Lora Staley | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

This week, a future Oscar winner shows up in Springwood.

Episode 1.14 “Black Tickets”

(Dir by George Kaczender, originally aired on February 5th, 1989)

Brad Pitt appears in this week’s episode, playing Rick. Rick is a rebellious teenager who elopes with his girlfriend, Miranda (Kerry Wall). Even on a low-budget show like this, Pitt’s screen presence was undeniable. From the minute he shows up onscreen, it’s impossible to look away from him. He had that movie star charisma from the start. It’s a shame that the episode itself isn’t that good.

It’s a typical Freddy’s Nightmares scenario. The first 20 minutes feature Rick having an extended dream sequence after he gets hit by a car. Rick apparently dreams about staying at a creepy hotel with Miranda and then being forced to kill two cops that show up and attempt to arrest him. But, at the end of the story, he sees himself lying in the middle of the road and realizes that everything that has happened since he got hit by the car has only been happening in his head.

The second 20 minutes features Miranda married to Rick. Rick has no settled down but Miranda is worried that she might be pregnant. While she waits for the results of her pregnancy test, she sees herself trapped in the house as a mother while Rick goes from being a rebel to being a police officer. Finally, Miranda snaps out of her dream and discovers that she’s not pregnant. She jumps for joy on her bed but then she slips, hits her head, and ends up with the mind of a child.

This was a pretty bland episode, even with Brad Pitt in the cast. The main problem was that it was all so predictable. The dreams were obviously dreams so there wasn’t really any suspense or tension while they were playing out. Freddy’s Nightmares used the “Its all just a dream” format so often that, by this point in the first season, it had gotten fairly boring. That was certainly the case here.

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 King of the Building, which aired on CBS in 1987. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Richard Lewis is a doorman.

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by James Komack, originally aired on July 31st, 1987)

Joey (Richard Lewis) is the …. KING OF THE BUILDING!

Well, no. Actually, he’s just a doorman for a Park Avenue apartment building. The owner of the building, Mr. Jamison (Simon Jones), is the real king of the building but the elderly residents all prefer to deal with Joey. That’s because Mr. Jamison is greedy and venal and always looking for an excuse to kick people out of their apartments. His latest target is Mrs. Gladstone (Billie Bird), who has dementia and thinks that Joey is her son, Elliot.

(Mrs. Gladstone has a sitcom form of dementia, where all of her mistakes are quirky and she never loses her temper or gets paranoid or disappears for hours on end.)

When Mr. Jamison brings in a social worker (Lora Staley) to try to get Mrs. Gladatone ruled incompetent, Joey and the other workers at the building conspire to make it appear as if all of Mrs. Gladstone’s confusion is due to Mr. Jamison keeping her apartment in disrepair. The social worker declares that Mrs, Gladstone will be fine as long as Joey is working at the building.

(Personally, I would think this would lead to Mr. Jamison just firing Joey so he could then get rid of Mrs. Gladstone but that doesn’t seem to occur to him. Of course, Joey also mentions that he’s a member of a union so maybe Joey has his job for life. I hope it pays well.)

This was a pilot for a series that presumably would have followed Joey as he protected the elderly residents from Jamison. It only aired once and it didn’t lead to a series. Watching the pilot, it’s easy to see why. Richard Lewis, who passed away two days ago, was a comedian who was acclaimed and famous for his ability to comedically explore what it meant to be truly neurotic. There’s not really anything neurotic or obsessive or even particularly interesting about Joey. He gets nervous and he complains a lot but, in the end, he’s just a blue collar doorman who doesn’t like his boss. Lewis is likable but miscast in the role. Watching him, one gets the feeling that Lewis was holding back all of his natural instincts to play the rather subdued and sensible Joey.

Despite the failed pilot, Richard Lewis would continue to appear in television and moves for the rest of his life and he became a bit of a cultural institution. On Curb Your Enthusiasm, he often played the voice of reason to Larry David and proved that one could play sensible without losing his edge. And, of course, a generation will always remember him as King John.