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 Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Season 4 continues!  Maybe this will be the week when it actually gets …. good.

Episode 4.5 “S.A.T. Blues”

(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 26th, 1998)

It’s S.A.T. time!  (Seeing as how Julie and Mary Beth are both in their fifth year of high school, it’s probably a good thing that they finally took the test.)  Everyone does well on the S.A.T. except for Hammer.  But Hammer is convinced that he doesn’t need good test scores because of his talent on the court.  Unfortunately, a recruiter from Duke U. informs Hammer that it doesn’t matter that Hammer single-handedly won the team’s last game.  Duke takes academics very seriously and there’s no way Hammer will ever play for them.  NOT WITH THOSE SCORES!

A dejected Hammer tries to quit the team.  Fortunately, a friend Coach K’s informs Hammer that he can still get into the NBA, even if he does end up going to junior college.  I’m going to guess that Coach K’s friend was played by a real-life basketball player, just because the audience went crazy when he made a basket.  Coach K. also made a basket but, noticeably, it was made through camera trickery because, unlike Reggie Theus, Dick Butkus was not a former basketball player and didn’t come across as being someone who had ever made a basket in his life.  Anyway, Hammer learns an important lesson and agrees to take the test again.  That said, if Hammer was actually as good on the court as he claimed to be, I imagine Duke would have bent the rules for him.

Meanwhile, Julie and Michael celebrate their 2-year anniversary.  After Mary Beth hears Michael talking about getting an expensive “ruby guitar” for himself, she tells Julie that Michael is getting her a “ruby.”  Julie buys Michael an expensive guitar case.  Meanwhile, Michael finds out that Mary Beth told Julie that she’s getting a ruby ring so he sells his guitar so that he can afford to get her the ring.  Somewhere, the angry ghost of O. Henry is researching copyright law.  Anyway, Julie gets mad at Michael for spending too much on her.  Who actually gets mad over something like that?

This episode was not particularly memorable but it wasn’t really bad either.  It was very much a middle-of-the-road Hang Time episode.  An important lesson was learned and the audiences was told to cheer whenever Michael and Julie kissed.  Dick Butkus is still totally unbelievable as a basketball coach.  Let us move on.

Episode 4.6 “Easy Credit”

(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 26th, 1998)

Ugh.  This is another one of those episodes where every complication is due to the characters being idiots.  I hate episodes like this.

In the B-plot, Julie is set to be named Indiana Basketball Player of the Month, because of course she is.  Coach K. doesn’t want Julie to find out before he announces it at the school dance.  However, he makes the mistake of telling Mary Beth and Michael about it and they do such a bad job of hiding how excited they are about Julie winning yet another honor that Julie suspects that something strange is going on.  Through a series of events that are way too annoying for me to detail, this leads to Julie and Kristy thinking that Coach K is going to ask the principal to marry him and this would all be interesting if I had never seen any other shows produced by Peter Engel.

The A-plot is even more aggravating.  Silk has a credit card but he’s only supposed to use it for emergencies.  But he ends up using it to buy stuff for himself and his friends.  He also ends up with a huge credit card bill.  Instead of getting a job or asking his parents for the money, he decides to use the credit card to buy a TV so that it can be raffled off at the school dance.  (What?)  Unfortunately, the TV gets broken so Silk, Rico, and Hammer decide to borrow the team van so they can take the TV to Rico’s uncle who is a master at repairing televisions.  Unfortunately, the van breaks down and Silk can’t afford to get it fixed because the credit card is maxed out and….

….

….

Sorry, I was silently screaming.  This was such an annoying episode.  I’m done talking about it.  Everything worked out and Silk learned an important lesson about not being an irresponsible dummy.  Yay!

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 Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Season 4 continues!  Will Coach K ever figure out how to step into Coach Fuller’s shoes?  Will the team ever come together?  Will Julie and Mary Beth ever graduate?  Let’s find out!

Episode 4.3 “Let Them Play”

(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 19th, 1998)

Another big game is coming up but the majority of the team doesn’t want to play it!  It turns out that one of their rival teammates is HIV+ and, as a result, high schools across Indiana have been refusing to play them.  When Coach K puts it to a team vote, only Michael argues that they shouldn’t cancel their upcoming game.  Even St. Julie votes to cancel the game.

However, Michael then brings the HIV+ positive player down to The Stadium, the oddly sterile restaurant where everyone hangs out.  The team discovers that their rival is just like them and almost all of them change their minds about playing.  The only one who doesn’t now want to play is …. JULIE!  Julie tells Michael that she doesn’t feel safe playing against a player with HIV, especially since she’ll be the one guarding him in the game.  “C’mon, Julie,”  Michael says, “we need you in this game!”  And Michael’s correct because, if there’s anything we’ve learned from Hang Time, it’s that Julie is the only good basketball player in Indiana.  Maybe that’s why she’s been allowed to stay at the high school for an extra year….

Despite the players changing their minds, the school board says that the game still cannot be played.  As a way to protest, the teams decide to play an “unofficial” game.  When a member of the school board comes by the gym to complain, Julie sees that it’s the same member of the board who always says that a girl shouldn’t be allowed to play basketball!  Julie decides that she will play, once again proving that the best way to get Julie to do anything is to make it all about Julie.

This is one of those episodes that probably would have worked much better with the “old” cast.  I imagine if this episode had aired during the previous season, Danny would have been the one arguing that the team should play and that would have been totally in character for him.  Turning Michael into a social crusader with a conscience goes against everything that we’ve learned about Michael up until this point.  As well, we still don’t know any of the new players so it’s a bit hard to know how to react to their feelings about playing against someone who is HIV positive.  Are they prejudiced or are they just worried?  Are they homophobic or are they just uneducated about how HIV is transmitted?  And, finally, it’s hard not to notice that Dick Butkus has a bit less gravitas than Reggie Theus when it comes to discussing whether or not HIV can be transmitted through playing basketball.  This episode came across as being well-intentioned but heavy-handed.

The B-plot features Mary Beth encouraging Kristy to write an angry letter to the art teacher who gave her a C on an assignment. As played by Amber Baretto, Kristy put so much joy into writing her letter that it was fun to watch.  I laughed

Episode 4.4 “Lend A Helping Hammer”

(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 19th, 1998)

Nick Hammer gets his first storyline as a member of the Tornadoes!  When he falls for Taylor, the new waitress at the Stadium, he’s shocked to discover that she and her family live at a homeless shelter.  On Saved By The Bell, when Zack liked a girl who was without a home, he arranged for her and her father to live at his house.  (And, much like the tenants of H.H. Holmes, they were never seen, heard from, or mentioned again….)  Nick, however, convinces the Coach that, instead of using the money raised at the school dance to buy new uniforms, the money should be donated to Taylor and her family.  Of course,  Nick also accidentally announces that Taylor is homeless to the entire school.

This was another episode that probably would have worked better with the old cast.  It’s easy to imagine it as being another Danny storyline.  Nick goes out of his way to help someone in need, which is nice, but we don’t really know Nick so we don’t know if his behavior is unusual or if he just does this for everyone that he meets.  It was a well-intentioned episode but it did seem to suggest that the best way to deal with homelessness is to have a bunch of wealthy friends.  Everyone goes out of their way to help Taylor but everyone else at the shelter just kind of gets ignored.

In the B-plot, Kristy is using a lot of slang.  Julie says that it’s because Kristy recently read a book by Queen Latifah.  In the C-plot, the Coach makes the team take a ballet lesson to make them more flexible.  “Ballet!” I excitedly exclaimed, when the idea was first brought up.  Unfortunately, the ballet scene is really short and the entire team has terrible form.

So far, Hang Time Season 4 has yet to escape the shadow of the past.  Hopefully, next week will be better for the Tornadoes and their new coach.