Jeremy Jordan | 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Gun, an anthology series that ran on ABC for six week in 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, on Gun, Martin Sheen plays a cop who might be investigating the final murder of his career!

Episode 1.2 “Ricochet”

(Dir by Peter Horton, originally aired on April 19th, 1997)

The second episode of Gun opens with the death of a Japanese businessman. He’s found shot on a cliffside that overlooks the ocean. The gun that shot him is discovered and taken by a homeless man named Lazy Eye Pete (Bud Cort). Pete is a cheerfully eccentric type, one who sings for money and who is dedicated to taking care of his pet dog, Chester. But, as soon as Pete gets that gun, his personality starts to change and he even ends up pulling the gun on a group of teenagers who were attempting to mug him. In the end, Pete sells the gun to a friend of his.

Also searching for that gun is Detective Van Guinness (Martin Sheen). Guinness, who suffers from ulcers and who takes his job very personally, has promised his girlfriend (Tess Harper) that he will retire from the force. However, he doesn’t want to go out on a simple or an unsolved case. Fortunately, for Guinness, he’s assigned the complicated case of the dead businessman. Unfortunately, for him, his girlfriend is not at all amused by his refusal to retire.

Van’s partner (Kirk Baltz) thinks that the businessman was killed during a robbery but Guinness disagrees. Guinness thinks that the businessman was murdered by either his wife (Nancy Travis) or his amoral attorney (Christopher McDonald). The wife and the attorney are sleeping together and they’ve also come up with a plan to somehow fix the California state lottery. (I couldn’t really follow what their plan was but then again, I’ve also never played the lottery.) The attorney thinks that the wife is the murderer. The wife thinks that the attorney is the murderer. The truth is a bit more complicated but, in order to full understand what happened, Van Guinness is going to have to find that gun.

Though the plot was a bit too complicated for its own good (Seriously, what was going on with the whole lottery subplot?), the second episode was a definite improvement over the first episode, with director Peter Horton keeping the action moving at a steady pace and establishing the consistent tone that the previous episode lacked. Ricochet played out like a true ensemble piece, splitting its attention between Martin Sheen, Bud Cort, Nancy Travis, and Christopher McDonald. All four of the actors did a good job bringing their characters to life. I especially liked Christopher McDonald’s amoral attorney. Nobody plays a crooked attorney with quite the style and wit of Christopher McDonald!

Next week: Rosanna Arquette and James Gandolfini appear in an episode directed by the show’s co-creator, James Steven Sadwith.

The 1999 romantic comedy Never Been Kissed is a definite guilty pleasure of mine, and that’s not just because of the fact that James Franco has a small role in it. Never Been Kissed is a genuinely sweet movie that might not be extremely realistic but is still enjoyable.

Never Been Kissed requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, largely because Josie Gellar, the character who has” never been kissed,” is played Drew Barrymore. Oh, it’s not that Josie hasn’t ever been kissed. Instead, it’s that she’s never gotten the type of kiss that every girl dreams of getting. She’s never been kissed by someone who she was truly in love with. She’s never had the type of romance that everyone dreams of having (especially when they’re in high school).

However, Josie is about to get a chance to find that kiss. Josie works for a newspaper and her editor (John C. Reilly) has just assigned her to go undercover at a local high school. Unfortunately, Josie was traumatized by her experiences the first time that she went to high school. (She wrote a poem for a boy, he responded by asking her to prom and then throwing eggs at her.) On her first day as a “student,” Josie finds that she is just as unpopular as the last time but now she’s also absolutely out-of-touch with her classmates. Fortunately, she’s befriended by Aldys (Leelee Sobieski) and, soon, Josie has finally managed to find a place with the Denominators, a group of intelligent students.

Unfortunately, hanging out with the good kids isn’t producing the type of stories that Josie’s editor wants. He orders Josie to reject Aldys and to befriend the school’s mean girls. After her brother, Rob (David Arquette), also enrolls in high school, he helps Josie to become the most popular girl in the school. Soon, Josie is no longer hanging out with Aldys and has been asked to go to the prom by the loathsome Guy Perkins (Jeremy Jordan).

However, Josie has fallen in love with her English teacher, Sam (Michael Vartan). Sam likes Josie too but, of course, he thinks that she’s a student. Will Josie tell the truth and risk losing Sam? Will she be able to maintain her cover even when she discovers that her new friends are planning to humiliate Aldys? Will Josie ever truly be kissed?

Well, you can probably guess all the answers. Nothing really surprising happens in Never Been Kissed but it’s still a likable film. For the most part, the actors all do a good job with their stock roles and David Arquette, especially, is hilarious as a professional slacker who thrives in high school precisely because he’s never bothered to grow up. (Of course, by the end of the film, his new high school girlfriend is wanting to know what he’s planning on doing with his life after he graduates….) At no point is the film in any way realistic but it’s still an enjoyable way to spend 110 minutes of your life.