Tag Archives: Ben Hammer

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 4.21 “A Special Operation”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, the fourth season comes to an end.

Episode 4.21 “A Special Operation”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson., originally aired on May 17th, 1981)

Season 4 comes to an odd end with A Special Operation.

Getraer is injured when he crashes his motorcycle.  He takes a piece of metal to the face and he nearly loses his eyesight.  Luckily, the abrasive but brilliant Dr. Patterson (James Sloyan) is able to save both Getraer’s eye and his ability to see with it.  However, the idealistic young Dr. Rhodes (A Martinez) worries that Patterson may have missed something.  Can Patterson set aside his ego long enough to listen to his younger colleague?

Hey, wait a minute, isn’t this CHiPs?

I don’t have any way to prove this but there’s a part of me that strongly suspects the season finale of CHiPs was also a backdoor pilot for a medical show.  So much time is spent with Patterson, Rhodes, and the nurses at the local hospital that it just feels like there was some hope that viewers would call in and demand to see more of Dr. Rhodes.  A Martinez even gives a very Erik Estrada-style performance in the role of Rhodes.

Speaking of Estrada, he’s barely in this episode.  (Ponch, we’re told, is preparing for to testify in a big court case.)  It largely falls to Jon Baker to stop the assassin (Eugene Butler) who has been hired to try to take Getraer out of commission.  This, of course, leads to the assassin stealing an ambulance and Baker chasing him.  The ambulance flips over in slow motion but somehow, the assassin survives to that Baker can arrest him.

It was a strange end for a season that’s largely been dominated by Erik Estrada and his performance as Ponch.  (Larry Wilcox, I will say, looked happy to have the finale to himself.)  For the most part, Season 4 was an uneven season.  The writing so favored Estrada over Wilcox that the show sometimes felt like it was turning into a parody of itself.  The show that started out about two partners on motorcycles became a show about how Ponch could literally walk on water and do no wrong.

Next week, we start season 5!

April True Crime: The Wizard of Lies (dir by Barry Levinson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For many people, Bernie Madoff is a still a name that summons hate.

Madoff was the owner of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, a firm that was a family business.  He ran it with his two sons, Mark and Andrew, and he gained a reputation for being a financial wizard, someone who never lost money and who always returned a profit for everyone who trusted him with their money.  He was someone who took money from the famous and the ordinary, the rich and the middle class, and he promised everyone that he would do wonderful things with that cash.  He lived in a fabulous home in New York City.  He had business and political connections.  His firm was, at one point, ranked as the sixth biggest on Wall Street but Madoff, himself, tried to keep a low-profile.

Of course, Madoff was a liar.  While his brokerage firm actually did make money, the asset management part of his business was actually a massive Ponzi scheme.  He took his clients’ money for himself and then kept everyone at bay by sending them fake documents that showed how well their investments were doing.  As long as the economy remained strong, Madoff had nothing to worry about.  People gave him their money, assumed it was safe, and then went away.  But when the stock market crashed in 2008, Madoff realized that his panicked clients would be coming for their money and he wouldn’t be able to give it to them.

Overnight, Madoff’s life collapsed.  He spent the rest of his days in prison, having been turned in by his own sons.  One son committed suicide, the other would die of cancer with his last words apparently being that his father was dead to him.  It was the biggest case of financial fraud in United State history and the majority of Madoff’s clients lost all of the money that they had given to him.  It was subsequently learned that many people had spotted red flags when it came to Madoff and his business.  (The fact that Madoff claimed to never lose money should have been a huge one.)  But Madoff invested his money in politicians and he never faced a real investigation until it was too late.  Madoff spend the rest of his days as a symbol of everything wrong with Wall Street.

Not surprisingly, quite a few movies were inspired by Bernie Madoff’s crimes, some of them featuring characters based on him and a few being about the case itself.  Produced by HBO, 2017’s The Wizard of Lies stars Robert De Niro as Madoff, Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife, and Alessandro Nivola as his son, Mark.  Directed by Barry Levinson, The Wizard of Lies follows Madoff as his Ponzi scheme collapses and it shows how the grand deception started.  Robert De Niro plays Madoff as being essentially soulless, a sociopath who knew he would eventually get caught but who just couldn’t bring himself to stop stealing people’s money.  Indeed, as played by De Niro, Madoff comes across as being one of the most joyless criminal masterminds in history.  He’s fooled everyone but he can’t enjoy it.  The impression that one gets is that Bernie Madoff was a pretty boring guy.  Perhaps that’s why people were willing to trust him with their money.  Someone that boring had to be trustworthy!  Many people have claimed that there’s no way that Mark and Andrew Madoff couldn’t have know what their father was doing.  In the film, one gets the feeling that Mark and Andrew knew something was going on but they decided to willfully blind themselves to what was happening around them.  The film hints that was Madoff’s secret power.  No one wanted to admit that his success was too good to be true.

The Wizard of Lies really doesn’t reveal anything new about the Madoff case.  Madoff’s crimes were actually pretty simple.  He wasn’t a criminal genius.  He was just someone who understood the importance of telling people what they wanted to hear.  Still, it’s a well-acted movie and, if you’re just looking for the facts of the case, The Wizard of Lies will give them to you.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.20 “Summit”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark do their bet to save the world from nuclear annihilation.  Good for them!

Episode 2.20 “Summit”

(Dir by Dan Gordon, originally aired on March 5th, 1986)

Maria Malinoff (Eda Reiss Merlin), a Russian immigrant, is dying.  Before she dies, she wants to see her son one last time.

The good news is that her son, Andrey Malinoff (Nehemiah Persoff), is currently in the United States.  Even better, Mark and Jonathan have been assigned to let Andrey know that his mother wants to see him and to convince him to set aside his bitterness and see her.

The bad news is that Andrey is now the deputy premier of Russia and the reason why he’s in the United States is to attend a summit with the President (voiced by Frank Welker).  Andrey is a communist who doesn’t believe in angels or American exceptionalism!

Mark and Jonathan are able to get jobs as waiters for the summit.  (It helps that there is another angel working at Camp David.)  They are even able to get Andrey away from his handlers long enough to take him to see his mother.  Andrey is convinced that Jonathan and Mark are with the CIA and their whole “mission” is a trick to keep him from attending the summit.  Mark dislikes Andrey because he’s a Russian and he think his country is superior to America.  Jonathan dislikes Andrey because he’s abrasive and refuses, at first, to accept that Maria is his mother.

Eventually, though, Maria starts to talk about what Andrey was like as a child.  Realizing that she is who she says she is, Andrey sits with his mother and talks to her until she passes away.  Then, he returns to the summit a (slightly) changed man.  He may still be a communist but at least now he knows the meaning of the word compassion.  Mark takes a few minutes to ask Andrey and the President to work out their differences, explaining that everyone in the world is scared of nuclear war.  The President, who is heard but not seen, is touched by Mark’s plea and agrees to have a long conversation about peace with Andrey.

Having apparently brought about world peace, Mark and Jonathan head off to their next assignment.

This episode — which was one of the few to be directed by neither Michael Landon nor Victor French — just felt silly, especially when compared to the strong episodes that came before it.  Nehemiah Persoff does a lot of blustering in the role of Andrey but he never convinces us of the character’s emotions or his transformation.  As an anti-communist, I enjoyed listening to Mark insult the Russians but otherwise, this well-meaning episode was a definite misfire.

Retro Television Reviews: Jennifer Slept Here 1.2 “Jennifer: The Movie”

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 Jennifer Slept Here, which aired on NBC in 1983 and 1984.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, the afterlife of film star Jennifer Farrell continues as a Hollywood production company comes to the house to shoot a scene for their Jennifer biopic!

Episode 1.2 “Jennifer: The Movie”

(Dir by John Bowab, originally aired on October 28th, 1983)

The second episode of Jennifer Slept Here opens with ghostly Jennifer in a good mood.  A movie is being made about her life and Joey has somehow gotten a hold of the script.  Jennifer reads the script and announces that the movie is going to be the “great biopic since Gandhi!  And I look a lot better under a sheet!”

(The audience loves that line.)

Jennifer’s main concern is who is going to be play her in the movie and, at her insistence, Joey asks his parents.  Since his parents are wacky sitcom parents, it takes them forever to finally reveal that not only is Jennifer going to be played by Sheila Drake (Lynnda Ferguson) but that a scene from the movie is going to be filmed at the house.  Jennifer is not a fan of Sheila Drake’s and she takes out her annoyance by playing the piano.  When his mother comes in the room to see who is so beautifully playing the piano, Joey is forced to pretend to be a talented musical prodigy.

Later, Jennifer is super-excited when the film crew shows up at the house to shoot a scene in which she talks to a producer.  This actually leads to a rather poignant moment in which Jennifer tries to talk to a few familiar members of the crew, just to be reminded that she’s dead and they can no longer hear her.  (When I say that the scene is poignant, it’s almost all totally due to the performance of Ann Jillian.)

However, Jennifer is not amused when she discovers that Sheila is planning on playing her as a “cheap tramp” who slept her way to the top.  Jennifer goes out of her way to disrupt filming, first by unplugging a power chord and then, after Sheila has gone up to Joey’s room to wait while the next scene is set up, spraying Sheila with water and then ripping off Sheila’s skirt.  Because Joey is in the room at the time, he gets blamed for both of these incidents.  So, I guess Joey’s going to jail and get booked on assault charges now, right?  Nope.  Instead, Sheila just walks off the picture.

The director (Luis Avalos) is freaking out because he’s got “a six million dollar picture” and no star when suddenly, Joey’s mom announces that there’s someone that the director should see.  The director says he doesn’t want to see anyone but then, Jennifer comes walking down the stairs.  AND EVERYONE CAN SEE HER!

It turns out that Jennifer has the ability to be seen when she wants to be seen.  She convinces the crew that she’s Sheila’s stand-in and then she shoots the scene the way that it really happened, revealing that she was a hard-worker who earned her roles with her talent.  Unfortunately, when the scene is later watched by the family, it turns out that the stand-in does not appear on camera.  (Instead, just as in The Invisible Man, the camera just picks up Jennifer’s dress moving around on its own.)  The family assumes that it was a problem with the camera while only Joey knows that it’s because Jennifer’s a ghost.

Accompanied by Jennifer (who is once again invisible to everyone but him), Joey heads down to a snooty restaurant where he confronts Sheila and, with Jennifer’s help, blackmails her to return to the film.  Joey threatens to reveal that Sheila steals her wardrobe from her movies and that she once spent a night in Madrid with a soccer team.  If I was Sheila, I would reply by calling the police and telling them that Joey was in the room when I was sprayed with water and had my skirt ripped off.  But apparently, everyone’s moved on from that.

Sheila returns to the film and shoots the scene, this time the way that it actually happened.  Jennifer wipes away a tear.  Awwwww!

Hey, this isn’t actually was not a bad episode.  It was certainly an improvement over the pilot and Ann Jillian did a great job playing up both Jennifer’s pride in her career and her anger that her accomplishments were being denigrated by a lesser actress.  The supporting characters continue to be the show’s biggest weakness but this episode largely worked, even if it never really made sense for the director to be okay with the family hanging out at the house while they were shooting the film.

Next week: Joey and his loser friend Marc both want to date the same girl!