Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!
This week, Amy, T.S. and Joe get involved in a — ugh — hostage situation!
Episode 2.9 “Hostage”
(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on November 28th, 1988)
Fleeing from the police after a botched robbery, two sweaty crooks, Rook (Lawrence King) and Larry (Angelo Rizacos), duck into Don’s Sporting Goods and end up holding 8 people hostage, including Amy and Joe! What a scary situation! These eight Canadians probably just wanted to buy new hockey jerseys and now, they’re being held hostage!
The police, of course, are ineffectual. T.S. tracks down the ex-wife of one of the men but she can’t convince him to come out of the store. The two crooks don’t want to go back to prison so they’ve demanded a lot of money and a plane and they’ve given the Toronto police only two hours to meet their demands. Inside the store, Amy tries to reason with them. Rook knows that things have gone too far and that they need to surrender to the police. But Larry is sweaty and violent and determined to escape with the money.
I groaned a bit when I saw what this episode was going to be about. I absolutely dread sitting through anything that involves hostage negotiation. There’s really not much that can happen in a story like this, other than the hostage takers doing a lot of yelling and the negotiators saying, “You’re going to have to give us more time!” It’s really not much fun to watch people getting guns pointed at their heads while some loser rants and raves about how he’s going to pull the trigger unless he gets what he wants. With the exception of Dog Day Afternoon, hostage taking is usually pretty boring to watch.
Probably the biggest mistake that this episode makes is that it sidelines T.S. Turner for much of the action. The main appeal of T and T is the chance to watch and hear Mr. T take down the bad guys. T.S. spends the majority of this episode just standing around and only he gets to call one person “brother.” Finally, during the final few minutes, T.S. ends up crawling around in the building’s loft so that he can break through the ceiling and take out the hostage takers but, by the time he does, the two criminals have already turned on each other. For once, it falls not to T.S. to capture the main bad guy but for the bad guy’s accomplice to shoot him in the back.
All in all, this was a disappointing episode. Amy failed to talk the criminals into giving themselves up and T.S. failed to capture the criminals by himself. What is Canada even paying these two for?
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!
This week, T.S. Turner searches for a missing teenage boy and finds Vernon Wells instead.
Episode 1.21 “Private Eyes”
(Dir by Stan Olsen, originally aired on May 30th, 1989)
“On tonight’s episode,” Mr. T informs us during the pre-credits, “the mob hunts for a young kid to prevent his father from testifying in court.”
Now, I understand that it’s tempting to roll your eyes at the mention of the mob, seeing as how this is a Canadian show. But what many Americans don’t know is that the Mafia is actually very active in Canada and they have been since the days of Prohibition. All that liquor that Al Capone was selling on the streets of Chicago? It came from Canada!
Tonight’s episode opens with Frank (Angelo Pedari), who has an impressive flat top, walking and then driving down the snowy streets of Canada. He’s on a mission to prevent a married couple from testifying in court. As the local mob boss puts it, the couple will be less likely to testify if their son is missing. Interestingly, these two important witnesses do not have any police assigned their house so Mr. Flaptop and his criminal associate are able to walk right in and announce that they’re taking young Steve (Noam Zylberman) hostage. In his bedroom, Steve overhears and slips out the window. The mobsters decide to chase after Steve as opposed to kidnapping (or doing something even worse) to his parents. I mean, if their goal is to keep the parents from testifying and Canada won’t even send a patrol car to check on the house, I’m not sure why the mob is wasting their time on some teenager.
At the courthouse, Officer Jones (Ken James) gives Amanda a picture of Steve and then asks if T.S. Turner can hit the streets and look for him. (So, why not just give the picture to Turner?) Turner agrees to look for the kid, even though he and Amy agree that they’re obviously only getting half the story.
Turner heads to down to the local pool hall, where the local pool hustler says that someone already came into the place looking for the kid. “He talked like that Alligator guy in the movie.”
“Australian!?” Turner asks, as if this is the first time that an Australian has ever been spotted in Toronto.
Now fully aware that there is an Australian searching for the kid, Turner reminds everyone in the pool hall to “call me” and not the Australian.
Who is the Australian? Why, it’s veteran screen tough guy, Vernon Wells! (Wells played played Wez in The Road Warrior.) In this episode, Vernon is playing Nigel and he is determined to find that kid. When T.S. stumbles across Nigel at the local Canadian high school, showing the students picture of Steven, Turner demands to know what’s going on.
“I’m not talking to you, mate!” Nigel replies.
“Yes, you are.” T.S. replies.
“No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are!”
“No, I’m not!”
Okay, guys, come on now….
Eventually, the police are called and Nigel and T.S. are both dragged down to the police station.
“When I get out of these cuffs, my friend!” Nigel says to T.S.
“You ain’t my friend, brother!” T.S. replies.
Detective Jones tells them to stop both yelling at each other. He explains that Nigel has been hired by Steven’s parents to find their son. He suggests that T.S. and Nigel work together.
“I work alone,” Nigel says before storming out of the police station. However, Nigel changes his mind, returns, and says that maybe he and T.S. should work together.
“No hard feelings, mate?” Nigel asks.
“I guess not,” T.S. replies, “I can always beat on your later.”
“That won’t be a easy from a hospital bed, mate.”
“I ain’t your mate, brother.”
Guys, come on now. The machismo is getting almost overwhelming.
At the gym, T.S. and Nigel meet a taxi driver who gave Steve a ride to the hotel where he is currently hiding out. T.S. and Nigel decide to head over to the hotel but the mob has already learned where Steve is hiding out. (Somehow, Steve’s disguise of a trench coat and dark glasses has failed to fool anyone.)
While T.S. and Steve head over to the gym, Amy confronts Detective Jones about the fact that there was supposed to be a police car in front of Steven’s parents house on the day that Steven disappeared. Someone called off the car. Jones admits that there is a mafia informant in the police department and that’s why he had to hire T.S. to look for the kid. Jones demands to know where Amy got her information. Amy says that she never reveals her sources. Then Sophie (Catherine Disher) wanders into the office and reveals that she got the information from a guy in fingerprinting that she’s dating. Go Sophie!
Meanwhile, at the hotel, T.S. and Nigel discover that Steve is not in his room. Nigel suggests that maybe one of them should wait outside in case Steve returns.
“That’s a good idea, brother!” T.S. says.
“I’m not your brother,” Nigel replies.
Okay, guys, come on, everyone is supposed to be working together here….
Anyway, the kid and the mob show up at the same time so Nigel and Turner get to beat some people up and save the kid. Yay!
Steven’s parents testify against the mob and then enter Witness Protection, which I guess means moving from Toronto to North York. At the courthouse, Nigel and T.S. finally find something that they can agree on, American football.
“Greatest football team ever made!” T.S. announces.
“The Redskins!” Nigel agrees.
Uh-oh. Guys, you might want to stop bonding….
Anyway, this episode was actually kind of fun, due to the bickering between Mr. T and Vernon Wells. They made for a fun team. Once again, it doesn’t really do anyone any good to try to tell an hour’s worth of story in only 30 minutes but Vernon Wells made me smile. That’s the important thing!
Through the Shattered Lens 