Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.10 “Out of the Past”

Posted on July 29, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

After last week’s trip to “the future,” this episode returns to 1988.

Episode 4.10 “Out of the Past”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on December 7th, 1988)

As a show, 1st & Ten has a weird habit of introducing new characters and pretending as if they’ve always been around even if they’ve never been seen or even mentioned before. In this episode, we meet Coleman King (Richard Lawson), the team’s veteran running back who fears that he’s on the verge of being dropped from the Bulls. Coleman is also an old friend of TD Parker’s (O.J. Simpson).

TD is conflicted. He knows that Coleman is past his prime. The Bulls are on the verge of signing a new running back and, when they do, TD knows that he’s probably going to have to cut Colman from the team. As a former player, TD knows how painful it is when your professional career is murdered and no one is held responsible for it. Complicating matters is the clear attraction between TD and Coleman’s wife, Della (Vanessa Bell Callaway).

While TD tries to figure out how to protect both the team and Coleman, Ernie Denardo runs into his ex-girlfriend, Brenda (Shannon Wilcox), at a bar. Brenda has some scary people after her because of her unpaid gambling debts. She tells Denardo that she has money on the next Bulls game. If the Bulls win by more than ten, her debt will be paid off and then she and Denardo can be together.

The next day, the Bulls are on the verge of winning by 9. With only a few seconds left in the game, Denardo has the team kick a field goal so that they can win by 12. Denardo returns to Brenda’s apartment and discovers that she’s gone. It was all a scam, hatched by Brenda and her real boyfriend.

In tears, Denardo tells TD that he has to quit as coach of the Bulls.

TD argues that Denardo didn’t do anything wrong because he didn’t have money on the game. TD points out that the field goal unit needed the practice and that the Bulls need as many points as possible to clinch home field advantage in the playoffs. The episode ends with TD embracing the sobbing Denardo. Awwww! Is there nothing an OJ Simpson pep talk can’t fix?

After last week’s bizarre episode, this was a traditional 1st & Ten episode. This episode served as a reminder of just how bland OJ Simpson was as an actor. That said, Reid Shelton did a good job as the grief-stricken Denardo and the gambling subplot at least did have a few interesting twists. By the standards of 1st & Ten, that makes this episode a success.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.9 “Team Picture”

Posted on July 22, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 2013!

Episode 4.9 “Team Picture”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 30th, 1988)

Weird, weird episode.

Taking place 25 years in the future, this episode features the ’88 California Bulls reuniting in 2013. Of course, since this episode was made in 1988, its version of 2013 is a bit different from the one that we all lived through. The 2013 of this episode is a dark and depressing dystopia, with militarized police and …. well, maybe it wasn’t that much different from what we lived through.

In 2013, former wide receiver Billy Cooper is a reporter who is hoping to go from the sports desk to the anchor desk.

TD Parker (OJ Simpson) is now the mayor of Los Angeles.

Zagreb is still playing in the NFL.

Doug Clayton is a Nobel prize-winning scientist.

Dr. Death works at a lumber yard.

Mad Dog owns twenty-five “sex discos.”

Bubba Kincaid is now the “King of Beer.” After his bar was shut down and demolished, he started Bubba Beer, which we are told is the “last American beer.”

And Jethro — well, no one has seen Jethro for ten years. Bubba tried to get Jethro to join him in his Bubba Beer business but Jethro refused. He went into wrestling and then he vanished. Most of his teammates are angry with him. They view him as being a crybaby who needs to man up.

In this episode, Jethro resurfaces at the Dodds Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles. He’s got a bomb strapped to his chest and he’s threatening to blow the whole place up. TD and Billy both try to talk to him but Jethro doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. Dr. Death approaches him and encourages him to blow himself up. Finally, Bubba goes to Jethro and apologizes for abandoning him. Unfortunately, Bubba gets shot by a robot sniper and is transformed into a pile of blue ash as Jethro watches.

And that’s how the episode ends!

I appreciated the fact that this episode was so weird. It pretty much came out of nowhere and I’ll be surprised if it’s ever referenced again. Probably the most interesting thing about it is that all of the Bulls ended up becoming jerks. No one seems to really care that Jethro might die. For that matter, Jethro isn’t that upset when Bubba gets killed.

I imagine when this episode aired, it was meant to be a commentary on how uncertain the life of a pro-athlete can be once they’re no longer playing. For every success story, there’s someone else who ends up losing all of their money and being exiled to the fringes of society. Seen today, it’s hard to watch Jethro without thinking about CTE and all of the former players who have succumbed to it.

This episode was so odd that it defies a traditional “good or bad” classification. I appreciated it for trying to do something different.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.7 “Saturday, Bloody Saturday”

Posted on July 8, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Lawrence Taylor shows up!

Episode 4.7 “Saturday, Bloody Saturday”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 16th, 1988)

Ever since I started reviewing this show, my friend Mark has been telling me to keep an eye out for Lawrence Taylor. Taylor is an actual football player who has gone on to have a sporadic acting career. (He also did Dancing With The Stars.) This week, after months of searching, I finally spotted Lawrence Taylor’s name in the credits.

Taylor plays Tombstone Packer, an opposing player who goes on television and announces that he’s going to destroy the Bulls to get revenge on Dr. Death for crippling one of Tombstone’s teammates. Usually, I joke about how the worst actors on shows like this are always the professional athletes. But I have to admit that Lawrence Taylor is not that bad in this episode. Of course, he spends most of the episode yelling at and threatening people and I imagine that would come naturally to most football players. Still, that’s more than most of the basketball players who appeared on Hang Time were capable of pulling off.

There’s a lot of drama in this episode, even beyond Tombstone Packer’s search for vengeance. For instance, Billy Cooper is shocked to discover that his newest girlfriend, Sybil (Samantha Eggar, seriously slumming), is the wife of Dodds Corporation executive Robert Nelson (Derek Patridge). Making things even worse is that Sybil dies of a drug overdose and Billy is worried that he and the players might be blamed and even criminally charged. Billy shouldn’t have worried, though. It turns out that Sybil had a long history of sleeping with athletes and Robert was okay with it. He’s not even that upset to hear that his wife has died.

Meanwhile, TD Parker (OJ Simpson) meets Gillian (Michael Michele). The newly-divorced TD flirts with Gillian at a supermarket and learns that she’s a soccer player. TD decides that it’s time for the Bulls to make history by signing Gillian as their backup field goal kicker! Over the objections of Coach Denardo, Gillian becomes the first woman to play professional football. Of course, Tombstone tackles her as soon as she makes her first kick and she’s carted off the field with a bruised leg. The show ends with TD welcoming Gillian to the team but, according to imdb, this was Gillian’s only appearance on the show. Hopefully, she didn’t make TD angry.

(I should also say that, on Tubi, this episode’s sound was extremely muddy and the close captioning was running way behind so the show ended before the captions even reached TD’s postgame talk with Gillian. Their conversation was not always easy to hear. That said, Gillian looked really happy so I’m assuming that TD welcomed her to the team.)

As I watched this episode, I remembered that, a few years ago, a woman actually did try out to be a kicker in the NFL. She received a lot of media hype in the days leading up to the try-out. Everyone was really excited until she actually kicked the football and sent it skidding over to the sidelines. I also thought about how Degrassi spent an entire season building up Jane as being a totally badass football player, just to abandon the idea after a few episodes. I guess my point is that I guess it would be great if a woman played in the NFL and totally dominated all of the 300-pound men who play in that league but I just don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime.

Oh well! At least I can now say that I’ve spotted Lawrence Taylor on 1st & Ten.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.6 “The Dark Side”

Posted on June 24, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, who cares about a concussion?

Episode 4.6 “The Dark Side”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 9th, 1988)

Going into the half, the Bulls are in danger of losing their first game of the season. Dodds Company executive Michael Westwood (Paul Tuerpe) has suspended Bubba and Jethro for refusing to sell their bar. “They draw a criminal element,” Michael said. “They’re just football players!” TD Parker (OJ Simpson) snaps back. Because Bubba and Jethro aren’t there to protect him, quarterback Doug Clayton (Scott Geyer) has been sacked and is now playing with a concussion.

During the coach’s locker room talk, Doug suddenly imagines that he’s in a Vietnam war film and that he and the team are soldiers on a mission to rescue Bubba and Jethro from a POW camp. OJ Simpson dresses up like Rambo and leads the assault. OJ kills a lot of people in this episode!

His fantasy over, the still dazed Doug heads back out to play the second half, this time with Bubba and Jethro once again blocking for him.

So, to make clear, Doug is playing with a severe concussion. That’s really the entire plot of this episode. The Vietnam stuff is occasionally amusing if overly broad. Bubba and Jethro recreate The Deer Hunter’s Russian Roulette scene. OJ Simpson still comes across as being oddly mild-mannered, even while firing a machine gun. That said, it’s hard not to feel that Doug, who gave up a Rhodes scholarship to play professional football, is basically sacrificing his life for one game.

Oh well. The Bulls win. That’s the important thing.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 4.5 “….The Clock Runs Out”

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Joe Hears meets his fate.

Episode 4.5 “….The Clock Runs Out”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 2nd, 1988)

Poor Joe Hearns!

Last episode, Joe went from being a skid row windshield cleaner to being a defense coordinator to being a linebacker on the team. This episode …. well, he dies.

Seriously.

It’s not a particularly noble death either. After a rookie player (played by Kevin Sorbo, of all people) is seriously injured in a prank involving a bull, Hearns decides to go back to the farm and challenge the bull himself. The show ends with the bull charging at Hearns and since Harold Sylvester (the actor who played Hearn) is not listed as having appeared in any episode of 1st & Ten beyond this one, I can only assume that the bull won.

Seriously, what was the point of that whole storyline? Bubba, Jethro, and TD all thought that Joe Hearns would be able to redeem himself on the Bulls. Hearns turned out to be suffering from massive PTSD, the result of having crippled an opposing player the last time he played. This episode, Joe has a near breakdown when one of the team’s new executives reprimands Joe for parking in his spot. And then Joe dies. I guess the lesson here is that he would have been better off if Bubba and Jethro had just left him in that parking lot.

Watching this show, I get the feeling that the writers really didn’t have much direction in the writing room. It’s amazing how often a potentially interesting character like Joe Hearn will be introduced and then dropped an episode later. There have been so many storylines that have been started and abandoned in a similar fashion. This very season started with the Bulls players buying the team and then, three episodes later, they decided that they didn’t want to be team owners after all.

The one thing that remains consistent? The bland affability of OJ Simpson. OJ may not have been a particularly good actor but he certainly was personable. That undoubtedly paid off for him later in life.

Unfortunately, Joe Hearns was not personable. And now, he’s dead.

(Actually, so is OJ.)

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.3 “Caught In The Draft”

Posted on May 27, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s for the draft.

Episode 4.3 “Caught In The Draft”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 19th, 1988)

The Bulls attend the draft and screw everything up. It turns out that allowing the players to own the team was a really bad idea. In fact, it goes so badly that TD Parker (OJ Simpson) really deserves to be fired for suggesting it in the first place. But, nobody wants to get on TD’s bad side, for some reason.

How badly does it go?

The Bulls need a linebacker. Sonny Cowers, the phenom out of Louisiana, is available in the first round. Unfortunately, Mad Dog worries that, if he drafts Sonny, the Bulls will then either release or trade him. Seeing as how Mad Dog owns the team, I’m not really sure how he could be traded or released but whatever. Mad Dog picks a player that the team doesn’t need and Sonny is picked by another team.

Meanwhile, Jethro and Bubba insist on drafting an unheralded running back because they’re convinced the man is in their hotel room and threatening to commit suicide if he’s not drafted. It turns out that the man in the hotel room was just an actor and that the Bulls just got conned into drafting some fat guy from Tennessee.

The Bulls do get a new head coach when TD trades a sixth round draft pick for the new coach of Houston’s term, Ernie Denardo. That’s right, Denardo’s back!

The draft is such a disaster that the bank cancels their loan and the players are forced to sell the team to the fast food company that they were trying to avoid being purchased by in the first place.

I actually liked this episode. I enjoyed the chaos of the draft and it was hard not to laugh at the earnest stupidity of the players. Shouldn’t you guys be trying to draft a quarterback? I thought at one point and, for a second, I felt like a sports expert.

Seriously, they need do need to get a quarterback.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.2 “The Inmates Buy The Asylum”

Posted on May 20, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The center cannot hold.

Episode 5.2 “The Inmates Buy The Asylum”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 12th, 1988)

If there’s one thing that you can depend on when it comes to this show, it’s inconsistency.

Last week, the players decided to buy the team. This was portrayed as being a genius move on their part. Dr. Death dressed up in a suit and said that he was ready to be a businessman as well as a player. TD Parker (OJ Simpson) told the players that it would be a good idea to take a blade to the typical player/owner relationship.

This week, the players buy the team and everything starts to fall apart. Suddenly, the players are all too concerned with their own petty issues to be smart businessmen. Dr. Death is no longer wearing a suit and shows up for a meeting of all the team owners in a denim jacket. (All of the owners except for one walk out on him.) The team decides to fire Coach Grier. Why? They just don’t like him. T.D. delivers the news to an embittered Grier and admits that the players are not good owners. Gee, TD, maybe you shouldn’t have told them to buy the team!

In other words, the players have seized the means of production and screwed everything up. If nothing else, this episode was a good example of why communism will never work.

Meanwhile, agent Max Green was still in Louisiana, trying to sign college linebacker Sonny Clowers (Gary Kasper). Fortunately, a chance meeting with the preacher of Sonny’s church gave Max an inside track. But with the Bulls be able to get it together in time to draft him?

I guess we will find out next week. As for this episode, it felt as if the writers suddenly realized that it was a mistake to have the players buy the team so they set out to course correct at the last minute. Myself, I’m wondering how being both a player and an owner would work. Who sets the salaries? If a player is traded, is he still an owner?

Seriously, this all seems like a bad idea.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.1 “The Bulls Own Up”

Posted on May 13, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we start season 4.

Episode 4.1 “The Bulls Own Up”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 5th, 1988)

It’s time for a new season of 1st & Ten and things have changed!

Yinessa is nowhere to be seen. Instead, this episode features a college quarterback named Sonny Clowers (Gary Kasper) who is being courted by agent Max Green (Mark Lonow). Also not around is Jill Schrader, the team’s owner. She has sold the team to a fast food chain. The new owner of the Bulls is Charles (Monte Markham). In his first meeting with TD Parker (OJ Simpson), Charles explains that he runs a clean-cut, all-American company and he expects the Bulls to be a clean-cut, all-American team.

In other words, it’s time to trade all of the trouble makers and the drug abusers. Charles doesn’t want a team of individuals. He wants a team of …. well, whatever the opposite of an individual is.

TD is not happy to hear about this. Neither is Mad Dog, who is revealed to come from a fabulously wealthy family. Mad Dog’s father wants Mad Dog to do something that requires more skill than football. Hmmm …. maybe Mad Dog and all the other players could form their own company and buy the team themselves?

That doesn’t really sound like a great idea to me. How can you release or trade a player when that player owns the team? However, TD thinks that it’s a good idea. Zagreb thinks it’s a good idea. And Dr. Death shows up for practice in a three-piece suit, which somehow convinces everyone else that it’s a good idea!

Why do I get the feeling that this idea will dropped after six episodes?

This was an okay season opener. The Bulls being sold to a fast food chain certainly makes more sense than Delta Burke acquiring them in a divorce settlement. OJ Simpson recoiling at the thought of the team being expected to avoid scandal? That was almost to on the nose!

Finally, I can’t end this review without saying Donald Gibb, RIP. On a show not known for great acting, Gibb was definitely the exception.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.13 “Championship Jinx”

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, season 3 comes to an end.

Episode 3.13 “Championship Jinx”

(Dir by Bruce Seth Green, originally aired on December 16th, 1987)

Things have a way of working themselves out on 1st & Ten, especially when the season ends and a lot of plotlines need to be hastily wrapped up.

Last week, TD Parker (OJ Simpson) was arrested under suspicion of ticket scalping. This episode, it turned out that 1) ticket scalping isn’t illegal and 2) TD’s ex-mistress quickly figured out that her boyfriend was trying to frame him. Someone trying to frame OJ Simpson!? Like anyone would ever buy that. Anyway, the main theme here seemed to be that it was a good thing TD cheated on his wife because otherwise, no one would have been around to exonerate him.

Last week, Yinessa was letting fame go to his head. This week, his father died and the funeral was a media circus. Yinessa decided to focus on playing football. That’s a good thing, seeing as how the Bulls had yet another championship game coming up.

Zagreb was concerned that he was a jinx after he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. (Yinessa told him that players who appeared on the cover often lost the spark afterwards.) Luckily, Cliff and Jethro brought in a voodoo priestess (Roxie Roker) to exorcise the jinx.

Before the game, Jill told the team that they weren’t only playing for themselves. They were playing for the memory of Tom Yinessa’s father. Unfortunately, the Bulls lost the game at the last minute when Billy Cooper’s game-winning catch was reviewed by the booth and declared to be out of bounds. So, I guess Yinessa’s father is in Hell now.

And so ends the rather odd third season. Coach Denardo left after the first episode. Delta Burke left about halfway through the season, just to be replaced by a new female owner who gave a pre-game speech that referred to all of the previous times she had gone to the Championship Game with the Bulls just to see them lose, despite the fact that she wasn’t even a part of the show’s cast during the previous two seasons. The season began with a player dying of steroid abuse and ended with OJ Simpson proving his innocence. Oh! And Zagreb discovered his father was a CIA agent and then he got married.

Was it a good season? Not really. This isn’t a good show. But season 3 was definitely a lot stranger than the previous two seasons and that’s definitely a point in 1st & Ten‘s favor.

Next week, we start season 4!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.12 “Of Scalpers and Superstars”

Posted on April 29, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, OJ’s in trouble!

Episode 3.12 “Of Scalpers and Superstars”

(Dir by Bruce Seth Green, originally aired on December 9th, 1987)

O.J. Simpson gets arrested!

Okay, technically, OJ Simpson is not the one being arrested. He’s just playing TD Parker, the Bulls’s general manager. TD is the one who is arrested at the end of this episode after being framed for stealing 5,000 ticket to the Championship Game and selling to a ticket scalper. Still, as is so often the case with this show, the casting of OJ Simpson does bring a while new layer to the action of meaning to the action onscreen.

Who framed TD? The answer is Dolph Crane (Forry Smith), a former player who was cut from the team. Dolph has never appeared on the show before but, judging from what TD says when he sees Dolph hanging around the stadium, it seems that Dolph was cut last season. One of the things that I’ve noticed about 1st & Ten is that new characters will often pop up out of nowhere and people will act as if they’ve been there the whole time. Dolph appears to be one of those pop-up character. Dolph mentions that he’s now dating TD’s former mistress. Dolph and the owner of Arizona’s team are the ones who conspire to take out TD. Hopefully, they didn’t plant a bloody glove anywhere in the office.

The Bulls are going to the Championship Game …. again! Maybe they’ll actually win this time. This is their third trip to the game, after all. It’ll be kind of sad if they win without Coach Denardo, though. Coach Grier just isn’t as much fun as foul-mouthed Ernie Denardo.

The entire team gets mad at Yinessa. After getting injured during a game, he decides that he needs to make as much money as possible so he allows his agent (Bobby Hosea) to promote him as being the “star” of the team. The rest of the team feels that isn’t fair. The thing is, though …. Yinessa is kind of the star. He’s the quarterback. If he has a bad day, the team doesn’t win. The Bulls are a bunch of crybabies. When they find out that a team music video is being reimagined as a Yinessa music video, they literally look like they’re about to break down in tears. No wonder they always lose the Championship Game.

This episode ended wth the Bulls heads to the Championship and OJ heading to jail. That seems about right. Good luck to the team!