Tag Archives: Barbara Gordon

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 3.19 “The Tree of Life”

Posted on 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, it’s Johnny vs the Druids.

Episode 3.19 “The Tree of Life”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on May 7th, 1990)

Johnny randomly runs into a distraught woman who claims that, years ago, her daughter was abducted and her husband murdered by obstetrician  Dr. Sybil Oakwood (Gale Garnett).  When Jack and Micki doubt the woman’s story, Johnny investigates on his own and discovers that Dr. Oakwood is kidnapping newborn girls and raising them in her fertility clinic.  It turns out that Dr. Oakwood is a druid and she’s trying to breed future Druidic priestesses.

(Don’t yell at me, this is the show’s interpretation of druidism.)

This was the next-to-the-last episode of Friday the 13th and it just feels like the writers were tired and uninspired.  Suddenly, for the first time in three years, Jack and Micki are skeptical about reports of the paranormal.  Johnny is back to being impulsive and, if we’re to be honest, kind of stupid.  He tells the distraught mother that her daughter is being held prisoner at the fertility clinic and then is shocked when the mother runs off to the clinic without waiting for Johnny to accompany her.  Once again, it all leads to a cult and an underground cavern.  This entire episode feels like it was recycled from previous episodes.

I’m not an expert on paganism so I’m not going to get into whether or not this episode accurately portrayed druidic beliefs.  I will say that the druids in this episode acted like every other cult that’s ever appeared on this show.  They’re just like the Satanic cult that showed up at the end of season 2.  Making them druids is probably one of those things that sounded good when the episode was pitched.  The word “druid” brings to mind Stonehenge and all the rest of that good stuff.  But, narratively, there was nothing gained nor lost by making them druids.  The show treated them like any other self-destructive cult.

This episode was a bit dull.  It felt like the show was taking one last shot at getting audiences to replace Johnny as Ryan’s replacement.  The whole thing just felt uninspired.  It certainly left your brave reviewer bereft of inspiration.

Next week, we come to the conclusion of Friday the 13th: The Series.

 

Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Three’s Company (2003, directed by Jason Ensler)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Do you remember Three’s Company?

The sitcom was a big hit when it aired in the 70s and 80s and it still gets a lot of play in syndication today.  Based on a British sitcom (and you would really be surprised to how closely the first season followed the original series), Three’s Company starred John Ritter as Jack Tripper, an aspiring chef who moved in with two single women, Janet (Joyce DeWitt) and Chrissy (Suzanne Somers).  Because their impotent landlord (Norman Fell) didn’t want people of the opposite sex living with each other unless they were married, Jack pretended to be gay.  Every episode centered around a misunderstanding, though it was Suzanne Somers’s performance as the perpetually bouncy and braless Chrissy Snow that made the show a hit.  The show fell apart when Somers asked for more money, Ritter and DeWitt got angry with her, and the studio bosses lied to everyone.  Today, the show is legendary as an example of how backstage tension can end even a popular series.

Behind The Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Three’s Company attempts to dramatize the success and eventual downfall of Three’s Company.  Joyce DeWitt appears at the beginning and the end to talk about how important she thinks the show was.  In the movie, she is played by Melanie Paxson.  John Ritter is played by a lookalike actor named Bret Anthony while an actress named Jud Taylor plays Somers.  Brian Dennehy plays ABC president Fred Silverman and other executives are played by Daniel Roebuck, Wallace Langham, Gary Hudson, and Christopher Shyer.  The movie recreates all of the drama that went on during Three’s Company without offering much insight or really anything new to the story.  Even though the movie was co-produced and hosted by Joyce DeWitt, Suzanne Somers is really the only sympathetic character in the movie.  DeWitt comes across as being jealous while Anthony plays John Ritter as being a bland nonentity who chooses his own success over being honest with his costars.  The network executives are more interesting, just because watching them provides a glimpse into how real producers and showrunners picture themselves.  They just wanted to make a good show about a sex addict pretending to be gay so he could live with two attractive, single women but the agents and the network presidents just keep getting in the way!  Won’t someone please think of the mid-level network executives?

Bland though this recreation was, it was enough of a rating hits that NBC went on to produce several more Behind The Camera films.  Three’s Company was only the beginning.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out 3.6 “Edna’s Choice”

Posted on 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!

This week, Howard’s dead!  Or maybe not.

Episode 3.6 “Edna’s Choice”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on October 24th, 1987)

This week’s episode opens with a rather odd scene in which Howard Bannister, who is still wearing his “Howie” manager uniform, showing up outside the gates of Heaven.  He’s shocked to find that Edna is waiting for him.  She has big wings on her back.  She says that she was made an angel when she came to Heaven because she lived a perfect life after she broke up with Howard.  Howard is surprised.  Edna mentions that she broke up with Howard because he refused to recommend her for a promotion that would have given her a store of her own to manage.  Howard refers to God as being a guy.  Edna replies that God is a woman and then sends Howard to hell.

WHAT!?

With this scene, the show establishes that 1) Edna and Howard broke up, 2) Edna died before Howard, and 3) Howard went to Hell.  That’s a lot to take in!

Of course, it all turns out to be a dream that Edna was having.  Edna tells Marlene about her dream and then she doesn’t mention it again for the rest of the episode.  This is despite the fact that Edna receives a chance to be promoted and Howard doesn’t recommend her for the job.  You would think that Edna would link all of this to her dream and maybe warn Howard that he was condemning his soul to the fires of Hell.  Maybe she forgot about her dream.  These things happen occasionally.  I sometimes forget about my dreams, too!

It’s between Jack Christian and Edna for the new store manager job and, in a very odd scene, Mrs. Schutlz (Barbara Gordon) interviews them both at the same time.  (Oddly, everyone at the store acts as if they all know Mrs. Schultz, despite this being her first appearance on the show.)  Edna notices that all of the questions appear to be biased against Christian.  Mrs. Schultz asks what they would do if a customer came in the store wearing the same dress as them.  Mrs. Schultz asks Christian what he would do if a customer was having PMS.  (“What’s PMS?” Christian asks and sweetie, you don’t want to know.)  Edna realizes that Gordon is only interested in giving the job to another woman so Edna turns down the promotion.  She wants to earn the job on her merits and nothing else.  And she doesn’t break up with Howard so I guess he still has a chance to getting into Heaven.

This episode was weird.  The dream sequence was actually pretty funny and Gordon Clapp scored a few laughs as the store’s dim-witted electrician.  That said, the whole job interview storyline felt strange.  Admittedly, I’ve never had to actually interview for any of the jobs that I’ve had but still, I just imagine it’s handled a bit differently than in this episode.  It was a weird episode.  Edna should have taken that job and ran with it.

Cleaning Out The DVR: My Husband’s Secret Life (dir by Philippe Gagnon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recorded My Husband’s Secret Life off of Lifetime on March 25th.

Agck!

That looks like quite an accident, doesn’t it?

Lying on the ground is Freddy (Brett Donahue).  Freddy owns a flower store so you might wonder how exactly he ended up lying in the middle of the street, covered in blood.  Some of it could have to do with the fact that Freddy is the husband who is mentioned, in the title, as having a secret.  Freddy may seem like a nice guy but he sure is shady about certain aspects of his past.  For instance, why does he carry a lighter that was made in Russia?  And when he talks in his sleep, why does he speak with slightly foreign accent?  And then there’s his slightly creepy and rather overprotective mother.

As for why he’s lying in the middle of the road, he’s just been run by a man named Arthur (Joe Cobden).  Arthur drinks too much and is frequently a nervous wreck.  Interestingly enough, he once had a respectable job and a strong family.  Whenever Freddy and Arthur meet, it’s on one of those park benches that practically screams, “Secret spy meeting place!”

Hovering over him is Jennifer Jones (Kara Killmer).  Jennifer is Freddy’s wife and, to be honest, she was a bit concerned about her marriage even before Freddy ended up in the middle of the street.  They’ve been married for seven years and yet, there’s still things that Jennifer doesn’t really known about Freddy.  And when she just happens to spot him in the city, getting yelled at by an angry woman, Jennifer’s suspicions become even stronger.  It gets even worse when she twice tries to call him and, after first ignoring her, he answers the second time and blatantly lies about where he is.

Later, when she confronts him, he admits that he was lying about where he was but then asks her why she didn’t call him out if she knew he was lying.  I mean, how dare she allow him to lie!?  That’s classic gaslighting and enough to make everyone watching the film shout, “Get away from him!”

But, shortly afterward, Freddy ends up in the middle of the street and, suddenly, the whole idea of leaving him gets a lot more awkward.  Freddy’s in a coma now and how can you leave someone when they’re in a coma?  While Jennifer waits for Freddy to wake up, her mother-in-law continues to push her away.  What was Jennifer’s husband hiding and why is his mother searching through his house in the middle of the night?  Jennifer is determined to find out!

In all probability, you’ll figure it out long before Jennifer does.  I mean, honestly, when a guy starts speaking in a foreign accent in his sleep, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he’s probably not who he says he is.  In fact, it takes a certain suspension of disbelief to accept that Freddy could have fooled Jennifer for all this time.

But — hey, this is Lifetime and Lifetime is all about suspending your disbelief and having a good time!  Kara Killmer gives a sympathetic lead performance and Joe Cobden has a few good scenes as the perpetually shaky Arthur.  At its most effective, My Husband’s Secret Life deals with a question that we’ve all asked (whether we admit it or not): How well do we know the people we love?

My Husband’s Secret Life is also known as Sleeper.