Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.19 “The Butcher”

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new 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 show can be found on YouTube!

This week, it’s all about Jack!

Episode 2.19 “The Butcher”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on April 24th, 1989)

Horst Mueller (Colin Fox), a Nazi scientist, uses a magic amulet to bring back to life the fearsome Col. Rausch (Nigel Bennett), a Nazi war criminal who was infamous for using barb wire as a garotte whenever he was carrying out executions. Rausch was killed during the war by a squad of soldiers led by a young lieutenant named Jack Marshak. Once Rausch is brought back to life, he not only sets himself up as a radio talk show host but he also seeks revenge on the men who killed him. One-by-one, he kills the members of the squad until eventually, only three are left alive, Simpson (Julius Harris), Shaw (John Gilbert), and Jack.

There were many episodes of Friday the 13th in which Jack was absent and described as being out-of-town while Micki and Ryan dealt with the latest cursed antique. This, however, is the first episode to feature Jack on his own. He mentions that Micki and Ryan are out-of-town, presumably because they’re tracking something down. This leads Jack to face Rausch with only the help of Simpson and Shaw. Watching this episode, one gets the feeling that Jack wouldn’t have it any other way. While this episode features all of the usual blood and melodrama that we’ve come to expect from this show, it also serves as a tribute to the friendship between Jack and his comrades-in-arms. Jack relates to Simpson and Shaw in a way that he can’t relate to the much-younger Micki and Ryan. If Jack is usually cast as a fatherly figure, this episode finds him working with equals and fighting against a monster with whom he has a personal connection. This is the rare episode to not feature any of Lewis’s cursed antiques. Instead, the magic amulet is one of the many artifacts for which Heinrich Himmler and the SS spent much of the war searching.

It’s a change-of-pace episode that gives Chris Wiggins a chance to show off his considerable talents an actor. Rarely has Jack been as haunted as he is in the episode and Wiggins’s sad eyes allow us to see what a lifetime of dealing with unbelievable evil would do to a person. In this episode, Jack is not just aware of the evil in the world but he’s also aware that he and his comrades-in-arms, the members of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” are aging and their time is passing. Jack and his friends are at an age where they should be enjoying their retirement. Instead. they’re still fighting against the legacy of Hitler’s evil.

This was a good and melancholy episode of Friday the 13th. This show could be uneven but episodes like this were good enough to make one mourn that the series did not last longer than just three seasons.

Retro Television Review: T and T 2.18 “Thicker Than Water”

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!

If you’ve ever watched T and T and thought, “I wish there was a lot less T in this show,” this week’s episode is for you!

Episode 2.18 “Thicker than Water”

(Dir by Harvey Frost, originally aired on May 8th, 1989)

This is a weird episode.

Ronnie (David Hewlett) and Steve (Gordon Michael Woolvett) are two brothers who have opened up a punk music venue in whatever part of Canada that T and T was filmed in. From the start, everyone is trying to shut them down. The other neighborhood business people claim that the club is bringing in a bad element. The police are unsympathetic whenever a fight breaks out. The fire department is always showing up with a list of regulations. The sinister person who loaned them the money to start the club wants the brothers to burn it down for the insurance money. Seriously, it’s not easy run a venue devoted to angry music that is best appreciated by people who like to fight. But, in the end, the brothers stick together and refuse to let Canada beat them down.

Yay! Take that, Trudeau!

(Yes, I know that Justin Trudeau was not in charge of Canada when this show was filmed but I’m too lazy to look up who was. Actually, T and T always pretended that it was set in the U.S. so I guess I should blame the first Bush. But seriously, everything about T and T screams Canada.)

So, why is this an episode of T and T? Well, Amy is their lawyer. (Sometimes, Amy practices criminal law and sometimes, she practices business law and sometimes, she just acts like a lobbyist. There’s nothing Amy can’t do!) Amy shows up at the club a few times. T.S. Turner also shows up once or twice and says, “Little brother, when you believe in something …. YOU FIGHT FOR IT!”

I’m going to guess that this was a backdoor pilot for a series that would have followed the brothers and their club. I have no idea if the pilot led to a series. It’s really hard for me to imagine what a potential series would have been like but I would say that I thought the club looked cool. I liked the rebellious attitude of the bands that performed there.

Like most backdoor pilots, this is a bit of a wasted episode. This is also the third episode in a row that hasn’t really featured Turner and Amy doing anything new. The previous two episodes were both clip shows and this episode isn’t even about them. These episodes are easy to review (yay!) but you do have to wonder what was going on behind the scenes during the latter half of the second season.

Retro Television Reviews: T and T 2.10 “Conspiracy”

Posted on December 22, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, T.S. goes up against his scariest opponent yet!

Episode 2.10 “Conspiracy”

(Dir by Robert Malenfant, originally aired on December 5th, 1988)

Two pre-teens, Paul (Michael Fantini) and Colby (Alan Fawcett), come across a million dollars hidden away in an apparently deserted warehouse. In slow motion, Paul throw the money into the air and declares that he and Colby are rich. Of course, Paul doesn’t stop to consider that the money is probably linked to something illegal and that it’s dangerous for him and his best friend to take it.

Soon, Paul and Colby are spending money all over the place. They buy new clothes. They buy new bicycles. Local store owner Bud (Charles Woods Gray) is concerned about the amount of money that Paul and Colby suddenly seem to have. He meets with his old friend, T.S. Turner, and asks Turner to talk to the boys.

Paul and Colby meet with Turner at Decker’s gym and Paul lies and says that the money came from his grandmother. He also says that he loaned Colby the money for Colby’s new bike. After the boys leave, Turner says that he knows that there is more to the story and that he’s going to investigate on his own. Turner invites Joe to investigate with him. It’s good to see that the show’s writers finally remembered that Turner and Amy basically adopted Joe at the start of the second season.

Turner is not the only one investigating. The counterfeiter who created the money wants to know who stole it. Birken (Martin Neufeld) may drive a car with a personalized license plate that reads “Rainbow” but he’s still a scary dude. He’s so dangerous that he doesn’t even wear a shirt half the time! No one is going to tell Birken what to do.

Eventually, Birken kidnaps Paul and ties him to a chair and threatens to suffocate him if he doesn’t help Birken get back his money. That leads to this rather disturbing sight:

The villains on T and T are usually fairly generic and forgettable but Birken is probably the scariest man in Canada. He’s certainly the first villain on this show to be just as intimidating at Mr. T. As soon as Birken shows up, the viewer has no doubt that he’s willing to kill anyone to get back his money. For once, the stakes on this show feels real.

Or, at least, they feel real until T.S. Turner shows up at Birken’s loft. (This is yet another episode where T.S. somehow manages to sneak into a building without being noticed.) When he confronts Birken, Birken attemps to show off his karate moves but T.S. takes him down with one punch.

It’s a bit of an anti-climatic ending, which is a shame because this was actually, by the standards of T and T, a pretty good episode. Birken was both memorable eccentric and genuinely menacing. Still, he was no match for T.S. Turner. No one stops Mr. T.