Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 5.4 “Mind Games”

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, the Bulls sign a new player!

Episode 5.4 “Mind Games”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 1st, 1989)

The Bulls have signed college phenom Achilles Byron (Ronald William Lawrence) to the roster. However, in order to his name on the dotted line, they also have to sign his loud-mouthed, wheelchair-bound father (Ron O’Neal). Mr. Byron is tough taskmaster who constantly yells at Achilles and forces him to do extra drills. Denardo isn’t happy about Mr. Byron’s presence on the sidelines. Quite rightly, he explains to TD Parker and Kristy that there can only be one coach on the field.

Fortunately, Achilles scores the game-winning touchdown in his first game and Mr. Byron announces that Achilles no longer needs him. Mr. Byron also reveals that he was driving drunk on the night that he crashed his car, injured his spine, and killed Achilles’s mother. Wow, that’s a lot to dump on a kid who just won a football game. Luckily, Achilles had already figured out all of that on his own. Achilles is like No hard feelings and I’m going to say, “Ouch,” on the behalf of the deceased Mrs. Bryon.

Denardo, as a sign of respect, rolls Mr. Byron out of the locker room. Denardo also threatens to roll Mr. Byron down a flight of stairs. Mr. Byron suddenly starts laughing.

1st & Ten has this weird habit of tossing new characters into the mix and expecting us to get emotionally invested in them despite the fact that we’ve never seen them before and we’ll never seem them again. I’ve already checked with the IMDb. This is the only appearance of the character of Achilles Byron on the show. The Bulls agreeing to let Mr. Byron sit on the sidelines never made any sense and the final revelation about the night he was driving drunk came out of nowhere. It almost felt like a parody of badly-done melodrama.

While all of that was going on, Dr. Death was briefly brainwashed by a cult. It doesn’t look like he’ll ever get his killer instinct back! But then an opposing player calls Dr. Death a “pinhead” and he snaps out of it. He scores a viscous tackle that leaves the other player so dazed that that he wanders over to the wrong sideline. Obviously, he has a concussion but the laugh track tells us not to worry about it.

Dr. Death getting brainwashed actually was kind of funny. Ron O’Neal, best known for starring in Superfly, does a lot of yelling as Mr. Byron. It’s not exactly a good performance but one gets the feeling that was more the fault of the script than O’Neal. This was another curiously insubstantial episode of 1st & Ten.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 5.3 “False Start”

Posted on September 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, OJ Simpson is stalked by an abhorrent admirer!

Episode 5.3 “Fale Start”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 25th, 1989)

Johnny Gunn, the new quarterback, is injured while leading the Bulls to victory in their latest game. Westwood, who has an unexplained dislike for Gunn, convinces the drugged quarterback to sign away his power of attorney and then has Gunn undergo a risky surgery. When Gunn realizes what has happened, he goes to the construction site of Westwood’s new house and knocks a few things over. The lesson? When your quarterback has just finished spending several years in prison for manslaughter, don’t upset him.

Dr. Death is stunned to discover that the highest bidder in the “Win a Day With Dr. Death” auction was not Heather Locklear but instead Carlyle Trent (Vince Edwards), a motorcycle-riding millionaire who happens to be gay. (Trent was obviously based on publisher Malcolm Forbes Sr.) Trent thinks that Dr. Death might be gay too. Oh, the hilarity, I guess. Actually, this storyline wasn’t as homophobic as one might expect from 1st & Ten. One of cool things about Dr. Death is that, despite his fearsome image, he’s usually the most open-minded and least prejudiced of all of the Bulls.

Finally, TD Parker (OJ Simpson) finds himself being stalked by a woman named Lisa (Laura Alavarez). Hey, that’s my name! Anyway, what starts as a one night stand ends with OJ having to talk Lisa out of shooting him and Kristy. Wow, OJ Simpson getting stalked by a homicidal maniac. Who would have guessed?

This episode tried to cram three big storylines into just 24 minute and, as a result, everything ended up feeling a bit half-baked. Last season, for all of its flaws, did seem to have a definite destination in mind, The Bulls were finally going to win the Championship Game. This season, on the other hand, has been all over the place.

Get it together, Bulls!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 5.2 “The Con”

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the Bulls get a new quarterback.

Episode 5.2 “The Con”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 18th, 1989)

Following the murder of Doug Clayton (who, if I remember correctly, was still alive in last season’s flash-forward), the Bulls need a new quarterback. T.D. Parker (O.J. Simpson) is contacted by a former player who now works as a prison guard. Vito Del Greco (Chris Meloni) is the prison’s best quarterback. He’s been serving time on a manslaughter charge, but he’s set to be released. T.D. watches Vito throw the ball once and signs him.

Coach Denardo isn’t happy. “I’m not a parole officer!” Kristy Fulbright and Michael Westwood aren’t happy either. They want a big name at quarterback. T.D. believes in Vito but still agrees to put him on the inactive list. A previously unseen and unmentioned player named Lenny Santino is hired as the new quarterback.

Vito struggles to fit in with the other Bulls and to adjust to being a free man. Billy Cooper makes the mistake of singing “Jailhouse Rock” off-key and gets punched out. “Nobody makes fun of Elvis!” That night at a bar, Vito is nearly goaded into another fight. (His manslaughter conviction came from a bar fight.) He announces, “Del Greco is dead,” and leaves.

That weekend the Bulls play their first game of the season. Under Santino’s uncertain leadership they lose 41–7. In the owner’s box, Kristy wonders what happens when the Bulls lose. T.D. tells her that when you lose, the fans chop off your head. Well, T.D. would know something about that.

In the locker room, Vito approaches T.D. and says Del Greco is dead. His name is now Johnny Gunn, and he is going to be the new quarterback of the California Bulls. T.D. gives him a shot because “Johnny Gunn… that sounds like a quarterback to me!”

Meanwhile, Bubba is stunned to learn his wife is cheating on him. Zagreb is tricked into a phony stock scheme. It turns out Billy and Dr. Death set him up as revenge for Zagreb’s tell-all memoir.

After the Bulls went undefeated last season, it was kind of nice to see them lose this week. It’s always more fun to root for the underdogs. As you probably already guessed, the most interesting thing about this episode is the introduction of a young, intense, rather skinny Chris Meloni as Vito Del Greco, a.k.a. Johnny Gunn. Meloni even had hair. That’s how old this episode is.

Will Johnny lead the Bulls back to the championship game? We’ll see.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 5.1 “The Book of Zagreb”

Posted on September 2, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we start season 5!

Episode 5.1 “The Book of Zagreb”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 11th, 1989)

It’s time for another season of football with the California Bulls.

In the wake of the Bulls finally winning the championship, Zagreb has written a tell-all book about his teammates. He spills that Bubba cheats on his wife, that Dr. Death smokes weed, and that, during the previous season, one member of the Bulls was killed by a bull. Solid continuity from 1st & Ten. About time.

T.D. Parker (O.J. Simpson) is described as a chronic womanizer who collects the underwear of secretaries. T.D. is so furious he could kill someone. Before he does, though, he has to keep the Bulls functioning. Help arrives in the form of a new general manager sent by the Dodds Corporation: Kristy Fulbright (Shannon Tweed). Kristy wants the Bulls to become the first team to win two championships in a row. Coach Denardo agrees.

A few familiar faces are missing from the locker room. Mad Dog has been traded to New York. Former quarterback Doug Clayton is mentioned as having been murdered after the big game. (Yikes. What exactly did he say to T.D.?) Dr. Death is now working as a professional wrestler, but he walks away from the ring the moment he’s told to take a fall.

If this review feels a little random, that’s because the episode is too. As usual with 1st & Ten, there isn’t much of a real plot. Everyone is furious at Zagreb, then they get over it. Dr. Death is done with football, then he gets over it. Bubba is terrified his wife will leave him, then she doesn’t. The show is about football; the characters barely have lives off the field.

The best things here are John Kassir’s handful of funny lines as Zagreb and Shannon Tweed’s red dress, which is to die for. We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.14 “The Irreducible Bottom Line”

Posted on August 26, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the fourth season comes to a close!

Episode 4.14 “The Irreducible Bottom Line”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on January 4th, 1989)

The Bulls are going to the championship game, and Joe Namath is hosting a documentary about them. In mockumentary style, Namath and his cameras follow the players around as they prepare for the big game. Quarterback Doug Clayton is told to say, “I’m going to Play Land!” if he wins. Bubba insists on wearing his lucky shirt, no matter how sweat-stained it gets. A decal for a burger chain is placed on all the footballs. The game is as much about big money as it is about victory. In the end, the Bulls win easily, and Coach Denardo finally gets a post-game call from the President.

This is a weird episode. According to IMDb, it ran 26 minutes when it premiered on HBO — the standard running time for 1st & Ten. The version streaming on Prime and Tubi, however, is only 12 minutes long and is full of abrupt jump cuts. Those streaming copies are the syndication edits. Because the series originated on HBO, most episodes included a little nudity and a lot of profanity, all of which was cut for syndication. In this case, about 14 minutes appear to have been removed. One can only assume the Bulls really partied before and after the big game.

Unfortunately, that makes it pretty much impossible to review the episode properly. A few amusing moments still land, mostly the ones that treat sports as a business. It’s also obvious that large stretches of the story were cut. All I can say is that the Bulls finally won the championship, and the rather uneven fourth season of 1st & Ten is over. We’ll start season five next week.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.13 “The High and Mighty”

Posted on August 19, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The undefeated season continues!

Episode 4.13 “The High and Mighty”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on December 28th, 1988)

In this week’s episode, we watch as the Bulls fly to and then from their latest game.

On the flight to the game, Denardo worries about whether or not he has what it takes to eventually win the Championship game. (That’s this show’s equivalent of the Super Bowl.) On the flight back, Denardo’s confidence has been restored and he can’t wait to start planning for the big game.

TD Parker (played by OJ Simpson) spends the flight back flirting with a flight attendant. OJ Simpson’s performance in this episode is perhaps the worst that he’s given since he first joined the cast. I think the problem is that Parker is supposed to be drunk and Simpson was incapable of playing any emotion or condition beyond bland amiability.

Bubba is terrified of flying and has a nightmare that Mad Dog is flying the plane.

Zagrib and a ringer (James Hampton) hustle all of the players in a poker game on the first flight. On the return flight, Zagrib loses all of the money he won and then begs Mad Dog not to kill him. Mad Dog says that he won’t hurt Zagrib because the team needs a good kicker.

Executives Gail (Shanna Reed) and Michael (Paul Tuerpe) argue over where the new Bulls Stadium should be located. Michael thinks that he has found the perfect spot but, on the flight back, Gail lies to him and tells him that the spot used to be a toxic waste dump. Michael calls the head of the Dodds Corporation and tries to take credit for finding the location where Gail wants to put the stadium. This storyline would have been more effective if Michael and Gail were interesting characters.

Finally, Doug falls for an obsessive flight attendant who later tells him that she poisoned his coffee. Doug panics, though he doesn’t actually die or anything so I think she was just lying to him.

I actually kind of liked this episode because I thought it was interesting to see how the members of the team distracted themselves before the game and how they celebrated after they won. This episode was all about big personalities in a confined location and, with the exception of OJ, it featured some fine ensemble work from the cast. Considering how much this show has struggled with finding a consistent tone from not only episode-to-episode but also from scene-to-scene, this was an unusually disciplined episode.

Next week, we finish up the fourth season!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.12 “Duty Calls”

Posted on August 12, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The season continues! Can the Bulls hold on to their undefeated record?

Episode 4.12 “Duty Calls”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on December 21st, 1988)

Considering all of the time that I’ve spent complaining about how there’s usually very little continuity from one 1st & Ten episode to another, I really do have to start this review by giving this show some credit. This episode actually follows up on something that happened a few episodes ago. Harley (Ken Morrison), the kid that Dr. Death befriended in “Injustice for All,” shows up at Bulls Stadium and tells Dr. Death that his mother has abandoned him yet again.

Dr. Death tracks Frankie (Beth Broderick) down at a biker bar and tells her that she needs to go home and take care of her son. It turns out that Frankie hasn’t even told her new boyfriend, Deacon (John Benjamin Martin), that she has a son. When Deacon finds out, he’s offended that Frankie wasn’t honest with him. He explains that bikers are all about family. If Frankie has a son, that means all of the other members of the motorcycle gang have a son as well.

(While it’s easy to scoff at this episode’s mawkish dialogue and its simplistic handling of what looks to be a case of massive parental neglect, I do have to say that my Dad had his share of biker friends and, underneath their admittedly rough exterior, they were some of the nicest people that I have ever met.)

While Dr. Death is fixing a family, Gail (Shanna Reed) and TD Parker (OJ Simpson) are trying to motivate the team to win their 11th game by offering them a $900,000 bonus if they secure a victory. This gets Gail in trouble with the rest of the league’s owners, all of whom are worried that Gail’s bonus is going to harm their bottom line. Gail’s boss, Mr. Medford (Monte Markham), thinks that it’s a great idea.

That said, the Bulls are going to have a tough game. Two Miami gamblers (one of whom is played by a youngish Chazz Palminteri) bribe the temperamental chef at Bubba and Jethro’s bar to give the Bulls food poisoning! On the morning of the game, all of the players are feeling sick and — ugh — flatulent. Will the Bulls still be able to win the game?

Yes, they do.

How do they win the game? I have no idea. Coach Denardo yells at them and then, one jump cut later, we see that the Bulls are ahead on the scoreboard. All of the players are still sick and constantly having to run off the field, but somehow they still crush their opponents. Maybe they were just playing a really bad team….

(For a show about a football team, it’s always interesting how little time 1st & Ten devotes to things like strategy or play calling. We’re told that Coach Denardo is one of the best, but it’s rare that we ever actually see him coaching.)

As nice as it was to see Dr. Death reuniting Harley with his mother, the rest of this episode was pretty much the epitome of everything that bothers me about this show. Who are the two gamblers who poisoned the entire team? The episode keeps things vague, and I imagine that we’ll never hear about either one of them again. The gamblers will vanish, just like the team’s female placekicker vanished after appearing in one episode. There really aren’t any stakes in 1st & Ten because most storylines get abandoned only a few minutes after they start.

Oh well. At least OJ Simpson always killed it in the role of TD Parker. This episode finds OJ — or actually, TD, but we all know TD might as well be named OJ — talking about the beauty of an undefeated season. Maybe that’s why the team won. They knew better than to get on OJ’s bad side.

Next week: The march to the championship game continues!

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.5 “Slice O’Life”

Posted on August 7, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Daily Motion.

This week, it’s a busy few days in Boston.

Episode 4.5 “Slice O’Life”

(Dir by Eric Laneuville, originally aired on November 6th, 1985)

Oh, the drama!

Elliot is still struggling to lose weight.

Fiscus is having an early midlife crisis, especially when a cancer patient (Todd Susman) philosophically accepts that the treatment is going to leave him impotent. The patient has lived a life with meaning. What has Fiscus done?

Dr. Craig finally admits to Ellen that he knows he was too hard on their now dead son. They are both preparing to raise their granddaughter, Barbara, in their home. However, Yvonne’s parents (Ramon Bieri and K Callan) arrive in Boston for a visit. They are so blue collar and, in Dr. Craig’s eyes, unsophisticated that they almost seems like caricatures of what the rich think the poor are like. They reveal that Stephen and Yvonne asked them to serve as Barbara’s legal guardians in case anything happened. At first, Ellen refuses to let them take Barbara. “Get your wife in check,” Yvonne’s father says. “I’ll see you in court,” Dr. Craig replies.

After complaining about feeling like he has a cold and then getting upset about the Hospital Board not immediately approving all of his projects, Dr. Westphall collapses in the St. Eligius stairwell. It turns out that he has Malaria. Apparently, a self-righteous attitude and a bunch of impractical ideas were not the only things Westphall brought home from Ethiopia.

Finally, Bobby spends another weekend up at Cape Cod. He picks up a local woman. They have what Bobby is probably expecting to be just another one night stand. The woman, however, has a razor blade that she’s hidden under her tongue (yikes!) and proceeds to slice Bobby across his face.

AGCK!

Up until that ending, this was a fairly typical episode of St. Elsewhere. It looked like the big drama was going to be the Craigs temporarily losing Barbara. Instead, the drama is that Bobby might be dead!

Oh, poor Mark Harmon. When he first started playing the role on this show, Bobby was portrayed as being a nice guy who was a little boring. The show really had no idea what to do with him, other than have him occasionally take his shirt off. For the fourth season, the show’s writers turned him into an arrogant hedonist. On the one hand, I’m sure there are a lot of doctors like Bobby Caldwell. On the other hand, the change really does seem to have come out of nowhere. And now, he might be dead. I guess the lesson here is to stay away from Cape Cod!

The attack on Bobby ultimately overshadows everything else that happened in this episode. I will say that, before Bobby got attacked, I was enjoying Dr. Craig’s rather snobbish reaction to Yvonne’s parents. As for Dr. Westphall …. eh. Westphall’s kind of become a one trick pony. He’s depressed and he wants the world to know it. I know quite a few people like Dr. Westphall in real life, which is probably why I get so annoyed with his character on the show.

Seriously, Westphall, cheer up!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.11 “Final Bow”

Posted on August 5, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, yet another new player joins the Bulls.

Episode 4.11 “Final Blow”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on December 14th, 1988)

Bubba’s fighting with his wife again! Maybe Jethro can fix things by sending her a fur coat, along with a card claiming that the coat is a gift from Bubba. Yes, that really is one of the main storylines on this week’s episode. If nothing else, you can always count on 1st & Ten to keep things simple.

As for the other storyline, the Bulls have signed Olympic runner Moses Jackson (Peter Parros) to the team. Moses’s agent (Calvin Lockhart), who is obviously meant to be a stand-in for Don King, announces that Moses is both the fastest man on the planet and also the world’s greatest athlete. For his part, Moses doesn’t even want to play football. He’s terrified of getting tackled.

Wide Receiver Coleman King (Richard Lawson) is scared that he’s going to lose his job to Moses. Even though Coleman had never been seen or mentioned before last week’s episode, he is apparently an old friend of TD Parker (OJ Simpson). TD is not so secretly in love with Coleman’s wife, Della (Vanessa Bell Calloway). When a depressed Coleman goes to Bulls Stadium with a gun, it’s up to TD to turn on the charm and convince Coleman that violence is never the answer. TD tells Coleman that he can’t play forever and he has to start thinking about what he wants to do once his athletic career is over. Coleman decides that he would like to be a teacher. TD takes Coleman’s gun and drives Coleman home in his Bronco.

During the next game, Moses turns out to be a bust. Every time he gets the ball, he gets tackled almost immediately. It’s not until the final quarter that he finally manages to break free and run for a 60 yard touchdown. However, Moses then runs into the locker room and refuses to come back out. The Bull are still down by 6 and their star player has just announced his retirement. Fortunately, Coleman King is still playing and he manages to make a last-minute, game-winning touchdown.

Yay! The Bulls remains undefeated.

After the game, TD congratulates Coleman and tells him that he picked a great way to go out. Coleman laughs and says he’s not going anywhere. He figures that he has at least another three years to go before retiring. Teaching can wait!

This was actually not a terrible episode. A lot of that is due to Richard Lawson’s empathetic performance as Coleman King. In fact, Lawson turns Coleman King into one of the few interesting characters on the series. I can’t wait to see what else he does …. oh wait. According to the imdb, this episode was the last time that either Richard Lawson or Coleman King appeared on 1st & Ten.

Oh well, I guess that’s football for you!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.10 “Out of the Past”

Posted on July 29, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After last week’s trip to “the future,” this episode returns to 1988.

Episode 4.10 “Out of the Past”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on December 7th, 1988)

As a show, 1st & Ten has a weird habit of introducing new characters and pretending as if they’ve always been around even if they’ve never been seen or even mentioned before. In this episode, we meet Coleman King (Richard Lawson), the team’s veteran running back who fears that he’s on the verge of being dropped from the Bulls. Coleman is also an old friend of TD Parker’s (O.J. Simpson).

TD is conflicted. He knows that Coleman is past his prime. The Bulls are on the verge of signing a new running back and, when they do, TD knows that he’s probably going to have to cut Colman from the team. As a former player, TD knows how painful it is when your professional career is murdered and no one is held responsible for it. Complicating matters is the clear attraction between TD and Coleman’s wife, Della (Vanessa Bell Callaway).

While TD tries to figure out how to protect both the team and Coleman, Ernie Denardo runs into his ex-girlfriend, Brenda (Shannon Wilcox), at a bar. Brenda has some scary people after her because of her unpaid gambling debts. She tells Denardo that she has money on the next Bulls game. If the Bulls win by more than ten, her debt will be paid off and then she and Denardo can be together.

The next day, the Bulls are on the verge of winning by 9. With only a few seconds left in the game, Denardo has the team kick a field goal so that they can win by 12. Denardo returns to Brenda’s apartment and discovers that she’s gone. It was all a scam, hatched by Brenda and her real boyfriend.

In tears, Denardo tells TD that he has to quit as coach of the Bulls.

TD argues that Denardo didn’t do anything wrong because he didn’t have money on the game. TD points out that the field goal unit needed the practice and that the Bulls need as many points as possible to clinch home field advantage in the playoffs. The episode ends with TD embracing the sobbing Denardo. Awwww! Is there nothing an OJ Simpson pep talk can’t fix?

After last week’s bizarre episode, this was a traditional 1st & Ten episode. This episode served as a reminder of just how bland OJ Simpson was as an actor. That said, Reid Shelton did a good job as the grief-stricken Denardo and the gambling subplot at least did have a few interesting twists. By the standards of 1st & Ten, that makes this episode a success.