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Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 3.27 “Class Encounters of the Carvelli Kind”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, the third season comes to an end.

Episode 3.27 “Class Encounters of the Carvelli Kind”

(Dir by Robert Hegyes, originally aired on May 18th, 1978)

At the Kotter apartment, Gabe tells Julie a joke about his Uncle Bruce, the dressmaker.  Julie responds by slamming the bedroom door in his face.  Poor Gabe!  Julie, if you hate his jokes that much, just get a divorce!

The next morning, Gabe steps into his classroom and finds Mr. Woodman sitting at the window and watching the rain falling outside.  “Being alive is overrated,” Woodman says.  “Try telling that to a dead person,” Gabe replies.  Woodman reveals that, when he was young, he dreamed of being a podiatrist.  “I love feet but I hate socks …. Sock stood between me and happiness!”

Woodman has every reason to be depressed.  There’s some sort of weird student exchange program going on.  Epstein is spending the week at another high school.  (In real life, Robert Hegyes was not available to play Epstein because he was busy directing this episode.)  Meanwhile, Carvelli (Charles Fleischer) and his buddy Murray (Bob Harcum) are going to Buchanan.

When Carvelli and Murray tell a story about being abducted by aliens and taken to the planet Yorksl, Gabe takes them to the vice principal’s office so Woodman can straighten them out.  To Gabe’s surprise, Woodman not only believe Carvelli’s story but he decides that he wants to go live on another planet.  He gives Carvelli permission to invite the aliens to land in the school’s courtyard.  Gabe is even more shocked with the alien does show up and it turns out to be Julie!  Julie explains that she’s a Yorsklite and then she agrees to Woodman away with her.  “You look like a nice little fella….”

Wow, I guess the show’s over.  I mean, Woodman is gone.  Julie’s an alien.  How do you do another episode about homework after that….

Oh wait, it was all a daydream.

Okay, never mind!

Usually, I hate it when a show does the whole “It was all a dream” thing but I actually enjoyed this episode because it gave John Sylvester White a chance to be totally unhinged as Woodman.  White’s performance as Woodman has been one of the few things to remain consistently strong through the first three seasons of Welcome Back, Kotter.  Watching him lose his mind, piece-by-piece, has truly been entertaining.

The episode and the third season ends with Washington tells Mr. Kott-air a joke about how ugly his aunt is.  Gabe is impressed enough to write the joke down on a notepad.

And that’s it for Season 3!  This was definitely an uneven season, with the humor ultimately getting a bit too broad for its own good.  The Sweathogs themselves are all obviously adults now.  This was something that Gabe Kaplan himself noticed.  He reportedly suggested setting the next season at a community college and having Gabe get a job as a professor.  (His students would, of course, be the graduated Sweathogs.)  ABC disagreed, which resulted in Gabe not appearing in several season 4 episodes.  Meanwhile, John Travolta also only appeared in a handful of episodes as he was now busy being a movie star.

What would all that mean for Season 4?

We’ll start finding out next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.10 “Night Hunger”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, we’ve got the saddest episode of Friday the 13th yet!

Episode 2.10 “Night Hunger”

(Dir by Martin Lavut, originally aired on January 9th, 1989)

As a young boy, Michael Firono was constantly told by his father, Dominic (Nick Nichols), that he should always play to win and that, if he lost, it was because he was a wimp.  Needless to say, once Mike became a teenager, he did not have a great relationship with his father.  Seeking an escape from his abusive household, Mike spend all of his time at the local antique store where, on his 16th birthday, the store’s owner, Lewis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong), gave him a special silver chain.

Mike (played by Richard Panebianco) has grown up to be an angry young man.  He always wears the chain around his neck.  Hanging on the chain is the key to his car.  Mike loves to race his car and, far from being the loser that his father claimed he would grow up to be, Mike cannot be beat.  His car is amazingly fast and Mike is incredibly (one might even say supernaturally) skilled behind the wheel.  His main goal is to defeat his childhood rival, Deacon (Real Andrews), who is now a street racer himself.  Deacon is hesitant to race Mike, precisely because Mike seems to be so driven to win that racing with him can be even more dangerous than usual.  To Deacon, street racing is fun.  For Mike, it’s an obsession.

Of course, Mike has a secret.  As long as he’s wearing the silver chain, he can’t be defeated.  But he has to kill people and dip the key in their blood for the chain to work.  Jack, Micki, and Ryan set out to reclaim the silver chain but an accident results in both the chain and the key being absorbed into Mike’s body.  With the chain and the key now sitting next to Mike’s heart, Mike’s eyes not only glow red but his car seems to have a mind of its own….

This is another one of those episodes of Friday the 13th where the villain is himself a victim.  Even before he met Lewis and received the silver chain, Mike was doomed.  His abusive father left Mike feeling so insecure and so obsessed with winning that there was really no way Mike wasn’t going to end up snapping eventually.  In the present day, Dominic finally understands how much he hurt Mike and he feels guilty about it but it’s too late to undo the damage that’s been done.  Like a pusher befriending people most likely to get addicted to his product, Uncle Lewis saw Mike as someone who would easily succumb to a cursed antique.  Mike becomes addicted to using the key and that leads to him doing a lot of bad things.  But the real curse here is not the silver chain but instead Mike’s abusive childhood.  Mike never had a chance.

This is a genuinely sad and well-acted episode, with Mike’s obsession eventually destroying him.  As happen so often with this show, Ryan and Micki are left with the knowledge that, while they can reclaim the cursed objects, they can never repair the damage that they’ve done.

Retro Television Review: T and T 3.15 “The Butler Duet”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 …. oh my God, it’s a surprisingly good episode of T and T!

Episode 3.15 “The Butler Duet”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on April 14th, 1990)

Sometimes, one screenshot tells you everything that you need to know about an episode.

In this episode, T.S. is indeed hired to bodyguard a parrot.  The parrot, named Higgins, has been named the sole beneficiary of Mrs. Wells’s will.  Mrs. Wells’s children (one of whom is played by comedian Colin Mochrie) want to declare their mother incompetent.  While Terri does her best to defend Mrs. Wells in court, T.S. works with Mrs. Wells’s butler (Ian White) to protect the parrot.

How does T.S. protect the parrot?  By putting on a tuxedo and working as the Butler’s assistant.  “Dinner is served,” T.S. Turner growls at one point.  Of course, to the surprise of no one, it turns out that the Butler is really the one whom is behind the effort to make Mrs. Wells look mentally incompetent.  “It’s always the butler,” Turner growls after grabbing the Butler in the courtroom.  Turner, it should be noted, does a lot of growling in this episode and I was happy about that.  What’s the point of casting Mr. T if he’s not going to growl at anyone?

With the Butler exposed, Mrs. Wells is ruled to be mentally competent and I guess that means that Higgins is going to be one rich bird.  Good for Higgins.  I like parrots.  I could never own one, of course, not with my love cats and my dislike of hearing my own words repeated back at me.  But still, they’re good for television shows and movies.  I think it’s a shame that Higgins didn’t have more of a Canadian accent but whatever.  You can’t have everything, I guess.

(How do parrots learn to talk?  And how difficult would it be for me to teach a parrot to like give an hour long speech or something?  I think next year’s state of the union address should be delivered by a parrot.  I mean, if a parrot were president, there would be no war.  There would be no government and things could go bad really quickly.  It would probably work better as a TV show than a real-life thing.)

This was an incredibly silly episode but it was also oddly likable.  For one thing, the judge in the courtroom was fascinated by the parrot and it was hard not to smile at him trying to get the parrot to talk while the witnesses testified.  As well, the episode was smart enough to realize that there’s no way that Mr. T cannot be amusing while wearing a tuxedo.

By T and T season 3 standards, this was a surprisingly good episode.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.17 “The Last Assignment”

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 Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, it’s time for a theological debate!

Episode 2.17 “The Last Assignment”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 12th, 1986)

While he and Mark drive through another run-down American city, a radio news report of a man dressed as Santa Claus giving people exactly what they ask for even though it’s not even Christmas leads Jonathan to suspect that Harold might be in the area.  As Jonathan explains to Mark, Harold is an angel who has been on probation for hundreds of years because he can’t obey the rules.  Instead of encouraging people to find it in themselves to do the right thing and to create their own opportunities, Harold just gives people exactly what they want.  If Jonathan is all about teaching people to have faith no matter what, Harold is about creating sudden miracles.

It’s actually an interesting plot, in that it really does capture one of the central debates at the heart of any religion.  Should God just give people what they want or should people’s faith in God give them the strength to understand and pursue what they truly need?  It’s the battle between those who take a vow of poverty and show their devotion through sacrifice and suffering and those who preach the so-called prosperity gospel, insisting that God is some sort of celestial regulatory agency.

(It’s also a reflection of the ongoing debate as to how involved the government should get in other people’s lives.  Jonathan argues for a hands-off approach that respects and promotes the idea of individual freedom.  Harold, for his part, seems to be a big government guy.  Jonathan supports encouraging people to pull themselves up.  Harold supports hand-outs.  Jonathan is a Republican.  Harold probably wants to be Bernie Sanders’s guardian angel.)

Jonathan tracks down Harold (Ed Asner).  Harold has opened a fire hydrant and turned water into wine, making all of the neighborhood alcoholics vey happy.  Harold says that he performed a miracle and gave the people what they wanted.  Jonathan argues that the people needed to learn that they had the power within themselves to find their own happiness.  Taking it upon himself to keep an eye on Harold, Jonathan can only watch as Harold bends the rules to help a woman sell her stamp collection for $500 and also reunites an older woman with her lost dog.  Jonathan says that Harold isn’t teaching anyone anything or helping anyone to discover their inner strength.  Harold argues that he’s helping out the faithful.  But when Jonathan and Harold meet a priest who has lost his faith, both of their approaches are put to the test.

Theological debates aside, it’s obvious that the main point of this episode was to give Ed Asner a showy role.  Asner makes the most of Harold, playing him as someone who may pretend to be a buffoon but who actually truly cares about people and who is truly angered by what he views as being cosmic injustice and holy indifference.  Asner and Landon both give good performances here and, as a result, the rather episodic story is always watchable.  The show may ultimately come down on Jonathan’s side but you’re still happy when it becomes clear that Harold isn’t going to change his ways for a second.

Retro Television Review: Malibu, CA 1.10 “The Costume Party”

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 Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Summer forever!  Hey, who wants to go to a costume party on the beach?  Like, seriously, why would you even do that?

Episode 1.10 “The Costume Party”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on December 13th, 1998)

Well, this is sure stupid.

This week, Jason once again proves himself to be the world’s worst boyfriend by getting jealous just because Stads is working with a totally hot lifeguard named Kip (Taso Papadikis).  Jason fears that Stads will dump him for Kip, just because Kip happens to be better-looking and a lot more athletic than Jason.

Scott proves himself to be the world’s worst brother by suggesting that Jason flirt with Tracy in order to make Stads jealous.  Jason does so, not knowing that Stads has absolutely no romantic interest at all in Kip because Kip’s dumb.  Stads, however, doesn’t know that Jason is just flirting with Tracy to make her jealous and she starts to get insecure about their relationship.  Stads, being a doormat, doesn’t realize that a decent boyfriend wouldn’t be flirting with another girl right in front of her in the first place.

Sam proves herself to be the world’s worst friend by suggesting that Stads make Scott jealous by flirting with Kip.  Stads flirts with Kip.  Jason responds by continuing to flirt with Tracy.  Eventually, Scott and Sam realize that they’ve royally screwed things up but it’s too late.  Jason and Stads have already broken up.

Luckily, there’s a costume party on the pier!  Because seriously, who wouldn’t want to go a hot beach in a suffocating costume?  Thinking that Stads is dressed as an astronaut and that Jason is dressed as a gorilla, Scott dressed up like a gorilla and pretends to be Jason.  What he and Sam don’t know is that Stads and Jason switched costumes.  So, when Scott tries to give a romantic note to who he thinks is Stads, he actually gives it to Jason.

As you can probably guess, this leads to Jason and Scott holding each other tight and dancing while the audience whoops it up.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because the exact same joke was used on Saved By The Bell and a host of other Peter Engel-produced sitcoms.  In the Engelverse, there’s apparently nothing funnier than two guys dancing together.

This was a pretty dumb episode but, surprisingly enough, Murray’s antics did make me laugh this week.  Having forgotten the security code to his house, Murray moves in with the Collins family.  First, he’s a slob.  Then, he’s a neat freak.  In the end, he dresses up like the Silver Surfer and runs around the costume party.  It was silly but Brandon Brooks really went all-out in the role and, for once, the character’s weirdness made me smile.

Otherwise, this was all pretty dumb.  Seriouisly, Stads …. you deserve better!

Music Video of the Day: If I Could Change Your Mind by HAIM (2014, dir by Warren Fu)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Browsing through my YouTube recommendations, I was shocked to discover a Haim video that I hadn’t already shared for music video of the day.  Let’s correct that this morning!

This energetic video was choreographed by Fatima Robinson.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.14 “Bed and Boar”

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 Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

Episode 2.14 “Bed and Boar”

(Dir by Sara Driver, originally aired on January 21st, 1990)

Traveling salesman John Dennis (a young Steve Buscemi) just wants to get a good night’s rest in a sleazy motel but, unfortunately, the couple in the room next to his is making a racket.  A woman and a man are fighting and yelling at each other.  “Bitch!  Bitch!” the man seems to be yelling.  Finally, the woman (Jodie Markell) leaves her room, runs through the stormy night, and ends up in John’s room.

John take one look at the woman in her white nightgown (which has gotten soaked in the rain) and decides that he has absolutely no problem with her staying in his room.  He has no problem with her removing her wet nightgown and wrapping herself in the sheets of his bed.  The only problem that John has is with her husband (Charles Kay-Hune), who not only tries to break into the room but also has the head of a boar.

You would think that would be enough to convince John to find another motel but instead, after chasing off the board husband, John spends the night with the woman.  John declares that he’s falling in love with the woman.  When her husband literally tears down a wall to get at them, John fights off and kills the woman’s boar-headed husband.

And it’s only then that it occurs to John that the woman might be a witch (“He wasn’t yelling bitch, he was yelling….”) and that maybe she was the one responsible for turning her husband into a pig.  (Someone has obviously never read The Odyssey.)  Of course, by this point, John is himself starting to turn into a pig.

The good thing about this episode is that it features a young Steve Buscemi, playing one of his trademark quirky characters who never knows when to stop talking.  The bad thing is that the episode doesn’t really give Buscemi much to do, other than be an idiot.  Since it was obvious, to me, that the woman was a witch and that she was the one who turned her husband into a boar, I spent the entire episode waiting for some sort of a surprise twist.  I was waiting for John to reveal that he was a warlock or a werewolf or a vampire or anything other than just a salesman in a motel room.  But that never happened.  As a result, the whole story felt rather pointless.

On the plus side, the husband was frightening.  The show did a good job with the boar makeup because I I did jump a little when that thing came bursting into the room.  This was a case where the monster was better than the story.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.23 “The Duel/Two For Julie/Aunt Hilly”

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, Hollywood royalty boards the Love Boat!

Episode 4.23 “The Duel/Two For Julie/Aunt Hilly”

(Dir by Ray Austin, originally aired on March 14th, 1981)

Who is Aunt Hilly?

She’s Olivia de Havilland!

And who is Aunt Hilly’s latest husband, Col. Von Ryker?

He’s Joseph Cotten, making his final screen appearance before retiring from acting!

Even for a show that was known for featuring stars from Hollywood’s Golden Age, de Havilland and Cotten are welcome additions to this episode of The Love Boat.  They bring a lot of class to the ship, both as themselves and as the characters that they’re playing.  It’s not just all of the wonderful Hollywood history that they bring with them.  It’s also that they both give charming performances, showing that they still had the screen presence that made them stars to begin with.

Hilly is Captain Stubing’s aunt, a wealthy woman who has devoted so much of her life to work that she missed out on spending much time with her family.  She wants to make up for the past by arranging for Vicki to attend an exclusive private school in Switzerland.  Captain Stubing is reluctant but ultimately, he agrees that it would be best for Vicki to be able to have friends her own age and to get a formal education as opposed to just receiving lessons from the occasionally mentioned but never-seen tutor who apparently lives on the Love Boat.

However, Col. Van Ryker knows that Vicki would be happier on the boat and that Hilly is just trying to deal with her own guilt over her strained relationship with her son, Conrad.  With the Colonel’s gentle help, Hilly realizes that it would be better for Vicki to stay with Captain Stubing.

Now, to be honest, I do kind of wonder if it’s a good idea for Vicki to live on the boat.  I mean, does she really have any friends outside of the members of the crew, all of whom are much older than her?  Personally, I think going to school is Switzerland and spending her summers on the Love Boat would have been a great idea.  But no matter!  This was a sweet story.  What I really appreciated is that, even though they were on opposite sides, both the Captain and the Aunt had the best of intentions and motivations.  It would have been easy to just portray Hilly as being a snob who thought living on a cruise ship was beneath the dignity of a Stubing.  Instead, she was a genuinely nice woman trying to do what she felt was the right thing.  Gavin MacLeod, Jill Whelan, Olivia de Havilland, and Joseph Cotten all did wonderful work with this story.

The other two stories were overshadowed by Cotten and de Havilland.  In the sillier of the two, Linda Cristal played a woman who tried to make her husband jealous by flirting with Doc Bricker.  Her husband (Alejandro Rey) reacted by challenging Doc to a duel.  Isaac and Gopher tried to convince the husband that Doc was an experienced and deadly duelist.  Again, it was just as silly as it sounds.

Meanwhile, Julie had two men (Ken Kercheval and Dack Rambo) hitting on her.  The two men were also competing to be the new vice president of Don Ameche’s company.  In the end, Julie remained single and good for her.

One silly story.  One boring story.  And one story that was so good that the other two stories didn’t matter.  This was a great cruise.