eileen barnett – Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing SLEDGE HAMMER!, a cop comedy which ran on ABC from 1986 to 1988. The entire series can be found on Prime!

This week, Sledge might be DOA!

Episode 1.12 “Miss of the Spider Woman”

(Dir by Charles Braverman, originally aired on December 20th, 1986)

Sledge has been poisoned!

The poison takes five days to do its work. Unfortunately, Sledge spent four days in a coma. Plus, daylight savings time kicked in. And also, his watch is broken. So, by the time Sledge wakes up, he’s actually only got about four or five hours left to go. While the doctors try to find an antidote, Doreau and Sledge investigate who poisoned him and why.

Actually, the why is easy to explain. It was a mistake! The mysterious Juanita (Eileen Barnett) wanted to poison Sledge’s neighbor but the woman who was hired to “deliver” the poison to Sledge was near-sighted and ended up in the wrong apartment. Whoops! Instead of trying the poison trick again, Juanita just has Sledge’s neighbor shot. It’s all because the neighbor was expecting a package that contained a valuable statue that Juanita wanted.

Through some good old-fashioned, death-fueled police work, Sledge tracks Juanita down to her boat. Juanita gives him what she says is the antidote and then reveals that he actually just drank more poison. Oh, Sledge! At least Sledge is still able to subdue and arrest her. Captain Trunk arrives at the last minute with actual antidote. Sledge survives! Later, he eats a powdered donut that had the fingerprints of a notorious serial killer. Everything’s back to normal!

This was a good take on two classic film noirs, D.O.A. and The Maltese Falcon. David Rasche made me laugh even while I was worrying about Sledge dying. I was happy he survived. The city wouldn’t be the same without him.

Welcome to Late Night 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 Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Jonathan is a dream warrior.

Episode 4.19 “The Correspondent”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 24th, 1988)

Journalist Hale Stoddard (Darren McGavin) sits in a South American prison cell and waits to be executed. One-by-one, the other prisoners are dragged out of the cell and shot by the country’s new government. Hale passes the time by writing a letter that he knows no one will ever read.

Suddenly, Hale is no longer in the cell. Instead, he’s in the basement of his house. And there’s Jonathan. Jonathan explains that time has stopped and now, Hale is in his wife’s dream. Martha (Patricia Smith) dreams of Hale never being at home. She dreams of their son having both arms, even though he lost those arms in an accident when he was younger. (She also dreams of their now-adult son as always being a child.) Martha dreams about Hale’s former mistress, Eleanor (Eileen Barnett), standing around the house. (Hale argues that Eleanor was never in the house but Jonathan explains that, in Martha’s dreams, she is.) Hale comes to realize how often he deserted Martha because he couldn’t deal with settling down and raising a family. And now, while Martha dreams of him, Hale is about to be shot and killed….

Except, he’s not. It turns out that the South American prison was Hale’s dream. When Hale wakes up, he’s still at home. He tells Martha that he won’t be going to South American after all.

Awwww! How sweet.

This was a bit of a weird episode but I liked it. I appreciated how the show created Martha’s dream world by adding randomly weird details (like an oversized chair at the breakfast table, which was meant to represent Hale’s absence). Darren McGavin gave a good performance as Hale and resisted the temptation to overact. With the episode, the show tried to do something different and, for the most part, it succeeded.