Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 4.8 “X-Rated Education”

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 can be purchased on Prime.

This week, Gabe Kaplan is missing.

Episode 4.8 “X-Rated Education”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on October 28th, 1978)

Epstein, because he’s apparently the only student who works in the audio-visual department, is setting up the projector in the classroom so that it can be used to show a sex education film.  Carvelli and Wilbur enter the room and announce that they have a pornographic film that they want to watch.  Horshack and Washington then show up and decide that they want to watch the movie as well, even though Horshack doesn’t seem to be quite sure what an adult film actually is.

(Horshack also now appears to now be about 50 years old.  The Sweathogs are aging …. fast!)

Epstein says that they can use a different projector to watch the pornographic film.  The Sweathogs and Carvelli head off to the storage closet while Julie takes the first projector to the office so that she can show the sex ed film to a bunch of parents who are not sure they want their children taking sex ed.

You can guess what happens, can’t you?  The two films get mixed up.  The Sweathogs end up watching the tame sex ed film.  Horshack becomes obsessed with the butterfly that is featured in the film.  The protesting parents watch the adult film and demand that both Julie and Woodman be fired.  Can Julie talk Epstein into explaining what happened even though it’ll mean that Epstein will be running the risk of being expelled?  Much like Horshack, Epstein appears to be 50 years old in this episode so maybe getting expelled would be good for him at this point.

This episode raises a simple question.  Is it really an episode of Welcome Back, Kotter if Kotter isn’t around to be welcomed back?  Gabe Kotter is not in this episode and his absence is neither mentioned nor explained.  (Off-screen, Gabe Kaplan was not happy with the show’s direction and refused to appear in all but a handful of season four’s episodes.)  It’s a shame because the plot of this episode does actually feel like a throw back to the type of first and second season episodes that Kaplan usually did quite well with.  Instead of Kaplan’s understanding but firm Gabe Kotter, we get Julie telling Epstein to tell the truth and negotiating with the parents.  Julie now works at the school but I’m not totally sure what her job is actually supposed to be.  Sometimes, she appears to just be Woodman’s administrative assistant.  Other times, she appears to be a guidance counselor.  Sometimes, she’s a teacher.  Julie usually gives good advice but she’s an outsider and it’s obvious that, unlike her husband, she would never consider herself to be a Sweathog.  Whereas Gabe talks to the Sweathogs, Julie often seems to be talking down to them.

This episode also suffers due to the fact that Barbarino is not present, even though the idea of the Sweathogs watching a sex education film seems like a classic Barbarino plot.  Robert Hegyes is the main Sweathog now.  He was a good actor but he was also way too old, at this point, to be playing a high school student.  Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs continues to be underused and Ron Pallilo performance as Horshack has grown more and more grating as the fourth season has progressed.

In the end, only John Sylvester White’s unhinged performance as Woodman remains a consistent source of laughs on this show.  Woodman is not quite as antagonistic towards Julie as he is towards Gabe but his constant bitterness is still a lot of fun to watch.  Maybe they should have renamed this show Welcome  Back, Woodman.

Anyway, this was another fourth season episode that fell flat because the Sweathogs and Julie all seemed like they would rather be anywhere than appearing on Welcome Back, Kotter.  Seriously …. let the Sweathogs graduate!

Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul: The Aftermath

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You can’t always get what you want.

Last night, almost every true fight fan wanted to see Mike Tyson knock out Jake Paul.  It didn’t happen, because Tyson is 58 years old and Jake Paul is 31 years younger.  Tyson started out strong but, after the third round, it was obvious that he was exhausted and it even looked like Jake Paul was going easy on him as things reached their conclusion.  Mike made it 8 rounds without collapsing, which was a personal victory considering how tired he looked by the end of the fight.  Jake and Mike both got paid and I imagine that was their main concern.

Last night was hardly the worst thing that I’ve ever seen as far as boxing is concerned.  I lived through the 90s and the era when Don King would shove any fighter, regardless of how mentally unstable or drug-addicted, into the ring.  I am old enough that I can remember Oliver McCall having a nervous breakdown in the ring and refusing to defend himself against Lennox Lewis.  I can remember Andrew Golota throwing away two certain victories because he just couldn’t stop hitting Riddick Bowe below the belt.  I can remember Mike Tyson biting off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear.  I can even remember Montell “Ice” Griffin.  Trust me, I’ve seen a lot worse that Paul vs. Tyson.  But watching Iron Mike lose to a YouTube star, that’s definitely the type of thing that will hurt the soul of any 90s kid.  The new generation has arrived and the man who was once the greatest boxer in the world lost to a former Disney star.

The biggest loser last night was not Netflix, despite all of the technical difficulties that they had trying to broadcast a live event.  The biggest losers were the people who purchased a Netflix subscription just to watch the fight and instead spent most of the night staring at error messages and a buffering image.  Did the Netflix engineer not consider that Mike Tyson coming out retirement to fight a YouTube star would put added stress on their servers?  Netflix still made their money, though.  They got what they wanted, even if fight fans didn’t.

I have no problem acknowledging that, even past his prime and two years away from sixty, Mike Tyson could easily beat me up.  But now I have to live with the knowledge that Jake Paul could beat me up too.  That’s the real tragedy of Paul vs. Tyson.

THE KILLER – The film that introduced Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed and Chow Yun-fat to the rest of the world!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

It was 1997 and I was in an outlet mall in Branson, MO. Being a film buff, I found myself looking for entertainment related books and noticed a book with Jackie Chan on the cover called “Hong Kong Babylon.” Jackie was enjoying some popularity in the United States at the time due to the financial success of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX. I opened up the book and started browsing through the various chapters. I saw blurbs about a bunch of movies I had never heard of and blurbs about a bunch of people I had never heard of. Jackie Chan was the only person I knew anything about. I put the book down because I saw another book about Hong Kong movies. This one was called “Sex & Zen and A Bullet in the Head.” I opened it up and saw some of the same people and movies mentioned in the other book. I liked this book better because it had more pictures. I remember this second book opening with a chapter called “10 that Rip.” It was their listing of 10 movies that would determine if you were a potential Hong Kong movie fan or not. Watching these movies would either open up that part of your mind that got excited about Hong Kong movies, or you would be hopelessly lost and not a candidate for Hong Kong movie fandom. As I looked closer, I noticed this same man in both books. He was usually holding a gun and looking extremely cool. That man’s name was Chow Yun-fat, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I remembered seeing him years earlier on a VHS box at our local Hastings Entertainment Superstore. Not really being a fan of foreign movies at the time of the Hastings notice, I didn’t pay much attention, but now I really took notice. Chow caught my attention, but I also found it interesting that there were so many other movies that I’d never heard of, and I thought I knew a lot about movies. I bought both books and took them home with me. It’s no exaggeration to say that these books changed my life, and I was soon lost in a world of Hong Kong films.

No film exemplified my newfound love for Hong Kong movies more than THE KILLER, which was directed by John Woo and starred my new obsession, Chow Yun-fat. I was happy to find that it was readily available on VHS. I watched it on repeat. I had not seen anything that I thought was so awesome. The story is simple. It’s about a hitman, the killer of the title (Chow Yun-fat), accidentally blinding a nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) when he’s performing a job. Feeling devastated that he hurt this beautiful woman, he spends the next few months hanging around the nightclub hoping to have a chance to help her. He finally gets a chance one night when a group of young hooligans attack her on her way home. Chow steps in and beats the crap out of the guys and sends them on their way. This starts a beautiful relationship and the two fall in love. The killer has to perform one more job to get the money needed for a surgery that will hopefully restore her eyesight.  When performing that last job, a tough cop (Danny Lee) finds himself on the trail of the killer and will do anything to get his man. John Woo has somehow crafted a story where Chow Yun-fat is an honorable “killer” on a noble mission to protect this young woman, and who is now the target of the Chinese triads trying to eliminate him. While trying to bring down the killer, the tough cop finds himself caught in the crossfire between the killer and the triads. When Chow goes out of his way to take a hurt young girl to the hospital, our tough cop realizes the hitman isn’t that bad after all, and the two men begin to have a respect for each other. There’s no time to rest though, as they find themselves having to team up to take on an army of triad soldiers armed to the teeth and out for blood.

I had never seen anything like THE KILLER up to that point in my life. The action had a style and flare that aroused everything I love about movies. I soon learned it fit into a subgenre of Hong Kong films labelled “heroic bloodshed,” a genre that I would go deep, deep, deep, into! The opening action sequence features the impossibly charismatic Chow Yun-fat dressed impeccably, taking on an underworld boss and his henchman, with two guns blazing in stylish slow motion. John Woo’s work has been endlessly copied by this point, but that does not take away how I felt watching this movie for the first time. I also loved the shameless sentimentality in the film, first between the killer and the singer, and then later between the killer and the cop. For a movie that’s balls to walls action, it has a huge heart. I was hooked.

I immediately began searching out all of John Woo’s films including A BETTER TOMORROW, BULLET IN THE HEAD and HARD-BOILED. After I watched those movies, I started trying to find every Chow Yun-fat film I could. I’ll never forget how I felt when I saw GOD OF GAMBLERS for the first time. I realized that Chow could do anything, not just cool heroic bloodshed films. I will tell anyone who’ll listen that Chow Yun-fat is my favorite living actor. After being a fan for 27 years, I still search the internet for any news I can find about a movie he may be working on.

And it all started at an outlet mall in Branson, MO, and when I first got my hands on THE KILLER.

Live Tweet Alert: Watch Bay of Blood With #ScarySocial!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

Bay of Blood (1971, dir by Mario Bava, DP: Mario Bava)

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood!

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  The film is available on Prime and Tubi!  I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.18 “A Friend To The End”

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, it’s two stories for the price of one!

Episode 2.18 “A Friend To The End”

(Dir by David Morse, originally aired on April 17th, 1989)

Before I say anything else about this episode, I should make clear that I’ve been watching Friday the 13th on YouTube.  Every episode has been uploaded and 99% of the uploads are clean and clear and easy to follow.  Unfortunately, this episode was the exception.  The sound quality was terrible.  The image was often blurry.  I’m not sure why this episode — and none of the other uploaded episodes — was so bad but it was bad enough that I occasionally struggled to follow the plot.  That’s not the fault of the show.  It’s just that the video that was uploaded to YouTube was really bad.  While I think I got the gist of the episode, I should still make clear that I watched it under less than ideal conditions.

This episode actually tells two stories.  With Jack out of town, Micki and Ryan are trying to retrieve the Shard of Medusa, a crystal that turns people into statues.  DeJager (Donna Goodhand) is the artist who currently owns the shard and who is using it to turn her models into stone.  What’s interesting about this story is that, when the episode begins, we join in medias res.  Micki and Ryan already know that DeJager has the shard and they’re already making a plan for Micki to go undercover as a model.

Unfortunately, they’re so busy trying to get back the shard that they don’t really have time to look after J.B. (Zachary Bennett), Micki’s young nephew who keeps getting left at the antique store while his newly-divorced mother runs off with her latest boyfriend.  (Interestingly, Ryan scornfully asks Micki about “your sister,” but since Micki is Ryan’s cousin, wouldn’t Micki’s sister also be his cousin?)  While Micki and Ryan are busy trying to get back the shard, J.B. is breaking into a nearby haunted house and befriending a troubled boy named Ricky (Keram Malicki-Sanchez).  What J.B. does not know is that Ricky is actually a living dead boy who is kept alive by a cursed coffin.  In order to continue to live, Ricky has to sacrifice people to the coffin.  Ricky isn’t happy about this.  He just wants a friend.  J.B. is willing to be that friend but what will happen when Ricky, desperately in need of a new sacrifice, turns his gaze towards Micki?

One of the strange things about this episode is that, when J.B. tells Micki and Ryan about Ricky, they both assume that he’s just making something up.  After everything Micki and Ryan have seen, would they really be so skeptical about J.B. claiming to have met a ghost in a long-abandoned house?  The other interesting thing about this episode is that the two storylines didn’t really intersect, beyond the fact that J.B. felt neglected because Micki and Ryan were spending so much time trying to get the shard.  At one point, DeJager breaks into the store and briefly grabs J.B. but that’s something that probably would have happened regardless of whether or not J.B. had ever met Ricky.

Did this episode work?  I’m hesitant to give a final verdict because of the poor quality of the upload.  That said, Keram Malicki-Sanchez gave a good performance as the tragic Ricky and I appreciated how all of the stuff with DeJager almost played out like a good-natured parody of a typical Friday the 13th episode.  Bad upload and all, this episode worked for me.

Finally, seeing as how I reviewed St. Elsewhere earlier today, I simply have to note that this episode was directed by Dr. Jack Morrison himself, David Morse.

 

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.2 “Bypass”

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 St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988.  The show can be found on Hulu!

This week, William Daniels claims the show as his own.

Episode 1.2 “Bypass”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on November 9th, 1982)

“Hey, it’s Tim Robbins!”

Yes, the future Oscar winner shows up in the second episode of St. Elsewhere, playing a rich kid-turned-terrorist named Andrew Reinhardt.  Reinhardt, who no doubt learned all about Marxism during his first semester away at college, set off a bomb in a bank, killing two people and putting a woman named Kathleen McCallister into a coma.  Both Reihnhardt and McCallister have been brought to St. Eligius.  While Kathleen’s husband, Stephen (Jack Bannon), sobs in the hallway, Reinhardt acts like a petulant brat in his hospital room.

With the nurses refusing to change his sheets or even give him his morphine shots, it falls to Dr. Morrison to take care of him.  Reinhardt is not at all appreciative and Morrison finds himself conflicted.  How is he supposed to give proper medical treatment to someone who he despises?  Morrison is so conflicted that he even goes to Dr. Westphall.  Westphall responds by telling a long story about a time that he fell in love with a patient.  I’m getting the feeling that Morrison feeling conflicted and Westphall telling long stories are both going to be regular features on this show.

(The correct answer to Morrison’s question about how he can take care of a bad person is as follows: It’s your job and you’re getting paid to do it.)

This episode also gave the viewer a chance to get to know Dr. Craig, the very talented but very egotistical head of surgery who is played by the great William Daniels.  Dr. Craig holds a press conference to inform reporters about the conditions of both Reinhardt and Kathleen McCallister and declares that, despite its bad reputation, “St. Eligius is the place to be!”  He then proceeds to get angry when the press is more interested in talking to the surgeon who actually saved Kathleen’s life than to him.

Dr. Craig browbeats a Mr. Broadwater (Robert Costanzo) into getting bypass surgery done.  The surgery appears to have been a success but it’s hard to ignore that Craig essentially bullied the guy into getting a major operation, one that could have killed him if the least little thing had gone wrong.  Resident Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) assists in the operation and, at one point, Dr. Craig intentionally head butts him when Ehrlich cannot name all of the arteries leading into the heart.  It’s a bit aggressive but, on the plus side, Ehrlich does learn all of the names.  Afterwards, Dr. Craig brags about how his own son is following in his footsteps and tells Mr. Broadwater’s son that some day, a new Dr. Craig will operate on him.  In other words, Dr. Craig is kind of a jerk but he’s good at what he does and he’s played by William Daniels so it’s hard to hold anything against him.

There were other subplots playing out in the background, the majority of which just seemed to be there to remind us that St. Elsewhere is an ensemble show and that, just because someone isn’t a major character in this episode, that doesn’t mean they won’t be important later on.  Psychiatrist Hugh Beale (G.W. Bailey) attempted to learn how to swim and ended up taking a class with a bunch of children.  Dr. Fiscus (Howie Mandel, the least convincing doctor ever) held court in the cafeteria and claimed that the hormones used in processing food were causing children to develop earlier than ever before.  Dr. Peter White (Terrence Knox) wandered around with a bunch of X-rays and begged everyone he met to help him understand what he was (or wasn’t) seeing.  If nothing else, this episode did a good job of capturing the idea of the hospital as being a place that’s always busy.

For the most part, though, it was Dr. Craig who carried this episode.  While Morrison and Westphall ponderously considered the implications of doing their jobs, Craig was an arrogant, angry, and brilliant dynamo and William Daniels’s high-energy performance was a pleasure to watch.  Whenever the episode started to slow down, Dr. Craig would liven things up by yelling at someone.  The hospital was lucky to have Dr. Craig and St. Elsewhere was lucky to have William Daniels.

Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul: A Preview

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I’ve managed to avoid most of the hype surrounding tonight’s boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.  That was intentional on my part because I found the whole idea to be incredibly depressing.

When I was growing up, there was no athlete more fearsome than Mike Tyson.  At the peak of his career, he was the best boxer of all time.  You can count me in as one of the people who believes that Tyson, at his best, could have easily defeated Mohammed Ali.  What Tyson lacked in finesse, he made up for in pure power.  As Tyson got older, he got slower and was no longer as impressive as he used to be but that happens to almost every boxer.  Even after he retired, Tyson remained a boxing icon.  I don’t care how old he is or how slowly he might now move, I would not want to get on Mike Tyson’s bad side.

And then there’s Jake Paul.  I had to ask Lisa who Jake Paul was.  Apparently, he’s a YouTube star who has decided that he’s a boxer and who has won a few sketchy fights.  Paul vs. Tyson is going to be his debut as a heavyweight.

Friends and fellow readers, let me just be blunt.

If “Iron Mike” Tyson loses to Jake Paul tonight, my childhood will be over.  If Mike Tyson, the most fearsome boxer of my lifetime, loses to a YouTube star, I am just going to give up on everything and start my mid-life crisis.  It would be one thing if this was an exhibition match.  Everyone knows that an exhibition doesn’t mean anything.  This is an officially sanctioned boxing match.  This fight will forever be a part of Mike Tyson’s record.  If Mike Tyson officially ends his career losing to Jake Paul, what’s the point?

And it could happen. Mike Tyson is 58 years old and Jake Paul is 27.  There’s a big difference between 58 and 27.  By his own admission, Mike Tyson also doesn’t like to train.  In Tyson’s last officially sanctioned match, he lost to Kevin McBride.  Remember that? Tyson quit the fight after the sixth round.  And after he lost, Tyson said “I’m not going to disrespect the sport anymore by losing to this caliber of fighter.”  Mike’s looking for a payday and so is Jake Paul.  If Jake beats Mike Tyson, that’ll mean that anyone could beat Mike Tyson if they pay him enough.  That would be the ultimate disrespect to the sport that Tyson says he loves.

I have faith in Iron Mike, though.  I think Tyson will let the fight go to the end but I think he’ll win on points.  I think that the universe or karma or whatever you want to call it will cut all of us fight fans a break.

At least, I hope it will.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Empire Records!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix presents 1995’s Empire Records!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Empire Records is available on Prime!  See you there!