Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

This week, Joe Hears meets his fate.

Episode 4.5 “….The Clock Runs Out”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 2nd, 1988)

Poor Joe Hearns!

Last episode, Joe went from being a skid row windshield cleaner to being a defense coordinator to being a linebacker on the team.  This episode …. well, he dies.

Seriously.

It’s not a particularly noble death either.  After a rookie player (played by Kevin Sorbo, of all people) is seriously injured in a prank involving a bull, Hearns decides to go back to the farm and challenge the bull himself.  The show ends with the bull charging at Hearns and since Harold Sylvester (the actor who played Hearn) is not listed as having appeared in any episode of 1st & Ten beyond this one, I can only assume that the bull won.

Seriously, what was the point of that whole storyline?  Bubba, Jethro, and TD all thought that Joe Hearns would be able to redeem himself on the Bulls.  Hearns turned out to be suffering from massive PTSD, the result of having crippled an opposing player the last time he played.  This episode, Joe has a near breakdown when one of the team’s new executives reprimands Joe for parking in his spot.  And then Joe dies.  I guess the lesson here is that he would have been better off if Bubba and Jethro had just left him in that parking lot.

Watching this show, I get the feeling that the writers really didn’t have much direction in the writing room.  It’s amazing how often a potentially interesting character like Joe Hearn will be introduced and then dropped an episode later.  There have been so many storylines that have been started and abandoned in a similar fashion.  This very season started with the Bulls players buying the team and then, three episodes later, they decided that they didn’t want to be team owners after all.

The one thing that remains consistent?  The bland affability of OJ Simpson.  OJ may not have been a particularly good actor but he certainly was personable.  That undoubtedly paid off for him later in life.

Unfortunately, Joe Hearns was not personable.  And now, he’s dead.

(Actually, so is OJ.)