Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
We’ve got a weird one tonight!
Episode 1.12 “Skip to the Loo”
(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on December 18th, 1985)
This episode opens with Howard feeling a bit concerned. As he explains to Edna, an old army buddy visited him the previous night. Mad Mike Mulroney climbed through Howard’s window with three dead Dobermans around his neck. Having just escaped from prison, Mad Mike asked Howard to do him a favor and give his son, Brandon, a job. Howard felt that he had to agree because Mad Mike saved Howard’s life while they were serving in Korea. Why, Howard cries, why did I let him do that!?
Brandon (Jeremy Ratchford) shows up and turns out to be as fearsome as his father. Howard suggests that Brandon fill in for bagboy Murray, who is on vacation. Brandon replies that he was hoping he could be a bouncer. Brandon then proceeds to literally toss a lot of people out of the store. Realizing that Brandon should not be on the sales floor, Howard suggests that Brandon spend the day in the meat locker where he can beat up the meat, Rocky Balboa-style.
Meanwhile, nerdy Herman Fastback (Howard Busgang) is trying to set the world record for skipping rope in the store. Unfortunately, the world record is 12 hours and Herman keeps getting distracted and having to start over. As well, Brandon keeps coming out the meat locker and taunting him.
When it’s time for the store to close, Christian agrees to spend the night in the store so that Herman can continue to set his record. The next morning, Christian wakes up in a shopping cart and discovers that all of the cash registers have been emptied and the employee locker room has been ransacked. Herman has disappeared and Brandon is dead in the meat locker! When Howard and Alf come to work, they surmise that Herman robbed the store and then killed Brandon.
No one is that upset about Brandon being dead. In fact, Howard doesn’t call the police and just leaves the body in the meat locker. But then Mad Dog (George Buza) shows up in full military gear and announces that he is just a few hours from heading to South America, where he plans to overthrow another country’s government. He tells Howard that he’s a mercenary and “I kill people for a living.” Mad Dog asks how Brandon is doing. It takes a while but eventually, Howard admits that Brandon is dead.
Mad Dog is not extremely upset about his son dying but he does request that Howard give him a funeral in the store. Realizing that Mad Dog will probably kill him otherwise, Howard agrees. He closes down the store and then Brandon’s frozen body is wheeled into the break room. Howard conducts a respectful funeral. Mad Dog is touched.
This episode was so strange that it was only during the end credits that I realized that Herman apparently got away with not only robbing the place but also killing Brandon. In fact, I don’t think Howard or anyone else at the store bothered to call the police about any of this. Instead, they just left Brandon in the meat locker. I’ve never worked in a grocery store so I have to admit that I’m not the expert on these things but I think leaving a corpse inside a storage area would have to be a health code violation of some sort.
It’s difficult to dislike anything that’s this cheerfully weird. This episode full embraced its own absurdity and, for that reason, it worked quite well. We’re about halfway through the first season of Check It Out! and the best episodes are definitely the weird ones.
Next week …. well, I don’t know what’s happening next week. Hopefully, they will have gotten Brandon’s body out of the store.
Through the Shattered Lens 