Category Archives: TV

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi Junior High 2.13 “Pass Tense”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

The second season of Degrassi Junior High comes to a close with a historic episode!

Episode 2.13 “Pass Tense”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on March 28th, 1988)

The school year is nearly over and it’s time for the 8th Grade to graduate.  Next year, they will all be going to high school except …. well, they won’t.  Even while Stephanie and the Farrell Twins are making fun of the 7th Graders for having to do all the work to prepare for the big graduation dance, word comes down from the district that, starting next year, Degrassi Junior High will have a Grade 9.  Even though most of the show’s characters are set to graduate and go to High School, they’ll still be attending classes at Degrassi Junior High next season school year.

(The official story is that the high school was overcrowded so adding a Grade 9 to Degrassi was the only option.  The truth, of course, is that the show got popular and was renewed for a third season and the show’s producers didn’t want to lose 75% of their cast.)

However, one eighth grader will not be “graduating.”  Joey Jeremiah has flunked! Oddly, Joey passed his final exams but, as Raditch puts it, he only scraped by and Raditch feels that Joey is too smart to only be scraping by.  Mr. Raditch called Joey’s parents and told them that Joey could either go into the 9th Grade and be put in a low-academic program or he could repeat the 8th Grade and hopefully mature a little.  Joey’s parents agreed that Joey should be held back.  “Flunk our son!” they apparently said.

(To be honest, this seems like kind of an unfair move on the part of Mr. Raditch and I’m not really sure how Joey can be held back after passing all of his exams.  It seems rather arbitrary.)

At first, Joey declares that he’s not going to go to the graduation dance, even though the Zit Remedy is scheduled to make their public debut.  Wheels confronts Joey and tells him that he’s smart and that he owes it to his friends to show up.  Wheels gets a bit judgmental, all thing considered.  Joey is being held back on the whims of Mr. Raditch so Joey really has every right to be mad.  Aren’t there any lawyers in Canada who can sue the school on Joey’s behalf?

(Add to that, I always smile a bit whenever Wheels gets judgmental of anyone.  Hey, Wheels, Joey’s not the one who is destined to go to prison for killing someone while driving drunk.)

Joey eventually does show up at the dance, apparently having been convinced that his friends won’t be laughing at him behind his back.  (From what we see, everyone is supportive.  I guess they’re just nicer in Canada.)  Greeting Snake and Wheels, Joey takes a moment to flirt, for the first time, with Caitlin, who is destined to become the love of his life.  He then says that he’s ready to perform.  This leads to a historic moment as the Zit Remedy takes the stage for the very first time.  They perform their one and only song, the deathless Everybody Wants Something.

Everybody wants something

They’ll never give up

Everybody wants something

They’ll take your money

And never give up

Finally, Spike, who is allowed to attend the dance after not being allowed to attend class, goes into a labor as the episode’s end credits roll.  This is a huge moment, both because Spike is giving birth to Emma Nelson, who will be the lead character for the first few seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation.  A running joke on DTNG would be Emma’s hatred of Everybody Wants Something so, for me, it was kind of fun to watch this episode and discover that this was the last song Spike listened to before giving birth.

(Speaking of Degrassi: The Next Generation, I had to smile at just how much Joey freaked out about getting held back.  DTNG was infamous for using the flimsiest of excuses to keep its more popular characters from graduating on time.  Ashley, Jimmy, Spinner, and a host of others were all held back.  Spinner was actually held back twice.)

And so ends the second season of Degrassi Junior High.  The second season was great and this finale did everything that a good finale is meant to do.  It wrapped up two major storylines while also hinting at what the future held.  It also gave Pat Mastroianni, Neil Hope, and Amanda Stepto a chance to show how much all three of them had developed as actors since the show’s first season. Mastroianni especially did a good job as Joey realized that his year of goofing off and not trying had finally caught up with him.  That said, I still think he needs to sue both the school and Mr. Raditch.  He probably needs to get emancipated from his parents as well.  What type of mother or father says, “Flunk my child?”

Next week, we start season 3!

Retro Television Review: All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story (dir by Lloyd Kramer)

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 the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 2000’s All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story!  It  can be viewed on YouTube.

In 1996, a 34 year-old teacher named Mary Kay Letourneau decided that she had fallen in love with someone who was not her husband.

A 34 year-old deciding that they are no longer happy in their marriage and subsequently deciding that that they’ve found love with someone else is hardly an unusual or even surprising occurrence.  What made Mary Kay Letourneau’s case a national scandal was that the person that she decided that she was in love with was a 12 year-old student named Vili Fualaau.  Mary Kay started her affair with Vili when she was his sixth grade teacher.  When she was arrested and charged with two counts of second-degree rape of a child, Letourneau was pregnant with Vili’s child.  Even after being arrested, Letourneau insisted that she and Vili were soulmates.  After giving birth to Vili’s child, Letourneau was sentenced to six months of prison and somehow managed to avoid having to register as a sex offender.  After serving her sentence, Letourneau was promptly arrested again with Vili and was sent back to jail, where she gave birth to Vili’s second child.

All-American Girl opens with Mary Kay Letourneau (Penelope Ann Miller) in jail, insisting that everything that happened between her and Vili was consensual and that their love is real.  The majority of the film is shown in flashbacks.  Some of those flashbacks deal with Mary Kay, her husband (Greg Spottiswood), and Vili (Omar Anguiano).  Watching the flashbacks, I couldn’t help but notice that the film really did seem to be on Mary Kay’s side, to an almost ludicrous extent.  Her husband is portrayed as being a soulless sociopath, even before Mary Kay starts sneaking around with Vili.  As for Vili, he is presented as being the one who initiated his relationship with Mary Kay, flirting with her in class and comforting her when she starts crying in a school hallway.  The actor playing Vili looked, acted, and sounded considerably older than just 12 years old.  At times, he appeared to be nearly as old as Penelope Ann Miller.  And I’ll admit that it’s totally possible that Vili could have looked older than his age and maybe he did have a surprisingly mature vocabulary.  But still …. he was 12 years old!  Apparently, Letourneau cooperated with the film’s producers and that’s pretty obvious from the first minute we see Vili giving Letourneau a wolfish smile in the 6th grade.

The flashbacks dealing with Letourneau’s childhood are a bit more interesting, if just because Letourneau was the daughter of a congressman who ran for president in 1972.  (One of her brothers served in the first Bush White House.  Another served as an advisor to the 2016 Trump campaign.)  At one point, she taunts a group of protestors that have gathered outside of her family’s home and her father praises her courage.  The film hints that it was the twin traumas of her brother’s death and the discovery that her beloved father had fathered two children with a mistress that led to Letourneau’s subsequent instability.  Perhaps that’s true, though I think the film is a bit too eager to accept that as an all-purpose explanation.

You may have guessed that I had mixed feelings about this film.  Penelope Ann Miller gave an excellent performance as Mary Kay but the film’s attempts to portray May Kay as being even more of a victim that Vili were undeniably icky.  

As for the real Mary Kay, she married Vili four years after being released from prison.  They separated a year before Mary Kay died in 2020.  Their relationship inspired several films, most recently May/December.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check it Out 2.2 “Edna’s Phantom Romance”

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 the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Season 2 continues with more inconsistent Howard and Edna weirdness.

Episode 2.2 “Edna’s Phantom Romance”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on October 10th, 1986)

Howard Bannister is, once again, the most unromantic man who has ever lived.

Now, I know that goes against what we’ve recently seen of Howard.  In fact, just last week, Howard agreed to go without a paycheck for two months so that he and Edna could have a vacation together.  This show has never been particularly consistent when it comes to its portrayal of Howard and Edna’s relationship.  When it first started, Howard was portrayed as being a jerk.  Then, he became a romantic.  Then he went back to being a jerk.  And then he become, yet again, a romantic.  And now, he’s back to being a jerk.  And Edna has gone from being snarky to naive to intelligent to naive again that it’s next to impossible to really say for sure who she is supposed to be.

Edna and Howard’s anniversary is coming up.  Edna wants him to take her to Hawaii.  Howard would rather stay at home and watch bowling.  It seems to be an impasse but myself, I’m wondering if Edna realizes that flying from Canada to Hawaii is not exactly something that one does on a whim.  I mean, you don’t just hop down to Hawaii for a few hours and then fly back, especially not on a retail worker’s salary.  Howard may be the manager but I doubt he has enough money to purchase a private jet.  Plus, Edna and Howard just took a 2-month vacation.  She could have gone to Hawaii then.

Edna, trying to get Howard’s attention, hires one of Leslie’s community theater friends to pretend to be her new boyfriend.  Howard freaks out after he sees Edna and the actor together.  Edna thinks that Howard is going to propose to her but instead, he breaks up with her.  “Oh, Howard!” Edna says before explaining that she was just paying the other guy to pretend to be in love with her.  Howard is surprisingly okay with that and the two of them get back together.  It’s interesting that Howard doesn’t care that Edna has basically spent a week lying to and manipulating him.

This was one of those really annoying and dumb episodes where every problem could have been resolved by people just talking to each other and not making assumptions.  Bleh.  I hate episodes like this.

On the plus side, Marlene’s constantly changing hairstyle remains the best thing about the show.  Here’s what she went with this week:

This episode was pretty dumb and I’m pretty sure that they already did a Howard-Screws-Up-His-Anniversary episode during the previous season.  If Check It Out! is already repeating itself (and especially if its repeating itself to diminishing returns), that means I’ve got a long few months ahead of me as I make my way through seasons 2 and 3 of this show.

Next week …. oh, who knows?

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 4/7/24 — 4/13/24

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Other than the shows that I watch for my retro television reviews, I didn’t watch a lot this week.  I was busy with other things.  (Luckily, I did get to watch a few movies.)  Here’s a few thoughts on what I did watch.

On Wednesday, I watched a screener for Chaser, which is a thought-provoking and surreal science fiction series that can currently be viewed on Prime.  I was flattered to get a chance to watch it for free and to review it.  I posted a review of the show on Friday so read the review and watch the show and leave a comment detailing how much you liked my review.

Abbott Elementary returned this week.  Janine was offered a full-time job with the District and she accepted it, much to Gregory’s disappointment.  To be honest, I’m kind of bored and more than a little frustrated with Janine and Gregory.  Gregory’s inability to act on his feelings has crossed the line from being an sweet example of social awkwardness to just being annoying.  My hope, as it has been from the start, is that Janine will realize that she is meant to teach and we’ll finally be done with all of this District nonsense.  That said, I did enjoy the AI storyline and Jacob’s shock at discovering that no one was reading his emails.  We’ve all known someone or had a friend like Jacob.  I would totally subscribe to Mr. Johnson’s newsletter.

I watched an old episode of Night Flight on Friday.  It dealt with androgynous rock stars so, not surprisingly, the majority of it was made up of videos from David Bowie and Queen.

Today, I binged the new Netflix reality show, Unlocked: A Jail Experiment.  Shot in Little Rock, Arkansas, the show dealt with a sheriff who decided to give one cell block a good deal of freedom to see if they could handle it.  It was an interesting show, though a lot of it seemed to be staged.  It was hard not to notice that the camera was always in the perfect position to pick up the most drama.  I also had to laugh at the inmates who said they were worried about getting caught doing something illegal but who then proceeded to make a shank or brew jail moonshine while the cameras were pointed straight at them.  I mean, when Miller was making his shank and bragging about how he was going to use it against anyone who got on his nerves, did he not realize that show’s footage could probably be used in court?  Unlocked was a slightly more amusing version of 60 Days In.  Speaking of which, the sheriff on this show was surprisingly likable, especially when compared to the majority of the law enforcement people who have appeared on 60 Days In.

And that’s that, with the exception of the retro shows that I watch every week for this site.  As I said, I didn’t watch a lot this week.  I’m running behind on both Survivor and The Amazing Race.  And, at some point, I’d like to watch the latest seasons of The Bachelor and Farmer Wants A Wife.  Hopefully, I’ll soon be caught up.

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 3.17 “Meet Your New Teacher: Batteries Not Included”

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 Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, a computer tries to take over Gabe’s class.  I wonder how Barbarino will react….

Okay, everyone, it’s Barbarino time!

Episode 3.17 “Meet Your New Teacher: Batteries Not Included”

(Dir by Bob Claver, originally aired on January 5th, 1978)

Barbarino’s not in this episode.

That may seem like an strange detail with which to lead off this review but, as far as the third season has been concerned, John Travolta’s performance as Barbarino has been one of the few consistently good things about Welcome Back, Kotter.  I’m going to guess that Travolta was absent from shooting because of the success of Saturday Night Fever.  Maybe he was off filming Grease.  That’s all understandable but still, the show really suffers when he’s not around.  Of the Sweathogs, he was the one who usually avoided turning into a cartoon.  In his way, he was the anchor of the group.  Plus, by this point, he was the only one who still looked young enough to be in high school.

Fortunately, John Sylvester White is in this episode.  If Travolta played an important role in keeping the show grounded, White’s unhinged performance as Woodman did an equally good job of keeping the show funny.  White could make even the simplest of lines hilarious by virtue of the incredible bitterness in Woodman’s voice.

This week, Mr. Woodman is excited because he’s purchased a computer that can teach!  He rolls it into Gabe’s classroom and informs Gabe that, from now on, he’ll be asking the computer for answers.

Obviously, it’s easy to roll your eyes at that bulky computer, especially since it appears to be more of a typewriter than anything else.  (I’m going to assume that is was state-of-the-art for the 70s).  Still, one could argue that this episode predicted the rise of A.I.  Gabe types in his questions and then the computer gives him an answer.  The computer has been programmed to always be correct.  Gabe complains that the computer can’t tell jokes but the Sweathogs don’t care.  They love the computer!  And, after a few days, Woodman returns to the classroom with a chart that shows how everyone’s grades have improved.

Woodman thinks that the computer is his ticket to a promotion.  He also thinks that the computer will finally allow him to fire Gabe.  (Sometimes, Woodman likes Gabe and sometimes, he tries to get him fired.  Normally, I’d complain about the inconsistency but the genius of John Sylvester White’s performance is that you just accept that Woodman’s insane and move on.)  The Sweathogs fear that Gabe will lose his job so Epstein sabotages the computer so that it gives wrong answers when Woodman tries to demonstrate it to a district representative.  Did you know the Harlem Globetrotters fought at the Battle of Waterloo?

It’s never really made clear how Epstein sabotaged the computer but no matter.  One of the flaws of AI is that, even though it acts like its thinking, it’s actually just repeating whatever it’s programmed to do.  This computer claims that the Globetrotters fought at Waterloo.  Decades later, Google Gemini would become infamous for creating ahistorical images of black and female presidents who were all presumably elected at a time when only white men were allowed to vote or run for office.  AI never changes.

I would have loved to have seen Barbarino interact with the computer.  He was seriously missed in this episode.  But Woodman’s unhinged personality made up for a lot of that.  This was fun, even if it still wasn’t nearly as memorable as any of the episodes from the first two seasons of the show.

As for this episodes jokes, Gabe tried to tell Julie a joke about his Uncle Magnovich.  Julie didn’t seem to care that much.  At the end of the episode, Gabe tried to tell the computer a joke.  The computer did not react.  “Don’t you get it?” Gabe typed.

“No,” the computer replied.

Poor Gabe!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.25 “What A Mother Wouldn’t Do”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new 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 show can be found on YouTube!

This week, a crib from the Titanic demands blood!

Episode 1.25 “What A Mother Wouldn’t Do”

(Dir by Neill Fearnley, originally aired July 18th, 1988)

After being told that her unborn child should be aborted because it’s just going to die anyway, Leslie Kent (Lynne Cormack) seeks peace inside an antique shop called Curious Goods.  The shop’s owner, Lewis Vedredi (R.G. Armstrong), shows her an antique crib that he says was on the Titanic.  Leslie is intrigued by the crib and, six months later, she is overjoyed when her friends reveal that they have purchased the crib for her as a gift.  Seriously, who wouldn’t want a crib that was once used by a baby who probably drowned in icy water when the Titanic sank?

The crib does have a special power.  It can cure sick babies!  Of course, the cure only works if the crib’s owner first kills seven people in a body of water.  After baby Allison is born, Leslie and her husband Martin (Michael Countryman) start killing random people in an effort to save their baby’s life.

It presents quite a moral quandary.  If Micki and Ryan don’t retrieve the cursed crib, Leslie and Martin will continue to kill.  However, if they do get the crib, Allison will die.  Are they prepared to sacrifice an innocent baby just to get their hands on the crib?  To its credit, Friday the 13th: The Series didn’t shy away from these questions.  In this episode, the villains are not unsympathetic.  Martin hates to kill but he’s trying to save his baby.  As for Leslie, the episode’s title says it all.  What wouldn’t a mother do to save the life of her baby?  As disturbing as the murders may be, they’re nowhere near as frightening as the cold and clinical way that Leslie is ordered to get an abortion at the start of the episode.

In the end, both Martin and Leslie end up sacrificing themselves to save Allison’s life.  But Allison disappears from her crib, leaving a terrified Micki to wonder if the evil within the crib has taken her.  Fear not.  As the final shot show, her babysitter Debbie (Robyn Stevan), grabbed the now healthy baby from the crib and then got on bus to start a new life.  The baby looks up at her and smiles for the first time.  Awwwww!

This was a good episode, with Micki and Ryan both coming to realize that the owners of the antiques are often as much victims as those they harm.  Chris Wiggins dif good job of portraying Jack’s single-minded determination to find all of Lewis’s cursed antiques while Lynne Cormack and Michael Countryman were poignant as two villains for whom you couldn’t help but feel some sympathy.

Next week, season one comes to an end!

Retro Television Review: T and T 3.4 “Cry Wolf”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990.  The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, someone from the past shows up but it’s not Amy.

Episode 3.4 “Cry Wolf”

(Dir by Alan Simmonds, originally aired on January 26th, 1990)

While filming footage for what is sure to be a riveting cinematic essay on urban decay, high school student Martina (Joanne Vannicola) films a drug deal going to down in an abandoned warehouse.  (The world of T and T was full of abandoned warehouses where people were either selling drugs or hiding stolen money.)  Unfortunately, Martina runs out of film before actually capturing the drugs being exchanged.  Everyone who sees the footage says that it doesn’t prove anything.

Martina decides to take justice into her own hands.  I’m not really sure why.  Martina’s obsession with tracking down the drug dealers and getting them arrested feels somewhat unhinged and it’s a bit disturbing to see coming from a teenager.  I mean, Martina doesn’t know the drug dealers.  She is apparently not a user of cocaine.  She’s just decided that these people deserve to be taken down by her.  One gets the feeling that Martina is going to grow up to be a member of the secret police.

Martina’s investigation leads her to a suburban couple who capture her and make plans to eventually kill her.  Fortunately, Martina’s best friend is Joe Casper (Sean Roberge) and he is able to enlist his mentor, T.S. Turner, to save Martina’s life.

That’s right!  Joe’s back.  He was a semi-regular during the second season, appearing in the opening credits even though he rarely got to do anything on the show.  Still, the return of Joe would, in theory, be the perfect opportunity for the show to explain what happened to Amy.  Amy and Joe were close, after all. It seems like it would be natural for Joe and Turner to say something about missing Amy and perhaps provide us with a clue as to why Amy has been replaced by Terri.

However, that doesn’t happen.  In fact, Turner acts as if he barely knows Joe, despite the fact that he practically adopted him during the second season.  “Why are you kids always here?” he growls when he sees Joe and Martina in Decker’s gym.  And seriously, why is everyone always in Decker’s gym?  The place is a dump!  And is there no one at the gym who could tell T.S. that the hot pink bodysuit that he wears while boxing looks kind of silly?

Anyway, T.S. goes down to the suburbs and saves Martina.  As usual, it doesn’t take much effort because the drug dealers are all kind of wimpy whereas T.S. Turner is Mr. T.  It was only as things ended that I realized that Terri didn’t even appear in this episode.  With Amy gone and Terri not being all the important, T and T is feeling more and more like T.

This episode was pretty dumb but I did appreciate that the drug dealers were essentially just two suburbanites who had no idea what they were doing.  That was a nice twist.  But otherwise …. yeah, pretty dumb.

Television Review: Chaser (dir by Daniel Roemer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Over the course of 8 episodes, Chaser tells the story of Eddi Sebastian (Russ Russo).

Eddi is a film editor, someone who spends almost all of time looking over different takes of different scenes and trying to arrange them into the perfect story.  Eddi is also shy, awkward, and so broke that he’s about to get kicked out of his home.  He has a hopeless crush on B-actress Annabel Ruysch (Gia Bay) and he regularly finds himself being bullied by Annabel’s arrogant (and married) boyfriend, Gar Madden (Daniel de Weldon).

When Eddi’s laptop stops working, his replacement comes with a special bonus.  Eddi can now use the laptop to not only edit the movies but also to edit real life.  As he learns via the mysterious Hal, he can edit anything that happens as long as he does so within a 24-hour period.  Anything that he changes becomes his new reality but the editing must be done with a 24-hour period and the laptop must be connected to the internet.

Considering that he is lonely and broke, it is not surprising that, at first, Eddi uses the laptop to his advantage.  Soon, he is waking up next to Annabel and heading off with her to Ohio in hopes of helping her shoot a film that will get into South by Southwest.  Also in Ohio is Fran Rosemarin (Haley Noel Bedocs), a former actress who beat Annabel out for a role and then, after the film was made, abandoned Hollywood and returned to the anonymity of middle America.  While Eddi continually tries to edit his life and Annabel obsesses on what could have been, Fran seems content to plan her wedding, which is also going to be combined with a football watch party.

However, when Gar shows up in Ohio, Eddi is forced to confront the fact that editing life is not as easy (or as harmless) as he assumed.

Directed by Daniel Roemer, Chaser is an intriguingly ambitious series.  Starting out as a comedy about a nerdy editor who uses his powers to change a bad date into a good one, the series branches out to consider questions of free will, morality, destiny, and even the struggle of Middle America to survive in a changing world.  For all of Eddi’s problems, they’re nothing compared to the old man who is seen standing on the side of the road and holding a sign asking for money.  The more that Eddi edits existence, the more complicated things become.

It’s an interesting question, really.  Would you edit your life if you could?  One of the things that sets movies and television apart from real life is that, while filming, you get multiple takes.  The performers get more than one chance to deliver their lines correctly and, if someone says the wrong thing, the director can yell “cut” and call for another take.  Ideally, the editor uses the best takes.  Sometimes, the editor even combines several different takes, mixing them into something that appears to have been shot all at once as opposed to multiple times.  One could argue that the editor becomes almost God-like in their power to decide what will be seen and what will be left on the cutting room floor.  In the movies, everyone always knows the right thing to say and they always react in the most cinematic way possible.  Every failure can be edited out. That’s one reason why, especially in troubled times, people turn to the movies.  But some would argue that it’s the unexpected and the spontaneous events, the ones that we can’t control, that make life worth living.  In Chaser, Eddi gets to live the dream of every movie lover.  He gets to treat his real life as a film but, as quickly becomes apparent, there’s a difference between editing events and actually living with the end results.

As I said, it’s an intriguing story and it’s one that plays out at a brisk place over 8 episodes.  The visuals are often wonderfully surreal and the cast does a good job of bringing the multi-layered story to life.  One thing I really liked about this show is that no one was mere caricature.  The character of Fran could have easily been one-dimensional but instead, as played by Haley Noel Bedocs, she became one of the most interesting characters on the show.

Chaser is available on Amazon Prime so be sure to check it out.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.5 “The Devil and Jonathan Smith”

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 Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week …. it’s Halloween!

Episode 2.5 “The Devil and Jonathan Smith”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on October 30th, 1985)

It’s Halloween and Mark Gordon has got himself in some trouble.

Left alone while Jonathan helps a guy learn that gambling is never a good idea, Mark accidentally runs over a kid.  The child is taken to the hospital in critical condition.  Though Mark is told that the accident was not his fault, he still feels guilty and remarks to one doctor (Anthony Zerbe) that he would even give up his own soul for the child to get better.  And wouldn’t you know yet — suddenly, the child gets better!

It turns out that the doctor wasn’t a doctor at all.  He was Jabez Stone, a bookstore owner who works for the Devil (played, with two horns on his head, by Michael Berryman).  Jabez explains that unless Mark holds up his end of the bargain, the child will die.  He gives Mark a contract to sign, stating that he will give his soul to the Devil at the end of Halloween.  Without Jonathan around to advise him, Mark signs the contract.

When Jonathan does finally return from his mission, he’s not happy to hear about what Mark has done.  Jonathan explains that he can’t just order Jabez to destroy the contract.  Instead, he’s going to have to somehow convince Jabez to give him the contract.  In short, Jonathan is going to have to pull a con job.  Since he’s an angel, Jonathan is not allowed to lie or steal.  But there is a con artist named CJ Barabbas (Conrad Janis) who might be willing to help.

Or, CJ might be planning on tricking Jonathan into surrendering his own soul to Devil!  As CJ tells Jabez, he would be willing to do anything to make sure he got a cushy office job if he should happen to end up in Hell.  Is CJ planning on betraying Jonathan or is it just another part of the con?

Well, you can guess the answer.  We’re only in the second season of a five-season show and, if Jonathan lost his soul, that would make the rest of the series kind of awkward.  There’s never any doubt that CJ is playing a long con on Jabez and the Devil and it’s actually pretty easy to guess just how exactly he’s going to pull it off.  This isn’t The Sting.  It’s Highway to Heaven.

That said, this was a fun episode.  Michael Berryman and Anthony Zerbe both seemed to be having a ball playing such cartoonishly evil characters and Conrad Janis was actually rather charming in the role of CJ Barabbas.  Season 2 has gotten off to an uneven start but this episode was both humorous and, in its way, kind of touching.  Landon and French were close friends in real life and that friendship comes through as Jonathan tries to keep Mark from spending an eternity in Hell.

Next week, Jonathan teaches a bunch of factory workers a lesson about pollution!

Retro Television Review: 1775 1.1 “The Pilot”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing 1775, which aired on CBS in 1992.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, we take a trip into the past.  Welcome to 1775!

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by David Trainer, originally aired on September 5th, 1992)

The year is 1775 and the streets of Philadelphia are awash in rumors of war and revolution.  While some prepare for war and others continue to declare their loyalty to the British Empire, Jeremy (Ryan O’Neal) and Annabelle Proctor (Lesley-Anne Down) just try to run their inn and find suitable husbands for their three daughters.  The youngest daughter (Danielle Harris, of Halloween fame) wants a horse because all of her friends have a horse.  She also wants to run off with a patriot and is offended when the pro-British Governor Massengill (Jeffrey Tambor) stops by the inn.

The Proctors know that one way to marry off their daughters would be to have them attend a fancy ball.  Unfortunately, that would require paying money that they don’t have.  Jeremy may have to ask his smug brother-in-law for cash.  His brother-in-law’s name?  George Washington.  Who plays George Washington?  Somewhat inevitably, Adam West.

Now, I know Adam West playing a smug and superficial George Washington might sound like a lot of fun but West only shows up for one scene and it’s a short one at that.  And he really doesn’t get any fun lines or really any opportunity to do any of his trademark Westing.  It’s a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Actually, the entire show feels like a wasted opportunity.  Reportedly, 1775 was an attempt to do a Blackadder for America but the pilot lacks all of Blackadder’s lacerating wit.  Instead of poking fun at American history and traditions in the way that Blackadder did to the Brits, 1775 is just a typically lame family sitcom that happens to take place in 1775.  The youngest daughter wants a horse …. BECAUSE IT’S 1775!  If it was the modern era, she would want a car.  That’s the entire joke.

As for the show’s cast, Lesley-Anne Down delivers a few snarky put-downs with elan but Ryan O’Neal appears to be lost in the main role.  Have you seen that famous clip of Ryan O’Neal saying, “Oh man, oh God,” over and over again?  Well, that’s the level of his performance here.  O’Neal sleepwalks through the show, delivering his lines in the weary voice of someone who needs the paycheck but otherwise could hardly care less.  When he gets exasperated with his daughters, he sounds numbly homicidal.  It’s not a pleasant performance and it features none of the fierce intelligence that Rowan Atkinson brought to countless incarnations of Edmund Blackadder.

Not surprisingly, only one episode of the show aired before it was canceled.  The series didn’t even reach the start of the Second Continental Congress but that’s okay.  We all know how that went.