Charmaine Lord | Through the Shattered Lens

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!

Hi, everyone! I sprained my wrist yesterday and today, it still hurts to type so today’s review is going to be a quick one. You might even call it a mini-review!

Episode 3.10 “Silent Witness”

(Dir by Alan Simmonds, originally aired on March 10th, 1990)

When a bank is robbed, a young deaf boy named Vito (Daniel DeSanto) is the only witness to catch sight of one of the robbers without his mask on. The police bring in T.S. to keep an eye on the kid until it is time to testify.

This was a sweet episode. Mr. T, who has occasionally seemed a bit bored with the third season of this show, really brightened up when he was acting opposite DeSanto. One gets the feeling that both T.S. and Mr. T are naturally protective of kids. It was nice to see Mr. T being warm-hearted instead of grumpy and annoyed. It felt like a flashback to the first season, when T.S. Turner was still an earnest idealist.

Proving that everyone has to start somewhere, the great character actor Henry Czerny shows up here as a corrupt cop.

This episode suffered a bit due to its short running time. Stuffing an hour’s worth of plot led to things occasionally feeling a bit rushed.

The episode ended with Vito watching Turner argue with a detective (Richard Fitzpatrick) and finally speaking, for the first time in the episode. “Stop!” Vito says. It was a nice note to end on. Stop arguing and just be happy that the case has been solved.

And that seems like a good place to stop this review.

This week, Terri and Turner take down the loathsome head of a halfway house.

Episode 3.3 “Halfway to Nowhere”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired January 20th, 1990)

Roman (Louis Ferreira) is an angry young man who is on parole and who has been living at a halfway house that is run by Eddy (Danny Pawlick). When Roman discovers that Eddy has been harassing Roman’s girlfriend, Sissy (Krista Bridges), Roman attacks Eddy. Eddy kicks Roman out of the halfway house and attempts to have him sent back to prison.

Terri just happens to be in the police station when Roman is brought in and, just like Amy used to do before her mysterious disappearance, Terri declares herself to be Roman’s attorney. (One gets the feeling that the show’s producers just crossed out Amy’s name on a bunch of scripts and wrote in “Terri.”) Roman turns out to be a terrible client who refuses to talk to anyone, including the attorney who is trying to keep him out of jail. Terri finally calls up T.S. Turner and asks him for help.

Turner’s reaction is to growl about how late it is.

Seriously, what’s going on with Turner this season? He’s in an even worse mood than usual. Maybe he’s mad because Amy has mysteriously vanished without explanation. After all, Turner owed Amy. Amy was the one who got him out of prison. It made sense that Turner would always be willing to drop everything to help out Amy. Terri is just some random lawyer who has shown up out of nowhere.

Terri, it should be said, is not a very good lawyer. At the parole hearing, she puts Eddy on the stand and asks him a bunch of questions, despite not having a clue as to how Eddy is going to respond. She also dramatically announces that she will be calling Sissy as a witness before she knows whether or not Sissy has agreed to testify. When Turner steps into the courtroom without Sissy and shakes his head because Sissy refuses to testify, Terri is forced to walk back her words. I doubt that parole board appreciated that and they probably took their frustration out on Terri’s client.

In the end, Sissy does agree to wear a wire and Eddy stupidly talks about all the crimes that he’s committed as the head of a halfway house. Eddy ends up getting arrested and Sissy and Roman are reunited briefly. That said, it appears that Roman is still going to go back to jail because Terri is a terrible attorney.

On the plus side, this episode featured one of the most loathsome villains to ever show up on T&T and it was satisfying to watch Terri and Turner take him down. On the other hand, it would have been even more satisfying if Terri wasn’t terrible at her job and if Turner didn’t seem to be annoyed by even having to be in her presence. This episode was a mixed bag but at least it looked like Eddy was going away for a long time.