Bobo Lewis | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

Say, have you heard the joke about the traveling Bible salesman and the farmer’s daughter? How about the one about the Man from Nantucket….

Episode 2.6 “The Farmer’s Daughter”

(Dir by Michael Warren Powell, originally aired on November 5th, 1989)

On a rainy night, traveling salesman Howard Filby (Soupy Sales) has an accident in front of the farmhouse owned by …. well, the show just calls them Ma (Bobo Lewis) and Pa (George Hall). Ma and Pa seem like good country folks. (That said, just their names brought to mind the owners of the Ma & Pa General Store on King of the Hill. “I guess your Pa because you’re PA-thetic!” “And you’re Ma because you’re always ridin’ mah ass!”) Ma and Pa are willing to let Howard spend the night at the farmhouse, out of the rain. He can just sleep up in the attic. They’ll have to put up a privacy sheet, of course. Their daughter Lucy (Stephanie Phillips) also stays up in the attic.

That privacy sheet doesn’t stay up for long. Howard becomes intrigued by Lucy’s silhouette and her sultry voice. When the sheet comes down, Howard is relieved to discover that Lucy is just as attractive as she sounded. Lucy asks Howard for his undying love and Howard’s willing to give it. Lucy talks about heading downstairs to let Ma and Pa know that they’ll be getting married. Howard’s a little bit surprised to hear that….

Howard’s even more surprised when he accidentally pulls off a chunk of Lucy’s skin. It turns out that Lucy is not quite who Howard thought she was and that Howard is hardly the first salesman to be brought to the farmhouse and sent up to the attic. Even as Howard struggles in the attic, Ma and Pa sit in their living room and smile at the sound of another fender bender outside….

This was a nicely atmospheric episode. Having heard all the various stories and jokes about traveling salesman and farmer’s daughters, I can’t say that I was particularly surprised by the direction that the story took but the episode still works as an example of American folk horror. Soupy Sales was a comedian and a children’s show host and, according to Wikipedia, his trademark was getting a pie slammed in his face. (Ouch!) With that in mind, I guess it’s not a surprise that Sales’s performance occasionally leans a bit too much towards the goofy side. (There’s a difference between playing the role with humor and just mugging for the camera.) However, Stephanie Phillips, George Hall, and Bobo Lewis are all effectively creepy as the faux friendly farmhouse inhabitants.

Interestingly enough, this episode was co-written by character actor Bob Balaban. As a director, Balaban was responsible for Parents, another film about a seemingly perfect married couple with a secret.

(Hi there! So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR. Seriously, I currently have 193 things recorded! I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not. So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR! Will I make it? Keep checking this site to find out! I recorded the 1999 romantic comedy Just The Ticket off of Epix on October 13th!)

Just The Ticket tells the story of Gary Starke (Andy Garcia).

Gary lives in New York City. He is a tough, streetwise character, loyal to his friends and quick to anger if he feels that anyone is trying to take advantage of him. He has no time for pretentious posturing or snobbish social gatherings. Gary’s a man of the people. He works with and takes care of an aging former boxer named Benny (Richard Bradford). He looks after a pregnant, former drug addict named Alice (Laura Harris). When the slick and dangerous Casino (Andre B. Blake) starts to do business in Gary’s territory, Gary is the only person with the guts to stand up to him. Having never had a family (he’s never even seen his birth certificate and has no idea who his parents were), Gary has adopted the street people as his surrogate family.

That’s not all. Gary is also a lapsed Catholic who, when he goes to confession, opens by saying that it’s been 25 years since his last confession and that he’s taken the Lord’s name in vain 20 to 30 times that morning. Gary needs some help because his girlfriend, an aspiring chef named Linda (Andie McDowell), has left him and Gary wants to win her back. The priest asks Gary if he can get him tickets to see the Knicks…

Why does he ask that?

You see, Gary is a legendary ticket scalper and…

Okay, I probably just lost you when I used the terms “legendary” and “ticket scalper” in the same sentence. And I’ll admit that, when I discovered this movie was about ticket scalpers, it nearly lost me as well. Just The Ticket treats ticket scalping with a dignity and reverence that I’m not quite sure it deserves. I wasn’t surprised to discover that director/writer Richard Wenk apparently based the character of Gary on an actual ticket scalper that he knew. A lot of bad movies have been made as the result of a director, writer, or producer coming across some mundane activity and thinking, “Wow, this would make a great movie!”

(That’s one reason why, every few years, we suddenly get a dozen movies about race car drivers.)

However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Just The Ticket is not a terrible movie. Admittedly, it’s totally predictable and there are a lot of scenes that don’t work. For instance, there’s a lengthy scene where Gary and Linda destroy a snobbish food critic’s kitchen. I could imagine Gary doing that because he has nothing to lose. But Linda is actually hoping to become a chef in New York City. Would she really run the risk of making a permanent enemy at the New York Times? There’s nothing about Andie McDowell’s performance that suggests she would. The scenes between Gary and his aging partner also tend to overplay their hand. Richard Bradford gives a good performance as Benny but we all know what’s going to end up happening to him as soon as he starts crying after Gary insults him.

With all that in mind, Just The Ticket still has an undeniable charm. Some of it is due to Andy Garcia’s dedicated performance. He is frequently better than the material and he and Andie McDowell have enough chemistry that you do want to see Linda and Gary get back together. Some of it is because Just The Ticket is not afraid to shy away from being sentimental. It’s hard to think of any other romantic comedy in which the Pope plays such an important supporting role. It’s a sweet movie. It has a good heart.

There’s something to be said for that.