Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week …. OH MY GOD, IT’S JOHN STOCKWELL!

Episode 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

(Dir by Michelle Manning, originally aired on July 5th, 1988)

Victor Haas (David Proval) is a club owner and also the head of Canada’s most violent ring of counterfeiters.  Detective Russ Sharko (Val Avery) is obsessed with taking Victor down.  Victor attempts to dissuade Sharko by using a car bomb to take out Sharko’s wife.  That just makes Sharko more determined.  However, when Sharko’s obsession leads to a bust-gone-wrong and a dead cop, Sharko is kicked off the force.  Sharko now has to take Victor and his man down on his own.  Fortunately, he happens to own an antique sheriff’s badge.  When he pins the badge on someone, that person suffers a violent death.

This sounds like a job for Micki and Ryan.  (Jack, again, is out of town.)  However, Micki and Ryan are distracted by the arrival of Tim (played by one of my favorite 80s leading men, the superhot John Stockwell).  Tim is Micki’s ex-boyfriend and soon, he and Micki are picking up where they left off.  (When the season began, Micki was engaged so I guess Tim must have been the boyfriend before the fiancé.)  Ryan gets jealous because — surprise! — he’s kind of in love with Micki.  Of course, just a few episodes ago, Ryan was in love with a preacher’s daughter.  And then, after that, he was in love with Catherine, who was murdered by an evil journalist.  Ryan seems to fall in love easily so….

Actually, wait a minute.  RYAN AND MICKI ARE COUSINS!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING, RYAN!?  Of course, they’re not first cousins but still …. it just doesn’t seem right!

Anyway, at first, it seems like Ryan might be correct to be suspicious of Tim because Tim approaches Victor and offers to help him with his counterfeiting ring.  But then we learn that Tim is with the FBI!  Why is the FBI working in Canada?  I guess maybe the show’s producers were still trying to convince viewers that Friday the 13th took place in America, despite the fact that all of the directors and most of the actors were Canadian and the show itself was clearly filmed in wintry Canada.  (This episode is a bit of an oddity in that all three of the main guest stars — David Proval, John Stockwell, and Val Avery — were born in the Lower 48.)  The important thing is that Tim’s a good guy but — uh oh! — Tim also gets shot and dies at the end of the episode.  Micki is a little bit sad but Ryan is kind of relieved because it means he’ll have a chance to hook up with his cousin….

SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL!?

This episode got a little bogged down with all of the counterfeiting stuff.  It felt more like an episode of Miami Vice than Friday the 13th.  The badge was also a bit of a boring antique because it didn’t really do anything other than kill people.  Other antiques changed the personality of the people who owned them and demanded a quid pro quo for their powers.  This antique is far more simple and kind of dull.

Oh well.  It’s a less-than-memorable episode but John Stockwell was hot and I’m a bit disappointed that he apparently won’t be making a return appearance.

Next week, we meet Ryan’s father and discover that he’s not a good man at all!