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!

This week, Edna has a good idea.

Episode 2.15 “Tots ‘R’ Us”

(DIr by J. Sumner, originally aired on February 1st, 1987)

I have no idea who J. Sumner was.

J. Sumner is credited as being the director of this episode.  (Up until this episode, Alan Erlich was the show’s regular director.)  I’ve never seen the name before and it struck me as being such an odd name to use that I actually looked the director up on the IMDb.  According to the IMDb, this episode of Check It Out! is the only thing that J. Sumner has ever been credited as having been involved with.  That’s quite an accomplishment, making your entertainment career debut as a director   Most people have to work up to it.

I kind of suspect that J. Sumner is a pseudonym of some sort.  Maybe the real director didn’t want to be credited for this episode, though there’s nothing about it that’s really all that different from any other episode of Check It Out.  It’s not a terrible episode but it’s also not a particularly interesting one, which is why I’m wasting so much time speculating about the identity of J. Sumner.

The episode takes place on Canadian Mother’s Day.  Edna decides to turn the back offices into a daycare so mothers can leave their children while they shop.  That actually does sound like a good idea to me.  Whenever I go grocery shopping, I always seem to get stuck in line behind people who have multiple hyperactive children.  Just last week, this little brat stepped on my foot while running around the store and his mother didn’t even apologize to me.  Seriously, I was limping for hours afterwards!  I should have called the cops and pressed charges….

Anyway, all of the moms and their kids eventually leave.  Except there’s one child (played by Benjamin Barrett) left behind.  He wears a nametag that reads “Orphan” but a call to the local orphanage reveals that no one is missing.  Edna calls the police but tells them that the store will take care of the kid and hold onto him until his parents arrive.  The police apparently say, “Okay, thanks for letting us know,” and then never bother to come out to the store.  That doesn’t sound like typical police procedure when it comes to an abandoned child but who knows?  This is a Canadian show so maybe that’s the way they do it in Manitoba.

Edna pressures Howard into using a sock puppet to talk to the kid.  The previously silent kid is happy to talk to Goober The Sock.  The kid’s name is Freddy.  He stays overnight at the store with Edna and, in a really sad scene, Edna asks Freddy if he knows anything about adoption.  Edna’s dreams of taking Feddy into her home are ruined when Freddy’s father (Walker Boone) shows up.  Howard gives Freddy and his father tickets to a baseball game.  Awww, that was nice!

This was a pretty simple episode and, to be honest, it was kind of boring.  Howard and Edna are more fun when they’re weird than when they’re nice.  As always, Gordon Clapp (as Viker, the electrician) got a few funny lines and made the most of his limited screentime.  Otherwise, this was a sweet-natured but not particularly enthralling episode.

And if J. Sumner is reading this, say hi in the comments!  We’d love to hear from you!