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Retro Television Review: Malibu, CA 2.11 “The Best Man”

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 Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Yes, this is from the first season. I don’t care. I refuse to waste my time looking for a second season advertisement.

Where was I when the new Pope was revealed?  I was watching this stupid show.

Episode 2.11 “The Best Man”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on January 15th, 2000)

Finally, after weeks of posting apologetic notes and an imdb summaries, I have reached a second season episode of Malibu, CA that has actually been uploaded to YouTube.  In fact, it appears that most of the rest of season 2 has been uploaded so I’ll be able to do real reviews now as opposed to just snarky speculation.

Normally, I’d celebrate but this is Malibu, CA.  It is, by far, the worst show that I’ve reviewed here at the Shattered Lens.  This week’s episode was especially stupid and the only thing that’s keeping me from really getting mad about having wasted 30 minutes of my life on it is the fact that we have a new Pope and he’s American!

The plot of this week’s episode is dumber than dumb.  Murray’s best friend is marrying Lisa’s friend.  How Lisa (the character, not me!) has any friends, I’m not really sure.  She just moved to California at the start of the season, she acts like a condescending bitch to just about everyone she meets, and she’s continually talking about how better she is then everyone.  Regardless, Scott has a crush on her …. then again, Scott also treats everyone he knows like crap so maybe that explains it.  Anyway, Murray is the best man and Lisa is the maid of honor and Traycee says that means they’re destined to fall in love.  Murray decides that Lisa is his girlfriend and, for some reason, neither Scott nor Lisa can find the courage to tell Murray the truth.

Meanwhile, Jason, his father, and new lifeguard Alex (Suzanne Davis) go into the piemaking business together.  They’re using Alex’s grandmother’s recipe and everyone loves the pie!  It’s so popular that they even set up a conveyer belt in the kitchen to make boxing the pies up go quicker.  But then Jason gets distracted, the conveyer starts moving too quickly, and — hey, there’s pie everywhere!

(Hmmm…. this seems familiar….)

Uh-oh!  There’s a lawyer in the restaurant and he’s threatening to sue.  It turns out that Alex’s grandmother got her recipe from the pies that were being made by a professional bakery.  And now, Jason and his Dad are getting sued, unless they stop making and selling the pies….

Wait a minute!  SCREECH’S SPAGHETTI SAUCE!  This whole thing is just a remake of an episode of Saved By The Bell!  They didn’t even bother to come up with new ending!

Seriously, screw these lazy writers!  I don’t ask for much, especially when the show is produced by Peter Engel.  I’m certainly not expecting or demanding a hard-hitting drama or a ground-breaking comedy.  But come on — DON’T JUST PLAGAIRZINE YOURSELF, YOU MORONS!  MAKE SOME SORT OF FREAKING EFFORT!

Ugh, this show!

I didn’t care much for this episode.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.20 “Craig In Love”

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 Hulu and, for purchase, on Prime!

This week, Dr. Craig does the unthinkable …. maybe.

Episode 1.20 “Craig In Love”

(Dir by Victor Lobl, originally aired April 12, 1983)

Dr. Craig is indeed in love in this episode.  He’s totally smitten with the Hungarian Dr. Vera Anya and, when his wife Ellen (played by Bonnie Bartlett, real-life wife of William Daniels) goes out of town to visit her mother, Craig makes plans to show Dr. Anya around the town and maybe more….

Ugh.  Seriously, I don’t like the idea of Dr. Craig cheating on his wife and, though this episode leaves it ambiguous as to what actually happened, it totally appears that’s what Craig did over the weekend.  Dr. Craig is pompous and full-of-himself and rude to almost everyone he talks to but it’s always appeared that he totally loved his wife.  The whole idea of him thinking about cheating — much less actually doing it — just doesn’t seem right for his character.  And, quite frankly, Dr. Anya wasn’t really that intriguing of a character so if Craig did share more than just that passionate goodbye kiss with her …. well, I prefer to pretend this entire storyline didn’t happen.

Far more interesting was the malpractice suit brought against Dr. Chandler and Nurse Daniels.  As the hospital’s lawyer explains it, there really isn’t much of a case to be made for malpractice.  Instead, the dead man’s family is just hoping to get a quick settlement out of it.  Most doctors aren’t willing to pay the legal fees and don’t have the time to go to court.  Chandler, however, is personally offended by the suit and pledges to do whatever he has to do fight it.  Yay, Chandler!  Seriously, I hate people who try to bully people into settlements.  After my Dad died, there was this crazy woman who thought she could bully his estate into giving her half a million dollars.  Instead, she received nothing and that’s exactly what she deserved.  Both Denzel Washington and Ellen Bry gave good performances this week.  Ellen  Bry’s Nurse Daniels is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters.  She doesn’t let anyone push her around.

Speaking of pushing people around, Dr. Morrison finally got sick of Dr. White’s drug addiction and the two of them ended up having a fist fight in the men’s room.  Still, when White later crashed his girlfriend’s car and needed to be bailed out of jail, Morrison was the first person that he called.  Morrison, being a saint, got White out of jail.  White, being a jerk, barely even said thank you.  Morrison went to Westphall with his concerns about Dr. White.  Westphall responded that it wasn’t his place to give a fatherly lecture.  That’s cold, Westphall.  What about when he kills a patient because he’s high?  Will you care then?  No wonder St. Eligius is getting sued for malpractice!

Finally, Dr. Samuels had a cold so he spent the entire episode whining about it.  Seriously, Dr. Samuels is one of my least favorite characters of all time.

This episode was uneven for me.  I’m not happy about Dr. Craig being a cheater but I am happy that Dr. Chandler is standing up for himself.  Dr. White appears to be heading to a very dark place.

There’s only two episodes left in the first season so I’m assuming we’re going to get some sort of closure to at least some of these storylines.  We’ll see what happens next week!

 

So, I Watched Underdogs (2013, Dir. by Doug Dearth)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

In a rural Ohio, a working class high school football teams plays an exhibition game against the rich school on the other side of town.  The working class team is coached by Vince DeAntonio (D.B. Sweeney), a former NFL offensive coordination and the son of a coach.  Vince is a tough taskmaster who tells his players that winning is not going to easy and it’s not going to be fun but he also has the connections necessary to get Joe Namath to stumble into the locker room and give a speech to his team.  The quarterback (Charlie Carver) of the rich high school is the son of the businessman (Richard Portnow) who is planning on moving his factory down to Mexico and putting the entire town out of work.  The quarterback (Logan Huffman) of the working class high school team is the son of an inventor (Willlam Mapother) who is being sued by a corporation that wants to steal his invention.  Both of the quarterbacks like the same cheerleader (Maddie Hasson).  This game is about more than just who scores the winning touchdown.  It’s about town pride.

I love a good underdog story but Underdogs didn’t seem to know what story it wanted to tell.  It spent as much time with the inventor and his court case as it did with the football team and the whole thing ended up becoming a commercial for his product.  (The movie is based on a true story.)  When it actually did get around to the football scenes, it was all too predictable.  The team was bad and then the team was good and the entire game came down to one final throw of the football with the clock counting down.  One weird thing about the movie is that it put a lot of emphasis on Vince recruiting unlikely players to his team but once he had them on the team, we hardly ever saw them again.

At least the movie’s heart was in the right place and it didn’t turn the cheerleaders into stereotypes, like so many high school football movies do.  D.B. Sweeney was okay as the coach but I don’t know if William Mapother’s character was supposed to come across as being as strange as he did.  I’m glad the underdogs proved themselves but the movie could have been better.

Celebrate Victoria Smurfit’s birthday with a catfight!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

If a person has co-starred in a movie with Charles Bronson or Chow Yun-fat, I’m a fan of theirs for life. Back in 2003, the lovely Victoria Smurfit played a villain in Chow’s BULLETPROOF MONK. To celebrate her birthday, I’m sharing this fight scene from the film, also featuring Jaime King. Enjoy!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Review: 3/24/25 — 3/30/25

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m just going to share the movies that I watched and then get some rest.  It’s been a long week and the start of spring has also been the start of my allergy season.

Films I Watched:

  1. Bad Substitute (2024)
  2. Contract For Life (1984)
  3. Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore (1973)
  4. Evasive Action (1998)
  5. The God Committee (2021)
  6. The Gymnast (1980)
  7. Have You Ever Been Ashamed Of Your Parents (1983)
  8. I Think I’m Having A Baby (1981)
  9. Institute For Revenge (1979)
  10. Lakeview Terrace (2008)
  11. The Mama Cass Television Program (1969)
  12. My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987)
  13. Reach Me (2014)
  14. Return to Waterloo (1984)
  15. Rock: It’s Your Decision (1982)
  16. Strange Invaders (1983)
  17. Touch of Evil (1958)

Links From Last Week:

  1. Case reviewed Pulp Fiction!
  2. Arleigh shared a song of the day and scene from The Newsroom!
  3. Brad reviewed Shane and wrote about Richard Camberlain, Terence Hill, Strother Martin, and Charles Bronson: The Musical!
  4. Erin kept us updated on the Rangers!
  5. Jeff reviewed Destiny Turns On The Radio!
  6. From House M: A profile of Belle Starr!
  7. From John Reiber: The Iconic Lights Of New York’s Grand Central Station! Here’s A Video Tour!
  8. Actor Richard Chamberlain Dies At 90
  9. Actor and Stuntman Richard Norton Dies At 75

Want to check out last week?  Click here!

Pulp Fiction, (Written & Dir. Quentin Tarantino) Review by Case Wright

Posted on by casewright

“Pulp Fiction” was as peak 1990s as much as these two:

Or this Archie’s Comic live action show

While “X-Files” attracted big audiences 60-40% male and the reverse for “90210”, “Pulp Fiction” captured 1994: Jocks, Nerds, Guys, Women, Girls, Boys, Boomers, X-ers, Older Millennials, you name it – Everyone was into Pulp Fiction. Tarantino described this art as a number of cliches: the mobster attracted to the mob wife, the boxer who tricks the mobsters into giving him money and NOT throwing the fight, and the killer who finds God. The cliches dig into DNA. WHY? Because they have the same motivations as our caveman ancestors: the unobtainable mate, a sense of honor, and redemption. These themes are the basic building blocks of what make us human beings and why these stories echo through the millennia – our ancestors fears are the same as ours today. Some might claim that “Reservoir Dogs’ was better- they are incorrect– Pulp Fiction was WAY more entertaining.

Even though this was released and written in the 1990s, it had an older feel to it. First, everyone smoked indoors. I remember the 1990s, smoking was on the OUTS big time! Second, man did he like to use a certain racial slur. OOF. But then again, I’m not from Los Angeles. Maybe, it’s like Alabama there? I have no idea! I can say that the film did hold up as re-watched it today. It was still relevant and maybe that’s because it was difficult to pin down the time period; in fact, the music was mostly from the 1970s and the story time jumped- A LOT! The Miramax producer who worked on the show also jumps a lot, but mostly in the shower.

The story begins with two mobsters Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield murdering two guys to get a magical briefcase back to their boss Marsellus Wallace, which feeds into the next storyline of Butch an aging fighter who’s about to rip off the mob, which feeds into Mia Wallace – Marsellus Wallace’s wife overdosing on heroin, which feeds into Butch on a quest to retrieve his great-grandfather’s watch, which feeds into a pretty graphic man on man scene of sexual violence and revenge, which feeds into Jules finding God, which feeds into cleaning brains out of a car, and finally ending in a diner being robbed by Tim Roth. Yes, the film requires attention. It’s not “Dazed and Confused”. You gotta pay attention.

I recently watched a show with Lisa Marie that time jumped – oh no, were their Germans around who got too close at a family reunion off camera?!

I still believe this is Quentin’s Opus and you cannot convince me otherwise because it connected to everyone and launched and re-launched A LOT of careers. Pulp Fiction’s legacy was that it empowered a 1990s writers to work in humor with their grittiness like in Halloween H20, which I reviewed here

https://unobtainium13.com/2016/10/29/halloween-h20-alt-title-they-stab-baby-boomers-dont-they/
: Pulp Fiction, (Written & Dir. Quentin Tarantino) Review by Case Wright

I recommend to going on Hulu and checking Pulp Fiction out again.

I Watched Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972, Dir. by Robert Butler)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is back and just in time because Medfield College is on the verge of getting closed down again.

In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, buying a computer was supposed to be the solution to all of Medfield’s financial problems.  I guess it didn’t work because Medfield is broke again and corrupt businessman A.J. Arnoe (Cesar Romero) is planning on canceling the school’s mortgage so that he can turn it into a casino.

There is some hope.  Dexter has accidentally created an invisibility spray.  Not only does it tun anything that it touches invisible but it also washes away with water so there’s no risk of disappearing forever.  Dexter and his friend Schuyler (Michael McGreevey) know that they can win the science fair with their invention but the science fair doesn’t want to allow small schools like Medfield to compete unless they really have something big to offer.  Dexter tells the Dean (Joe Flynn) that he has a sure winner but Dexter also refuses to reveal what it is because he doesn’t want word to leak before for the science fair.  The Dean decides to raise the money to pay off the mortgage by becoming a golfer, as one does.  Schulyer works as the Dean’s caddy while Dexter uses the invisibility spray to help the Dean cheat.  That’s a good message for a young audience, Disney!  But when Arno finds out about the spray, he wants to steal it so he can rob a bank.

This was even dumber than The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes but it was also hard to dislike it.  The comedy was too gentle, Kurt Russell and the rest of the cast were too likable, and the special effects were too amusingly cheap in that retro Disney way for it to matter that the movie didn’t make any sense.  When a bunch of college kids learn the secret of invisibility and use it to cheat at golf, you know you’re watching a Disney film.

Music Video of the Day: Leave by Jessica Simpson (2025, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day is the latest from Jessica Simpson.  Jessica Simpson actually went to my high school, though she was a student long before I got there.  She was often held up as an example of what we, as students, could achieve even though she dropped out without graduating.

In other words, don’t worry too much about that diploma.

Enjoy!