Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.5 “The War”

Posted on May 25, 2026 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988. The entire show can be found on Tubi!

This week, Luca has to prove himself.

Episode 1.5 “The War”

(Dir by Leon Ichaso, originally aired on October 7th, 1986)

Luca is in trouble.

Last week’s episode ended with Max Goldman on the receiving end of a beating from Noah Ganz’s goons. Goldman survives and returns with a message. Ganz is not happy that Luca tried to steal his book. Bartoli, Weisbord, and Fosse all inform Luca will have to resolve the Ganz situation on his own.

Luca tries to get public defender David Abrams (Stephen Lang) to act as a negotiator for him but David doesn’t want to get involved in the mobster lifestyle that made his father rich. David just wants to defend the poor and play sax in a jazz club. When Luca is attacked while driving in Chicago, he realizes that negotiating with Ganz is a dead end.

Instead, he just kills Ganz. In a bravura sequence, Luca shows up at a hotel and, with the help of sniper, takes down Ganz’s bodyguards. Then he uses a bomb to take out Ganz while the latter is holding court in an elevator. A plume of white smoke puffs out of the hotel’s exhaust vent.

Having taken care of the issue, Luca is welcomed back into the family. Weisbord says, “Call me Mac.” Fosse (played by Michael Madsen) nods and slowly smokes a cigarette.

Meanwhile, Torello’s wife miscarries. This is the episode that features the clip of Torello walking down a lonely Chicago street on a rainy night. (The clip is prominently featured during the show’s opening credits.) In fact, both Torello and Luca end up spending a good deal of time walking around at night while David Abrams plays his saxophone. It’s a scene that is so overstylized that it shouldn’t work but somehow, it does. If nothing else, it reminds us that Crime Story of two dangerously obsessed men on a collision course.

This was a good episode, if just because it showed that Luca can be a clever criminal when he needs to be. Before this episode, Luca seemed to be clearly outmatched by Torello. With this episode, Luca proved himself to be Torello’s equal.

Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.4 “St. Louis Book of Blues”

Posted on May 18, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, everyone’s going to Missouri. Can you blame them?

Episode 1,4 “St. Louis Book of Blues”

(Dir by Leon Ichaso, originally aired on September 30th, 1986)

After Ray Luca discovers that his henchman, Frank Holman (Ted Levine), has been compromised by Torello, he decides to deal with the situation by sending Holman down to St. Louis. A gangster named Ganz (Raymond Serra) has a home in St. Louis and, according to Ganz’s associate Johnny Fosse (Michael Madsen, doing his slow-talking, cigarette-smoking Madsen thing), there is a book in Ganz’s shelf that contains the name of every bookie, coach, and sports-fixer in America. Ray, who is hoping to start up his own nationwide gambling syndicate, wants that book.

Far be it for me to question Ray Luca’s strategy but it does seem strange that his response to one of his people screwing up is to give that person an even more important job to do. I get that Ray is trying to be a manager now and, as a result, he no longer personally robs anyone but Frank really does seem like the last person he should trust to pull this off.

And, to no one’s surprise, Frank doesn’t pull it off. Torello and his men follow him all the way to St. Louis. They not only arrest him but they also get their hands on Ganz’s book. They do this despite the operation nearly being ruined by an ambitious and publicity-hungry sheriff named Hartman (Allen Swfit).

Unfortunately, when Frank offers to inform on the entire “St. Louis mob,” Hartman releases him from jail. Frank promptly flees town. When he calls Ray, Ray orders him to stay out of Chicago and instead to go to Cleveland. Frank replies that if he has to choose between Hell or Cleveland …. he’ll go to Cleveland. Good thinking, Frank!

(Actually, I’ve never been to Cleveland so I don’t know if it’s really good thinking. Wasn’t Dennis Kucinich from Cleveland?)

As this episode ends, Ganz is ready to declare war on Luca and it appears that Max Goldman might be the first victim. The funny thing about Max is that he’s played by a young Andrew Dice Clay and, in every scene in which he appears, Clay’s facial expressions are totally and completely over-the-top, as if Clay was determined to make sure that no one forgot he was in the scene. I hope that Max survives, just for the sake of entertainment,

This episode returned to the idea of Torelllo being dangerously and tightly wound. Before he followed Frank to St. Louis, he nearly firebombed a furniture store because the owner hadn’t delivered the table that he had ordered. Torello was talked out of doing so by his fellow cops but the store owner still got the message. The table arrived at Torello’s apartment. Of course, it was the wrong table. That made me laugh. People have no idea how close Torello is to snapping and killing everyone around him.

This was a good episode. It was interesting to see a young Ted Levine, not to mention a young Michael Madsen as well. The corrupt and incompetent sheriff was identified as being a Democrat. I appreciated that. I’m looking forward to seeing where this show is going.

Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.3 “Shadow Dancer”

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Torello’s war on Luca continues!

Episode 1.3 “Shadow Dancer”

(Dir by Leon Ichaso, originally aired on September 26th, 1986)

With the frequency killer now dead, Torello and his men are once again free to focus on trying to bust Ray Luca. The sooner they do it, the better. For one thing, Torello is becoming so obsessed that, even though his wife is pregnant, Torello’s dreams are still dominated by Luca taunting him. Also, Luca’s latest robbery has resulted in a death. Vincent Noonan (Michael Kemmerling), a former cellmate of Frank Holman’s (Ted Levine,) lost it during their latest home invasion and beat to death Mrs. Novak (Nancy Sheeber).

(Noonan, it turns out, has a history of losing control. It probably wasn’t a good idea to hire him in the first place but, with Luca no refusing to personally take part in robberies, the crew had to find a third man and quickly. Holman recommended Noonan because of how loyal Noonan was to him in prison)

Eager to solve the case and take down Luca, the Major Case Unit starts to put pressure on Luca’s boss, Phil Bartoli (Jon Polito). After his weekly craps game is broken up by Danny Krychek, Bartoli tells Luca that he has to do something to get the police to back off. Bartoli orders him to turn Noonan over to the police. Luca, who no longer handles dirty work himself, tells Holman to take care of it. Holman sends Noonan on a job and then tips off Torello. Despite Danny telling him that Noonan would die before turning into a rat, Torello is convinced that, if he takes Noonan alive, he’ll be able to get Noonan to give up Luca. (What Torello doesn’t realize is that Noonan has never actually met Luca. To quote Willy Cicci, “The family had lots of buffers.”)

It’s all for naught, though. Torello and the cops chase Noonan all over the streets of Chicago and, in the end, Noonan dies while trying to escape. Much like Homicide’s Luther Mahoney, Luca appears to be untouchable …. for now.

This episode worked best as a character study. After last week’s somewhat over-the-top villain, this episode reminded us that Luca and Torello are two tightly-wound men who struggle with emotion. Beyond his own self-absorption, Luca lacks the emotions necessary to truly understand his fellow humans. Torello, meanwhile, gets too emotional. Whether he’s pursuing Ray Luca or snapping at a condescending salesman, Torello is a self-styled crusader who appears to be going slowly but surely insane. This wasn’t a particularly complex episode but it felt important. It was a reminder of what this show is all about.

Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.2 “Final Transmission”

Posted on May 4, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Torello and company search Chicago for a serial killer.

Episode 1.2 “Final Transmission”

(Dir by Leon Ichaso, originally aired on September 19th, 1986)

Mike Torello and the members of the MCU would really like to go after Luca and his crew but, unfortunately, there’s a serial killer on the loose in Chicago. Realizing that the MCU is going to be tied up trying to track down Ray Pernell (John Snyder) before he kills again, Luca orders his crew to commit even more robberies. Luca explains to a crestfallen Paulie that Luca will no longer be taking part in the robberies. Luca is the boss and the boss doesn’t get his hands dirty. Instead, Luca spends most of this episode meeting with Murray Weisbord’s man in Chicago, Max Goldman (Andrew Dice Clay).

This was an odd episode. On the one hand, the show went out of its way to recreate Chicago in the early 60s. The soundtrack was early rock and roll. The cars all had tailfins. The suits, the cigarettes, Luca’s haircut, all of the details screamed 1960s. But then the episode revolved around a serial killer who thought his mother was addressing him through the television and who looked and dressed like a late 70s punk rocker. I assume that Ray Pernell was based on Richard Speck, the notorious Chicago serial killer who, in 1966, murdered 8 student nurses. Like Speck, Pernell had an identifying tattoo and both men were traced through the National Maritime Union. That said, Pernell just seemed so out-of-place, with his sleeveless shirt and his punkish haircut that he just didn’t seem to belong in the world of Crime Story.

That said, I will give this episode some credit. In the pilot, Luca often seemed like a clueless punk. In this episode, he quickly realized that the MCU would be too busy hunting for Pernell to devote much time to him and he took advantage of that fact. Luca’s not quite as dumb as he sometimes seems. This episode also showed that he was capable of thinking ahead. When he suspects that someone is listening in on his conversation with Goldman, he resists the temptation to burst into the room next door with his gun drawn. (If he had, he would have run straight into Torello and Danny.) This episode shows that Luca is learning and growing. He not the buffoonish hothead that Torello originally assumed him to be. In fact, he’s even more dangerous.

This episode ends with Pernell somehow (it’s not really clear how) taking an entire television news broadcast hostage. Torello takes him down as the cameras roll and the entire city of Chicago watches. It’s not a bad ending but it just doesn’t feel right for the show. It’s a Miami Vice ending. This is Crime Story!

Deal of the Century (1983, directed by William Friedkin)

Posted on January 5, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

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Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines, and Wallace Shawn all play small-time arms dealers who get involved in a scheme to sell the “Peacemaker” drone to the dictatorship that has seized control of the Latin American country of San Miguel. After Shawn commits suicide, Chase and Hines are joined by his widow, who is played by Sigourney Weaver. Selling the Peacemaker should be easy except that Hines has a religious epiphany and becomes a pacifist and Chase himself is starting to have qualms about the way he makes a living. As his brother-in-law puts it, something bad seems to happen in every country that Chase visits.

Deal of the Century has the unique distinction of being one of the two films that director William Friedkin did not acknowledge in his autobiography, The Friedkin Connection. When Friedkin was asked why he left it out of his book, Friedkin said that he didn’t consider Deal of the Century to be a “Friedkin film.” He wanted to do a Dr. Strangelove-style satire while the studio wanted a board Chevy Chase comedy. The studio won, Friedkin was not given final cut, the movie bombed, and Friedkin didn’t see any reason to revisit the experience of making it.

Deal of the Century is a disjointed film. The best scenes are the one that are probably the closest to Friedkin’s original vision. These are the scenes set in weapons expos and that highlight the commercials designed to sell products of mass destruction. But those scenes are dwarfed by scenes of Chevy Chase being pursued by cartoonish guerillas in San Miguel and Gregory Hines overacting after getting baptized. Chase has a few good smartass scenes at the start of the film, some of which are reminiscent of his career-best work in Fletch. But he loses his way as the film goes on and his change-of-heart never feels convincing. The film ends with a burst of special effects that are unconvincing even for 1983.

Deal of the Century may have been directed by William Friedkin but he was correct to say that it is definitely not a Friedkin film.