Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.15 “The Long Road Home”

Posted on June 13, 2025 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week …. ugh.

Episode 3.15 “The Long Road Home”

(Dir by Allan Kroeker, originally aired on February 12th, 1990)

This week’s episode starts where most episodes end. Micki and Johnny retrieve the cursed antique. In this case, it’s a yin-yang charm that allows the owner to swap minds with a recently deceased person. That sounds like a really cool antique and I have to admit that I’m kind of annoyed that this is one of those shows where the antique is recovered early. I would have enjoyed seeing the entire search.

I certainly would have enjoyed it more than having to spend the next 40-something minutes listening to Micki and Johnny discuss whether or not to start a relationship while, at the same time, being pursued by an inbred redneck and his brother. This episode goes off the rails as soon as Micki and Johnny step into a roadside diner that is owned by a family of homicidal hillbillies. In order to save their lives, Johnny had to use the cursed antique himself so that he could enter the body of one of the brothers. That went against everything that the show previously established about the cursed antiques. You’re not supposed to use a cursed antique, not even once. Johnny uses it and everything works out fine for him. It feels like cheating and it was something that Ryan would never have done. God, I miss Ryan.

But I want to get back to this relationship nonsense. Since when is Micki attracted to Johnny? Johnny’s been hitting on Micki since his first appearance and she’s never been interested in the past. Now, suddenly, they’re having a relationship talk? It comes out of nowhere. In the end, Micki and Johnny agree not to have a relationship as long as there are still cursed antiques that need to be found and that’s a good idea. Still, the whole thing just felt tacked on.

This episode was dull. Chris Wiggins wasn’t in it and that’s a shame because this episode needed his steady, no-nonsense presence.

Oh well. Not every Friday can be a great one!

Retro Television Review: T and T 3.16 “TV Turner”

Posted on September 27, 2024 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, a documentary crew proclaims T.S. Turner to be the West’s greatest crime fighter.

Episode 3.16 “TV Turner”

(Dir by Patrick Loubert, originally aired on April 21st, 1990)

A Japanese television crew shows up at the Canadian police station and tells Detective Hargrove that they asked a computer for the name of the greatest crime fighter in North America. The computer replied with “T.S. Turner,” so they have traveled to Canada to interview Turner. The only catch is that they have no idea where Turner is and they don’t know anything about him.

Meanwhile, Turner is preparing to leave for his interview with the Japanese documentary team when …. wait a minute, I thought they didn’t know where to find Turner. I thought they hadn’t even called Turner before arriving in Canada. So, why is Turner getting ready to leave for his interview? This is a confusing episode.

Anyway, an old friend of Turner’s asks him to help her track down her missing husband, who lost his job after he was framed for a theft at work. Turner blows off the interview to search for him. This means that the film crew instead interviews Hargrove and then Terri about Turner. The film crew is disappointed to learn that Turner does not drink and he’s not a womanizer. A random criminal (Phillip Jarrett) gives an interview about the time he was arrested by Turner but it turns out that he’s thinking of a different Turner.

Finally, Turner shows up at the station. However, before he can do the interview, Terri’s latest client (Angelo RIzacos) grabs a gun and threatens to shoot his way to freedom. By an amazing coincidence, it turns out that the client is also the missing husband! Turner convinces the man to put down the gun by explaining that everyone now knows that he was framed for the theft.

(That said, the guy is still looking at serious jail time. He threatened to shoot up a police station!)

The film crew decides not to interview Turner because he’s not exciting enough. The end.

Weird episode. I was expecting it to be a clip show but instead, it was just people talking about how Turner didn’t drink, have sex, or fight any supervillains. I guess the idea was to show that Turner was a good man and that’s what made him a hero. That’s a nice message but it also leads to Turner losing his chance to be the subject of a documentary. Turner’s just too good for the world, I guess.

Let’s give some credit where credit is due. After sleepwalking through most of season 3, Mr. T actually seemed to be invested in this episode and the scene where he talked the guy into putting down his gun was very nicely done and acted. As an actor, Mr. T had zero range but he could be likably earnest and that’s certainly the case here.

Anyway, this was an odd episode, even by T and T standards. There’s only five more to go!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.7 “Wax Magic”

Posted on July 5, 2024 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, Ryan and Jack go to a carnival!

Episode 2.7 “Wax Magic”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on November 14th, 1988)

Unable to get a date, loser Ryan convinces Jack to go to a traveling carnival with him.

(Okay, maybe “loser” is a bit harsh. I like Ryan and I think John D. LeMay did a pretty good playing him on the series but seriously, in this episode, Ryan is oddly whiny. Then again, I would think that Ryan would be more careful about trying to date anyone, considering that everyone with whom he falls in love either dies or is his cousin, Micki.)

Ryan and Jack discover that the carnival has been rocked by a series of decapitations. Ryan suspects that it might involve the creepy wax figure exhibit that is run by Aldwin Chase (Angelo Rizacos). Aldwin is incredibly jealous of but also very abusive towards his wife, Marie (Susannah Hoffman). Whenever someone shows too much interest in Marie, they are visited by a wax figure of Lizzie Borden. Guess who Ryan develops an obviously doomed crush on?

This was an effectively creepy episode and, with its scenes of carnival goers losing their heads, it felt like it had more in common with the Friday the 13th movies than some of the other episodes. Towards the end of the episode, Jack and Ryan are actually attacked in the antique shop and it’s actually a bit jolting, a reminder that nowhere is safe. The show ends with a twist about Marie that’s not particularly but it’s effective nonetheless. In the role of Jack, Chris Wiggins gets to deliver another one of his monologues about the nature of evil and, as always, he pulls it off wonderfully.

That said, Micki is not in this episode and that’s unfortunate. Micki is the character to whom I relate, mostly because we’re both redheads with big boobs and, therefore, we share the same struggle. There have been plenty of episode where Jack was said to be off on another mission and, in those cases, that actually raised the stakes because it left Micki and Ryan without their mentor. But not having Micki present just felt weird. Unlike Ryan, I guess she was actually able to get a date.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.17 “The Electrocutioner”

Posted on February 9, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s nothing scarier than going to the dentist! Especially when he has a cursed electric chair!

(As a sidenote, I was planning on reviewing this last week but I was not feeling well so I held off until this week. I apologize for the delay in the writing and posting this review! These things do happen and I’ve recently been told that I need to start getting more rest and looking after my health so it may happen more than once.)

Episode 1.17 “The Electrocutioner”

(Dir by Rob Hedden, originally aired on April 18th, 1988)

In 1978, Eli Pittman (Angelo Rizacos) was sitting on death row, an innocent man who had been wrongly convicted of murder. Sentenced to die in the electric chair, Eli’s cries of innocence fell on deaf ears. The warden of the prison didn’t care. The judge didn’t care. The prosecuting attorney didn’t care. Miraculously, Eli survived the first attempt to electrocute him. And, fortunately, his death sentence was overturned before he could be shocked a second time.

Ten years later, Eli is working as a dentist at a school for runaways. Though he presents himself as being a charitable doctor who just wants to help the less fortunate, Eli is actually a deeply bitter man. He wants revenge on everyone who sent him to prison. Eli has purchased the electric chair in which he was meant to die. He’s disguised it as a dentist chair. When his teenage patients sit in the chair, they are reduced to ash. Eli is then able to generate electricity through his body. He uses this power to get his revenge.

Can Ryan, Micki, and Jack stop him?

After a really good opening scene (which is filmed in black-and-white and makes use of a handheld camera to generate a genuinely nightmarish atmosphere), this becomes one of the sillier episodes that I’ve watched so far. Angelo Rizacos is good in the flashback scenes and he makes you feel a good deal of sympathy for Eli. But, in the modern day scenes, he overacts to an extent that Eli goes from being a victimized man driven by revenge to a rather broadly-drawn supervillain. He’s like a character from a B-comic book movie, the sort of villain that would expect Venom or Morbius to battle in a pre-credits sequence.

Add to that …. an antique electric chair? This show is at its best when the antiques are stuff that you could imagine actually stumbling across in an antique store. The idea of that big, bulky chair being in the store (and subsequently being disguised as a dentist chair) was just silly.

But you know what? Friday the 13th is a fun show, even when it’s silly. Chris Wiggins, John D. LeMay, and Robey made for a good team of investigators and, if nothing else, it was fun watching them interact in this episode. This was a silly episode but at least it was silly in an entertaining way.

Retro Television Review: T and T 2.9 “Hostage”

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Amy, T.S. and Joe get involved in a — ugh — hostage situation!

Episode 2.9 “Hostage”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on November 28th, 1988)

Fleeing from the police after a botched robbery, two sweaty crooks, Rook (Lawrence King) and Larry (Angelo Rizacos), duck into Don’s Sporting Goods and end up holding 8 people hostage, including Amy and Joe! What a scary situation! These eight Canadians probably just wanted to buy new hockey jerseys and now, they’re being held hostage!

The police, of course, are ineffectual. T.S. tracks down the ex-wife of one of the men but she can’t convince him to come out of the store. The two crooks don’t want to go back to prison so they’ve demanded a lot of money and a plane and they’ve given the Toronto police only two hours to meet their demands. Inside the store, Amy tries to reason with them. Rook knows that things have gone too far and that they need to surrender to the police. But Larry is sweaty and violent and determined to escape with the money.

I groaned a bit when I saw what this episode was going to be about. I absolutely dread sitting through anything that involves hostage negotiation. There’s really not much that can happen in a story like this, other than the hostage takers doing a lot of yelling and the negotiators saying, “You’re going to have to give us more time!” It’s really not much fun to watch people getting guns pointed at their heads while some loser rants and raves about how he’s going to pull the trigger unless he gets what he wants. With the exception of Dog Day Afternoon, hostage taking is usually pretty boring to watch.

Probably the biggest mistake that this episode makes is that it sidelines T.S. Turner for much of the action. The main appeal of T and T is the chance to watch and hear Mr. T take down the bad guys. T.S. spends the majority of this episode just standing around and only he gets to call one person “brother.” Finally, during the final few minutes, T.S. ends up crawling around in the building’s loft so that he can break through the ceiling and take out the hostage takers but, by the time he does, the two criminals have already turned on each other. For once, it falls not to T.S. to capture the main bad guy but for the bad guy’s accomplice to shoot him in the back.

All in all, this was a disappointing episode. Amy failed to talk the criminals into giving themselves up and T.S. failed to capture the criminals by himself. What is Canada even paying these two for?