For our final episode of Fear Itself, we have Echoes. In this episode, a man discover that he was a killer in a previous life. Director Rupert Wainwright also directed the remake of The Fog. Does anyone remember that remake?
Though this episode was meant to air in 2008, the show went on hiatus and was then cancelled before it could air. It was finally released in 2009, as a part of the Fear Itself box set.
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, Julie returns.
Episode 2.2 “Blast From The Past”
(Dir by Eugene Corr, originally aired on September 29th, 1987)
Torello’s ex-wife, Julie (Darlanne Fluegel), is in Las Vegas with her new husband, Dr. John Newhouse (David Soul). While Julie waits outside, John steps into a bank to withdraw some money. He ends up walking straight into a bank robbery. When one of the four robbers is shot and wounded by a security guard, Newhouse tries to stanch the young criminal’s bleeding. Newhouse explains that he’s a doctor. The leader of the gang, Smilin’ Jack (James Remar), took a bullet to the hand during the robbery, so he abducts Newhouse so that he can take care of both his hand and the other robber.
Newhouse is held prisoner in a trailer park in the middle of the desert. Needing to launder the stolen money, Smilin’ Jack calls his old friend, Frank Holman. Holman, who has moved on from his singing career and now wants to shoot stag films, comes out to the trailer park. He brings his movie camera. Soon, the trailer park is full of aspiring actresses.
Meanwhile, Julie goes to Torello and asks for his help. Torello puts the investigation into Las Vegas organized crime on hold so that he can find Dr. Newhouse. The other members of the Task Force have no problem with this because they all worship the ground that Torello walks on. And, of course, Torello ends up sleeping with Julie before eventually tracking down Smilin’ Jack and rescuing Dr. Newhouse.
This episode was pretty boring. Holman trying to become a filmmaker provided some amusing moments, but otherwise this was a fairly standard crime melodrama. James Remar brought a certain demented energy to the character of Smilin’ Jack, but the character was still obviously just a one-off villain from the minute he first appeared.
This was the second episode to not feature Luca and Pauli, both of whom are presumed dead despite the fact that Tony Denison and John Santucci are still listed in the opening credits. Crime Story’s narrative momentum really slows down when it’s just Torello’s story. He needs a worthy adversary and, without Luca around, he doesn’t have one.
Hopefully, next week’s episode will be a bit more interesting.
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: The Next Generation, which aired from 2001 to 2015! The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi.
This week, Degrassi goes there!
Episode 3.14 “Accidents Will Happen: Part One”
(Dir by Eleanore Lindo, originally aired on January 26th, 2004)
Jimmy, Spinner, and JT are planning on going to Buffalo so that they can see DJ Mad Bullets. Toby wants to come as well but Jimmy’s no longer talking to Toby. The official reason is because Toby’s stepsister, Ashley, broke Jimmy’s heart. Another reason is that Toby keeps saying things like, “What up, dawg?” whenever he sees Jimmy.
When Toby overhears Jimmy saying that he won’t get to go to the concert if he doesn’t pass his Algebra midterm, Toby offers to hack into the school’s system and change Jimmy’s grade. Jimmy says that he would be willing to take Toby to the concert in return. Toby attempts to hack the system from his laptop but he accidentally gives Jimmy a grade of 8,888 instead of 88. Toby’s laptop then dies. Jimmy insists that Toby try again from the computer lab’s main console. Of course, Mr. Raditch just happens to step into the lab and sees what Toby is doing. Jimmy and Toby both get Saturday detention. Jimmy tells Toby that, “You’re a fake rap fan. You’re a fake computer hacker. You’re just a fake.” OUCH! Painful …. but probably deserved.
Meanwhile, several students are sick with the stomach flu but that’s not why Manny runs from Ms. Kwan’s classroom so that she can throw up in the girls restroom. Manny has also been in training for an upcoming gymnastics meet but that’s not why her period is several weeks late. Manny asks Paige how she would know if someone used a condom. I’ll admit that I always yell, “OH MY GOD!” whenever I hear Manny ask that question but look at it from Manny’s point of view. She was raised in an extremely traditional household. She was apparently very sheltered. It’s totally believable that no one in her family ever talked to her about sex. Craig was her first and, when Manny eventually asks him point blank if he used a condom, Craig says that he assumed she was on the pill. OH MY GOD! I just yelled it again.
After talking to Spike about what it was like when Spike got pregnant as a teenager, Manny finally takes a pregnancy test and gets a positive result. Manny is scared. Craig is overjoyed. The guy who can’t even handle putting on a condom just can’t wait to be a father!
More than anything, this episode is about the importance of sex education. Both Manny and Craig are about to deal with something that neither knows nothing about. Ironically enough, this episode did not air in America until 2006, a full two years after it aired in Canada. It was considered to be too controversial for America. In America, the people who actually needed to see this episode were not allowed to.
This is a two-parter. We’ll deal with the second part next week!
In this episode of Fear Itself, a dead teenage girl wants her friends to help her get vengeance on her murderer. This episode may be called “The Spirit Box” but it’s better known as “The One With Anna Kendrick.”
This episode was meant to air in 2008 but Fear Itself went on hiatus and was cancelled before it happened. The Spirit Box was later included when Fear Itself was released on DVD.
It was 63 years ago today that America watched as William Shatner played a nervous man on an airplane who looked out the window and saw something on the wing!
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet was the fifth episode of the fifth season of The Twilight Zone. Written by Richard Matheson and directed by Richard Donner, it starred William Shatner as Robert Wilson, a man who had just been released from sanitarium and who was taking a flight with his wife (Christine White). When he spotted a gremlin (Nick Cravat) on the wing, he couldn’t get anyone to believe him until, finally, he was forced to take an extreme action to save all of the other passengers. I remember the first time I saw this, as a kid, I was actually relieved when Rod Serling told me that, even though everyone on the plane thought Robert was crazy, they would eventually find evidence that there had been a gremlin. That’s how good a job Matheson, Donner, and Shatner did with this show. If Robert hadn’t been exonerated, viewers would never have never recovered.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet was one of television’s best scary programs and it aired 63 years ago tonight, on October 11th, 1963.
Previous Moments In Television History:
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, Pembleton, Lewis, Bayliss, and (ugh) Flasone investigate a shooting at a Vietnamese restaurant.
Episode 6.7 “Saigon Rose”
(Dir by Nick Gomez, originally aired on November 21st, 1997)
There’s an incredibly dumb moment in this week’s episode of Homicide. In an otherwise deserted hallway, Flasone confronts Kellerman with his suspicion that Kellerman executed Luther Mahoney and now, as a result, innocent people have been killed due to Georgia Rae Mahoney’s vendetta. (As if Georgia Rae wouldn’t have launched a vendetta if the killing hadn’t been an execution….) Kellerman and Falsone have a scuffle in the hallway and they both end up pulling their guns and having a brief, John Woo-style stand-off. When another cop comes walking down the hallway, they reholster their weapons.
It’s an idiotic moment that should have had no place on Homicide. It also gets at what is so annoying about Falsone. Why is Falsone investigating this? No one has asked him to investigate it. No one else seems to care about whether or not Kellerman murdered Luther. Most would probably say that Luther got what he deserved. But Falsone is on a crusade and the show seems to think that it makes him a hero, as opposed to a rat.
While Kellerman and Falsone are threatening to kill each other, Pembleton, Lewis, and Bayliss are investigating a shooting at a Vietnamese restaurant. Almost everyone who worked at the restaurant — including an off-duty cop — is found dead. The only survivors are two teenagers who hid in the kitchen. When interrogated by Pembleton and Lewis, they reveal that one of the shooters was a local cop named Toinette Perry (Camille McCurty Ali).
Toinette was hired as a cop despite having a history of mental instability. Her father had a friend at city hall and pulled some strings. Her father subsequently disappeared. Pembleton and Lewis think that Toinette recruited her cousin, Curtis (Dion Graham), to commit the robbery with her. Bayliss and Falsone are sent to arrest Curtis, which just proves that you can’t get away from Falsone on this show. He has to be involved in everything.
This episode wasn’t particularly complex. The mystery was easily solved and, while the episode did hint that the off-duty cop resented Toinette for being a “diversity hire,” it didn’t really pursue that angle with any real depth. That’s not necessarily a complaint. Homicide is at its best when its just about the detectives doing their jobs. Camille McCurty Ali gave a chilling performance as the sociopathic Toinette.
Meanwhile, Laura Ballard was rushed to the hospital after a night eating crabs with Gharty. (My boyfriend assures me that this is a Baltimore thing.) It turns out that Laura has an allergy to shellfish. Gharty is horrified at the thought of living in Baltimore and not being able to eat crabs. It was a cute storyline, largely due to Peter Gerety’s performance as Gharty.
This was not a bad episode but Falsone needs to leave Kellerman alone!
Seriously.
If I had to choose two words to describe Mike Flanagan’s “reimagining” of Carrie, they would probably be “fan fiction.”
In fact, it’s sometimes humorous just how obviously this miniseries is a work of fan fiction. Carrie White (blandly played by Summer Howell) may be a bullied and sheltered girl with telekinetic powers, but now she has a best friend, Emaline (an equally bland Thalia Dudek, who looks less like a 2026 teenager and more like the bassist in a 1990s riot grrrl band), who also has a power and always has the best advice and the snarkiest comebacks! What would Carrie do without her best friend Emaline? And while Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan) is still present as an overprotective and paranoid force in Carrie’s life, there’s now another maternal figure named Adelaide (Kate Siegel) who exists to talk about how those with secret powers are always being held down by a society that’s just not capable of accepting how important they are. Adelaide opens each episode with a monologue that feels like it was written by a 2017 college freshman who has just watched Linda Sarsour on YouTube. Watching the miniseries, one gets the feeling that Flanagan and his writers really wanted to make a show called Emaline and Adelaide and decided to graft them onto Carrie.
Ever since this miniseries was announced, there’s been a lot of talk about how Flanagan has updated the story. In this case, that means there’s an emphasis on phones and social media, as if teenagers couldn’t find a way to hurt each other even before technology caught up with them. In fact, social media is pretty much to blame for everything that happened. The audience is meant to violently roll their eyes at Margaret White for believing in conspiracy theories and religion while, at the same time, accepting a portrayal of the dangers of social media that makes Aaron Sorkin look even-handed and calm. One gets the feeling that if this show had been made just a few years earlier, it would have found a way to blame Margaret White and Chris Hargensen for the January 6th riots. There is a riot in the sixth episode, but it just involves all of the students doing a massive walkout to protest Chris Hargensen’s secret Instagram account. “Death to Hargensen!” the students chant, and it briefly seems like maybe Flanagan is going to make a bigger point about how the bullies can become the bullied, but ultimately, this is too much of a work of fan fiction to delve too deeply into anything that complex. It’s also too much of a work of the streaming era to introduce an idea that can’t be neatly summed up in 15 seconds.
Yes, this is a new version of Carrie. If King’s novel and De Palma’s film gave us a Carrie White who was never happy until that one prom night and who lashed out after that happiness was stolen from her, the Mike Flanagan miniseries gives us a Carrie who becomes the most popular girl in school even before prom night. No longer does Tommy (Joel Oulette) ask Carrie to prom as a favor to his guilt-ridden girlfriend, Sue Snell (Siena Agudong). Instead, he asks Carrie as a friend. Carrie’s no longer sheltered and shy. Instead, she’s somewhat smug and annoying. She sneaks out of the house many times before prom night. She goes to a party. She goes to the junkyard and curses like a sailor while showing off her powers. Her best friend Emaline is impressed. What would Carrie do without her best friend, Emaline? Of course, by changing all of this, Flanagan robs the story of all of its emotional power. This is probably the first version of Carrie where I’ve actually found myself getting annoyed with Carrie as a character. Towards the end of the miniseries, she just becomes so smug and self-righteous, like the girl at school who used to sweetly pull you aside to tell you that your skirt was too short. This is a version of the story that lets Carrie off the hook. Emaline is the one who suggests that she use her powers to get revenge. Adelaide and her dumbass cult are the ones who accidentally set fire to the school. Carrie dances in the street with Emaline and, for a few seconds, you actually find yourself wishing for the calming hand of Ryan Murphy.
Yes, I know that Stephen King has endorsed Mike Flanagan’s changes. That doesn’t mean that I have to. The fact of the matter is that Stephen King has consistently shown that he will endorse just about anything, and it’s also been a while since King has written anything that can match the power of his earlier work. There’s a world of difference between the youngish and struggling writer who originally wrote Carrie and the wealthy boomer who is now probably better known for his angry tweets than his more recent literary output. As well, it’s obvious that King likes Flanagan. Flanagan is the ultimate fan. And yet, considering that Flanagan’s best film, Hush, was also his simplest, one can’t help but feel that Flanagan would do well to stop adapting his heroes and maybe just try to focus on creating unapologetic suspense.
It’s the curse of elevated horror. Right now, the critics who hate entertaining horror love slow-moving elevated horror. They go on and on about the subtext, as if there wasn’t subtext to be found in the horror movies that were made in the past. The truth of the matter is that the subtext is usually the least interesting thing about these films and series. Making a film or a show that is critical of capitalism and religion is hardly the radical act that the critics seem to think it is. There’s nothing particularly interesting or special to be found between the lines when it comes to this version of Carrie. Indeed, for all the time and effort that the series puts into villainizing Margaret White and Chris Hargensen, they’re ultimately the most interesting characters because Samantha Sloyan and Alison Thornton are the only two performers who are allowed to break free from the show’s rigid ideological structure. (Samantha Sloyan especially deserves a lot of credit for finding a hint of reality in her portrayal of Margaret.) Chris and Margaret are compelling because they’re the only characters who don’t just parrot the accepted lines and the accepted thinking. They’re the only characters who seem to have a life and an outlook that was formed by something other than the demands of the show. We’re meant to shake our heads when Margaret becomes an online celebrity with a podcast, but instead, we’re interested and almost happy for her because Margaret is actually doing something unexpected and making an effort to take actual control of her life. It’s hard not to feel that this version of Margaret White deserved a better ending than what the show gave her. In the end, Margaret feels less like a villain and more like a victim of the show’s writers and their own feelings about religion and politics. (One wonders if the writers realize that their show ultimately makes the case that all of the tragedy could have been avoided if the government had simply stayed out of it and just allowed Margaret to continue to homeschool her daughter.) If previous versions of Carrie seemed to be designed to appeal to shy outsiders, this version of Carrie is designed to compliment self-styled victims who don’t have the self-awareness necessary to realize that they are now the bullies.
In the end, Carrie feels like a forgotten Showtime series from 2018 and, if it had been made by anyone other than Mike Flanagan, no one would care.
Previous Icarus Files:
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 can be purchased on Prime!
This week, Zack loses his favorite duck.
Episode 3.9 “Pipe Dreams”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on October 26th, 1991)
Oil’s been discovered on Bayside’s football field! Smarmy Dan Grayson (Gary Lahti) offers Bayside a lot of money for the right to drill on the field. Almost all of the students fantasize about going to rich school despite the fact that, with the exception of Kelly, it’s been established that they’re all already rich and that Bayside has been a rich school for a while. I’m not sure why the students think that they would be getting any of the money. And why is it up to the principal to decide whether or not to allow drilling. It seems like that should be up to the county supervisors.
But what about the never before mentioned pond behind the football field!? When the inevitable oil spill happens, Zack’s favorite duck Becky is killed. “She’s where the oil can’t hurt her anymore,” Screech says. It looks like it’s time for Zack to crash Mr. Grayson’s presentation and spray oil on him. “I’m covered in oil!” Mr. Grayson shouts. It’s easy to make your point when your opponent is cartoonishly evil.
You probably already guessed that this is not my favorite episode. It’s just so cartoonishly heavy-handed and the idea that Zack’s simplistic presentation was enough to convince everyone not to drill for oil was borderline insulting. If there’s oil underneath the football field and money to be made by drilling for it, someone’s going to do it. No one is going to care whether Zack approves or not.
My favorite moment is when Slater calls out Jessie for wearing clothing and accessories that aren’t environmentally-friendly. Seriously, Jessie is always a little bit too self-righteous for me. Personally, I would have agreed to let the company drill for the oil but only after they found a new pond for all of the turtles and ducks.
Poor Becky.
The Amazing Race (Wednesday Night, CBS)
I wrote about the Amazing Race here.
Austin City Limits (PBS)
On Friday night, I watched a performance by Sienna Spiro. She was okay. I prefer EDM but that’s not the Austin City Limits way.
Carrie (Prime)
I started watching Mike Flanagan’s Carrie on Friday. I’ve got two more episodes to go so I’ll probably review it tomorrow. I’ll hold off on giving my thoughts until then.
Fear Itself (YouTube)
I’ve been watching and posting episodes of Fear Itself all week.
Kitchen Nightmares (Tubi)
I watched four episodes on Wednesday. Two of the episodes deal with the Main Street Bistro and its arrogant owner. One episode was about Yanni’s, a Greek restaurant owned by a loud family. The final episode was the classic episode that featured Gordon’s visit to Amy’s Baking Company in Scotsdale, Arizona. It’s hard to believe that episode is now 13 years old.
The Steve Wilkos Show (Tubi)
I watched two episodes on Tuesday. Both dealt with bad and abusive parents. Steve got mad and yelled a lot but he was totally justified in doing so. Some people really don’t deserve to be parents.
Survivor (Wednesday Night, CBS)
Tonight’s episode of Fear Itself features Ethan Embry as Chance Miller, whose run of bad luck gets even worse once he finds himself having to deal with an evil doppelganger of himself. This psychological thriller was directed by noir specialist, John Dahl.
This was one of the episodes of Fear Itself that was filmed in 2008 but wasn’t aired before the show went on hiatus. It was included when the show was released on DVD in 2009.
