As we approach Valentine’s Day, this music video from Haim feels appropriate. Back in the day, Paul Thomas Anderson directed video-after-video of the Haim sisters walking around Los Angeles and it was the greatest thing ever.
Enjoy!
Tag Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman
Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 3.14 “Heartbeat”
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 Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.
This week, Palermo dies but it’s not a permanent condition.
Episode 3.14 “Heartbeat”
(Dir by Terence H. Winkless, originally aired on December 28th, 1997)
This week, Pacific Blue decided to stop pretending that it was anything more than a Baywatch ripoff by having Carmen Electra appear as Lani MacKenzie, the lifeguard that she played on Baywatch. She helped the bicycle cops out with a rescue and then the bike cops helped her out when she had to break up a knife fight on the beach.
Lani was also present to discuss a new program in which two EMTs will ride with the cops. They will learn how to get around on a bicycle while teaching the bike cops stuff like CPR. One of the EMTs is Alexa Cholak (Alex Datcher), an ex-girlfriend of Palermo’s. This complicates things when an explosion rips across the beach. Palermo and a random woman are injured. Alexa and all the bike cops work on restarting Palermo’s heart, giving him mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. Palermo lives. The woman dies. The woman’s boyfriend then sues the bike patrol because he says that they were so concerned about saving Palermo that they essentially just let his girlfriend die. We’re supposed to dislike the boyfriend but he is actually kind of …. sort of …. right? Chris points out that the woman would have died even if the EMTs had tried to save her but they had no way of knowing that at the time. Essentially, they decided to save their friend Palermo while ignoring someone else who was seriously injured.
This really gets to one of the major problems I have with Pacific Blue. The show just assumes that we’re going to be on the side of the bike patrol no matter what, despite the fact that they often come across as being a bunch of jerks. That’s certainly the case here. When Palermo returns to the office, everyone starts applauding and cheering for him, despite the fact that the dead woman’s boyfriend happens to be standing just a few feet away.
This episode features scenes of the members of the bike patrol being interviewed by a therapist after the explosion. Palermo says that, when he was dead, he didn’t see a bright light or feel any sort of inner peace. He didn’t see his loved ones waiting for him. It’s like even the show is admitting that Palermo is going to go to Hell for creating the bike patrol.
As for the rest of the episode, Chris and Victor investigated the claims of an environmentalist whack job (Michael Houston King) who said that a big evil businessman (Larry Wilcox, of CHiPs fame) was polluting the beach. It turned out the environmentalist was telling the truth. Meanwhile, shaken by the death of the woman and the resulting lawsuit, Alexa resigned from the bike patrol. It would have been touching if Alexa had actually been in more than one episode. Still, each member of the bike patrol popped a wheelie in honor of Alexa. It was dumb. Get those bicycles off the beach!
Stupid episode, this week.
Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 1.4 “Home Shopping”
Welcome to 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 Saved By The Bell: The New Class, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 2o00. The show is currently on Prime.
This week, an old friend makes an appearance.
Episode 1.4 “Home Shopping”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on October 2nd, 1993)
With the entire school freaking out about midterms and Scott and Lindsay working in the school store (which apparently is just a cardboard sign set up next to a trashcan in the hall), Scott comes up with a brilliant idea. Why not start a home shopping network on Baywatch’s TV station? And why not sell a special memory tonic that is basically just chocolate syrup and fish oil?
Soon, the entire school is drinking Chocolate Memory. Evil old Dr. Hammersmith (David Byrd) announces that he’s going to make his midterm even more difficult as a way to combat the use of Chocolate Memory. Scott recruits James the Actor (Mark Blankfield) to pretend to be a Harvard professor who is willing to offer Dr. Hammersmith a job but only if Dr. Hammersmith gives an easy midterm.
James the Actor, I should mention, appeared in a handful of episodes of the original Saved By The Bell. He was a waiter at the Maxx and an actor who would happily put on a fake beard whenever Zack needed to fool someone. It’s not a surprise that he would come back for Saved By The Bell: The New Class. What is a surprise is that Scott — a transfer student from another school — somehow knows who James is. In fact, how do any of the members of the new cast know James as well as they do? James was Zack’s friend and now, suddenly, he’s Scott’s friend. It seems like James, a grown man approaching 50, just liked hanging out with high school students and helping them with their zany schemes. Red flag! Red flag!
Oh, this episode was dumb. Presumably, everyone flunked their midterms, except for Megan who was so worried about fooling Mr. Hammersmith that she actually studied for them. What’s funny is that the “difficult” questions that Mr. Hammersmith asked weren’t that difficult. I mean, if you can’t remember the year that the Boston Tea Party occurred, maybe you should be held back a grade or two. (1773, by the way.)
One of the more familiar complaints about the first season of Saved By The Bell: The New Class is that it didn’t do much to differentiate itself from the original series. It just brought in a bunch of new people and had them act like Zack, Slater, Kelly, and Weasel. That’s certainly true in this case. As I watched Scott go through the motions with his wacky scheme, I found myself suspecting that the episode’s script probably just had a line marked through “Zack” and “Scott” added in pencil.
At the end of the episode, Megan and Scott share a smile and agree that they make a great team. “Whooooo!” the audience shouts. I guess they make an okay team. I mean, they managed to get everyone in the school to drink a potentially lethal combination of fish oil and chocolate syrup. If Megan wants to become a professional con artist, I guess she’s found her man.
Scenes I Love: Lon Chaney, Jr. Learns The Facts Of Werewolf Life
On this date, 116 years ago, Lon Chaney, Jr. was born in Oklahoma City. At the time, Oklahoma wasn’t even a state. His father was the actor Lon Chaney Sr.
Originally named Creighton Chaney, Lon Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps. Like many sons of famous men, he often struggled to escape his father’s shadow. While he would never be mistaken for a man of a thousand faces, Lon Chaney, Jr. did make a name for himself, first as Lenny in the Oscar-nominated 1939 film version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and then as Larry Talbot, the unfortunate man who found himself cursed to turn into the Wolf Man whenever the moon was full. Chaney spent the majority of his career appearing in horror films and, later, westerns. Not only did he play The Wolf Man but he was also one of the many actors to take a shot at playing both Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula. Later, he would appear in a series of low budget horror films that were often a far cry from his best-known films. In his later years, he was a favorite of producer/director Stanley Kramer, who cast him in both High Noon and The Defiant Ones and who once said that Chaney was one of the finest character actors in Hollywood. His deep voice and craggily face made an undeniable impression in those later films. Looking at him, you could see had lived a tough life but he had the heart of a survivor.
In today’s scene that I love, Larry Talbot learns the facts about being a werewolf. From 1941’s The Wolf Man, here is Lon Chaney, Jr in his signature role.
4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Alexander Payne Edition
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to director Alexander Payne! It’s time for….
4 Shots from 4 Alexander Payne Films
Election (1999, dir by Alexander Payne, DP: James Glennon)
Sideways (2004, dir by Alexander Payne, DP: Phedon Papamichael)
The Descendants (2011, dir by Alexander Payne, DP: Phedon Papamichael)
Nebraska (2013, dir by Alexander Payne, DP: Phedon Papamichael)
Music Video of the Day: With You by Jessica Simpson (2003, dir by Elliott Lester)
Today’s music video features Jessica Simpson, back in happier days. This was the last video she made with Nick Lachey. (They would get divorced three years later.) It’s essentially just an advertisement for the reality show that was their life. When Jessica and Nick split up, a generation stopped believing in love. They probably should have stopped believing in reality television instead.
Jessica Simpson and I went to the same high school, though Jessica had dropped out and moved to California long before I started going there. Still, I had some teachers who remembered her as being a nice person.
Enjoy!
Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 5.8 “Diamond In The Rough”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!
Who will be Jon’s partner this week? Read on to find out.
Episode 5.8 “Diamond in the Rough”
(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on November 22nd, 1981)
Erik Estrada is not in this episode which means that a pre-transition Caitlyn Jenner is back as Officer Steve McLeish. Yay! Jenner is just as off-putting and unconvincing as the last time that he appeared on this show. Unfortunately, it appears that the show’s producers picked up on the fact that he wasn’t a particularly good (or even appealing) actor and, as a result, neither Jon nor Steve do much in this episode. It’s almost as if the show’s producer didn’t realize that Jenner’s inability to show emotion or deliver his lines without smiling like a goofball was the most entertaining thing about the episodes without Estrada.
Instead, the episode is split between a veteran thief (Henry Jones) plotting his next robbery and an angry kid named Pat (Nicky Katt, in one of his first roles) who stays with the Getraers while his mother is recovering after a car accident. As the car accident was caused by the thief’s car, Pat is in a position where he can identify the thief. But first, Pat has to stop getting angry at everyone.
This episode didn’t add up too much. The whole thing felt a bit half-baked and one gets the feeling that the script was hastily thrown together so that it wouldn’t require Estrada (who was recovering from a stunt-gone-wrong at the time) while, at the same time, it also wouldn’t require Jenner to do much more other than stand around and direct traffic. Robert Pine gets to do a bit more than usual, which is good because he was the best actor on the show. But still, on the whole, this just didn’t feel like a proper episode of CHiPs.
One final note: Nicky Katt was really good as Pat. Most child actors tend to go overboard and come across as being cutesy. Katt, on the other hand, seemed to be sincerely angry in the role of Pat. Your heart really broke for him. Even as a child actor, Katt was a smart and intuitive actor. He is definitely missed.
Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.14 “The Lost Madonna”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
This week, Crockett and Tubbs — or is it Burnett and Cooper? — enter the art world.
Episode 5.14 “The Lost Madonna”
(Dir by Chip Chalmers, originally aired on March 17th, 1989)
When Crockett and Tubbs take down what they think is a drug deal, they’re shocked to discover that Stanley Costa (Stephen G. Anthony) was actually smuggling two paintings! They could always ask Stanley what’s going on but — whoops! They killed him during the show’s precredit sequence.
Detective Whitehead (Michael Chiklis) comes down from New York City and explains that the two paintings are the side pieces for a triptych called The Last Madonna. It was recently stolen from a Paris museum and Whitehead is convinced that theft was masterminded by Joey Scianti (Peter Dobson).
It’s time for Tubbs and Crockett to — *sigh* — go undercover. Why they’re still always going undercover, I have never really understood. Every time they go undercover, their cover gets blown. Do the members of the Miami underworld just not communicate with each other? Shouldn’t everyone know, by this point, that Tubbs and Crockett are cops? In this case, Tubbs goes undercover as someone who appreciates art. Crockett goes undercover as the crude Sonny Burnett….
Yes, Crockett is still using the Burnett cover. He’s doing this despite the fact that he just recently had a mental breakdown that led to him not only thinking that he actually was Burnett but also becoming Miami’s biggest drug lord. Even if the Scianti family was dumb enough to not know that Crockett was a cop, surely they would have heard enough about drug lord Sonny Burnett to wonder why he would be hanging out with a connoisseur of fine art.
(Indeed, it’s hard not to notice that everyone has apparently moved on rather quickly from Sonny’s mental breakdown and his time as a drug lord. For that matter, Sonny certainly doesn’t seem to ever give much thought to his dead second wife. Remember her? The world-famous singer who was literally gunned down in front of him? She appears to have been forgotten.)
This episode was dull, largely because the Scianti family was never really a credible threat. They came across as being a bunch of buffoons and, as such, it was hard to really get that concerned about whether or not they would figure out that Crockett and Tubbs were actually cops. This is another episode that features a twist that you’ll see coming from miles away. From the minute Michael Chiklis first showed up, I knew that he was eventually going to try to steal the The Lost Madonna for himself.
Considering that there was a lot of humor in this episode (Crockett, not surprisingly, struggled with understanding modern art), there’s also some surprisingly graphic violence. Crockett and Tubbs gun down Stanley Costa and blood splatters all over the wall. Whitehead shoots Joey Scianti and the shocked Joey looks down at his wound and says that it’s “real blood.” Tonally, this episode is all over the place.
Everyone seemed kind of bored with this episode. This was definitely a final season entry.
In Praise Of Korey and Cory
As you all know, I don’t really do sports but I just jumped out of my chair and started cheering when I saw Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse defeat the Italian team in the Winter Olympic semi-finals for mixed doubles curling.
The other night, during the Super Bowl, I was talking to some friends about how nothing seems to really unite people anymore. Even the Super Bowl entertainment divided people this year. The once legendary Super Bowl commercials have become bland and boring because there really aren’t universally beloved celebrities any more. It used to be exciting seeing your favorite actor shilling for junk food or car insurance. Now, when an actor shows up in a commercial, we immediately remember all the stupid things they said during the previous election cycle. (The Budweiser commercial was an exception. One reason why everyone loved that commercial with the horse and the eagle is because we all know that neither one of them is going to start spouting off about politics on Twitter.)
Even at the Winter Olympics, the same press that will never ask Eileen Gu about the Chinese government sentencing Jimmy Lai to life imprisonment is all too eager to demand that American athletes denounce their country. Some people say that that goal of the media is to divide us. Personally, I think the goal of the media is to make money and the easiest way to do that is to generate controversy which will then generate the clicks that are needed to survive. Getting people angry is less a subversive plot and more a business model.
But as I watched Korey and Cory — two people from Minnesota who Duluth, Minnesota — come from behind to defeat the very strong Italian team, I felt more optimistic than I have in a long time. Beyond the fact that Cory is a lab technician and Korey is a realtor, I don’t know much about who Korey and Cory are when they’re not on the ice and quite frankly, I don’t need to know. I don’t need to know how they vote. I don’t need to know how they feel about this issue or that. I don’t need to know what movies they watched or what music they listen to or anything else. All I need to know is that they’re good at curling and they’re representing America in Italy and doing a great job of it. Whenever the camera switched to the watch parties in Duluth or to Korey’s family in the stands, I felt very proud of both them and my country.
As individuals, we may not always agree on everything but, as Americans, we can all cheer for Korey and Cory and, in doing so, we can be reminded that we’re not really as divided as the media’s business model and social media’s algorithms would like us to believe. Tomorrow, they go for the gold against Sweden. I’ll be watching.
Join #MondayMania For Stalker’s Prey!
Hi, everyone! Tonight, on twitter, I will be hosting one of my favorite films for #MondayMania! Join us for 2017’s Stalker’s Prey!
You can find the movie on Prime and Tubi and then you can join us on twitter at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) See you then!
Through the Shattered Lens 