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 Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Season 4 continues!  Maybe this will be the week when it actually gets …. good.

Episode 4.5 “S.A.T. Blues”

(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 26th, 1998)

It’s S.A.T. time!  (Seeing as how Julie and Mary Beth are both in their fifth year of high school, it’s probably a good thing that they finally took the test.)  Everyone does well on the S.A.T. except for Hammer.  But Hammer is convinced that he doesn’t need good test scores because of his talent on the court.  Unfortunately, a recruiter from Duke U. informs Hammer that it doesn’t matter that Hammer single-handedly won the team’s last game.  Duke takes academics very seriously and there’s no way Hammer will ever play for them.  NOT WITH THOSE SCORES!

A dejected Hammer tries to quit the team.  Fortunately, a friend Coach K’s informs Hammer that he can still get into the NBA, even if he does end up going to junior college.  I’m going to guess that Coach K’s friend was played by a real-life basketball player, just because the audience went crazy when he made a basket.  Coach K. also made a basket but, noticeably, it was made through camera trickery because, unlike Reggie Theus, Dick Butkus was not a former basketball player and didn’t come across as being someone who had ever made a basket in his life.  Anyway, Hammer learns an important lesson and agrees to take the test again.  That said, if Hammer was actually as good on the court as he claimed to be, I imagine Duke would have bent the rules for him.

Meanwhile, Julie and Michael celebrate their 2-year anniversary.  After Mary Beth hears Michael talking about getting an expensive “ruby guitar” for himself, she tells Julie that Michael is getting her a “ruby.”  Julie buys Michael an expensive guitar case.  Meanwhile, Michael finds out that Mary Beth told Julie that she’s getting a ruby ring so he sells his guitar so that he can afford to get her the ring.  Somewhere, the angry ghost of O. Henry is researching copyright law.  Anyway, Julie gets mad at Michael for spending too much on her.  Who actually gets mad over something like that?

This episode was not particularly memorable but it wasn’t really bad either.  It was very much a middle-of-the-road Hang Time episode.  An important lesson was learned and the audiences was told to cheer whenever Michael and Julie kissed.  Dick Butkus is still totally unbelievable as a basketball coach.  Let us move on.

Episode 4.6 “Easy Credit”

(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 26th, 1998)

Ugh.  This is another one of those episodes where every complication is due to the characters being idiots.  I hate episodes like this.

In the B-plot, Julie is set to be named Indiana Basketball Player of the Month, because of course she is.  Coach K. doesn’t want Julie to find out before he announces it at the school dance.  However, he makes the mistake of telling Mary Beth and Michael about it and they do such a bad job of hiding how excited they are about Julie winning yet another honor that Julie suspects that something strange is going on.  Through a series of events that are way too annoying for me to detail, this leads to Julie and Kristy thinking that Coach K is going to ask the principal to marry him and this would all be interesting if I had never seen any other shows produced by Peter Engel.

The A-plot is even more aggravating.  Silk has a credit card but he’s only supposed to use it for emergencies.  But he ends up using it to buy stuff for himself and his friends.  He also ends up with a huge credit card bill.  Instead of getting a job or asking his parents for the money, he decides to use the credit card to buy a TV so that it can be raffled off at the school dance.  (What?)  Unfortunately, the TV gets broken so Silk, Rico, and Hammer decide to borrow the team van so they can take the TV to Rico’s uncle who is a master at repairing televisions.  Unfortunately, the van breaks down and Silk can’t afford to get it fixed because the credit card is maxed out and….

….

….

Sorry, I was silently screaming.  This was such an annoying episode.  I’m done talking about it.  Everything worked out and Silk learned an important lesson about not being an irresponsible dummy.  Yay!