Retro Television Review: Malibu CA 2.26 “Three Dudes And A Baby”

Posted on August 14, 2025 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999. Almost the entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Yes, this is from the first season. I don’t care. I refuse to waste my time looking for a second season advertisement.

All good things must end.

And so must all bad things.

Episode 2.26 “Three Dudes And A Baby”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on May 20th, 2000)

It’s over!

After two seasons and over 50 episodes, Malibu, CA is over!

As opposed to the other Peter Engel shows that I’ve reviewed on this site, Malibu CA doesn’t get a real finale. Instead, the final episode is just another stupid 22 minutes that signify nothing. When waitress Stacie (Kristen Miller) goes out of town, Murray, Jason, and Peter take care of her baby. Awwwww …. wait a minute. Why would anyone leave their baby with those idiots?

When the three men find out that Stacie is getting divorced from her husband, all three try to step up. Murray asks Stacie to marry him. So does Jason. Peter offers to adopt her. Stacie reveals that she and her husband have decided to stay together. Are you sure, Stacie? Murray is like really rich.

Meanwhile, Lisa (the character, not me!) gets upset because her little sister is a fan of Traycee’s television show and is thinking of quitting college so she can become an actress. Lisa blames all of this on Traycee which is weird because 1) Traycee didn’t force Lisa’s sister to do anything and 2) Traycee has found a lot of success as an actress and if Traycee can do it, why can’t Lisa’s sister do it?

This is a typical Lisa story. Lisa (the character, not me!) acts like a total bitch, whines nonstop, and blames everything on Traycee, even though none of it is really Traycee’s fault. Adding the character of Lisa was one of the biggest mistakes that was Malibu CA made during its second season. The first season was pretty dire but, in the end, it was actually better than the second season and that’s entirely because the first season did not feature Lisa (the character, not me). I don’t want to be too hard on the actress who played her because it’s not exactly as if she was being given great material to work with. That said, Lisa was a poorly-written character who basically was portrayed as always being annoyed with something. The fact that the finale of the show focuses on her as opposed to wrapping up the stories of Jason and Scott says a lot about why this show was the most forgettable of all of the Peter Engel-produced sitcoms.

And so, Malibu CA comes to a close and there’s really not much to say about it. Peter Engel tried to work his Saved By The Bell/California Dreams/Hang Time magic but the show never really found a consistent tone and neither of the Collins brothers were particularly likable protagonists. It’s really not a shock that neither Jason Hayes nor Trevor Merszei went on to have acting careers after this show ended.

On a positive note, Brandon Brooks and Priscilla Inga Taylor were consistently amusing, if just because they were smart enough to embrace the oddness of their characters. And Ed Blatchford had his moments as the father figure. Otherwise, this was a forgettable sitcom that signified the end of an era.

Next week, something new will be coming to TSL in this timeslot. What will it be? We’ll find out next Thursday!

Retro Television Review: Malibu CA 2.14 “Retiring Dad”

Posted on June 12, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yes, this is from the first season. I don’t care. I refuse to waste my time looking for a second season advertisement.

This week, Peter tries to enjoy retirement but his dumbass sons screw it all up.

Episode 2.14 “Retiring Dad”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on February 5th, 2000)

This may be the worst episode of Malibu CA that I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something as every episode of this show that I watch is the worst until I watch the next one. Most bad shows will still occasionally have a good episode. Somehow, Malibu CA continues to get worse and worse. I say this despite the fact that Edward Blatchford, Brandon Brooks and Priscilla Inga Taylor have consistently managed to give performance that are far better than the material. I say this despite the fact that Trevor Merszie, in the role of Scott, is nowhere near as annoying during the second season than he was during the first. Despite those improvements, the show continues to decline with each passing week.

It all comes down to the writing, which is uninspired even by the standards of the typical 90s teen sitcom. Peter Engel’s shows were never known for their strong scripts but California Dreams (especially during its final season) showed that it was possible to make a good show while remaining true to Engel’s “vision” of what a teen sitcom should be. The writing on Malibu CA just feels lazy and, for whatever reason, storylines seem to consistently focus on the two weakest members of the cast, Jason Hayes and Marquita Terry.

(I should say that, in fairness to Terry, her character usually got stuck with the worst lines in each episode and the writers never came up with much of a personality beyond, “Girl Who Complains Nonstop.” As for Jason Hayes, he was still looking straight at the camera halfway through the second season.)

As for this episode, it features Peter finally retiring from running The Lighthouse so that he can fish and travel. He leaves his two idiot sons in charge. In this episode, we learn that Scott is apparently in college while Jason is still pursuing his — *snicker* — music career. Why Peter would leave his sons in charge (especially when you consider that, whenever he’s done so in the past, it’s always led to disaster) is a question that show never really explains. Seriously, is there no one else that works at the restaurant? It’s a big restaurant. Surely, there is someone else who is capable of running the restaurant. Considering the amount of time that Marquita Terry’s Lisa spends complaining about every little decision that Peter makes, maybe she should have been put in charge. She certainly seems more emotionally invested in the place than either Jason or Scott.

Jason and Scott’s attempt to turn the restaurant into a nightclub leads to a brawl between two customers who proceed to totally trash the place. Again, the restaurant gets trashed in every other episode so you would think Jason and Scott would be used to this. (You would also think that the restaurant would have gone out of business a long time ago as I can’t imagine it’s cost efficient to have to rebuild the damn place twice a month.) Peter ends his retirement because both of his sons are idiots. I’d feel bad for Peter but he was stupid for trusting them in the first place.

Meanwhile, Murray’s cousin — Alecia — is visiting from Alabama. Murray is overprotective but then, at the end of the episode, Alecia sings a song and everything is magically fixed. Alecia was played by Alecia Elliott, who was a cast member of another Peter Engel-produced sitcom, All About Us. Elliott had just released her first country album when she appeared on Malibu CA. I have to admit that I did laugh out loud when, from out of nowhere, she suddenly started singing. Of course, her song took up the last four minutes of the show, which spared us from having to deal with anymore scenes involving the restaurant. That was a good thing.

There’s only a handful of episodes left. Soon, I will never have to write or think about this show again.

For Your Consideration #4: I, Frankenstein (dir by Stuart Beattie)

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the tonight’s final entry in For Your Consideration, I’m going to suggest that everyone take the time to consider a film that came out way back in January — I, Frankenstein.

“WHAT!?” someone out there is saying. “It was bad enough when you tried to convince us that The Purge: Anarchy deserved an Oscar nomination…”

Okay, okay — hold on a minute. You get upset so easily, it can’t be good for your blood pressure. Anyway, have you calmed down now? Good.

Here’s the thing — I said that I was going to suggest some films that I thought were worthy of award consideration. The Oscars aren’t the only awards around. There’s also the Razzie Awards. The Razzies claim that their mission is to honor the worst movies and performers of each year. To be honest, looking over some of their past nominations, it looks like they’re more interested in picking on easy targets like Lindsay Lohan and … well, I was going to say Adam Sandler but there’s a reason why most of his films are such easy targets.

Now, as far as this year is concerned, I’m sure that the people behind the Razzie awards are already busy coming up with snarky things to say about that Kirk Cameron Christmas movie. And good for them! However, I’m simply suggesting that instead of just settling for nominated Kirk Cameron a gazillion times, the Razzies might want to give some consideration to another potentially deserving film that came out this year.

Personally, I really wanted to like I, Frankenstein. It was produced by the people behind the Underworld films, all of which are definitely guilty pleasures of mine. And it starred Aaron Eckhart, who is such a good actor even if he rarely seems to get the lead roles that he deserves. That said, even before I saw the film, I had my doubts about whether an actor with the almost satirically all-American facial features of Aaron Eckhart would be believable as a reanimated corpse and sad to say, he was not. You could definitely imagine Eckhart playing a legendary big game hunter who has decided that he’s going to add Frankenstein’s monster to his wall of trophies. But as the monster — well, not so much.

In I, Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Monster survives through the centuries and eventually ends up fighting a bunch of demons for some reason. Or something like that. I have to admit that I was never quite sure what was going on in I, Frankenstein. Some of that was because I was bored with the movie and a lot of it was because the movie felt less like an actual film and more like a collection of highlights. This is one of those films where off-screen narration was necessary to describe a huge chunk of the movie’s plot.

And, finally, I just couldn’t buy Aaron Eckhart as a monster. He’s too handsome in his own clean-cut, middle American way. There’s a reason why Aaron Eckhart was convincing as the symbol of good government decency in The Dark Knight and that’s the same reason why he’s not very convincing playing a creature who has been built out of random body parts.

So, to the people behind the Razzies, I would encourage them to continue to try to come up with the perfect Kirk Cameron joke. But don’t forget about I, Frankenstein.

It’s worthy of your consideration.

And speaking of consideration, For Your Consideration will continue tomorrow with 6 more films that are worthy of your awards consideration!