Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing SLEDGE HAMMER!, a cop comedy which ran on ABC from 1986 to 1988. The entire series can be found on Prime!

This week, Sledge might be DOA!

Episode 1.12 “Miss of the Spider Woman”

(Dir by Charles Braverman, originally aired on December 20th, 1986)

Sledge has been poisoned!

The poison takes five days to do its work.  Unfortunately, Sledge spent four days in a coma.  Plus, daylight savings time kicked in.  And also, his watch is broken.  So, by the time Sledge wakes up, he’s actually only got about four or five hours left to go.  While the doctors try to find an antidote, Doreau and Sledge investigate who poisoned him and why.

Actually, the why is easy to explain.  It was a mistake!  The mysterious Juanita (Eileen Barnett) wanted to poison Sledge’s neighbor but the woman who was hired to “deliver” the poison to Sledge was near-sighted and ended up in the wrong apartment. Whoops!  Instead of trying the poison trick again, Juanita just has Sledge’s neighbor shot.  It’s all because the neighbor was expecting a package that contained a valuable statue that Juanita wanted.

Through some good old-fashioned, death-fueled police work, Sledge tracks Juanita down to her boat.  Juanita gives him what she says is the antidote and then reveals that he actually just drank more poison.  Oh, Sledge!  At least Sledge is still able to subdue and arrest her.  Captain Trunk arrives at the last minute with actual antidote.  Sledge survives!  Later, he eats a powdered donut that had the fingerprints of a notorious serial killer.  Everything’s back to normal!

This was a good take on two classic film noirs, D.O.A. and The Maltese Falcon.  David Rasche made me laugh even while I was worrying about Sledge dying.  I was happy he survived.  The city wouldn’t be the same without him.