches” on a nearby farm and how things did not turn out well for any of them. What made this PIF more traumatic than similar PIFs was the nonchalant reactions of both the children and the adults. Each farm accident is followed by a clinical clearing away of that children’s possessions and then the child is forgotten about. It doesn’t occur to anyone to do anything to make the farms safer.

Still, this PIF probably kept a lot of children safe while also inspiring many nightmares. Director John MacKenzie went on to direct Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren in The Long Good Friday, which is considered to be one of the finest British crime films ever made.

Previous Great Moments In Television History:

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.16 “Scarlet Cinema” (dir by David Winning)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the sixteenth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

In this episode, a werewolf-obsessed film student brings his favorite movie monster to life! Needless to say, it’s not a good idea. This episode ends with a clever little twist. Remember it if you ever have a problem with a werewolf in your life.

This episode originally aired on February 25th, 1989.

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.15 “Better Off Dead” (dir by Armand Mastroianni)

Posted on October 24, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the fifteenth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!

In this episode, a doctor uses a cursed syringe (agck!) to withdraw pieces of another person’s soul that he can give them to his daughter, who is extremely violent. Unfortunately, this usually lead to bad things for soul donors. This episode was directed by Armand Mastroianni, who also directed the classic 1980 slasher film, He Knows Your Alone. That was Tom Hanks’s first film so, without Armand Mastroianni, who knows who would have ended up starring in Captain Phillips?

This episode originally aired on February 18th, 1989.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 10/17/21 — 10/23/21

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s a few thoughts on what I watched this week!

(How’s that for a detailed intro?)

Allo Allo (Sunday Night, PBS)

This week, yet another attempt to smuggle the British airmen out of France failed. As usual, the plan was too complicated to succeed and the British airmen themselves remained cheerfully oblivious to the danger that they’re putting everyone else into. (“I say,” one of them said after missing his chance to get smuggled out on a fish truck, “When’s the next fish truck?”) This episode’s highlight was Crabtree getting to speak perfect English to all of the British airmen who had gathered in Rene’s Cafe before then switching back to his usual mangled French to speak with Rene. Episodes of Allo Allo are not particularly easy to describe but they almost always make me laugh.

The Bachelorette (Tuesday Night, ABC)

I don’t know. Going straight from one season of the Bachelorette to Bachelor in Paradise to another season of the Bachelorette is a little bit too much. It works better when there’s some downtime between the seasons. I have to admit that I was pretty bored with the premiere of the new season. I mean, the first episode wasn’t even over and already, I was having to listen to all of that crap about whether or not the men were there for “the right reasons.” The whole thing with Ryan getting kicked off the show felt very staged and pre-planned and Michelle seems like she’ll be canceling a lot of cocktail parties to get right to kicking people off the show. I think I’ve just been oversturated with this dumb show for the past few months.

Baywatch (Friday Afternoon, H&I)

H&I has changed up their schedule. Instead of daily showing of Baywatch, they now air a five-hour block on Fridays. I watched two episodes. They were both from the 2nd season and I remembered them both from when I binged the show a few months ago. The first episode featured Eddie trying to clear his name after being accused of assaulting a teenager. The 2nd was yet another episode where a mysterious woman stayed with Mitch while someone with a gun hunted for her. This seemed to happen quite frequently to Mitch but he never commented on either the strangeness or the familiarity of it all.

The Brady Bunch (Sunday Afternoon, MeTV)

I watched three episodes on Sunday while working on my Cry Macho review. The Brady kids were so self-centered that Alice quit. Greg conspired to make Marcia the head cheerleader. Marcia fell in love with a much older dentist and decided she was too mature to go on a date with a classmate. The Bradys were the worst.

Court Cam (Wednesday Evening, A&E)

I watched two episodes when I got home from work on Wednesday. One episode featured a loser who was arrested several times for pretending to be a traffic cop. Maybe he wanted to get on Parking Wars. Regardless of his motivation, everyone he stopped could tell he wasn’t a cop and no one treated him with the respect that he very loudly demanded. That was kind of fun to watch.

Day of the Dead (Friday Night, SyFy)

I finally watched last week’s premiere on Thursday and I reviewed it for the site.

Fear the Walking Dead (Sunday Night, AMC)

I reviewed the season premiere here!

Friday the 13th: The Series (YouTube)

Once Horrorthon is over and I have the time, I’m going to go back and binge this entire series.

Hunter (Weekday Mornings, ZLiving)

I watched two episodes of this surprisingly violent 80s cop show on Friday. I was also working at the time so the show mostly served as background noise. (I find having the TV on helps me to focus, oddly enough.) From what I did see, it seemed like an awful lot of people ended up getting shot. In fact, Hunter’s main personality trait appears to be that he’ll shoot anyone. (The second episode featured Hunter blowing away a psycho motorcyclist played by Don Swayze.) One thing I will say about the show, though, is that I love the propulsive music that plays over the opening credits.

King of the Hill (Weekday Afternoons, FXX)

I watched two episodes of Tuesday. In the first one, Bobby became a peer counselor and quickly started to abuse his position. This is actually one of my favorite episodes, even though Bobby definitely owed Stacy an apology. The highlight of the episode was Stacy singing, “I’m your Stacy in a bottle.” The second episode featured Hank visiting the Platter Ranch in Montana and discovering that Henry Winkler was refusing to allow the ranchers to herd their cattle across his land. Yes, that Henry Winkler.

The Office (Saturday afternoon, Comedy Central)

I watched some classic episodes from season 5. Dwight and Michael conducted corporate espionage against Prince Family Paper. Pam and Michael hit the lecture circuit. Stanley had a heart attack. Michael’s golden ticket promotion blew up in his face. I always say that this show started to go downhill after the third season but Season 5 was actually pretty good.

Open All Hours (Sunday Night, PBS)

This week’s episode was actually kind of charming, as it featured Granville dancing in the rain while holding a mop. For a second, it seemed like Granville might be something other than incredibly depressed. It didn’t last long but it was still good to see him vaguely smile. Of course, once the rain stopped, it was time to go back to plotting Arkwright’s death.

Saved By The Bell (Sunday Morning, MeTV)

I watched two episodes on Sunday morning. The first one featured Zack launching a hostile takeover of the student store and then secretly photographing all of the girls for a calendar. That was kind of icky but at least Kelly got a modeling career out of it. She even went to Paris, something that was never mentioned in subsequent episodes. This was followed by the infamous Running Zack episode, in which Zack learned he was Native American and Jessie demanded that Lisa forgive her for being from a family of slave traders. The important thing is that Zack was able to compete at the track meet. So cringey!

Silk Stalkings (Weekday Afternoons, ZLiving)

Agck! Where are Chris and Rita!? It’s been over a month since I last caught any episodes of this 90s cop show. I watched two episodes on Friday and Rob Estes and Mitzi Kapture were gone! Apparently, they left the show and were replaced by two other cops who had the exact same backstory as Chris and Rita. What a coincidence! Anyway, the show still featured the same mix of murder, sex, and attractive people getting undressed but these new detectives just didn’t have the same chemistry.

That said, both of Friday’s episodes were enjoyably sordid, featuring a lot of sem-clad, attractive rich people doing a lot of very bad things. It was fun! I may have to start binging this show.

Survivor (Wednesday Night, CBS)

I wrote about the latest episode of Survivor here!

Talking Dead (Sunday Night, AMC)

This week’s episode was a bit by-the-numbers. Even Chris Hardwick seemed to be struggling to pretend to be interested in either Fear the Walking Dead or Walking Dead: World Beyond, which was odd since both of those shows were fairly good this week.

Walking Dead: The World Beyond (Sunday Night, AMC)

This week’s episode was actually pretty good. It still feels like Christopher Pike’s The Walking Dead (or maybe Saved By The Dead) but this week’s episode actually did a good job of capturing the contrast between wanting to be a teenager while, at the same time, having to survive in a world that leaves you with little time to actually grow up.