Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 7/10/22 — 7/16/22

Posted on July 16, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I spent most of this week watching movies. The Emmy nomination period is over with and, as a result, so is a lot of my interest in television. I am still watching Big Brother, of course. How could I ever stop watching that? That’s the power of addiction.

The Bachelorette (Monday Night, ABC)

There’s two Bachelorettes, which is only right considering what a mess the last season of The Bachelor was. We’ll see how this plays out. To be honest, I’m suffering a bit of fatigue with this franchise. It was more fun to watch before everyone decided that they were also in on the joke. Jesse Palmer seems like he’ll be a better host than Kaitlyn and Tayshia. So, we’ll see! (Can you tell that I didn’t really pay much attention to the first episode?)

Better Call Saul (Monday Night, AMC)

Better Call Saul returned with a bang this week. For those who thought Lalo would be around for a while longer, nope. I still feel bad for Howard, who will apparently now forever be branded a drug addict. I’m also increasingly concerned about what’s going to happen to Kim because pretty soon, Walter White and his sidekick are going to show up and Kim was never seen or spoken of in Breaking Bad.

Big Brother 24 (All week, CBS and Paramount+)

My thoughts on this latest season of Big Brother can be found over at the Big Brother Blog. This big news this week was that Paloma, who was obviously a favorite of production’s, self-evicted after having what appeared to be a hypomanic episode in the House. Julie Chen Moonves made a big deal about saying that production wished the best for Paloma and that they were only concerned with her mental health but rumor has it that production actually asked Paloma to stay in the game, even after it became obvious that she was struggling. Anyway, that’s Big Brother for you! (That’s also why I would never go on that show.)

Boy Meets World (Disney Plus)

On Thursday, I was bored enough to watch an episode of this late 90s sitcom. Shawn joined a cult. Mr. Turner got into a motorcycle accident. As with most episodes of Boy Meets World, it was 50% cringey and 50% effective. This episode featured a good performance from Rider Strong but it also featured Ben Savage going totally over the top as he shouted, “This is a hug, Shawn! THIS IS A HUG!”

The Challenge (Wednesday Night, CBS)

Survivor alumni faced off against Big Brother alumni and Love Island alumni and some Bachelor alumni. To be honest, I may have had the television on but The Challenge really has yet to capture my attention.

Hawkeye (Disney Plus)

I’m still mad that Natasha sacrificed herself in Avengers: Endgame so Clint could be reunited with his family. That said, this series was enjoyable when taken on its town terms. It may be because my last name is Bowman but I’ve always liked archers. Vincent D’Onofrio seemed to be having fun as a crime lord and Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfield were believable as father and daughter.

Inspector Lewis (YouTube)

I watched another episode of Inspector Lewis on Tuesday. I watched it with a group of friends on twitter and I have to admit that the tweets were so lively that I actually didn’t may attention to the episode. Sitting here and typing this up on Saturday, I have no idea what happened but I do remember that Hathaway seemed troubled.

Loki (Disney Plus)

My God, could Tom Hiddleston be any more adorable? The plot of this show was typical Marvel nonsense but Hiddleston’s devilish performance made it fun and worth watching.

Stranger Things (Netflix)

I watched the latest season and, as you can tell from my personal Emmy nominations, I liked it. I’m going to hold off on saying anything more because I’m planning on reviewing each episode individually at some point in the near future. By the time I get around to reviewing it, everyone will probably have moved on but oh well. That’s one of the benefits of having your own site and being your own boss. You can set your own schedule.

6 Classic Television Episodes To Watch On Halloween

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you want to celebrate Halloween but you don’t necessarily want to spend the entire day watching horror movies …. well, what the Hell’s wrong with you?

No, no! I’m just joking! I actually understand where you’re coming from! Well, fear not — here are six wonderful shows for Halloween and I believe they’re all streaming somewhere. So, if you need some quick Halloween entertainment, take a look at this list below!

(The episodes below are listed in chronological order.)

Saved By The Bell 3.26 “Mystery Weekend” (first aired on December 21st, 1991)

Desperate to spend a weekend away from Bayside High School and Mr. Belding, Zack and the gang head off to a mansion for a mystery weekend! The plan is to solve the murders and win …. something. To be honest, I’ve never really understood the point of the mystery weekend and I’ve always found it weird that the a bunch of underage high school kids were allowed to participate without the presence of their parents. Like I would think most murder houses would have an age requirement. Of course, an even bigger question is why would they bring Screech with them?

Anyway, it soon appears that the mystery weekend has taken a dangerous turn as people start to turn up dead for real! Or are they? And then Lisa Turtle disappears! Or does she? Only Zack Morris can solve this case! This episode is dumb but entertaining in the typical Saved By The Bell manner.

2. Boy Meets World 5.17 “And Then There Was Shawn” (February 27th, 1998)

The entire season 5 cast is in detention because they interrupted class to have a debate over Cory and Topanga breaking up. Good Lord, did these people not have a life outside of Cory and Topanga’s creepy relationship? Anyway, it soon turns out that there’s a murderer in the school and, one by the one, the entire cast is murdered! Who could it be!?

Complete with a random guest appearance from Jennifer Love Hewitt (who was dating BMW’s Will Friedle at the time), And Then There Was Shawn was a parody of films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. It’s surprisingly well-done and I say this as someone who isn’t really a huge fan of this show. (Cory’s love for Topanga was a bit too stalkerish for me. Even worse was everyone’s insistence that Topanga was obligated to love him back, regardless of how she felt.) In fact, this episode is a macabe classic in its way. One gets the feeling that the writers had been discussing how they would like to kill off the cast for a while before this episode was written.

3. King of the Hill 7.9 “Pigmalion” (January 12th, 2003)

Luanne (voice by the much-missed Brittany Murphy) is dating Trip Larsen (voice by Michael Keaton), the owner of Larsen Pork Products and one of the richest men in Texas. Yay! Trip is totally and completely insane and only Peggy (Kathy Najimy) realizes it. Uh-oh! My favorite thing about this episode is that, even though Trip is trying to kill everyone and he’s literally in love with a pig, no one but Peggy and eventually Luanne ever notices. Instead, they just shrug off his behavior as him being an eccentric Texas millionaire. Michael Keaton does a wonderful job voicing Trip and fear not, Trip does eventually get his sanity back. Of course, as soon as he regains his sanity, he notices that he’s on the conveyer belt in a slaughter house and well …. things don’t end well for him. But, as Luanne pointed out, at least he sounded happy before he died.

This episode was originally meant to air during Season 5 but was delayed because Fox thought it would be too controversial. (The episode takes place during Halloween but aired in January.) When it did air, it would be the only King of the Hill episode to get a “parental discretion advised” warning slapped on it. It’s a good episode, though. Family Guy wishes it could come up with something as good as Pigmalion.

4. The Office 2.5 “Halloween (October 18th, 2005)

Poor Michael! He just wans to celebrate Halloween and he’s even come up with a pretty cool costume. Unfortunately, corporate expect him to spend the day finding someone to fire. Will it be Creed or will it be Devon? When this episode was being shot, the writers weren’t sure who Michael would fire. But after the scene where Creed Bratton argues with Michael in his office, it was decided to keep Creed and the eccentric energy that he brought to the show. Don’t worry, though. Devon Abner the actor was already planning on leaving the show because he had gotten a role in a play and Devon the character was hired back in the final episode.

5. Community 3.5 “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps” (October 27th, 2011)

After Britta gives all the members of the Study Group an anonymous personality test, she is shocked to discover one of them is a psychopath! But who? Perhaps the best way to find out would be to have everyone tell a scary story. Shirley’s story involves her wild friends getting “left behind.” Pierce’s story is reactionary, violent, and kind of disturbing. Abed’s story is extremely meta while Troy’s story is, of course, about him and Abed. My favorite story was Annie’s rather violent vampire story. Eventually, it turns out that Britta misread the test results. Only one member of the group is sane but I won’t spoil who it is.

The great thing about this episode is not just that it perfectly parodies so many horror films but that each story is also perfectly tailored for the character telling it. Only Annie could have come up with that vampire story. Only Troy would have found the positive in being sewn together with Abed. Season 3 of Community was one of the best. For proof, just consider that this episode that preceded this one was Remedial Chaos Theory.

6. South Park 16.12 “A Nightmare on FaceTime” (October 24th, 2012)

Long before he became a marijuana farmer, Randy Marsh tried to force his family to help him run the last Blockbuster in Colorado. It turned out to be a haunted Blockbuster and, not surprisingly, Randy ends up going crazy and turning into Jack Nicholson from The Shining. Fortunately, it all worked out in the end!

Happy Halloween!

What Lisa Watched Last Night #52: Boy Meets World S5E17 “And Then There Was Shawn” (dir by Jeff McCracken)

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, my BFF Evelyn and I watched the infamous “And Then There Was Shawn” episode of the old ABC sitcom Boy Meets World.

Why Were We Watching It?

We were watching it because it’s October and we both had Halloween on the mind. Of course, according to the Boy Meets World wikia — and yes, I am as shocked as you to discover that such a thing exists — this episode actually originally aired on February 27th, 1998 so, technically, it was more of a belated Valentine’s Day episode than a Halloween episode. But anyone who has ever sat through And Then There Was Shawn knows that this was so totally a Halloween episode, even if it did air in February.

What Was It About?

And Then There Was Shawn pretty much starts out the exact same way as every single episode of Boy Meets World: Obsessive-stalker Cory (Ben Savage) and frigid, self-righteous Topanga (Danielle Fishel) are having issues and the entire world is just so concerned about whether or not they’ll be able to get back together so that they can eventually get married at the age of 18. Cory’s friend Shawn (played by the very adorable Rider Strong) manages to stop talking about living in the trailer park long enough to disrupt Mr. Feeney’s history class. Rather then questioning why his entire life seems to revolve around a bunch of 16 year-olds, Mr. Feeney (William Daniels) responds by giving everyone detention.

So, Topanga, Cory, and Shawn are all in Mr. Feeney’s after-school detention, along with Shawn’s boring girlfriend Angela and a random student named Kenny. (It took me a while to recognize that Kenny was being played by Richard Lee Jackson, who I remembered from Saved By The Bell: The New Class.) Since this is Boy Meets World, everyone is using their time in detention to discuss Cory and Topanga’s creepy relationship when suddenly “No one gets out of here alive” appears on the chalkboard, written in blood.

And from that moment on, it goes from being a standard episode of Boy Meets World to transforming into being perhaps one of the weirdest episodes ever to show up in a family sitcom.

Soon, Kenny’s dead as the result of someone jamming a pencil into his head, Mr. Feeney’s dead with a pair of scissors in his back, there’s a creepy janitor stalking the hallways, and Cory’s cute older brother Eric (Will Friedle) shows up, along with Jennifer Love Hewitt. By the end of the episode, almost the entire cast has been killed and, of course, it turns out that it’s all because the entire world revolves around Cory and Topanga…

What Worked?

Over the course of the episode, just about every character on the show is killed off. Considering just how annoying most of the characters on Boy Meets World could be, it’s hard not to appreciate this episode’s determination to kill all of them off.

The episode, itself, is actually pretty well-written and clever. Unlike a lot of sitcom Halloween episodes, And Then There Was Shawn actually feels like a legitimate (and respectful) homage to the great horror films of the past.

What Did Not Work?

I’ve often wondered if the audiences in the 20th Century found the character of Cory Matthews to be as creepy as I find him to be in the 21st. Seriously, whenever I see Boy Meets World, I’m struck by the fact that Cory basically spends every episode telling everyone that 1) they’ll never love anyone as much as he loves Topanga, 2) that Topanga’s belonged to him her entire life, and 3) that everyone in the world has an obligation to think about him and Topanga before they do or say anything. In addition to that, you have to consider his oddly co-dependent relationship with Shawn, the fact that he looks nothing like anyone else in his family, and the fact that whenever he and Topanga have a fight, he yells, “NO! We’re not supposed to ever disagree because I love you Topanga and … YOU LOVE ME!” Seriously, what a creep! Fortunately, Corey is less of a jerk than usual in this episode but, all things considered, it’s still hard to root for that little psycho.

Finally, what was up with the Boy Meets World theme song? I mean, it’s awful but it certainly does get stuck in your head.

“OMG! Just like me!” Moments

To be honest, I find almost all of the regular characters on Boy Meets World to be so annoying that I’m almost tempted to say that there wasn’t a single “Just like me!” moment in this episode. However, I do have to admit that — much like Jennifer Love Hewitt in this episode — I probably would have found time to make out with Eric as well. Seriously, he was soooooooooo cute!

Lessons Learned

Sitcom love = creepy love.