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Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 3.13 “Avenging Angel”
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, two vigilantes disturb the peace, Cory meets a special guest star, and everyone continues to look stupid on their little bicycles.
Episode 3.13 “Avenging Angel”
(Dir by Terence H. Winkless, originally aired on December 14th, 1997)
This episode was dumb.
Cory is haunted by nightmares involving her mother, who died when Cory was 10. In her latest nightmare, she runs into her mother at a crime scene and her mom shoots her! Chris thinks that’s an odd dream and she’s right. Cory explains that her mom is just trying to get her attention. Cory believes that her mom is her guardian angel. Chris doesn’t know how to react to this because Cory is expressing an emotion that doesn’t involve being snarky or self-righteous.
When Cory is injured while chasing two Korean brothers (we’ll get to them in a minute), she has to go to rehab. Luckily, Olympic track medalist Florence Griffith Joyner is a patient at the same rehab clinic. Joyner takes Cory under her wing and encourages her to work hard and get her knee back into shape. When Cory says she’s thinking of leaving the force, Joyner tells her not to. “Thanks, FloJo,” Cory replies.
(Yes, Florence Griffith Joyner played herself. As an actress, she was a good athlete.)
As for the two Korean brothers, they are vigilantes who are beating up criminals on the boardwalk and becoming celebrities in their own right. Palermo views them as being a threat to the peace and he’s determined to catch them. Meanwhile, the Mob is determined to kill them and a very annoying talent agent is determined to sign them.
Ugh, what a stupid episode. Usually, I’m a sucker for episodes that deal with people coming to terms with the death of a parent. That’s something to which I can relate. I have no doubt that my mom is also looking over me. But, as much as I wanted to fully embrace Cory’s story, I couldn’t get past the fact that she went to rehab and just happened to meet an Olympic athlete. Maybe if Joyner has been a better actress, this storyline would have worked but, as it was, it just felt forced. There was really no reason why Joyner should have been so wrapped up in whether or not Cory decided to remain with the force.
As for the stuff with the brothers, the entire plotline felt like filler. The brothers couldn’t act. The actors playing the gangsters who wanted to kill the brothers couldn’t act. The talent agents who kept popping up and talking about how much they wanted to sign the brother, they also couldn’t act.
This episode was just painful and all the rehab in the world isn’t going to change that.
Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 1.3 “A Kicking Weasel”
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, Scott and Tommy D attempt to exploit Weasel’s happiness for their own monetary gain. Ah, that’s classic Bayside!
Episode 1.3 “A Kicking Weasel”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on September 25th, 1993)
It’s been ten years since Bayside had a good football team!
That’s what Scott tell us at the start of this episode. Scott explains that the Bayside student body has no enthusiasm for football. No one cares because the team always loses and, as such, even Mr. Belding is more concerned with the school’s ping pong team.
To which I say, “What?”
Seriously, every Saved By The Bell fan knows that A.C. Slater led the Bayside Tigers to victory after victory. With the help of Ox and all the other players, Slater made Bayside into a football powerhouse.
This can only mean one of two things. Saved By The Bell: The New Class is either taking place ten years after Saved By The Bell (possible but I doubt it due to the fact that Screech is coming back next season) or that the writers just didn’t care about continuity. I’ll go with the latter.
Things are looking up for the football team, though. It turns out that Weasel can actually kick the ball! He goes from being the waterboy to the cornerstone of the team’s offense. But Weasel can only kick well when he’s angry. When he’s not angry, he’s too mellow. When he become a football star, he’s happy. He mellows out.
That’s bad news for Scott and Tommy D, who are looking to make a fortune by selling Weasel t-shirts! Tommy D agreed to embezzle the seed money from the print shop fund. (Hey, that’s a crime!) In return, Scott fixed the varsity cheerleader tryouts so that Lindsay beat out both Megan and Vicki. When Linsday finds out that the tryouts were fixed, she refuses to cheer. That makes Weasel mad and he ends up winning the game with 11 field goals. Lindsay, meanwhile. gets her revenge by telling Belding that Scott and Tommy D will be donating all of the t-shirt profits to the ping pong team.
This episode …. actually, I’m going to surprise myself by saying that it wasn’t that bad. Yes, the plot was way too busy for its own good and Scott’s constant scheming feels like what it was, a bad imitation of Zack Morris. But, in the role of Weasel, Isaac Lidsky actually gave a pretty good sympathetic performance. (Weasel was never as annoying as Screech, largely due to Lidsky.) Jonathan Angel delivered his dialogue with the right amount of dumb earnestness and it was nice to see the Bayside nerds end up winning for once. All in all, this one really wasn’t bad.
Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 5.7 “Bomb Run”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!
Who will be Jon’s partner this week? Read on to find out!
Episode 5.7 “Bomb Run”
(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on November 15th, 1981)
I was really hoping that this would be another episode with Caitlyn Jenner playing Steve but no, Ponch was back. (Erik Estrada is the better actor of the two but Jenner’s performance is often so bizarre in its utter blandness that it becomes fascinating to watch.) This episode opened with Baker observing as Ponch piloted a small airplane. CHiPs was all about the California lifestyle and apparently, a big part of that lifestyle was being able to take off in a small private plane whenever you felt like it. Ponch thinks that he’s ready for a solo flight but Baker tells him that he still needs to work on his landing skills. Sorry, Ponch, you’re not a Kennedy.
The highway patrol is preparing for the big air show. Officer Baricza (Brodie Greer) is surprised when he sees his ex-girlfriend, Terri (Kristin Griffith), hanging out around an airplane and preparing to take part in the show despite the fact that she has always been scared of flying. What Baricza does not know is that Terri and her father (Ed King) have planned a big robbery to take place during the air show. While Terri drops bombs from the airplane, the explosions will cover the sound of two safecrackers (played by Brion James and Taylor Lacher) blowing open a safe and stealing a bunch of bearer bonds. However, things get complicated when the safecrackers illegally park their car (which leads to a helicopter towing it off, carrying it through the sky). Things get even more complicated when Terri’s father has a heart attack when they’re in the air and Baker and Ponch have to perform a mid-air rescue.
So, how does Baricza react to his ex-girlfriend being a criminal? We never find out. Ponch roughly lands Terri’s plane and then show pretty much ends. As a result, we don’t know what happens to Terri and her father. We don’t know if the police succeeded in catching the safecrackers. We don’t even know if Terri’s father merely passed out or if he actually died up there. Instead, Getraer makes a joke about Ponch’s terrible landing skills and we get the familiar CHiPs freeze frame.
This episode featured a lot of airshow stock footage and it was pretty obvious that the plot was secondary to showing off all of the planes doing fancy maneuvers in the sky. It felt a bit lazy on the part of the show’s producers but I also imagine that this episode was also fairly cheap to produce. There’s more stock footage than plot. As a result, the ending is a bit unsatisfying. Is Baricza upset about Terri being a criminal? Who knows? He certainly does seem to be amused by Ponch’s landing though!
Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.13 “The Cell Within”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
This week, Tubbs gets kidnapped and the entire episode is oddly dull. Presumably because it’s the final season and no one was paying attention, the show took a risk and it did not pay off.
Episode 5.13 “The Cell Within”
(Dir by Michael B. Hoggan, originally aired on March 10th, 1989)
Former criminal Jake Manning (John P. Ryan) has apparently reformed himself. As getting busted by Tubbs, Manning spent years in a tiny cell where he read Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. Sponsored by renegade film director Robert Phelps (L.M. Kit Carson), Jake is now a free man and a published author. Tubbs is convinced that Jake has changed his ways and when Jake invites him to a dinner party, Tubbs accepts.
(Crockett is on vacation, spending time with his son. During his brief appearance on the episode, Crockett jokes about what a great book he and Tubbs could write if they were ever arrested. Uhmm …. you were arrested, Crockett. Remember when you were a drug lord? The show appears to have forgotten but I haven’t.)
Anyway, it turns out that Jake has built a prison under his house where he keeps undesirables locked up and every few days, he electrocutes them. He kidnaps Tubbs so that Tubbs can see and hear about Jake’s view of how justice should be meted out. Jake likes to talk and talk and talk and talk.
Ugh, this episode.
I’m honestly surprised that I got through this episode because it was just so mind-numbingly dull. The show attempted to do something different with its format and that’s fine. But Jake was so long-winded and his cartoonish prisoners were such thinly drawn stereotypes that it didn’t take me long to lose interest. I’ve never liked episodes of cop shows that center around hostage situations or kidnappings. It’s hard to build much narrative momentum when no one can really move around. It gets boring to watch and that was certainly the case here. That John P. Ryan spent most of the episode wearing a flowing robe did not help matters. It made him look like a Saruman cosplayer at a Lord of the Rings convention. I probably would have laughed if it all hadn’t been so dull.
As always, it’s interesting to see Tubbs at the center of a story but even the normally smooth Philip Michael Thomas didn’t seem to know what to make of all these nonsense. As I watched Tubbs rather easily fall victim to Jake’s trap, I wondered why Tubbs has suddenly become such a stupid character. I mean, seriously, anyone should have been able to see through Manning’s invitation. For Tubbs, this episode was the equivalent of that time Trudy got kidnapped by the alien who looked like James Brown.
All in all, this was not a good episode. It’s the final season so it makes sense that you’re going to get a few clunkers. Hopefully, next week will be better.
Brad reviews YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998), starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan!
Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) owns a children’s bookstore in New York City named “The Shop Around the Corner.” It’s a small, cozy store that she inherited from her dear mother, and it’s part of the lifeblood of who she is as a person, as well as the community itself. Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), on the other hand, is the heir to a major bookstore chain, Fox Books (think Barnes & Noble), that threatens to wipe places like Kathleen’s off the map. As fate would have it, the two meet anonymously online where they trade their hopes, dreams and insecurities through daily e-mails, with both excitedly opening their computers each night hoping to hear those three little words, “You’ve Got Mail.” Things begin to get interesting when Joe plans to open up a Fox Books Superstore just around the corner from Kathleen’s place with neither knowing that they’re real-life business adversaries. When will they find out that they’re enemies in the business world? Can true love find a way in the most difficult of circumstances? And isn’t that why we watch these kinds of movies in the first place?!
I’ll start off by saying that Meg Ryan is operating at the top of her “America’s sweetheart” phase here… she’s cute, sincere, nostalgic, slightly neurotic, and ultimately quite believable as a person who romanticizes her world and truly believes there will always be a place for her small store and the gigantic superstores! I grew up and still live in the state where Wal-Mart started so I definitely know how hard it is for the “mom and pop” stores to compete. Tom Hanks walks a bit more of a tightrope as Joe Fox. He’s likable enough that you want him to be able to win her heart, but he’s also just arrogant enough that you understand why Kathleen resents everything he stands for. Ultimately, Hanks is able to pull it off with enough charm that you still root for him even when he can be a little bit of a jerk at times.
What’s really strange about revisiting YOU’VE GOT MAIL at this point in my life is the fact that it takes me back to the late 90’s when the internet was something new to me and it seemed like something magical. In this movie, the internet connects two souls, and when we hear “you’ve got mail” as they fire up their computers, the movie expects you to feel genuine excitement, without a hint of irony. Compare that with where the world is today with almost any kind of online activity, especially social media. While there are still a lot of positives to be found, it’s sad that going online now is often exhausting, hateful, and stressful! In 1998, though, it was still possible to believe that logging on could lead to something incredible!
Nora Ephron, who directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay, does a good job of presenting a sad reality of the real world underneath this romantic comedy’s love story. “Progress” can be cruel, and it seems like it just can’t be stopped no matter what! I spend a lot of time talking about the wonderful hours I spent in the video stores of my youth. Those stores are all gone now and have been for decades. The stores that replaced them are mostly gone now, and almost all of my movie viewing is now done through online streaming. In YOU’VE GOT MAIL, Fox Books certainly isn’t better than Kathleen’s Shop Around the Corner. As a matter of fact, it’s not nearly as educational or personal. What it is, however, is bigger, cheaper, and more efficient, and that’s what seems to win in the end, just like it did with the local video stores and Wal-Mart. This is where Ephron does her strongest balancing act. Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly still fall in love despite the fact that the realities of the world around them take their realistic and natural course. A true human connection is made in the most difficult and painful of circumstances, and that ultimately means more than anything else in the film.
Revisiting YOU’VE GOT MAIL now doesn’t feel that much different than revisiting the film that inspired it, 1940’s THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Both films are time capsules of a world that no longer really exists. However, both films ultimately realize the time-tested truth that it’s our relationships with other people that provides the most meaning to our lives. That’s a truth that won’t change whether we’re writing letters, sending e-mails, exchanging texts or whatever “progress” the human race achieves in communication in the future! I find some comfort in that.
Song of the Day: I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher
Today’s song of the day should be stuck in everyone’s head for Groundhog Day.
Sing it, Sonny!
And Cher.
Music Video of the Day: Time Has Come Today by The Ramones (1983, dir by Francis Delia)
In today’s music video of the day, we visit the Church of the Ramones, where the band is energizing the congregation with a cover of The Chambers Brothers’s Time Has Come Today.
And indeed the time has come. It’s Groundhog Day! For the first time this year, someone is going to tell the future!
ENJOY!
Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi: The Next Generation 2.4 “Karma Chameleon”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi: The Next Generation, which aired from 2001 to 2015! The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi.
This week, several important characters make their first appearances!
Episode 2.4 “Karma Chameleon”
(Dir by Stefan Sciani, originally aired on October 21st, 2002)
This week, Ellie makes her first appearance!
Though she doesn’t do much in this episode, Ellie Nash (Stacey Farber) would go on to become one of the most important characters on Degrassi: The Next Generation. (And Farber herself would go on to have one of the more-successful post-Degrassi careers of the show’s regulars.) When I first watched Degrassi, I related to Ellie, largely because we both had red hair, we both tended to wear black, and we both had a weakness for Craig Manning. (There was another reason why I related to Ellie but I won’t go into that until we reach season 3.) Now that I’ve gotten older, I can see that, in high school, I actually had more in common with the overly dramatic Ashley Kerwin than I did with Ellie but still, Ellie is one of Degrassi’s best characters.
In her first appearance, Ellie refuses to move to another computer, despite Paige ordering her to so that Paige can sit next to Hazel. Later, she provides some sarcastic comfort to Ashley after Ashley’s latest poorly conceived plan blows up in her face. “That went well,” Ellie says and yes, it’s a little bit snarky but that’s what made Ellie so cool. As I said, Ellie doesn’t do much in this episode. (Stacey Farber wouldn’t become a regular until the third season.) But she definitely makes an impression.
As for Ashley, she spends this episode trying to get back into everyone’s good graces. Following Terri’s suggestion, Ashley swallows her pride and apologizes to Paige, Jimmy, and Sean. Everyone seems to be willing to forgive Ashley, except for Paige. Paige continually warns everyone that Ashley is just being manipulative. Jimmy, however, wants to restart his romantic relationship with Ashley. But when Sean calls Ashley and asks her on a date, Ashley happily accepts. Terri says that Ashley is going to hurt Jimmy if she goes out with Sean because Jimmy thinks that he and Ashley are about to get back together.
Ashley rolls her eyes, explains that she’s single, and then tells Terri that “Ter, one day when a guy likes you, you’ll understand how this works.”
AGCK!
I mean, actually, Ashley’s right. She didn’t tell Jimmy that she wanted to get back together again. (She did say that she missed having Jimmy around and I would say that Ashley should have been able to guess how Jimmy would interpret that, given their past relationship.) And there’s no reason why she shouldn’t date Sean Cameron if she wants to. And, for that matter, no one likes Terri.
(At least not yet. Eventually, Terri’s first boyfriend will end putting her in a coma and then shooting up the school but that’s a while off….)
But Ashley definitely could have put things a bit more diplomatically. One reason why I cringe so much watching this is because I can remember saying similar stuff when I was a teenage and not understanding why people got offended until many years later. Ellie never would have said something like that.
Meanwhile, Toby has a girlfriend! Kendra Mason (Katie Lai) loves anime even more than Toby! The only problem is that …. KENDRA IS SPINNER’S ADOPTED SISTER! At first, Toby is terrified to talk to Kendra because of Spinner. But Toby finally finds the courage to stand up to Spinner and tell him that he’s going to talk to Kendra whether Spinner likes it or not. Spinner says that he will disembowel Toby is Toby hurts his sister. Toby says he’s prepared for that. (Toby, never prepare for something like that.) It’s nice that Toby has a girlfriend and can presumably stop whining about Emma liking Seasn. It’s just too bad that Kendra’s going to vanish after this season and never be mentioned again, not even by her protective older brother.
Also, all the boys in school are in love with the new science teacher, Ms. Hatzilakos (Melissa DiMarco). This was Hatzilakos’s first appearance. It’s only one scene of Spinner and Jimmy drooling at their desks. Of course, Ms. Hatzilakos is destined to eventually become principal of Degrassi and her son Peter will eventually enroll as a student, break a lot of hearts and law, and write the deathless song House Arrest.
Anyway, Jimmy gets mad at Ashley. Sean gets mad at Ashley and calls off their date. Paige tells Terri that she has to make a choice between four years of being popular or four years of being an outcast and Terri decides to be popular. Ashley breaks down crying as her school picture is taken. So ends another happy episode of Degrassi!
Oh, this episode. It’s actually pretty good for an Ashley episode. And the freeze frame of Ashley getting her school picture taken as a tear sloppily rolls down her face? That’s image pretty much sums up Degrassi perfectly.
Next week, Spinner is a part of a science experiment and …. well, this would never happen on American television.
Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 4.20 “The Wedding”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.
This week …. someone’s getting married!
Episode 4.20 “The Wedding”
(Dir by Alan Taylor, originally aired on May 10th, 1996)
Kevin Lungo, a Baltimore radio host, is found dead. The previous day, he announced on his program that he was not only in favor of abortion but he was in favor of requiring any pregnant woman with an IQ of less than 100 to have one. Did that comment lead to him being gunned down in a parking lot?
(When this episode aired, 100 was considered to be an “average” IQ. Now, the average IQ is considered to be 90. That’s not a good thing.)
We never really find out. The case is handled by Giardello and Kay and, while Kay has never heard of Lungo, it turns out that Giardello used to enjoy listening to him. (Hopefully, Giardello disagreed with Lungo’s pro-eugenics stance.) When the radio station offers a $5,000 reward for any tips, someone calls in and give the name of the “killer.” When Giardello and Kay follow-up on the tip, the suspect pulls a gun and is shot dead by Giardello.
Giardello feels guilty about the shooting. He tells that Kay that, when he was younger, he was able to shoot well-enough that he could simply wound a suspect, instead of killing him. Making it even worse is that the dead man has an alibi. The call was just a practical joke between friends. “Why did you have to kill him!?” the dead man’s friend wails.
Back at the squad room, Lewis shocks everyone by announcing that he’s getting married to a woman that they’ve never heard of. While he doesn’t invite any of his co-workers to the wedding, he does ask them to attend a reception at the Belvedere Hotel. He tells Pembleton to order and pay for the flowers. He asks Russert to arrange for the band and an open bar and asks if she would be willing to cover the cost. (“Until my next paycheck,” Lewis assures her.) Munch assumes that Lewis is lying. Most of the squad room suspects that Lewis is lying. But they give him the benefit of the doubt and show up for the reception.
Also going to the reception is Carrie, the very glamorous sister of Kay Howard. Carrie is visiting from Florence and soon, both Kellerman and Bayliss are shamelessly flirting with her. An actress named “Margaret May” is credited as playing Carrie. Of course, Margaret May is actually Melissa Leo.
With the exception of Giardello and Kay (who are still working the Lungo murder), all of Lewis’s colleagues show up at the ballroom. Even the crusty forensics examiner, Scheiner (Ralph Tabakin), shows up. “Do you want to dance?” he asks Russert’s daughter. “NO!” she replies.
But where’s Lewis? Lewis is missing. Was Munch right? Pembleton, who is there with his very pregnant wife, is not amused. As Brodie films him, Pembleton announces that he is going to kill Lewis and he will never get caught because of his experience as a homicide detective….
Fortunately, Lewis shows up before Pembleton gets his gun. And accompanying Lewis is his new wife, Barbara Shivers (Karen Williams)! The reception is a huge success. The band plays. Kellerman and Bayliss both try to hold onto Carrie’s attention. Scheiner watches as Russert’s daughter proceeds to dance with everyone but him. Finally, Giardello and Kay show up. Kay warns Bayliss that Carrie is dangerous. Bayliss asks why. Kay says that Carrie likes to play game and she just does whatever feels good. Bayliss looks intrigued….
Mary Pembleton’s water breaks on the dance floor as she goes into labor! (In a nice twist, Mary Pembleton was played by Andre Braugher’s real-life wife, Ami Brabson.) As the episode ends, even Giardello smiles. For all the ugliness in the world, there is still hope.
I loved this episode! Homicide’s greatest strength was its ensemble and here, everyone gets a chance to show off. Yaphet Kotto reminds us of what an imposing actor he truly was, though my favorite Giardello moments continue to be the times when he allows himself to get amused by the absurdity of it all. What really made this episode was for me was that, even with the wedding reception and Mary going into labor, the episode never allowed itself to be sentimental. For most of the episode, everyone is skeptical about Lewis getting married and, having watched Meldrick Lewis for four season, I was skeptical too! In the end, the episode earned its right to emotionally satisfying through smart storytelling and good acting.
Through the Shattered Lens 