Category Archives: TV Show

Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 2.13 “Bayside Story”

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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell: The New Class, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 2o00.  The show is currently on Prime.

Oh no, it’s another Bayside vs Valley episode!

Episode 2.13 “Bayside Story”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on October 22nd, 1994)

It’s time for Bayside and Valley to meet on the athletic field …. again!

*sigh*

Seriously, how much water can this show draw from the well of this particular rivalry?  Ever since the original Saved By The Bell, there have been episodes about Bayside competing against Valley.  Every episode begins with Mr. Belding complaining that Bayside never beats Valley.  And yet, every episode also seems to end with Bayside defeating Valley so I’m really not sure what Belding’s problem is.

This episode, after Valley toilet papers the Bayside hallways, Mr. Belding complains that Bayside hasn’t defeated Valley since Slater graduated.  Tommy D, Lindsay, Rachel, Megan, Brian, and Bobby all nod in agreement, which is odd since Slater graduated before any of them started at Bayside.  Belding also mentions that Screech is in Vegas for Zack and Kelly’s wedding and, again, everyone nods as if they know who Zack and Kelly are.  None of these students knew who Screech was when he first came back so how would they know Zack and Kelly?  Am I just giving this too much thought?  Perhaps.

As the head cheerleader, Megan is determined that the cheerleading squad (which is apparently made up of only her, Rachel, and Lindsay) is ready to declare death to Valley.  But then she meets Doug (Bumper Robinson), the captain of Valley’s football team, and she ends up falling for him.  Her friends are horrified that Megan would date someone from Valley but that doesn’t stop them from using Megan’s relationship to take advantage of Doug by pulling off one of those elaborate SBTB schemes where everyone dresses up in a stupid costume and distracts Doug long enough for Brian and Bobby to use a spy camera to take pictures of Valley’s playbook.

(Seriously, the whole thing is really stupid.)

Shortly afterwards, Megan ends up breaking up with Doug because she can’t handle everyone’s disapproval.  The Gang feels guilty so they decide to give the pictures of the playbook back to Doug but, as opposed to just giving him the film, they instead decide to pull off another elaborate prank that involves everyone putting on costumes.

The reason why I’m not going into a lot of details about the pranks and the costumes is that it’s all really stupid.  And I’m worried that if I spend too much time describing all of this, my brain might short-circuit.  Let’s just say that it never occurs to anyone to just do the simplest of things, like maybe practicing really hard on the football field and trying to win the game legitimately.

That said, there a few things that work in this episode.

Amazingly, there actually is a funny running joke in this episode.  Unlike most of the characters on this show, Brian knows nothing about American sports and continually has to be told the most basic facts about football.  (“It’s played on a field, not a rink!”)  Christian Oliver delivered his lines with the right amount of enthusiastic naivete and it was kind of nice to see Brian transformed into something more than just a stand-in for Zack.

The episode ends with the Bayside Gang meeting the Valley Gang at the Maxx and everyone crying as they realize that they’re not so different after all.  That was actually kind of sweet.  And then Belding ran in wearing riot gear because he was convinced a fight was about to break out.  That actually made me laugh a little.  So, dumb pranks aside, this episode wasn’t a total loss.

In conclusion, I should mention that my high school had a hated rival that was actually only a few blocks away from us.  Our football team hated their football team and all that other stuff.  Unfortunately, since my school was pretty much an art school, I don’t think we ever won a game against them.  Some of that was because my school didn’t even have a football field so our team had to go over to the rival school whenever they wanted to practice.

Seriously, not even Slater could have saved them.

 

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 6.3 “Spaceman”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, CHiPs jumps the proverbial shark.

Episode 6.3 “The Spaceman Made Me Do It”

(Dir by Winrich Kolbe, originally aired on October 24th, 1983)

There’s three storylines in this week’s episode.  Let’s start with the two that make sense.

In the episodes comedic storyline, the members of the Highway Patrol all receive a chain letter.  Some continue the chain and have good luck.  Others — like Ponch — do not continue the chain and wait for their bad luck.  Grossie mails his letter and then gets an $800 refund from the IRS.  However, at the end of the episode, it’s revealed that the Highway Patrol’s secretary failed to mail the chain letters and the IRS informs Grossie that his refund was a mistake.  Everyone laughs at Grossie.  Poor guy.

The B-plot features Grossie and new officer Kathy (Tina Gayle) tracking down some thieves who are robbing Japanese tourists.  This was a traditional CHiPs story and it was actually kind of nice of the show to acknowledge that Ponch isn’t the only person fighting crime in California.

But then there’s the main plot.  Ponch and Bobby have been assigned to night patrol.  They catch a preadolescent girl named Jodi (Kyle Richards) breaking into a jewelry store.  She says that an E.T. (and yes, she says “E.T.’) ordered her to break into the store because it need the diamonds to fix its spaceship.  Ponch and Bobby take Jodi to the station and Ponch volunteers to serve as Jodi’s legal guardian until her parents can be found.  Dr. Joyce Brothers appears as herself, talking to Jodi and announcing the Jodi is not crazy.

Having watched five seasons of CHiPs, I found myself waiting for the inevitable moment in which it would be revealed that Jodi was being manipulated by a master criminal.  When Jodi ran away to meet up with the UFO, I expected that Ponch and Bobby would track her down and arrest the actual villain.

Instead, when Ponch and Bobby tracked down Jodi, I got a scene of a light shining down from the sky, Jodi being pulled towards the unseen UFO, and Ponch grabbing her and yelling that the aliens can’t have her.  Ponch’s words apparently have the right effect because the lights disappear as the never-seen UFO returns to its own planet.

“What was that?” Bobby asks.

“Whatever you want it to be,” Ponch replies.

No, guys.  I’m sorry.  This is CHiPs.  It’s a show about cops on motorcycles.  It’s not a show about UFOs.  You can’t just introduce an alien on this show and then have everyone shrug it off once they hear that Grossie won’t be getting his tax refund.  This just isn’t the show to try that sort of thing.  (Yes, Force Seven did get pretty weird but that was a backdoor pilot for a different series and Ponch and Jon didn’t actually get involved in any of the mad scientist/karate action.)

I’m going to guess this episode was an attempt to shake things up.  Maybe there was a feeling that, since new star Tom Reilly lacked all credibility as a cop, the show should abandon the straight-forward approach that it used during the Larry Wilcox years.  I’m sure the show had its reasons but this episode just doesn’t feel right.

Of course, some thing never change.  The aliens may have been a surprise but it’s not a surprise that Ponch was the one who (somehow) made them go away.  Aliens or not, this is still….

Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.14 “Fatal Crossroads”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988.  The entire show can be found on Tubi!

This week, guess who screws up?

Episode 1.14 “Fatal Crossroads”

(Dir by Gary Sinise, originally aired on January 9th, 1987)

As much as I want to like David Abrams — and I did like him for the first few episodes — he’s just dumb.  Offended by the fact that Luca is using his legal advice to try to beat his indictment, David starts this episode out by approaching Luca in public and announcing that he’s not only quit the public defenders office but that he’s also decided to join the D.A.’s office, specifically so he can take guys like Luca down.  Then, later on in the episode, David approaches Luca again and, this time, he brings along his father (Nathan Davis).  David’s father, a former low-level gangster, brags about how smart David is and how he’s going to take Luca down.

So, of course, Luca has someone put a bomb underneath David’s car.

And, of course, it’s David’s father who decides to borrow the car to go to the store and who ends up getting blown up.

And yes, it’s a terrible thing that David’s father got blown up.  BUT WHAT DID DAVID THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!?  He knows who Luca is!  He knows that Luca will kill people without a second thought.  So why the Hell is David walking up to Luca and basically daring him to try to kill him?  I mean, David’s father was in the rackets!  David should have known better and, for that matter, David’s father should have known better.

I’m sorry but David Abrams is a moron.

For some reason, Luca also tries to take a hit out on Torello, despite the fact that Luca’s entire legal strategy depends on Torello denying Homan’s claims that Torello is crooked.  Fortunately, Torello is somehow brilliant enough to realize that Luca is going to take a hit out on him and the members of the Crime Squad are smart enough to take a look at a building and somehow figure out exactly which room a sniper would be hiding in.  If only David Abrams was as smart!

This episode featured a few too many coincidences and a bit too much of David Abrams suddenly acting like an idiot.  It was directed by Gary Sinise, who is one of my favorite people.  Sinise does a good job of capturing the drizzly gangster movie atmosphere but the script could have used a bit more work.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 5.20 “Narcissus”

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’s episode was written by none other than Yaphet Kotto!

Episode 5.20 “Narcissus”

(Dir by Jean de Segonzac, originally aired on May 2nd, 1997)

A shooting at four in the morning leads to a group of white patrolmen chasing a black suspect across West Baltimore until he ducks into a building that they’ve been told not to enter.  The building is the headquarters of the African Revival Moment, a militant group that is led by a former cop who goes by the name of Burundi Robinson (Roger Robinson).  Robinson is one of the most powerful men in West Baltimore, a hero to the community and also someone who has connections to Baltimore’s police commissioner, James Harris.

As Robinson explains to Lt. Giardello, he and Harris were once partners.  When he and Harris busted a heroin dealer, Harris sold the drugs back to the dealer for $10,000.  When it was discovered that the drugs were missing from the evidence lock-up, Harris and Robinson flipped a coin with the understanding that the loser would resign from the force and take the fall.  Robinson lost the coin toss.  Robinson went on to start ARM and Harris became the police commissioner.

At first, Harris (who doesn’t appear in this episode but instead is simply a background figure of menace) protects Robinson and sends Col. Barnfather to the scene to order Detectives Pembleton and Munch to back off.  However, when a member of ARM comes forward to say that Robinson ordered the shooting because the victim was going to expose Robinson’s history of taking sexual improprieties with his followers, Harris suddenly starts ordering the police to get more aggressive with Robinson and ARM.  Harris does this with the full knowledge that the police raiding ARM headquarters and attempting to arrest Robinson will lead to a violent confrontation.  When the police eventually do bust into the headquarters, they discover that Robinson and all of his followers have committed suicide.  Giardello understands that was Harris’s hope all along.  He was willing to risk a riot just to silence the one man who could prove his corruption.

This episode was written by Yaphet Kotto and, not surprisingly, Giardello is at the center of the action.  The lengthy scene where he meets with Robinson is the highlight of the episode as both Giardello and Robinson have a unique understanding of how things work in Baltimore.  Giardello has had first-hand experience with Harris’s corruption and he’s not in the least bit surprised by either Robinson’s story or Harris’s heavy-handed attempts to control the investigation.  In a bit of wonderful irony, when Harris initially tries to protect the African Revival Moment, he uses the racist Captain Gaffney to interfere with Munch and Pembleton’s investigation.  Gaffney, one of the most loathsome characters on the show, is suddenly the one who is telling a suspect to demand a lawyer and leaking the name of the informant to Robinson.

This episode was a strong one all the way around, with Kotto, Andre Braugher, and Roger Robinson all playing proud men who each had their own unique view on how to best deal with the issue of race in Baltimore.  (One thing that sets Homicide apart from so many other shows is not just the diversity of the cast but also the diversity of personalities and opinions.)  The ending carries a punch.  When Giardello says that there will be Hell to pay, you believe him.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell 2.13 “From Nurse To Worse”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Kelly wants to go steady but Zack’s fallen in love with the new school nurse.

Episode 2.13 “From Nurse To Worse”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on December 15th, 1990)

Zack has asked Kelly to go steady but, when Kelly finally tells him that the answer is yes, Zack smiles stupidly and says, “That’s great, what was the question?” before wandering off.  Zack has met the new school nurse, Nurse Jennifer (Nancy Valen), and is so busy imagining a future with her that he’s totally forgotten about the fact that he’s supposedly been in love with Kelly for years.

When people talk about Zack Morris being “trash,” this is the type of episode that they’re thinking about.  Zack treats Kelly horribly, all because he’s convinced that new school nurse is going to risk her job by dating a 10th grader.  Of course, Nurse Jennifer doesn’t help by telling him that he’s cute.  When Jennifer finds out about Zack and Kelly, she helps Kelly out by pretending to be crazy.  It perhaps would have been simpler for Jennifer to just tell Zack that it would have been illegal for her to have dated him but then we wouldn’t have gotten the sight of Jennifer pretending to be terrible at her job.

As was typical of Saved By The Bell, Slater’s B-story was actually more interesting than all of Zack’s nonsense.  It’s time for everyone’s flu shot and Slater is scared of needles.  Mario Lopez always did a good job of portraying Slater’s insecurities and there’s something rather endearing about the look of terror on his face when he’s called to the nurse’s office for his shot.

For those of us who are into continuity, this episode was a weird one.  Not only did the new nurse do a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense but the episode itself seems to ignore everything that has happened in Zack and Kelly’s relationship over the past few episodes.  Suddenly, Kelly and Zack are back to dating whether or not to be an exclusive couple.  I thought that had been settled a while ago.  Judging by the episode’s production code, this episode was originally meant to be the second of the season and would have aired right after The Prom episodes.  For whatever reason reason, NBC didn’t air it until late in the season, when it no longer made sense.

Technically, this is the end of season 2.  Whether or not that means anything is debatable because apparently, way back in 1990, season 3 started the very next week.  With Saved By The Bell, one gets the feeling that these things were decided at random.  Well, no matter!  Next week, we’ve got season 3 and The Fabolous Belding Boys!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 8/2/26 — 8/8/26

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

America 2100 (YouTube)

I reviewed America 2100 here,

Baywatch (Tubi)

You can read my review here!

Big Brother (24/7, CBS, Paramount+, Pluto TV)

You can read my ongoing review of Big Brother here.

Cheaters (Tubi)

Cheaters is on Tubi!  I watched a few episodes on Saturday.  This show is a guilty pleasure for me because 1) it was filmed in Dallas and 2) Joey Greco is just so judgmental!

CHiPs (Prime)

You can read my review of CHiPs here.

Crime Story (Tubi)

You can read my review of Crime Story here.

Diff’rent Strokes (Tubi)

After buying their father a birthday present, Arnold and Kimberly decided to hitchhike home.  They were picked up by a man who locked Arnold in a room and then threatened to rape Kimberly.  This was pretty disturbing for a sitcom!  I watched this two-part episode on Thursday and I was relieved when the police finally showed up to rescue them.

Freddy’s Nightmares (Tubi)

I wrote about the series finale here!

Election Coverage (Tuesday Night)

I was pretty depressed going into this week’s primary elections but I have to admit that watching the results in Michigan cheered me up,  Even though the latest DSA flavor-of-the month, Abdul El-Sayed, won his primary, it was only by one percentage point as opposed to the election being the blow-out that so many predicted.  Not everyone is on board with extremism and I take some hope from that.

On Thursday, I watched as the election results rolled in from Tennessee.  Other than that one congressman that lost his primary, the Tennessee results weren’t quite as exciting as the Michigan results.  I did find myself amused as I remembered how, way back in 2018, some pundits were convinced that Taylor Swift coming out as a Democrat would somehow turn the state blue.

1st & Ten (Prime)

You can read my review here.

Flight of the Conchords (HBOMax)

I watched one episode from the first season (Todd joined the band and things quickly fell apart, despite his skill with the bongos) and one episode from the second season.  (Bret and Jermaine met Murray’s best friend, Jim.)  Both episodes made me laugh.  This is definitely a show that I miss, even if it does seem like Bret and Jermaine probably did everything they could with the concept during the first two seasons.

Hunter (Tubi)

You can read my review here.

The Love Boat (Paramount Plus)

You can read my review here.

Mad TV (Tubi)

Mad TV’s on Tubi now!  I watched two episodes on Thursday and, unfortunately, they were even worse than I remembered.

The Office (Peacock TV)

“THIS WAS THE BEST DUNDIES EVER!  WHOOOOO!”  As much as I complain about the show’s final two seasons, the first three seasons are about as good as anything that has ever aired on television.  On Friday, I watched The Dundies.

Pacific Blue (Tubi)

You can read my review of Pacific Blue here.

Saved By The Bell (Prime)

My review will be dropping shortly.

Saved By The Bell: The New Class (Prime)

You can read my review here!

St. Elsewhere (YouTube)

You can read my review of St. Elsewhere here!

60 Minutes (CBS, Sunday Night)

I caught the last 30 minutes of 60 Minutes on Sunday night.  It’s funny that, for all the acclaim that this show has received and all the current controversy surrounding it, the only time that I have ever watched it has been when I’ve been waiting for something else to start.  It seems like I always end up turning on the show whenever Anderson Cooper is doing one of his “look at my exploring the wilderness!” type of stories.

Survivor 50 (CBS, Wednesday Night)

As I watched this week’s rerun of Survivor 50, it occurred to me that the all of the Survivor icons are starting to get really, really old.  A better name for Survivor 50 would have been Survivor: Seniors’ Retreat.

Retro Television Review: Baywatch 2.14 “War of Nerves”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001.  The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.

This week, some people stand in the darkness, afraid to move into the light.

Episode 2.14 “War of Nerves”

(Dir by Douglas Schwartz, originally aired on February 3rd, 1992)

Drug lord Mason Sato (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) has just gotten out of prison and he wants revenge of Mitch.  For reasons that aren’t really explained beyond a shot of a newspaper headline that reads, “Hero Lifeguard Helps Police Take Down Drug Lord,” Mason blames Mitch for his arrest,  Do lifeguards make arrests?

Mason stalks Mitch, Hobie, and Mitch’s girlfriend, Kaye (Pamela Bach).  At first, Mitch doesn’t tell either Hobie or Kaye what’s going on.  But when Mason asks Hobie to teach him how to use a boogie board, Mitch loses it and punches Mason out.  Mason later kidnaps both Hobie and Kaye.  This leads to a fight in an abandoned warehouse.  Once the fight moves into the ocean, Mason nearly drowns but Mitch saves his life so he can go back to prison.

Meanwhile, Shauni asks Ben to teacher her how to surf.  We never actually see Ben teaching her anything but we do get a lengthy montage as Ben remembers his days as a surfing lifeguard.  Myself, I’m wondering how Ben, who we’ve been told can no longer swim because of a leg injury, suddenly stops limping in this episode.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa was a magnetic villain but otherwise, this was Baywatch at its cheapest.  The plot was by-the-book and it mostly seemed to exist so that Hasselhoff could play the action hero.  This episode felt like a dry run for the first, non-supernatural season of Baywatch Nights.  How many lifelong enemies has Mitch managed to make?

The life of the lifeguard is a dangerous one.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 2.22 “Life Sentence”

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 Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

This week, we finish up Freddy’s Nightmares.

Episode 2.22 “Life Sentence”

(Dir by Anita W. Addison, originally aired on March 11th, 1990)

The final episode of Freddy’s Nightmares is also one of the most boring.

Just as with last week’s snoozefest, this episode takes place at the local prison.  Andy (George De La Pena) is due to be released.  Everyone knows that he killed a guard during an armored truck robbery but Andy blamed his accomplice Bruno (Ron Troncatty) and got away with a plea bargain.  Andy can’t wait to get out of jail.  He brags to the guy in the next cell about how he knows where all the money is hidden.

Uh-oh, it looks like the prison’s psychiatrist, Elaine Alamo (Penny Johnson Jerald), is trying to keep Andy imprisoned.  What does Andy care?  Sure, everyone hates him but Bruno’s in another prison and Andy’s got all that money waiting for him.  However, when Andy finds out that Bruno has escaped, Andy no longer feels safe on the outside.  However, Elaine has changed her mind about keeping Andy in jail because she wants Bruno to kill Andy because the guard the Andy killed was her father.  So, Andy kills Elaine so he can stay in prison.  But then Bruno gets captured and becomes Andy’s new cellmate.  That’s the first story.

The second story features the prison’s warden, Hendler (John Milford), running for sheriff.  He’s behind in the polls so he uses an experimental truth serum on Andy.  Andy hallucinates that the Warden is Bruno and Andy tells him where the money is hidden.  Then Andy dies from a heart attack.  The Warden calls a press conference to announce that he’s found the money but Dr. Redman (Glynn Turman), the inventor of the serum, spikes the Warden’s drink and the Warden confesses to killing Andy.

Freddy doesn’t do anything in either one of these stories, other than appear in three host segments and tell a joke about dropping the soap.

This episode was incredibly dull.  The low-budget was extremely obvious.  (The Warden holds his press conference in the prison, presumably because the show couldn’t afford to dress another set.)  Penny Johnson Jerald does a  good job with her role but otherwise, this was a poorly acted episode that featured dull characters.  Andy was unlikable.  The Warden was unlikable.  This episode was sad note for this show to go out on.

Of course, it’s not a shock that Freddy’s Nightmares ended with a bad episode.  It wasn’t a very good show to begin with,  There were a few above average episodes during the second season and the first season features some memorably grotesque moments but otherwise, Freddy’s Nightmares was too constrained by the standards of television to really live up to the legacy of A Nightmare on Elm Street.  The best episode were the ones the featured Freddy getting involved in the plot but those were few and far between.

Freddy’s Nightmares did not get a grand finale.  Instead, it just got a forgettable final episode.  Unlike the Friday the 13th series, Freddy’s Nightmares never found a consistent tone or a compelling reason for existing.

Oh well.  Next week, we’ll have a new show in this time slot.  See you then!

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.5 “Slice O’Life”

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 Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988.  The show can be found on Daily Motion.

This week, it’s a busy few days in Boston.

Episode 4.5 “Slice O’Life”

(Dir by Eric Laneuville, originally aired on November 6th, 1985)

Oh, the drama!

Elliot is still struggling to lose weight.

Fiscus is having an early midlife crisis, especially when a cancer patient (Todd Susman) philosophically accepts that the treatment is going to leave him impotent.  The patient has lived a life with meaning.  What has Fiscus done?

Dr. Craig finally admits to Ellen that he knows he was too hard on their now dead son.  They are both preparing to raise their granddaughter, Barbara, in their home.  However, Yvonne’s parents (Ramon Bieri and K Callan) arrive in Boston for a visit.  They are so blue collar and, in Dr. Craig’s eyes, unsophisticated that they almost seems like caricatures of what the rich think the poor are like.  They reveal that Stephen and Yvonne asked them to serve as Barbara’s legal guardians in case anything happened.  At first, Ellen refuses to let them take Barbara.  “Get your wife in check,” Yvonne’s father says.  “I’ll see you in court,” Dr. Craig replies.

After complaining about feeling like he has a cold and then getting upset about the Hospital Board not immediately approving all of his projects, Dr. Westphall collapses in the St. Eligius stairwell.  It turns out that he has Malaria.  Apparently, a self-righteous attitude and a bunch of impractical ideas were not the only things Westphall brought home from Ethiopia.

Finally, Bobby spends another weekend up at Cape Cod.  He picks up a local woman.  They have what Bobby is probably expecting to be just another one night stand.  The woman, however, has a razor blade that she’s hidden under her tongue (yikes!) and proceeds to slice Bobby across his face.

AGCK!

Up until that ending, this was a fairly typical episode of St. Elsewhere.  It looked like the big drama was going to be the Craigs temporarily losing Barbara.  Instead, the drama is that Bobby might be dead!

Oh, poor Mark Harmon.  When he first started playing the role on this show, Bobby was portrayed as being a nice guy who was a little boring.  The show really had no idea what to do with him, other than have him occasionally take his shirt off.  For the fourth season, the show’s writers turned him into an arrogant hedonist.  On the one hand, I’m sure there are a lot of doctors like Bobby Caldwell.  On the other hand, the change really does seem to have come out of nowhere.  And now, he might be dead.  I guess the lesson here is to stay away from Cape Cod!

The attack on Bobby ultimately overshadows everything else that happened in this episode.  I will say that, before Bobby got attacked, I was enjoying Dr. Craig’s rather snobbish reaction to Yvonne’s parents.  As for Dr. Westphall …. eh.  Westphall’s kind of become a one trick pony.  He’s depressed and he wants the world to know it.  I know quite a few people like Dr. Westphall in real life, which is probably why I get so annoyed with his character on the show.

Seriously, Westphall, cheer up!

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.15 “The Beach Boy”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, someone is killing criminals in Los Angeles and, for once, it’s not Rick Hunter!

Episode 1,15 “The Beach Boy”

(Dir by Richard Colla, originally aired on April 6th, 1985)

A Hawaiian drug lord is angered when five Los Angeles drug dealers decide to stop dealing his product.  So, he sends his main assassin — Wes “Beach Boy” Kapano (Brett Clark) — to L.A. to kill all five of them.  Hunter and McCall find themselves in the strange position of providing productive custody to the dealers while trying to stop Kapano.

This was a typical “chase-em-and-shoot-em” episode of Hunter.  Dee Dee even managed to get shot for the second time this season.  (And, once again, it didn’t seem to actually hurt her.  “I’m fine!”)  For the first season, at least, Hunter kept things simple.  In between the flirtatious Hunter/McCall banter, there would be at least one car chase and three shootings.

What sets this episode apart is that Hunter and McCall are protecting drug dealers.  While McCall makes it clear that she doesn’t actually care what happens to the dealers, Hunter’s feelings are a bit more ambivalent.  He’s been chasing the dealers for so long that he’s developed a grudging affection for them.  When one of them is killed while helping the police, Hunter’s actually upset about it.

The other thing that sets this episode apart was Brett Clark’s intimidating turn as the assassin.  The Beach Boy, as he’s called, doesn’t waste too much time with conversations.  He doesn’t brag about how clever he is or go to a lot of trouble trying to fool anyone.  Instead, he just shows up and starts firing.  He wears a bulletproof vest, as well.  McCall shoots him twice and he barely flinches.  He’s a scary dude!

That said, Hunter still manages to kill him.  How many people have been killed by Rick Hunter so far?  I’ve lost track.  Most officers are suspended after a shooting so that the shooting board can rule whether or not it was justified.  Hunter is always back on the streets within an hour of killing someone.  Considering how quick he is with a gun, I probably wouldn’t want to tell him he was suspended either.

Much like Hunter and McCall, this episode was brutal and efficient.