Retro Television Reviews: Lookwell 1.1 “The Pilot”

Posted on February 15, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Lookwell, which aired on NBC in 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Adam West is an actor who solves crimes …. kind of.

Episode 1.1 “Lookwell”

(Dir by E.W. Swackhamer, originally aired on July 28th, 1991)

Ty Lookwell (Adam West) was once the biggest star in Hollywood.

Well, maybe not the biggest star. But, in the 70s, he did have his own cop show. It was called …. Banacek? Mannix? No, that’s not it. Oh …. BRANNIGAN! Ty Lookwell starred on a show called Brannigan and he was even given his own honorary police badge in 1972. It was presented to him at a ceremony in Television City.

However, nearly 20 years later, things have changed. Brannigan is no longer on the air and Ty Lookwell has been reduced to wearing a wig and a leather jacket in an attempt to get a role in a revival of Happy Days. (He not only doesn’t get the role but he doesn’t even get to audition.) When he returns to his home, he is informed that his favorite hairspray has been discontinued (“Those fools!”) and that all the messages on his machine are for his nephew. Kevin Costner calls looking for Lookwell’s nephew. Francis Ford Coppola calls for Lookwell’s nephew and leaves a message in which he promises to call back. No one calls for Ty Lookwell.

Lookwell, however, still has a steady gig teaching an acting class and his students not only look up to him but also help him out whenever he decides that there’s a crime he has to solve. This apparently happens frequently as Lookwell takes his honorary badge very seriously.

“Remember how we talked about how you don’t have to come around here?” Detective Kennery (Ron Frazier) asks Lookwell at one point.

The pilot follows Lookwell as he investigates a series of car thefts. Helping him out is his favorite student, Jason (played by future director Todd Field). Lookwell’s investigative techniques are not particularly complicated. He puts on a disguise and attempts to go undercover. It never quite works, largely because everyone that Lookwell meets is smarter than Lookwell. Lookwell’s attempt to disguise himself as a Grand Prix racer fails because the security guard takes one look at him and sees that he’s obviously not a Grand Prix racer. His attempt to conduct a stakeout on a fancy diner is nearly thwarted by his bizarre decision to disguise himself as a hobo. His attempt to go undercover at a garage is thwarted by the other mechanics misunderstanding his leading questions.

(“Who beat you up, Mr. Lookwell?” his students ask at the start of class.)

As the investigation continues, Jason wonders if they’re just wasting time.

“You do not waste time,” Lookwell corrects him, “Time wastes you.”

Lookwell was written by Conan O’Brian and Robert Smigel, long before either one of them became famous, and the humor is definitely the humor of a generation who grew up watching network television, especially the cop shows of the 70s and the 80s. While the dialogue is clever and definitely funny, it’s really Adam West who makes the pilot work. West delivers all of his line with such conviction and confidence that it doesn’t matter that he only plays a peripheral role in solving the case and, in fact, usually makes things worse for everyone involved. As played by West, Lookwell is so confident in his abilities and so blithely unaware of his limitations that it’s hard not to admire his spirit.

Unfortunately, the spirit was not admired by NBC and Lookwell only aired once. But it has since developed a cult following. Adam West described it as being his favorite of the various shows that he did. I enjoyed the pilot, though I do think the premise was perhaps a bit too thin to support an actual series. (It would have made a great recurring SNL bit, though.) Thanks to YouTube, everyone can now watch what NBC passed up.

Cyborg (1989, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on January 7, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the future and the world has seen better days. As a result of solar flares and war, Earth has been reduced to a barren wasteland where only the strong survive. Making things even worse is that a plague has broken out and is threatening to wipe out what remains of the world’s population.

A cyborg named Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon) has been sent to New York to retrieve the information on how to cure the plague from a computer system. Now that she has the information, it’s all a matter of safely returning to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. She’s being pursued by the evil Fender (Vincent Klyn), a pirate who says that he loves the new world and who wants to be the one to decide who does and who does not get the cure. When a mercenary named Gibson (Jean-Claude Van Damme) offers to protect her on her journey back to Atlanta, Pearl declines. She says that Gibson is not strong enough to defeat Fender and that she’ll take her chances with the pirates. (Pragmatically, Pearl says that her allies in Atlanta can kill Fender themselves.)

However, Gibson is not willing to take no for an answer. Gibson is less concerned with saving humanity and more concerned with avenging the death of his lover, who was murdered by Fender. Working with Nady (Deborah Richter), another sole survivor of one of Fender’s massacres, Gibson sets out to track down and destroy the pirate.

When Cyborg started, I was really looking forward to watching Jean-Claude Van Damme play a cyborg but it turned out that Van Damme was playing a human. I thought that Fender might be a cyborg but he’s also just a human. There’s only one cyborg in this film and she’s often superfluous to the action. I imagine that this movie was called Cyborg in order to capitalize on the popularity of movies like Terminator and Robocop but Cyborg actually has more in common with the Mad Max films. Van Damme is a haunted loner, just like Max Rockatansky, while Fender and his crew feel as if they could have stepped out of the Road Warrior. Even the lengthy scene where Gibson is crucified in the desert feels tailor-made for Mad Max and Mel Gibson’s habit of playing characters who undergo lengthy torture scenes. (And is it coincidence that Mel Gibson and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s haunted hero both share the same last name?)

Jean-Claude Van Damme, with his pun-worthy name and his reputation for bad behavior off-screen, never got much respect but he was one of the best of the Arnold Schwarzenegger imitators of the 80s and 90s. He was a genuine athlete and he was a far better actor than someone like Steven Seagal. When Van Damme was under contract with Cannon Films, he was offered his choice of starring in three films: Delta Force 2, American Ninja 3, and Cyborg. He chose Cyborg, playing a role that was originally envisioned for Chuck Norris. As a film, Cyborg will never win any points for originality but the fight scenes are kinetic and exciting and, even more importantly, this is a movie that lets Van Damme be Van Damme. There are no attempts at character development or any sort of self-aware winking at the audience. Instead, Van Damme shows up and fights. Matching Van Damme blow for blow is the imposing Vincent Klyn, whose opening monologue (“I like the death! I like the misery! I like this world!”) is a classic of its own.

Cyborg would be followed by two sequels, which were largely unrelated to the first film. Jean-Claude Van Damme would not return for either of them.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #82: Promised Land (dir by Michael Hoffman)

Posted on May 21, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I made out my schedule of reviews for Embracing the Melodrama, I did not realize that I was setting myself up for a mini-marathon of Kiefer Sutherland movies but somehow, that’s exactly what happened! No sooner had I watched and jotted down my impressions of Bright Lights, Big City and 1969, then I started watching a 1988 film called Promised Land (which should not be confused with the recent Matt Damon/Jon Krasinski fracking film).

And guess who stars in this particular film?

That’s right — Kiefer Sutherland!

Now, if Bright Lights, Big City featured Kiefer as a sociopath and 1969 featured Kiefer as a blonde-haired golden boy, Promised Land features Kiefer as a prototypical outsider.

Promised Land opens at a high school basketball game. Hancock (Jason Gedrick) is the handsome and popular jock who is a star on the court and who is dating a cheerleader named Mary (Tracy Pollan). Danny (Kiefer Sutherland) is the nerdy kid who gets good grades and who is nicknamed Senator because he wants to enter politics. He has an obvious crush on Mary but also appears to have one on Hancock as well. As Hancock runs up and down the court, nobody cheers louder than Danny. Meanwhile, Hancock barely knows who Danny is.

Three years later and things have changed. Hancock, having gone to college on an athletic scholarship just to drop out and return home, is now a vaguely fascistic police officer. Mary has remained in college. When she returns home for Christmas break, Hancock tries to rekindle their relationship but Mary has moved on.

Meanwhile, Danny has dropped out of school as well. After spending a few years drifting around, he meets the lively, vivacious, and totally insane Bev (Meg Ryan). He and Bev get married in Las Vegas and decide to head back to Danny’s hometown for Christmas…

Drama, violence, and tragedy follow!

But you already guessed that, didn’t you? That’s one of the problems with Promised Land. From the minute that Bev says that she wants to meet Danny’s family, you can tell exactly how this story is going to end. And while a predictable plot can sometimes be redeemed by memorable performances, that’s not the case with Promised Land. Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan both give good and dangerous performances but Jason Gedrick and Tracy Pollan make for a boring couple.

(Interestingly enough, Tracy Pollan was also in Bright Lights, Big City.)

Promised Land does have some historical significance, in that it was the first film to ever be partially funded by the Sundance Institute. Robert Redford is listed as an executive producer. But, historical significance aside, there’s really not much about Promised Land to really recommend going to the effort to try to track it down. It’s not so much bad as just very forgettable.