David Bortolucci | 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!

Are you ready to get back into T and T?

Yeah, me neither.

But I made a commitment to review the show so here we go!

Episode 3.11 “A Place In History”

(Dir by Alan Simmonds, originally aired on March 17th, 1990)

Phil (Sean McCann), the new cut man at Decker’s gym, impresses everyone when he throws one solid punch that breaks the nose of a cocky boxer. Phil tells them that he learned how to take care of himself back when he was better known as Lucky O’Mara.

OH MY GOD, everyone says, LUCKY O’MARA!

Apparently, in the 50s, Lucky O’Mara was a gangster who was famous for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. His picture was never taken and his mysterious disappearance led to a legend growing all over Canada about what happened to Lucky O’Mara. (He was the Toronto version of D.B. Cooper, I suppose.) After the local media gets wind of Phil’s story, he becomes a celebrity. Everyone wants to interview Lucky O’Mara. And at least one person — a veteran mafia hitman — wants to kill Lucky O’Mara.

Only Turner, Terri, and Detective Hargrove are skeptical of Phil’s story. When Hargrove summons Phil to the police station and announces that he’s going to be arrested for a murder that Hargrove says Lucky committed, Phil comes clean and admits that he’s not Lucky. And it all turns out that Phil wasn’t going to be arrested anyway. It was just a clever ruse on the part of Hargrove and Terri.

At the end of the episode, Phil is back to working as a cut man and no one at the gym seems to be all that upset about him lying to them. Phil tells Turner that he actually is Lucky O’Mara. Turner shrugs.

Wow, what a nothing episode. The idea was intriguing but the episode did little with it. You kind of have to wonder how it is that a busy policeman like Hargrove and a busy attorney like Terri have time to fake arrest someone. I mean, aren’t there real arrests that need to be made? Worst of all, T.S. Turner spent most of this episode sitting in his office. He didn’t growl at anyone. He didn’t threaten anyone. He didn’t get mad at anyone. What’s the point of T and T if you’re not going to use the T that most people are probably watching for?

This episode was typical of the third season of T and T. It didn’t add up too much and Mr. T really didn’t seem like he wanted to be there anymore. I know how he feels but there’s only a few more episodes to go and I’m going to review everyone of them.

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, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week’s episode is a creepy one! Read on!

Episode 1.8 “Shadow Boxer”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on November 21st, 1987)

Tommy Dunn (David Ferry) is a punch drunk boxer who barely makes a living working at a local gym. No one takes him seriously. The other boxers taunt him. The owner of the gym treats him like a slave and continually tells him that he’ll never be a champion. However, Tommy has a secret weapon. He’s found an old pair of boxer gloves. The gloves used to belong to a savage boxer known as the Killer. When Tommy puts the gloves on and touches his shadow, his shadow comes to life. While Tommy is throwing punches either in the gym or in the ring, his shadow is beating someone else to death. As long as his shadow is beating someone up, Tommy is unstoppable.

After Tommy’s shadow murders the owner of the gym, Micki, Ryan, and Jack show up to investigate. (The gloves were, of course, bought from Curious Goods.) Micki brings her camera and takes pictures of all of the boxers so that Ryan and Jack can later look to see if any of them are wearing the “Killer” gloves. It doesn’t take them long to discover that Tommy is currently in possession of the gloves. When Micki flirts with Tommy at a diner, Ryan and Jack break into his apartment and search for the gloves. This leads to three things happening. First off, Micki has a really awkward date with a murderer. Secondly, Ryan and Jack fail to find the gloves before Tommy returns. Third, Tommy now knows that Ryan, Jack, and Micki are onto him.

During his next fight, Tommy sends his shadow after Jack but fortunately, Micki is waiting with a flashlight. Shining light on the shadow causes it to disappear and it also causes Tommy to get beaten unconscious in the boxing ring. With Tommy temporarily out of commission, Ryan steals the gloves. Tommy can no longer use the gloves to kill but, as Micki bitterly points out, Tommy will also never be prosecuted for all the people that he killed.

Of course, Tommy then shows up at Curious Goods and tries to force Micki to tell him where the gloves are. Ryan puts on the gloves and proceeds to beat up Jack, which leads to Ryan’s shadow beating Tommy to death. Jack isn’t particularly happy about getting beaten up but it does save Micki’s life.

This was a well-done episode. There weren’t many twists to the story but the sight of Tommy’s shadow following people around was undeniably creepy. The shadow was probably the scariest of all of the threats that have appeared on the show so far. Even when the shadow was saving Micki’s life by beating Tommy to death, it was still scary to watch. When Ryan hit Jack, it was left ambiguous as to whether or not he was trying to save Micki’s life or if the evil of the cursed gloves had briefly possessed him.

The only unfortunate thing about this episode is that it led to me going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of researching boxers who have died in the ring. Boxing is a brutal sport, whether you’re fighting with cursed gloves or not!