Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out! 1.8 “….Or Get Off The Pot”

Posted on November 25, 2023 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!

After celebrating Thanksgiving and my sister’s birthday, all in the same week, I’m exhausted but I still managed to review yet another episode of Check It Out! So, I guess …. check it out below!

Episode 1.8 “….Or Get Off The Pot”

(Dir by Ari Dikijian, originally aired on November 20th, 1985)

As this week’s episode opens, Edna (Dinah Christie) is excited because it’s her 7-year anniversary with Howard! Seven years ago, Howard took her out to celebrate Secretary’s Day and they ended up going back to his place. What some people would call a clear breach of workplace etiquette, Edna calls the beginning of something wonderful. She can’t wait to see what Howard is going to do for their anniversary!

And what is Howard planning on doing? He’s planning on going bowling with the guys.

YIKES!

Realizing that Howard seems to have real issues with commitment, Edna follows a friend’s advice and she demands that Howard join her in seeing a relationship therapist. Howard is not a big fan of therapy and he tries to get out of it by moving back his bowling game and offering to take Dinah to a theme restaurant afterwards. (The restaurant’s theme? Bowling!) Edna does not agree. Therapy it is!

Needless to say, the therapy doesn’t go well. There’s only one happy couple at the session and they’re married but not to each other. Everyone else is miserable, despite the fact that their therapist is played by Helen Seymour, who played the nice (and doomed) laundromat owner in the original My Bloody Valentine. Edna eventually gives Howard an ultimatum about proposing to her but she changes her mind after Howard apologizes for taken her for granted. After a night of anniversary sex (“You apologized several times,” Edna says), Howard agrees to marry her someday and Edna agrees not to run off with her building’s gardener.

Meanwhile, the employees of Cobb’s pool their money to buy Howard and Edna an anniversary gift. Why would they do that? Like seriously, they’re always talking about how little they get paid but now, they’re pooling their money to buy a gift for someone else’s anniversary? Anyway, Christian takes their money and buys Howard a new golf club. Good for him!

This episode didn’t add up too much but, on the plus side, Don Adams and Dinah Christie had more chemistry in this episode than they had in previous episodes. This is the first time, since I started watching this show, that I’ve believed Howard and Edna as a couple. That said, their relationship is still probably the least interesting part of this show. So far, the best episodes of Check It Out! have been the ones taking place not in the office but on the salesfloor.

Next week, someone is stealing the store’s pricey gourmet food! Can Howard catch the Phantom of the Market!?

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out 1.7 “A Rosenbloom By Any Other Name”

Posted on November 18, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Advance warning: This episode is pretty dumb.

Episode 1.7 “A Rosenbloom By Any Other Name”

(Dir by Ari Dikijian, originally aired on November 13th, 1985)

Oh God, this episode.

Seriously, I’m just going to start things out by admitting upfront that this episode was a bit too frantic for me. Obviously, a lot of great comedy has come out of misunderstandings but in the case of this episode, most of the misunderstandings were just too stupid to be amusing.

So, basically, cashier Jennifer Woods (Tonya Williams) has been promised a raise by Howard and she is really looking forward to using that money to pay off her new car. But, when she receives her paycheck, she discovers that the raise did not go through. Marlene, ever the trouble maker, tells her that Howard must have lied about trying to get her the raise.

But Howard didn’t lie! He submitted the paperwork to a Mr. Federson at the corporate headqyarters and Federson has yet to approve it. Howard marches into his office and discovers Edna on the phone. Howard tells Edna to hang up and call Federson. Edna says that (for some reason) she’s already on the phone with Federson.

“Ask him where the Hell Jennifer’s raise is!” Howard says.

“Where the Hell is Jennifer’s raise?” Edna repeats.

Federson takes offense to the way the question was asked and hangs up. Howard tells Edna that it’s her fault for using that tone with Federson but Edna replies that she was using Howard’s tone and, for what seems like an hour or two, they debate who is responsible for which tone. Howard tells Edna to call up Federson and apologize for her tone. Edna calls Federson and apologizes for Howard’s tone and Federson tells her to tell Howard to man up and apologize himself. Oh, and Jennifer’s raise is now cancelled because Canada apparently has very lax labor laws.

While this is going on, Howard is also having to deal with an old woman named Mrs. Rosenbloom (Helen Hughes), who is standing outside the store in the Toronto cold. Howard brings Mrs. Rosenbloom inside. Mrs. Rosenbloom says that she’s waiting for her son, Sheldon but she’s not sure where he is or what his phone number is. “I don’t want to be a bother,” Mrs. Rosenbloom continually says as she bothers Howard for everything from a chair to a cup of soup.

Meanwhile, Jack Christian and Murray build a gigantic display of taco chips. Unfortunately, the display gets to be too high and it falls over on top of Mrs. Rosenbloom. Luckily, she appears to be okay. “Those chips have sharp edges!” Howard exclaims.

Marlene encourages Jennifer to sue the company for discrimination, as Jennifer is the only black person working at the store and also the only one to not get a raise. Howard panics when he learns that Jennifer has hired Marlene’s boyfriend, lawyer Cy Richards, to sue the store for 10 million dollars. When Cy (Ted Simonett) does eventually show up at the store to meet with Jennifer, it turns out that he’s actually Mrs. Rosenbloom’s son, Sheldon. He changed his name when he opened his law office. Cy is happy to have found his mother but he’s even happier to sue the store.

But then, largely because there’s only two minutes left in the show’s running time, Jennifer decides not to sue the store because Federson comes by the store to meet with her and he decides to give her the raise. Federson is played by Clark Johnson, who would go on to appear on shows like Homicide and The Wire. Howard takes one look at Federson and exclaims, “You’re black!”

“It runs in the family,” Federson replies.

(Yes, it’s just as cringey as it sounds.)

Jennifer may have dropped the lawsuit but Howard is still going to court because now Mrs. Rosenbloom is suing because of the chip display that fell on her.

There was a bit too much going on in this episode and so much of it could have been avoided by Howard and Edna not being idiots. I mean, how does a secretary keep her job if she doesn’t know enough to clean up her boss’s language before quoting it back to someone at the corporate office? How does Howard not know better than to have someone else apologize for him? How can he promise someone a raise that he apparently doesn’t have the power to deliver? In short, how does Howard still have a job? On The Office, they went to pains to establish that Michael was good at selling things as a way to explain why he was still in charge of the branch. On Check It Out, Howard is so thoroughly incompetent that it’s difficult to believe that the store hasn’t burned down yet. And, of course, there’s the fact that Howard, having worked for the company for 20 years, is stunned to discover that a black man has a position of corporate authority. I mean, that really doesn’t say anything good about Howard or the company.

Shows like Check It Out make me happy that I’ve never had a real job.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out 1.1 “No Security In Security”

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Check It Out is a show that I recently came across on Tubi. It’s a Canadian sitcom from the late 80s, one that took place in grocery store. Don Adams starred as Howard Bannister, the store’s manager. Dinah Christie played Edna, who was Howard’s girlfriend and secretary. Kathleen Laskey, Aaron Schwartz, and Tonya Williams played cashiers. Jeff Pustil played the assistant manager. The security guard was played by Henry Beckman and Simon Reynolds played a teenage bagboy. Since I had never heard of this show before, I figured why not review it? What’s the worst that could happen?

Besides, check out the totally funky theme song!

Episode 1.1 “No Security In Security”

(Dir by Ari Dikijian, originally aired on October 2nd, 1985)

Welcome to Cobb’s, perhaps the most depressing location that I’ve ever seen for a Canadian sitcom. Cobb’s is a grocery store and, interestingly enough, it actually looks like a grocery store, with cheap displays, bored employees, and floors that you can tell are probably sticky. Usually, most sitcoms — especially sitcoms that aired in the 80s — go out of their way to try to look inviting. From the minute we see Cobb’s, the show seems to be telling us, “Run away! Shop elsewhere!”

As the pilot opens, store manager Howard Bannister (Don Adams) watches as a security specialist named Vicker (Gordon Clapp) installs several new security cameras. Howard asks what channels the cameras get. Vicker replies that you can watch produce, you can watch the front doors, and you can watch the registers. Howard weakly tries to explain that he was making a joke. It goes over Vicker’s head.

You know what isn’t a joke? The fact that Mrs. Cobb (Barbara Hamilton), the fearsome owner of the store, now expects Howard to fire Alf (Henry Beckham), the ancient security guard who has been working at Cobb’s for his entire life. Howard is reluctant to fire an old man, despite the fact that everyone keeps talking about the fact that Alf is not that good at his job. The assistant manager, Jack Christian (Jeff Pustil), volunteers to do the firing but Howard says that it’s the type of the thing that should be done by the manager. After getting an angry visit from Mrs. Cobb, Howard takes Alf outside and fires him. Alf responds by punching Howard in the stomach.

Well, I guess it’s a good thing that they fired Alf! Seriously, violence is never the answer! Still, Howard feels so guilty that he can’t perform sexually with his girlfriend and secretary, Edna Moseley (Dinah Christie). But, don’t worry! Alf calls in a bomb threat and gets his job back….

Seriously, that’s the plot of the first episode. It’s a plot that had some potential. One of The Office‘s best episodes was the Halloween episode where Michael was forced to fire Devin. On The Office, the story was more about Michael’s fear of being the bad guy than the actual firing. Michael knows that he has to fire someone but he’s just scared to death of getting anyone mad at him. Things are a bit less complicated on Check it Out. Alf is terrible at his job but Howard doesn’t want to fire him because he’s old. Fortunately, all it takes is a fake bomb threat to get Alf’s job back.

It was a bit of a forgettable episode, though it introduced the characters and that’s what a pilot is supposed to do. The main problem is that, with the exception of Gordon Clapp’s performance as Vicker, the episode itself just wasn’t that funny.

Maybe the second episode was an improvement! We’ll find out next week!