Mark Walker | Through the Shattered Lens

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. insults the national sport of Canada and Amy battles city hall.

Episode 1.9 “On Ice”

(Dir by Alan Simmonds, originally aired on March 7th, 1988)

“In this episode,” Mr. T tells us, “Decker is forced to face the truth about a long-time friend.”

Though T and T took place in a generic city, the show itself was filmed in Canada, with a largely Canadian cast and crew. Hence, it only makes sense that the show would eventually do an episode that centered around hockey. This episode opens with Mr. T’s friend, Decker (David Nerman), coaching a junior hockey game. While the players skate on the ice and chase the puck, Decker deals with fans like the loud Mrs. Mowby (Jayne Eastwood), who is apparently convinced that she knows better how to coach the team than the actual coach! Unfortunately, Decker is yanked out of the game by two detectives who announce that he is under arrest for “theft of over $2,000.”

After T.S. Turner and Amy bails Decker out of jail, Amy explains that it appears that over $25,000 has been embezzled from the Junior Hockey Association. Decker admits to being the association’s treasurer but he also admits to not being good at numbers. He explains that his old friend, Goldie Stanski (played by Sean McCann), usually goes over the books for him.

“Goldie?” T.S. growls, “You trusted a guy named Goldie!?”

Decker explains that Goldie has been his friend for years. Goldie was his former coach! And, indeed, when Mrs. Mowby demands that Decker be kicked out of the Junior Hockey League, Goldie argues that Decker has not been convicted of anything, not that it does Decker much good. However, Detective Jones (Ken James) informs T.S. that “word on the street” is that Goldie has a gambling addiction.

Decker takes T.S. to his next practice and introduces T.S. to the team. They ask T.S. if he’s going to join them on the ice.

“No thanks, brothers,” T.S. replies, “I don’t play no sport when you can get frostbitten indoors. Besides, I think hockey’s an old ladies’ game …. Look at the ton of equipment you guys wear!”

After practice, Decker is arrested for a second time after the detectives, having gotten an anonymous tip, search his locker and just happen to find a bus ticket that leads to a bag full of money. Fortunately, Amy is able to bail him out of jail again, much to the relief of her spacey administrative assistant, Sophie (Catherine Disher), who has a crush on Decker.

T.S. has decided that Goldie is setting up Decker. Now, he just has to get Goldie to give himself away.

“I think with a little persuasion,” T.S. tells Amy, “he might do something foolish …. Friendly persuasion, of course!”

T.S.’s style of persuasion is to show up in Goldie’s apartment and tell him that everyone knows what Goldie’s done while drinking a glass of milk. “Thanks for the milk,” T.S. growls before leaving. When Goldie responds by going to the gym and pocketing more money from the hockey’s charity fund, Amy, T.S., and Decker are there to chase him out on the ice and catch him. If you’ve ever wanted to see Mr. T drive a Zamboni, this is the episode for you.

Decker’s name is cleared and he’s re-instated as coach. Yay!

This was a totally predictable episode but I kind of liked it. Mr. T on a Zamboni was just a ludicrous enough image to make the entire show work.

Episode 1.10 “The Latest Development”

(Dir by George Mihalka, aired on March 14th, 1988)

“In this episode,” Mr. T tells us, “Amy and I fight City Hall …. and City Hall fights back!”

When a dumb, 13 year-old kid named Nick (Toby Proctor) breaks into a construction site and takes a bulldozer for a joyride, he accidentally destroys a truck. The owner of the site, Enzo Malec (George Touliatos), is determined to throw the book at Nick because he’s an evil developer and he wants both Nick and his grandmother, Cora (Helen Hughes), out of their home.

It turns out that one of Amy’s former classmates, Brian Brack (Richard Comar), works in the city’s legal department so she heads down to City Hall in an attempt to guilt him into allowing Cora to stay in her home. For once, we actually get to see Amy doing legal work, which basically amounts to wandering around with a file folder and rolling her eyes while having conversations with other people.

Meanwhile, T.S. takes Nick down to the construction site and convinces Malec to let Nick work off his debt as a construction worker. T.S. arranges for Cora to move in with gospel-singing Aunt Martha (Jackie Richardson) while Nick moves in with Decker.

Suddenly, building inspectors show up at Amy’s office and start searching for violations. “Brian Brack is responsible for this, isn’t he!?” Amy says, while the inspectors write her up for not having a window that opens quickly enough. That’s a $2,000 fine! Upon discovering that they are now going to war with city hall, T.S. tells Amy, “This could be a title bout!”

Amy confronts Brian at a fancy restaurant and tells him that she has discovered that he has invested in Enzo Malec’s development. She demands to know who he and Malec paid off at city hall. Brian tells Amy that she doesn’t know who she is missing with. Amy responds by tossing a drink on him. In a case of amazing timing, Alderman Kent (Mark Walker) shows up and asks if Amy is going to be joining him and Brian for lunch. Hmmm …. I wonder who the corrupt politician could be.

Meanwhile, T.S. and Decker help Nick deal with his anger by training him to box.

“I know how to fight!” Nick says.

“To win, you need a strategy,” T.S. replies.

T.S. proceeds to knock down a 13 year-old.

While T.S. is teaching Nick how to fight, the city is threatening to shut down Aunt Jackie’s foster home! When T.S. finds out, he puts on his dark jacket and starts to head off to City Hall so he can presumably beat up the mayor. Instead, Amy convinces him to hold off by revealing that Brian and Alderman Kent have been taking bribes from Enzo Malec. When T.S. heads down to the construction site, Malec panics and, later that night, he tries to burn a bunch of incriminating files. However, it turns out that he’s being filmed by Amy and the local news.

And that apparently fixes the whole thing!

This episode felt rushed as it basically only had 30 minutes to deal with an hour’s worth of complications. It only took one boxing lesson for Nick to let go of his anger and it only took one confrontation with T.S for Enzo Malec to make one sloppy mistake. That said, I appreciate any episode that portrays municipal government as being thoroughly corrupt and irredeemable. Fight the system!

Next week: Amy’s car gets stolen!

Disconnected, an independent and low-budget horror film from 1984, is an odd one.

Actually, odd might be too mild of a description of this film. It’s about Alicia (Frances Raines, niece of Claude) who works in a video store and who keeps getting strange phone calls. Alicia has a boyfriend named Mike (Carl Koch) and a twin sister named Barbra Ann (Raines, again) and, one night, she answers her landline phone and suddenly hears Mike and Barbara Ann talking about the affair that they’re having! She then starts having nightmares in which Mike and Barbara Ann team up to kill her.

At the same time that Alicia is dreaming about being murdered, Franklin (Mark Walter) actually is murdering women all over town. Franklin also keeps asking Alicia for a date and, after she discovers that Mike has been cheating on her, Alicia finally says yes. One morning, Franklin wakes up in bed, grabs a knife, and attempts to stab Alicia, just to discover that she’s already left for the day. Franklin just ends up stabbing a pillow, which is unfortunate because it was a nice pillow.

Meanwhile, Detective Tremaglio (Carmine Capobianco) is trying to figure out the identity of the serial killer. For some reason, Detective Tremaglio spends a good deal of the film talking directly to the camera, as if he’s being interviewed. Tremaglio is quick to point out how cheap the police station looks and he also says, at one point, that he feels like he’s in a low-budget horror film.

It creates a rather odd atmosphere. On the one hand, you’ve got Franklin wandering around town, hitting the bars and searching for new victims. On the other hand, you’ve got Alicia isolated in her apartment, dealing with the phone constantly ringing and basically having a Repulsion moment. Who is calling Alicia? It’s hard to say. It’s definitely not Franklin. Is Alicia imagining the phone calls? Or is it some sort of a supernatural force? And how is it connected to the mysterious old man who keeps wandering through the film at certain points, popping up like a red herring from the 2nd season of Twin Peaks?

Disconnected raises a lot of questions but it doesn’t answer many of them. And while it’s tempting to suggest that this is just a case of sloppy storytelling, there’s enough intentionally arty moments in the film that I actually think that Disconnected was intentionally designed to be a riddle wrapped in an enigma. For instance, there’s a scene where Alicia answers the phone. For some reason, the camera is placed directly in front of a window. The sun is streaming in through the window, which leads to an almost blinding lens flare. The viewer is vaguely aware of Alicia moving around the room and answering the phone but, due to that lens flare, it’s impossible to actually make out any real details. It sounds like an error in camera placement and yet the scene goes on for so long that there’s no way it wasn’t intentional. (It should also be noted that the scene itself wasn’t particularly important so, if that lens flare was an honest mistake, there’s no reason why the scene couldn’t have been left on the cutting room floor.) Obviously, the director liked the effect and just decided to go with it. And yes, it’s kind of annoying but it’s kind of fascinating too.

The entire plot of Disconnected has a kind of “let’s make this up as we go along” feel to it and it’s hard not to appreciate the film’s enthusiastic incoherence. At its best the film achieves a sort of dream-like intensity. In the end, it all means nothing and yet, thanks to Frances Raines’s better-than-average performance, you are invested in what happens to Alicia. You want to know what it all means, even if it only adds up to the ringing of that cursed phone.

So, does that means I’m recommending Disconnected? Kinda. As I’ve said many times in the past, I have a weakness for low-budget, amateur films. This one was filmed out in the middle of Connecticut and most of the actors were obviously not professionals. There’s something oddly likable about a film like this, one that makes no sense but, at the very least, was still made and — 36 years later — is still being watched and reviewed. So …. yeah, I am kind of recommending this film. It’s weird enough to be worth at least one viewing.