Tag Archives: review

Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 2.20 “Dust to Dust”

Posted on 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 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!

The cannibals are back!

Episode 2.20 “Dust to Dust”

(Dir by Bill Froehlich, originally aired on February 25th, 1990)

Tony Dow, Amy Lyndon, and Sandahl Bergman, the three cannibals from Prime Cut, are back!  They are now all living together and are members of Cannibals Anonymous.  For months, they have resisted the urge to taste human flesh.  But, when an escaped prisoner breaks into their home, they give into temptation and have a good meal.

Uh-oh, it turns out that escaped prisoner was actually an astronaut who returned to Earth infected with a space virus that eventually reduces its victims to dust.  And now, the cannibals all have the virus!  The government abducts them and takes them to an underground lab where a group of scientists dispassionately watch as they become hypersexual before going insane and turning into dust.  One scientist (Tim Russ) sympathizes with the cannibals and soon, the entire lab  is infected.

This episode had potential but it ultimately failed because it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be funny or scary.  There’s a lot of terror to found in the idea of being held prisoner until your transformed into blue dust.  At the same time, the symptoms of the space virus were so over-the-top and the actors went so overboard in performing those symptoms that it was hard to really care about any of it.  Having the victims quote a movie before turning into dust probably seemed like a good idea but it doesn’t work in execution.  The whole thing ultimately felt like a community theater production of The Andromeda Syndrome.

Not even Freddy appeared to be that interested in this episode.

Only two more episodes to go!

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.3 “Haunted”

Posted on 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.

I apologize for the delay in posting this review.  I was feeling under the weather last week.  This week, I feel well enough to share this review of one of the most emotional hours of television that I’ve ever watched.

Episode 4.3 “Haunted”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on October 23rd, 1985)

This episode begins where the previous one ended.  After crashing his car, Stephen Craig and his wife, Yvonne, are rushed to the Emergency Room.  Despite the best efforts of Drs. Chandler and Axelrod, Stephen dies in the ER.  Yvonne goes into labor, eventually giving birth to Dr. Craig’s granddaughter.  Dr. Mark Craig and Ellen show up shortly after Stephen has been pronounced dead.  While Ellen immediately slips into denial (“That’s not Stephen!”), Dr. Craig calmly tells Chandler that he knows Chandler did everything that he could.

Throughout the episode, Ellen struggles with her grief while Mark holds back his emotions.  He suspects that Stephen was once again using drugs and he even goes to the autopsy to see for himself.  While Stephen’s organs are being weighed, Dr. Craig starts to talk about how he was never close to his son but how, when Stephen was young, they used to read Dr. Seuss together.  “Thank you Sam I Am,” Dr. Craig recites under his breath, right before hearing that Stephen had used cocaine shortly before dying.

For Dr. Craig, Stephen’s renewed drug use is an excuse to refuse to mourn for him.  For Ellen, Stephen’s drug use is proof that his father was too critical and pushed him too hard.  Ellen tells Mark that he never cared about Stephen except for when Stephen said he wanted to be a doctor.  As the episode ends, Dr. Craig sits in his office and thinks about the words of Dr. Seuss and finally, he starts to cry.

I cried too.  I cried a lot while watching this episode.  This was the most emotional episode of St. Elsewhere that I’ve watched so far.  Both William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett were heartbreaking as a couple who each dealt with their grief in their own way.  It was hard to watch Ellen fall apart in the Emergency Room but it was even harder to watch Dr. Craig fall apart as he realized that his wife was right.  When Stephen was young, the only time they were close was when they read that Dr. Seuss book.  And now, that memory is all Dr. Craig has left.

There were other things that happened in this episode, of course.  One thing about St. Elsewhere is that there are always several stories going on at once.  Elliot worried about his weight, even after discovering that his girlfriend liked the fact that he wasn’t thin.  Dr. Caldwell spent the weekend at a recently purchased house in Cape Cod and Fiscus showed up unannounced.  Dr. Morrison encouraged the other male residents to donate sperm.  Dr. Westphall continued to try to push through his efforts to make St. Eligius a community-centered hospital.  But none of the other stories could match the power of Mark and Ellen Craig losing their son.  In fact, I found myself resenting being taken away from the Craigs.  “Who cares about Cape Cod!?” I said, “The Craigs have lost their son!”

This was not an easy episode to watch but, in the end, it was powerful, it was touching, and it made me cry.

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.13 “Snow Queen: Part One”

Posted on 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 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, we have part one of a two part story.

Episode 1.13 “Snow Queen: Part One”

(Dir by Tony Mordente, originally aired on March 23rd, 1985)

This week’s episode features two tough guys who are both named Dennis.

Dennis Farina appears as Vic Terranova, a gangster who owns a nightclub and who loves country music.  McCall is working undercover as a country-western singer in order to take both him and his cocaine-dealing operation down.

Meanwhile, Dennis Franz appears as Sgt. Jackie Molinas, a sleazy detective from New York who comes to Los Angeles to extradite Sally LaPone (Lycia Neff), a former New York drug dealer who relocated to Los Angeles after she witnessed a murder in the Big Apple.  Sally is now the exclusive drug dealer for rock star Darby Slash (Brendan Hughes).  When she’s arrested at a raid on one of Terranova’s clubs, Molinas demands that she be turned over to him.  Correctly assuming that Molinas is planning on killing her, Sally escapes his custody.  Molinas’s search for Sally leads to him apparently killing both Darby Slash and also one Hunter’s informants.

Hunter can’t prove that Molinas is the killer but he suspects it.  It seems like he could just ask his Mafia relatives if Molinas is working for the Mob but this show has kind of forgotten that Hunter has relatives in the Mafia.

This episode was part one of two so this review is going to feel incomplete.  When the episode ended, McCall had gotten a job singing for Terranova and Molinas was closing in on Sally.  We’ll see how it all plays out next week.  For this week, I’ll simply say that Dennis and Dennis delivered.  Dennis Farina was properly smooth as Terranova.  Meanwhile, Dennis Franz turned Jackie Molinas into one of the sleaziest, most obnoxious characters that I’ve ever seen.  He’s the type of guy who walks into a place, insults all of the men, crudely hits on all of the women, and then attempts to murder a stranger.  Franz made Molinas into a character worthy of loathing.

I always find it interesting when Rick Hunter has to deal with a bad cop.  It’s like the show is saying, “Yes, Rick kills a lot of people but at least he’s not that guy!”

We’ll see how things work out next week.

Retro Television Review: Decoy 1.39 “The Lost Ones”

Posted on 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958.  The show can be viewed on Tubi!

This week, Decoy comes to an end.

Episode 1.39 “The Lost Ones”

(Dir by Arthur H. Singer, originally aired on July 7th, 1958)

The final episode of Decoy finds Casey dropping in on Elsa Kramer (Phyllis Newman), a recently-released juvenile offender who Casey previously arrested.  Casey just wants to check on her and to welcome her back to society.  But, when Casey steps — unannounced, which may be okay in New York but seems rather rude to my Texas sensibilities — into the family’s small kitchen, she discovers Elsa’s abusive father is dead and Elsa is holding the gun.  Elsa makes a run for it.  Elsa’s mother (Adelaide Klein) and brother (Morton Lighter) say that Elsa shot her father in self-defense.

Casey doesn’t think Elsa pulled the trigger and is determined to find Elsa and learn the truth before Elsa is arrested again.  Not surprisingly, Casey’s right.  It was her brother who killed their father.  Elsa took the blame because her brother was going to medical school whereas Elsa really didn’t have much of a future to lose.

In some ways, this episode is an appropriate send-off for Casey and Decoy.  It has some location footage of New York, which was always the show’s main appeal outside of Beverly Garland’s lead performance.  It features Casey trying to prove that a seemingly guilty person is actually innocent.  That’s certainly preferable to what we saw last week.

At the same time, this episode had some of the same flaws that were present in quite a few of Decoy’s final episodes.  The dialogue was a bit overbaked.  Even worse, the acting from the supporting cast was not particularly impressive.  Morton Lighter was so twitchy as Elsa’s brother that there wasn’t much doubt as to who the guilty party was.  This episode also featured Casey meeting with the least intimidating street gang in New York history.  The whole thing lacked the authenticity that distinguished Decoy at its best.  I’m not really sure if the show’s producers knew that this would be the final episode of the series.  If they did, they allowed to show to end on a bit of anticlimactic note.

So, that’s it for Decoy.  For the most part, it was a good show.  The last few episodes were perhaps a bit too melodramatic for their own good.  One got the feeling that the show’s writers were under orders to “liven” things up.  But the early episodes made great use of the New York setting and, throughout the series, Beverly Garland gave a great performance as the tough but compassionate Casey Jones.

What will I be watching next?  I’ll let you know next week!

Brad reviews the South Korean action film, THE MAN FROM NOWHERE (2010)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Do y’all remember when Best Buy had a good selection of DVD’s and blu-rays? This was sometime around the turn of the century and every time we’d go to Little Rock, I’d stop by Best Buy and check for the newest titles. I remember running across the South Korean movie SHIRI (1999), and the description on the cover made it sound like it would be an amazing action film. I didn’t know anything about South Korean cinema, but it looked good, so I bought it. And I absolutely loved it. I spent the next decade immersed in the country’s film industry, watching every movie that looked good to me. Titles like JOINT SECURITY AREA (2000), OLDBOY (2003), A BITTERSWEET LIFE (2005) and so many others became staples of my movie watching life. I remember when I first read about THE MAN FROM NOWHERE. It looked like it would be right down my alley…

Won Bin stars as Cha Tae-sik, a quiet pawnbroker who seems completely content spending all of his time by himself. He makes one exception, and that’s for So-Mi (Kim Sae-ron), the neglected young girl who lives next door and has no friends. She likes Tae-sik though and we see them slowly building a sweet relationship. When So-mi is kidnapped because her addicted mother steals from a drug dealing, organ harvesting criminal organization, we find out that Tae-sik possesses incredible fighting skills, and he will use them in every way possible to get her back. What starts as the quiet story of an unlikely friendship will soon turn into a brutal quest to find the girl before it’s too late.  

As far as I’m concerned, THE MAN FROM NOWHERE is a must watch for several reasons. The best South Korean films for my money can accurately be described as “slow burners.” Writer-Director Lee Jeong-beom really takes his time setting up the story. We get scenes that help set up the action, but his focus for the first thirty minutes is the developing relationship between two broken human beings in Tae-sik and So-Mi. By the time she is put in danger, we care about her and understand why he will do whatever it takes to save her. Even as the action and violence kicks in hard, the story continues to pause long enough to let us learn more about Tae-sik’s past. Based on what we’ve learned about the characters, every fist punch, knife slash, and fired bullet acts as both a means to finding So-Mi and a cathartic emotional release. 

If you enjoy brutal, badass action like I do, this delivers in spades. The action itself is extraordinary, some of the best in the cinema of South Korea, and the world, for that matter. There is gunfire at times, but this film mostly relies on close-quarter combat and the use of sharp blades. The fighters kick ass, but they also end up exhausted and in a lot of pain, often accompanied by a lot of blood. Because these scenes are somewhat grounded in reality, they’re both powerful and hard to watch at times. The film builds to a final knife fight between Tae-sik and Ramrowan (Thai actor Thanayong Wongtrakul), and when it finally comes, we can see and feel the two experts in violence engaged in a battle to the death. The action is tense and bloody, saving its very best for last.

THE MAN FROM NOWHERE has an excellent cast, led by Won Bin, possibly the most selective superstar in the history of cinema. I knew him from his prior South Korean hits GUNS & TALKS (2001), TAE GUK GI: THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR (2004), and MOTHER (2009). As of today in 2026, he has only six film credits to his name, and he has not acted in another film since this one. He’s excellent here as Cha Tae-sik, even if I don’t like his haircut for most of the film. It’s a very satisfying moment when he grabs some clippers and gets all that hair out of his eyes! He says very little, but beneath his cold exterior is a man carrying deep pain. It’s a restrained performance that exudes more emotional turmoil than pages and pages of dialogue ever could. And he’s a badass action performer when the time comes as well. I hope he comes back at some point, but if he never does, he goes out on top!

Kim Sae-ron, who was ten years old at the time, is very effective as So-mi. Her performance is very natural and vulnerable, stealing our hearts with ease, and I think we can all understand why Tae-sik would want to protect her. On a very sad note, while doing research for this review, I discovered that she took her own life on February 16, 2025, at just twenty-four years of age. Watching her in the film and discussing her work feels different now, serving as a poignant reminder of both her incredible talent at such a young age and the complexity of the human condition.

THE MAN FROM NOWHERE was a massive hit in South Korean cinemas in 2010, with only the worldwide smash AVATAR having more ticket admissions. Between Won Bin’s transformative performance, the irresistible “protect the innocent child” dynamic, and the brutal, in your face action, the film still had me on the edge of my seat when I watched it again this week. If you like your action filled with blood, sweat, and tears, I can’t recommend this more highly.

As of the date of this review, it’s streaming on Amazon Prime.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.9 “Team Picture”

Posted on 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.

Welcome to 2013!

Episode 4.9 “Team Picture”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 30th, 1988)

Weird, weird episode.

Taking place 25 years in the future, this episode features the ’88 California Bulls reuniting in 2013.  Of course, since this episode was made in 1988, its version of 2013 is a bit different from the one that we all lived through.  The 2013 of this episode is a dark and depressing dystopia, with militarized police and …. well, maybe it wasn’t that much different from what we lived through.

In 2013, former wide receiver Billy Cooper is a reporter who is hoping to go from the sports desk to the anchor desk.

TD Parker (OJ Simpson) is now the mayor of Los Angeles.

Zagreb is still playing in the NFL.

Doug Clayton is a Nobel prize-winning scientist.

Dr. Death works at a lumber yard.

Mad Dog owns twenty-five “sex discos.”

Bubba Kincaid is now the “King of Beer.”  After his bar was shut down and demolished, he started Bubba Beer, which we are told is the “last American beer.”

And Jethro — well, no one has seen Jethro for ten years.  Bubba tried to get Jethro to join him in his Bubba Beer business but Jethro refused.  He went into wrestling and then he vanished.  Most of his teammates are angry with him.  They view him as being a crybaby who needs to man up.

In this episode, Jethro resurfaces at the Dodds Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles.  He’s got a bomb strapped to his chest and he’s threatening to blow the whole place up.  TD and Billy both try to talk to him but Jethro doesn’t want to hear what they have to say.  Dr. Death approaches him and encourages him to blow himself up.  Finally, Bubba goes to Jethro and apologizes for abandoning him.  Unfortunately, Bubba gets shot by a robot sniper and is transformed into a pile of blue ash as Jethro watches.

And that’s how the episode ends!

I appreciated the fact that this episode was so weird.  It pretty much came out of nowhere and I’ll be surprised if it’s ever referenced again.  Probably the most interesting thing about it is that all of the Bulls ended up becoming jerks.  No one seems to really care that Jethro might die.  For that matter, Jethro isn’t that upset when Bubba gets killed.

I imagine when this episode aired, it was meant to be a commentary on how uncertain the life of a pro-athlete can be once they’re no longer playing.  For every success story, there’s someone else who ends up losing all of their money and being exiled to the fringes of society.  Seen today, it’s hard to watch Jethro without thinking about CTE and all of the former players who have succumbed to it.

This episode was so odd that it defies a traditional “good or bad” classification.  I appreciated it for trying to do something different.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 8.2 and 8.3 “Vicki and the Fugitive/Lady in the Window/Stolen Years/Dutch Treat”

Posted on 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 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!

This week, we have a two-hour episode of The Love Boat!

Episodes 8.2 and 8.3 “Vicki and the Fugitive/Lady in the Window/Stolen Years/Dutch Treat”

(Dir by Robert Scheerer, originally aired on September 29th, 1984)

This week, the crew is assigned to a European cruise!  Aboard the Royal Viking Sky, the crew and their passengers sail from England to the Netherlands and back again.  This is one of those episodes that was shot on location and, as always, the scenery is lovely.

The stories on the other hand….

Vicki falls for a deckhand named Peter (Patrick Cassidy).  In fact, Vicki even finds herself falling in love with him.  (In this episode, it’s established that Vicki is now 17.  Is she old enough now to actually get paid a salary for all the work she does on the boat?)  However, Peter is actually Anton, a young man who is being pursued by Interpol.  The show spends a lot of time trying to make it appear as if Antono is a criminal of some sort.  Actually, he’s just a royal prince who ran off because he wasn’t ready to accept his official duties.  Vicki is happy to discover that Anton isn’t a criminal but unhappy that he now has to stay behind and rule a kingdom in Europe.

Captain Stubing probably could have helped Vicki during all of this but he was too busy pursing a romance with Inga Van Damme (Elke Sommer), a mysterious passenger who, much like Anton, appeared to be keeping a secret from her romantic partner.  Telling Stubing that she couldn’t be with him, Inga left the ship early.  Stubing wandered all over Amsterdam, searching for her.  And he discovered her …. working as a madam.  “It is legal here,” Inga explains.  “But is it morally right?” Stubing replies.

Speaking of being morally right, Dr. Foster (Pat Harrington, Jr.) finds himself on the boat with both his wife (Eileen Brennan) and his mistress (Teri Copley)!  Wow, how many times can the exact same thing happen on the Love Boat?  As always with this show, the husband went back to his wife but, fortunately, his mistress met someone while leaving the boat.  “Can I help you with your bags?” the charming stranger asks.  “Are you married?” the former mistress replies.

Finally, Danish Lisa Anderson (Cloris Leachman) meets Erik Larsen (George Kennedy), another Dane, on the boat.  (George Kennedy speaks with his normal American accent.)  Erik falls in love with Lisa (Hey!  That’s my name!) but Lisa is haunted by memories of her former lover (Tim Robbins) being dragged away by the Nazis during World War II.  At first, it seems that Lisa is too haunted by what happened to move on.  However, it is eventually revealed that her former lover is Erik Larsen!  Somehow, Tim Robbins grew up to be George Kennedy.  In her memories, it appears that Lisa betrayed Erik but actually, by pointing him out to the Nazis, she bought him time.  While everyone else in the town square was being executed, Erik was being interrogated and, because of this, he was still alive when the Americans returned.

So, here’s the problem.  Cloris Leachman, not surprisingly, gives a great performance as Lisa.  And George Kennedy, once you get over the idea that he’s supposed to be Danish, gives a pretty good performance as Erik.  But flashbacks of Nazi atrocities feel very much out-of-place when mixed in with scenes of Vicki dating a prince and the doctor trying to balance being on a cruise with both his wife and his mistress.  Tonally, this episode is all over the place.

That said, the scenery’s lovely (am I repeating myself) and Ted McGinley fit in nicely with the rest of the crew.  Pat Klous isn’t bad as Judy but, at least at this point in the season, she doesn’t have the same sort of brother/sister chemistry that Lauren Tewes had with Fred Grandy and Bernie Kopell.  McGinley, of course, had the advantage that, while he was new, he still wasn’t replacing anyone.  Poor Pat Klous still has to escape from the shadow of the former cruise director.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.11 “Broken Dreams”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, the entire police force is worthless.

Episode 4.11 “Broken Dreams”

(Dir by Scott Lautanen, originally aired on December 6th, 1988)

While pursuing a pure snatcher, Cory accidentally runs over the victim on her bicycle.  I know that probably sounds like a joke but that’s actually how this episode begins.  It turns out that the victim is deaf and couldn’t hear Cory screeching at her to get out of the way.  It turns out that Monica knows sign language.  When Cory demands to know why Monica knows how to sign, Monica refuses to tell her.

(And really, it’s none of Cory’s business.)

Cory and a reluctant Monica investigate a series of robberies that have targeted deaf beggars on the pier.  Cory learns that there is an entire deaf community that simply wants the hearing world to leave them alone.  (Cory apparently doesn’t get out much.)  Monica eventually admits that her mother is deaf and Cory eventually admits that Monica can be a good cop when she tries.  That’s nice of Cory to finally since that was already established during Monica’s first episode.  One gets the feeling that the show’s writers weren’t really sure what to do with Monica as a character.  She started out as a badass undercover cop and then was quickly transformed into an emotionally unstable, selfish bicycle cop.

While Cory and Monica learn to work together, Bobby finds himself temporarily transferred to the horse patrol.  (A member of the horse patrol is also reassigned to ride a bicycle.)  Why exactly anyone thought this was a good idea, I don’t know.  It turns out that Bobby can’t ride a horse to save his life.  His supervisor thinks that’s hilarious but you have to wonder how many crimes are being committed while all the cops are standing around and laughing at Bobby?

Bobby and TC spend most of this episode trying to catch two kids who keep shooting off a potato cannon.  They never really catch them, largely because Bobby can’t control his horses.  Instead, the kids knock themselves out when they blow up a watermelon.  Their reign of terror is ended but it’s not really because of anything done by the members of Pacific Blue.  The kids themselves just go too ambitious.

The theme of this episode was that every cop was extremely incompetent.  I’ve never been a “defund the police” person but, in this case, I doubt it would make much difference.  Defund Pacific Blue!

Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 2.10 “A Matter of Trust”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell: The New Class, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 2o00.  The show is currently on Prime.

This week, it’s all for charity!

Episode 2.10 “A Matter of Trust”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on October 8th, 1994)

Oh crap, it’s another country club episode.

It’s time for the annual charity event!  The male employees of the club are auctioned off to various women bidders so that they can compete together in a contest.  The winning team gets a hot air balloon ride.  Mr. Belding makes it sound like a big deal but it’s hard not to notice that hardly anyone outside of the main group seems to take part.  Apparently, this is a charity being funded exclusively by teenagers with summer jobs.

Bobby asks Megan to bid on him because he thinks it’ll make him more attractive to the woman who he hopes will buy him.  Instead, Megan bids too much and she wins Bobby.

Lindsay wins her boyfriend, Tommy D.  Lindsay is excited but Tommy is worried because he’s scared of heights.

Because Mr. Belding says that Screech has too many responsibilities to be auctioned off, Screech can only watch as his girlfriend, Alison, purchases Brian.

Brian’s girlfriend, Rachel, buys Hubert Dweebly (Mark David) because she feels sorry for him.  That’s something that I would definitely do.  Hubert then turns out to be a total perv who spends the entire competition pawing Rachel and trying to get her to kiss him.  This would perhaps have been funnier if Sarah Lancaster had been older than 14 when she played Rachel.

Anyway, Screech gets jealous and tries to get Brian in trouble so that he can take Brian’s place.  And Tommy doesn’t want to win so he tires to help Bobby cheat but everything gets screwed up and Tommy and Lindsay win anyways.  It’s a typical Saved By The Bell episode, you can probably already guess everything that happens.  Allison turns out to be very forgiving.  Allison might not be that smart.

The main problem with this episode is that it asks us to believe that Allison would find needy, uberemotional, shrill-voiced Screech to be in any way attractive.  During the second season, Dustin Diamond’s performance was nowhere near as obnoxious as it would eventually get.  But his version of Screech was still too cartoonish to be taken seriously.  His performance in this episode is …. well, it’s just bad.  There’s no other way to put it.  You really do find yourself thinking, “Allison and Brian actually make a lot more sense than Allison and Screech.”

It’s funny to me that the first Country Club episode was all about the importance of working hard when you have a job and we haven’t actually seen anyone doing their job since.