Category Archives: TV

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 4.13 “The Man From Yesterday/World’s Most Desirable Woman”

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 the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion.

This week, the Island is full of damn liars.

Episode 4.13 “The Man From Yesterday/World’s Most Desirable Woman”

(Dir by Robert C. Thompson, originally aired on January 31st, 1981)

Bill Keating (Martin Milner) is a photojournalist who has reported from some of the most war-torn areas of the world.  He has spent years searching for a notorious mercenary named Calvin Doyle (Dennis Cole) and he believes that he has finally tracked Doyle down to Fantasy Island.  Bill swears to Mr. Roarke that his fantasy is to only do an interview with Doyle.

Of course, Bill’s lying.  Once Bill tracks down Doyle and discovers that Doyle has not only renounced his previous ways but is also the foster father of three native children, Bill reveals that his true fantasy is to shoot Doyle and get revenge for all the terrible things that Doyle did during his former life.

Marsha (Barbi Benton) is a frumpy, 39 year-old woman who says that she just wants to know what it’s like to be young and beautiful for a weekend.  Maybe she could even enter and win The World’s Most Desirable Woman pageant that’s being held on Fantasy Island.  Mr. Roarke and Tattoo take Marsha to the Island’s fountain of youth.  Marsha enters the fountain as a 39 year-old wearing a modest one-piece bathing suit.  She steps out of the fountain as a 21 year-old wearing a bikini.

Of course, Marsha isn’t being totally honest about her motives.  She is married to Hal Garnett (Bert Convy), the owner of Erotic Magazine and the sponsor of the pageant!  Her fantasy is to get revenge on Hal for all the years in which he’s neglected her for the younger women who appear in his magazine.

Two fantasies, two liars.  Mr. Roarke is fairly busy this week, showing up frequently in both fantasies (and even singing at the Most Desirable Woman pageant).  Mr. Roarke warns Marsha that she is getting too caught up in her newdound beauty.  Mr. Roarke also warns Calvin that Bill Keating wants to kill him.  Roarke allows Keating to take his shot at Calvin but he also arranges for the confrontation to happen on a rickety bridge so that the wounded Calvin can escape into the water below.  It’s interesting to see Roarke getting involved for once and Ricardo Montalban knew exactly how to deliver the character’s occasionally ominous lines.  Still, you have to wonder why he let these two liars on the Island on the first place.  Usually, he has pretty firm rules about stuff like this.  What if the bridge hadn’t broken and Doyle had died?  Mr. Roarke would look pretty dumb.

Fortunately, it all works out.  Having faked his own death, Doyle is able to leave the Island with his children.  And Marsha is informed that she will not go back to being 39 at the end of the weekend but will instead remain 21 and just age naturally.  Hal freaks out, realizing that men are going to be chasing his wife.  Roarke tells him that he better be good to her.

(Of course, Tattoo later takes a picture of Marsha and is shocked to see that picture is of the old Marsha, suggesting that the young Marsha is just an illusion that only Marsha, Hal, and I guess Tattoo can see.  It’s weird.)

Barbi Benton and Dennis Cole were regular guests to Fantasy Island and they both do well with their roles.  All of the lying felt a bit out-of-place for this show but at least Roarke got to be an active force in both fantasies.  All in all, this was a good trip to the Island.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.14 “Rustling”

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 Freevee!

This week, CHiPs makes me cry!

Episode 1.14 “Rustling”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on January 12th, 1978)

This week’s episode of CHiPs featured a scene that brought tears to my mismatched eyes.

A drunk driver (played by G.W. Bailey) swerves across the highway and causes another car to flip over.  While Ponch chases after the driver, Baker goes to investigate the crash.  He discovers that the car’s driver is a 17 year-old girl named Susie (Pamelyn Ferdin) and she has been pinned under the wreckage.  He manages to free her and carry her away from the car before it explodes.  YAY!  Another life saved by Jon Baker, right?

That’s when Susie says that she can’t feel her legs.

That scene got to me.  It was far more well-acted than anything that I think one would normally expect to find on a episode of CHiPs, with both Ferdin and Larry Wilcox bringing a lot of emotional sincerity to their roles.  Susie realizes that she may never walk again.  Baker realizes that, just because he saved her from the car, he can’t save Susie from the other consequences of the accident.  I wanted to cry.  Actually, I did cry.

Now, I should admit that I’m recovering from a sprained ankle and I was doing my ankle exercises while watching this scene.  So, not only did I already have tears in my eyes (seriously, some of those exercises hurt!) but I was also feeling pretty emotional.  But still, even if I was just watching this scene while sitting on a couch, I think it would have had the same effect on me.

Of course, for the record, Ponch does capture the drunk driver (and the driver starts to sob when he realizes what he has done).  And, by the end of the episode, Baker is informed that Susie is going to be okay.  I was happy about that.

Excuse me, I’m starting to cry again….

Okay, believe it or not, that was only a small part of the episode.  The main storyline featured the great L.Q. Jones as a cattle rustler who, when he’s not driving his truck full of stolen cattle, rides a motorcycle.  Fortunately, after a lengthy chase, Baker and Ponch are able to capture him and his accomplice (Paul Tuerpe).  It was a pretty simple story but, at the same time, L.Q. Jones was one of those brilliant character actors who make even the most mundane of characters interesting.

Also, over the course of the episode, Ponch and Baker deal with an irate driver (Mill Watson) who claims that he was only speeding because his gear shift failed.  In court, Ponch is able to prove that the gear shift didn’t break by pointing out that the brake lights would have come on in that case.  (“Your honor,” the defense attorney says, “my client would like to change his plea to guilty.”)  Ponch and Baker also stop a magician and his assistant and are so fascinated by the magician’s tricks that they nearly forget to write his assistant a ticket.

Finally, Ponch arranges for everyone to meet at Baker’s apartment to throw him a surprise birthday party.  Whoops!  Baker’s birthday isn’t for another three months.  Ponch looked at Baker’s personnel file and misread his employment number as being his birthdate.  Oh, Ponch!  Still, the party is a success.  Getraer shows up with zucchini.  The magician shows up and performs a trick that involves tossing milk on Ponch and Baker.  What?  Well, whatever.

What’s important is that one scene that brought tears my eyes.  The rest of the episode may have been generic but that one scene was beautifully done and I’ll never forget it.

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 2.1 and 2.2 “The Prodigal Son”

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 Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, the second season with a two-hour long premiere!  Crockett and Tubbs are going to New York!

Episode 2.1 and 2.2 “The Prodigal Son”

(Dir by Paul Michael Glaser, originally aired on September 27th, 1985)

The second season premiere of Miami Vice opens with a series of set pieces.

In Panama, Crockett and Tubbs visit a secret military base in the jungle and are disgusted to learn how the Panamanian military gets information about drug smugglers.  Tubbs and Crockett find one horribly tortured man in a tent.  Tubbs gives him a drink of water and gets what information he can from the man.  Crockett and Tubbs leave the tent.  A gunshot rings out as the involuntary informant is executed.  When the shot rings out, both Crockett and Tubbs turn back to the tent in slow motion, stunned by the brutality of their allies in the Drug War.  Indeed, it’s hard not to compare the scene to the famous photograph of a South Vietnamese general executing a communist during the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam analogy continues with the next scene.  In the Everglades, Crockett, Tubbs, and the entire Vice Squad work with the DEA to ambush the Revilla cousins as they bring drugs into the U.S.  Sitting in the swamp, Crockett compares the experience to Vietnam, suggesting that the war on the drugs is just as futile and as costly.  And indeed, it’s hard not to notice that every drug dealer that Crockett and Tubbs has taken down over the course of this show has immediately been replaced by another.  The Revillas are just another in a long line of people getting rich off of other people’s addictions.

After the bust goes down, Crockett and Tubbs arrives at a celebratory party, just to discover that almost of all of the undercover DEA agents have been murdered and Gina has been seriously wounded.  There is something very haunting about this scene, with Crockett and Tubbs rushing through a penthouse and seeing a dead body in almost every room.

At a meeting in a stark office, the head DEA agent explains that his agency has been compromised and all of his undercover agents have been unmasked.  Someone has to go to New York and work undercover to take down the Revillas but it can’t be any of his people.  Since the Revillas are smuggling their stuff in through Miami, Miami Vice has jurisdiction.  Paging Crockett and Tubbs!

Working undercover as Burnett and Cooper, Crockett and Tubbs visit a low-level drug dealer (played by Gene Simmons) who lives on a yacht and who gives them the name of a connection in New York City.

From there, Miami Vice moves to New York City, where Crockett and Tubbs meet a low-level criminal named Jimmy Borges (played by an almost impossibly young Penn Jillette) and they try to infiltrate the Revilla organization.  Along the way, Tubbs meets up with Valerie (Pam Grier) and discovers that she has apparently lost herself working undercover.  Meanwhile, Crockett has a brief — and kind of weird — romance with a photographer named Margaret (Susan Hess).

(“I like guns,” she says when Crockett demands to know why she stole his.)

With Crockett and Tubbs leaving Miami for New York in order to get revenge for a colleague who was wounded during an operation, The Prodigal Son almost feels like the pilot in reverse.  Also, much like the pilot, the exact details of The Prodigal Son‘s story are often less important than how the story is told.  This episode is full of moody shots of our heroes walking through New York while songs like You Belong To The City play on the soundtrack.  (There’s also a song from Phil Collins, undoubtedly included to bring back memories of the In The Air Tonight scene from the pilot.)  It’s all very entertaining to watch, even if the story itself doesn’t always make total sense.  Indeed, you really do have to wonder how all of these criminals keep falling for Sonny’s undercover identity as Sonny Burnett.  You would think that someone would eventually notice that anyone who buys from Sonny Burnett seems to get busted the very next day.

Stylish as the storytelling may be, this episode actually does have something on its mind.  Those lines comparing the War on Drugs to the Vietnam Conflict was not just throwaways.  Towards the end of the episode, Crockett and Tubbs follow a lead to the offices of J.J. Johnston (Julian Beck, the ghost preacher from Poltergeist II).  The skeletal Johnston is an investor of some sort.  He has no problem admitting that he’s involved in the drug trade, presumably because he knows that there’s nothing Crockett and Tubbs can do to touch him.  Upon meeting the two cops, he immediately tells them exactly how much money they have in their checking accounts.  He points out that they’re poor and they’re fighting a losing war whereas he’s rich and he’s making money off of a losing war.  Beck gives a wonderfully smug performance as Johnston and it should be noted that, of all of the episode’s villains, he’s the only one who is not brought to any sort of justice.  Val almost loses herself.  Tubbs and Crockett don’t even get a thank you for their hard work.  The somewhat sympathetic Jimmy Borges ends up dead while the Revillas were undoubtedly been replaced by even more viscous dealers.  Meanwhile, J.J. Johnston relaxes in his office and counts his money.  This is the No Country For Old Men of Miami Vice episodes.

This episode is also full of familiar faces.  Charles S. Dutton, Kevin Anderson, Anthony Heald, Miguel Pinero, James Russo, Bill Smtirovich, Zoe Tamerlis, Paul Calderon, and Louis Guzman, they all show up in small roles and add to show’s rather surreal atmosphere.  This is Miami Vice at its most dream-like, full of people you think you might know despite the fact that they’re doing things of which you don’t want to be a part.

As for the title, The Prodigal Son is Tubbs and he is tempted to stay in New York City.  But, in the end, he joins Crockett on that flight back to Miami.  It’s his home.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi Junior High 2.6 “Fight!”

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!

This week, we meet Dwayne Myers!

Episode 2.6 “Fight!”

(Dir by Mike Douglas, originally aired on February 8th, 1988)

After appearing in the background over the past few episodes, Dwayne Myers (Darrin Brown) takes center stage in this episode.

At first glance, Dwayne is the school bully.  He’s bigger than everyone else.  He appears to be in a permanently bad mood.  He deliberately knocks Joey off of his skateboard and then laughs about it.  When he later overhears Joey calling him a “dozer,” (which is seriously one of the most Canadian words that I’ve ever heard in my life), Dwayne tells Joey that he’s going to beat him up after school.

And yet, Dwayne is not all bad.  When Scooter (Christopher Charlesworth), a student who is younger and smaller than everyone else, needs help opening his locker, Dwayne is the one who yanks off the lock.  Later, when Scooter can’t reach his bag of chips (because some other bully put it on top of a high shelf), Dwayne lifts Scooter up so that Scooter can get them.  Dwayne seems to sincerely like Scooter, perhaps  because Scooter is the only person at the school to not show any fear of him.

Scooter, however, is shocked to hear that Dwayne is going to beat up Joey because Joey, like Scooter, is considerably smaller than Dwayne.  When Scooter asks Dwayne why he’s going to beat up Joey, Dwayne shrugs and says, “It’ll feel good.”

And Dwayne proceeds to do just what he said he would do.  Joey doesn’t attempt to run away from the fight and that wins him a measure of respect from the other students.  But, in the end, he still gets thoroughly beaten up.  On the plus side, it wins him some sympathy from Liz and it also wins him a new friend when Scooter decides that he would rather hang out with Joey than Dwayne.

Speaking of hanging out with each other, Stephanie is still obsessed with getting Simon to notice her and Simon is still only interested in Alexa.  Even when Stephanie pretends to sprain her ankle, Simon barely notices.  (Ankle sprains are no joke, Stephanie!  Believe klutzy little me, I know.)  Stephanie finally asks Simon to go to the fight with her and Simon says sure.  Stephanie is overjoyed until Simon brings Alexa with him as well.  Amazingly, Simon and Alexa are both totally clueless as to what Stephanie is doing.  Then again, I think we’ve all known at least one couple like Simon and Alexa, who are so perfect for each other and so thoroughly vapid in their personalities that you just know they’re never going to have any disagreements at all and that the real world is never going to invade their fantasy.

This was a good episode, largely due to Darrin Brown’s multi-layered performance as Dwayne.  While this is Dwayne’s only big Junior High episode, he is destined become one of show’s most ground-breaking characters once the action moves into high school.

Retro Television Review: Pigs vs. Freaks (dir by Dick Lowry)

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 1984’s Pigs vs. Freaks!  It  can be viewed on YouTube.

In the late 1960s, a small town is divided between the conservative older generation and their rebellious hippie children.  Former high school football star Doug Zimmer (Patrick Swayze) has just returned from fighting in Vietnam and, unlike many of his former classmates, he is firmly on the side of the establishment.  He wears his hair short.  He has a job as a cop.  He tries to keep his younger sister, Janice (Penny Peyser), from hanging out with hippies like his former best friend, Neal (Grant Goodeve).

Neal is also the son of the local police chief, Frank Brockmeyer (Eugene Roche).  Though Frank and Neal have different political beliefs and Frank is always telling Neal to get a haircut, they still have a respectful relationship.  When Neal complains that cops like Doug and his partner, Sgt. Cheever (Brian Dennehy), are always harassing the hippies who want to play football in park, Frank suggests a football game between the hippies and the police.  When Neal agrees, the game becomes known as “Pigs vs. Freaks.”

While Frank coaches the Pigs and signs a few former athlete as police reservists, Neal recruits his former little league coach, a bearded guru who now goes by the name of Rambaba Organimus (Tony Randall) to serve as the Freak’s coach.  He also places a call to a former football star named Mickey South (Adam Baldwin) and talks him into coming down from Canada to play in the game.  Of course, Mickey is wanted by the FBI for dodging the draft so it might not seem like a great idea for him to risk federal prison for an exhibition football game but no matter!  Who cares that there are now two federal agents watching the Freaks practice?  There’s a game to be won!

Pigs vs. Freaks is an amiable mix of comedy and drama.  Some of the comedy, like Tony Randall’s bearded guru and Stephen Furst’s perpetually frantic hippie linebacker, is a bit too broad but there’s enough moments of dramatic insight that it’s easy to overlook those flaws.  I appreciated the fact that both the Freaks and the Pigs are treated fairly, with both sides getting a chance to make a case for themselves.  When they first appear and start harassing the hippies for playing football in the park, it’s easy to dismiss both Doug and Cheever as fascists but a later scene, which is very well-played by both Brian Dennehy and Patrick Swayze, establishes them as just being two men who are confused by the direction of the world.  Swayze, in particular, gives a strong performance that reveals the vulnerability underneath Doug’s tough exterior.  As for the hippies, Mickey South is no self-righteous crusader but instead someone who feels the Vietnam War is wrong but who is also someone who both misses and loves his home country.  Adam Baldwin does a wonderful playing him and is well-matched with Grant Goodeve, who plays the most reasonable hippie that one could hope to meet.

It’s a likable film and well-intentioned, a portrait of two opposing groups brought together by the love of one game.  Some will cheer for the Pigs.  Some will cheer for the Freaks.  I cheered for both.

My 2024 Super Bowl Predictions

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

My Super Bowl prediction is that the refs are going to come hard after the 49ers and there will be a lot of shots of Taylor Swift watching from the owner’s box and cheering every Travis Kelce play.  The narrative has been set since the season began and the NFL knows how they want this story to end.

And with the ratings they’re going to get for this Super Bowl, who can blame them?

Final score:

Chiefs — 28

49ers — 14

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out! 1.17 “Banzai”

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!

This week, I finally get a chance to review the episode that I should have reviewed last week.  Nature is healing.

Episode 1.17 “Banzai”

(Dir by John Bell, originally aired on February 8th, 1986)

Mrs. Cobb (Barbara Hamilton) has decided that it would be a good idea to send someone over to Japan to study how the Japanese have become such efficient employers and employees.  That is an idea that actually isn’t bad and totally makes sense.  Give some points to the show for having a good idea for once.

However, for some reason, Mrs. Cobb wants to send over not an executive and not a store manager but an assistant store manager.  That makes no sense.  If you want to make changes, why wouldn’t you send someone over who has the authority to do so?  As usual, Mrs. Cobb wants it to be someone from Howard’s store.  The show has always implied that Mrs. Cobb is the richest woman in Canada and that she actually owns several businesses across the North American continent.  It’s odd that the only one she ever seems to care about is Howard’s store.

Assistant Store Manager Jack Christian is on vacation in Fiji so Howard has to pick a temporary replacement who can go to Japan.  Mrs. Cobb tells him to pick a woman and since Marlene has a criminal record and Jennifer is not in this episode, the job falls to Edna.

Edna goes to Japan and then returns with a lot of ideas for how to make Cobb’s better.  Cue Howard’s comic exasperation as Edna demands informality in the workplace, a lack of walls, and a mandatory exercise period.  Also cue the two Japanese workers that Edna brought back with her, who proceed to tear down the walls of Howard’s office.

Watching all of this, I had to wonder just how long Christian’s Fiji vacation lasted.  This episode seemed to take place over the course of a month, maybe even longer.  It lasted long enough for the staff to rebel against Edna and for Mrs. Cobb to change her mind about using Japanese methods in her business.  And it lasted long enough for Edna to decide that she would rather go back to being Howard’s administrative assistant.  Jack Christian did return by the end of the episode, which is good since Jeff Pustil (who played Christian) and Kathleen Laskey (who played Marlene) were the show’s two most consistent comedic performers.  (Interestingly enough, they’re married in real life.)

This was actually not a bad episode.  I always cringe a bit whenever I see any 80s or 90s sitcom attempting to deal with cultural differences, especially when the other culture is Japanese.  Just judging from a lot of the shows that I’ve seen, it would appear that many Americans (and I guess Canadians) in the 80s felt like the only way to deal with Japan’s competitive economy was to make often juvenile jokes about Japanese tourists with cameras and the poor dubbing that most Japanese films suffered on their way to American screens.  This episode of Check It Out! is actually respectful of Japanese business culture, even if the show’s message seems to be that it ultimately isn’t right for the more laid back culture of Canada.

As for what happens in next week’s episode — who knows?  We’ll find out.