Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to the actor and musician Keith Carradine. Our song of the day is a song that Carradine wrote for and performed in the 1975 film, Nashville.
Tag Archives: review
Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 2.22 “Life Sentence”
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, we finish up Freddy’s Nightmares.
Episode 2.22 “Life Sentence”
(Dir by Anita W. Addison, originally aired on March 11th, 1990)
The final episode of Freddy’s Nightmares is also one of the most boring.
Just as with last week’s snoozefest, this episode takes place at the local prison. Andy (George De La Pena) is due to be released. Everyone knows that he killed a guard during an armored truck robbery but Andy blamed his accomplice Bruno (Ron Troncatty) and got away with a plea bargain. Andy can’t wait to get out of jail. He brags to the guy in the next cell about how he knows where all the money is hidden.
Uh-oh, it looks like the prison’s psychiatrist, Elaine Alamo (Penny Johnson Jerald), is trying to keep Andy imprisoned. What does Andy care? Sure, everyone hates him but Bruno’s in another prison and Andy’s got all that money waiting for him. However, when Andy finds out that Bruno has escaped, Andy no longer feels safe on the outside. However, Elaine has changed her mind about keeping Andy in jail because she wants Bruno to kill Andy because the guard the Andy killed was her father. So, Andy kills Elaine so he can stay in prison. But then Bruno gets captured and becomes Andy’s new cellmate. That’s the first story.
The second story features the prison’s warden, Hendler (John Milford), running for sheriff. He’s behind in the polls so he uses an experimental truth serum on Andy. Andy hallucinates that the Warden is Bruno and Andy tells him where the money is hidden. Then Andy dies from a heart attack. The Warden calls a press conference to announce that he’s found the money but Dr. Redman (Glynn Turman), the inventor of the serum, spikes the Warden’s drink and the Warden confesses to killing Andy.
Freddy doesn’t do anything in either one of these stories, other than appear in three host segments and tell a joke about dropping the soap.
This episode was incredibly dull. The low-budget was extremely obvious. (The Warden holds his press conference in the prison, presumably because the show couldn’t afford to dress another set.) Penny Johnson Jerald does a good job with her role but otherwise, this was a poorly acted episode that featured dull characters. Andy was unlikable. The Warden was unlikable. This episode was sad note for this show to go out on.
Of course, it’s not a shock that Freddy’s Nightmares ended with a bad episode. It wasn’t a very good show to begin with, There were a few above average episodes during the second season and the first season features some memorably grotesque moments but otherwise, Freddy’s Nightmares was too constrained by the standards of television to really live up to the legacy of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The best episode were the ones the featured Freddy getting involved in the plot but those were few and far between.
Freddy’s Nightmares did not get a grand finale. Instead, it just got a forgettable final episode. Unlike the Friday the 13th series, Freddy’s Nightmares never found a consistent tone or a compelling reason for existing.
Oh well. Next week, we’ll have a new show in this time slot. See you then!
Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.5 “Slice O’Life”
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!
Song of the Day: Overture from King of King by Miklos Rosza
Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.15 “The Beach Boy”
Welcome to Late Night 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 Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!
This week, someone is killing criminals in Los Angeles and, for once, it’s not Rick Hunter!
Episode 1,15 “The Beach Boy”
(Dir by Richard Colla, originally aired on April 6th, 1985)
A Hawaiian drug lord is angered when five Los Angeles drug dealers decide to stop dealing his product. So, he sends his main assassin — Wes “Beach Boy” Kapano (Brett Clark) — to L.A. to kill all five of them. Hunter and McCall find themselves in the strange position of providing productive custody to the dealers while trying to stop Kapano.
This was a typical “chase-em-and-shoot-em” episode of Hunter. Dee Dee even managed to get shot for the second time this season. (And, once again, it didn’t seem to actually hurt her. “I’m fine!”) For the first season, at least, Hunter kept things simple. In between the flirtatious Hunter/McCall banter, there would be at least one car chase and three shootings.
What sets this episode apart is that Hunter and McCall are protecting drug dealers. While McCall makes it clear that she doesn’t actually care what happens to the dealers, Hunter’s feelings are a bit more ambivalent. He’s been chasing the dealers for so long that he’s developed a grudging affection for them. When one of them is killed while helping the police, Hunter’s actually upset about it.
The other thing that sets this episode apart was Brett Clark’s intimidating turn as the assassin. The Beach Boy, as he’s called, doesn’t waste too much time with conversations. He doesn’t brag about how clever he is or go to a lot of trouble trying to fool anyone. Instead, he just shows up and starts firing. He wears a bulletproof vest, as well. McCall shoots him twice and he barely flinches. He’s a scary dude!
That said, Hunter still manages to kill him. How many people have been killed by Rick Hunter so far? I’ve lost track. Most officers are suspended after a shooting so that the shooting board can rule whether or not it was justified. Hunter is always back on the streets within an hour of killing someone. Considering how quick he is with a gun, I probably wouldn’t want to tell him he was suspended either.
Much like Hunter and McCall, this episode was brutal and efficient.
Retro Television Review: America 2100 1.1 “Pilot”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! This Thursdays, I will be reviewing America 2100, which aired its only episode on ABC in 1979. The show can be found on YouTube!
Episode 1.1 “Pilot”
(Directed by Joel Zwick, originally aired on July 24th, 1979)
In 1979, it appears that the comedy team of Chester Barnes (Jon Cutler) and Phil Kreese (Mark King) are on the verge of breaking up. Tired of not finding success and struggling to pay the bills, Chester is thinking of moving home and working for his uncle’s refrigeration company. Phil begs Chester to reconsider. Chester finally agrees to sleep on it. To help him sleep, Phil suggests warm milk and sleeping pills. Chester and Phil go to bed in their small apartment….
….and wake up in 2100!
As the cheery Dr. Karen Harland (Karen Valentine) explains, Chester and Phil died in 1979 but, through the use of science, they’ve been brought back to life! What is 2100 like?
It’s a lot like the 70s, just a little bit tackier.
The Future!
At first, Chester and Phil claim that there were the leaders of America in 1979. When Karen says that the mysterious Max takes a dim view of lying, Chester and Phil admit that they were two unemployed losers. When they ask who Max is, Karen explains that Max is in charge and that everyone has to do what Max is.
Max is a robot, though it’s not a good idea to call him that. He prefers to be called a — wait for it — “computer.” Max speaks with the voice of Sid Caesar. Every child is brought before Max and told what they’re going to do with the rest of your life. “You’ll be a microbiologist,” Max says to one child. “You’ll be a female impersonator,” he says to another. Eventually, Chester and Phil are brought before Max.
“You two will be museum exhibits,” Max says.
Chester and Phil are not happy about that. They want to be in show business! Back at their apartment, they explain to Karen that she’s living a life where there is no freedom and, without free will, life is meaningless. Karen admits that she secretly wants to be a tap dancer. She then shows off a few of her tap dancing moves and the audiences goes wild and the end credits roll.
Wow, I wonder what type of wacky adventures Chest and Phil had in the future!?
Well, they didn’t have any adventures. This pilot aired once and it didn’t lead to a series. Watching the pilot, I could see why the show didn’t work. The two leads were miscast and they both played their roles very broadly. When you’ve already got Sid Caesar providing the voice of a rolling computer, you really don’t need anyone else in the cast to go overboard. It also didn’t help that Chester and Phil seemed to be pretty much interchangeable as characters. The only thing that really distinguished one from the other was that Chester was the one with dark hair.
That said, I am a big believer in personal freedom and I appreciated that this show attempted to make the case for allowing people to be creative and to even screw up occasionally. An America where everyone compliantly takes orders from a computer may have seemed unbelievable in 1979 but it’s a bit more plausible in 2026. Max is basically a less cranky version of Bernie Sanders so it was fun to see someone tell him off, even if it was just Chester and Phil.
Song of the Day: Andy Warhol from David Bowie
Today’s song of the day comes from David Bowie and it’s about Bowie’s fascination with Andy Warhol. Warhol himself apparently didn’t care for this song but Bowie meant it as a tribute.
This song came out in 1971. 25 years later, Bowie would play Andy Warhol in Basquiat.
Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.11 “Final Bow”
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, 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!
Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 8.5 “Only the Good Die Young/Honey Beats the Odds/The Light of Another Day”
Welcome to 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 the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!
Come aboard, we’re expecting you….
Episode 8.5 “Only the Good Die Young/Honey Beats the Odds/The Light of Another Day”
(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on October 13th, 1984)
This week, Isaac’s friend Lydia (Vernee Watson) boards the boat with her young son, Timmy (Emmanuel Lewis). Is it time for Isaac to find love? Not quite. It turns out that Isaac knew Lydia’s deceased husband. This trip is the first that Lydia and Timmy have taken since he died.
At first, Timmy is all cute and adorable. But then he overhears Isaac talking to Lydia. When Isaac mentions something about the good always dying young, Timmy decides to be bad so that he’ll live longer. Soon, he’s sneaking out of his cabin, making a mess in the kitchen, and trying to steal stuff from the gift shop. Finally, Captain Stubing and Isaac explain to him that what Isaac said was just an expression. All is forgiven!
Oh God, this storyline. I almost always respond to stories about people dealing with the loss of a parent or spouse. I did not respond at all to this story, though. Some of that is because Emmanuel Lewis’s performance as Timmy was way too cutesy. Even more of it was because this story didn’t really deal with loss in any sort of honest or authentic way. Instead, it was just some stupid kid who misunderstood something that he heard. As usual, Ted Lange really poured his heart into his performance but otherwise, this story just fell flat.
Meanwhile, blind Millie Constant (Barbara Parkins) thinks that she has randomly run into Sam Washburn (John Bennett Perry — yes, Matthew’s father). In college, before she lost her eyesight, she had a crush on Sam. What she doesn’t know is that Sam is dead and she’s actually met his younger brother, George. When Millie finally figures out that George is not Sam, how will she react? Most people, blind or not, would probably be disgusted and go out of their way to avoid George for the rest of the cruise. Millie, however, falls in love with George because this is The Love Boat! This story actually featured two good performances. Both Parkins and Perry did their best with the material they had been given to work with. But the story itself asks us to suspend our disbelief just a bit too much.
Finally, Honey Mallory (Stephanie Faracy) boards the boat with her boyfriend, bookie Jake Diamond (James Sloyan). With Jake more interested in making bets than romance, Honey starts to hang out with Miles Metcalf (Jack Riley). Jake panics when he realizes that he might lose Honey. He should also panic about the fact that Miles is a federal agent who has been secretly recording all of his conversations with Honey. This story ends on a weird note. Honey realizes that she loves Jake but Miles announce that Jake will be getting indicted at the end of the week.
All in all, this was not a memorable cruise. None of the stories worked that well and, with the exception of Ted Lange, the Love Boat cast didn’t really seem like that they were that into it this week. This was a pretty forgettable cruise.
Song of the Day: The Main Title Track From The Maltese Falcon by Adolph Deutsch
Today’s song of the day comes from 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston.
Through the Shattered Lens 