Tag Archives: review

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 1.20 “The Cocoon”

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 show is streaming on Tubi.

This week, Billy Drago learns an important lesson about cheating, greed, and cocoons.

Episode 1.20 “The Cocoon”

(Dir by John Gray, originally aired on April 29th, 1989)

A woman (Kim Ulrich) is involved in a serious traffic accident, one that should have killed her.  Instead, she survives the accident with hardly a scratch but also without her memory (or so she claims).  A greedy police detective named Richard (Billy Drago) is called in when it is discovered that the woman has a good deal of money but no identification on her.  When the woman says that she knows that she’s wealthy, Richard becomes very interested in helping her regain her memory.

Richard’s girlfriend, Sarah (Silvana Gallardo), is a psychic.  Richard brings her to see the woman, hoping that Sarah will have a vision.  When she handles the woman’s comb, Sarah has a vision of the woman in the 1920s, seducing a man who has been missing for over 60 years.  But the woman appears to be in her 20s in both the present and in Sarah’s vision.  Richard suggests that Sarah might be seeing the woman’s grandmother.

Of course, the truth is a bit more complex.  The woman has been alive for centuries, surviving by wrapping her lovers in a cocoon and then feasting off their life force.  The woman is hoping to make Richard her next lover and Richard, being a bit of a sleazeball, is prepared to go along with it.  However, Sarah has a few tricks of her own….

This was an interesting and ambitious episode, one that attempted to tell a very complex story in just 21 minutes and on a very limited budget.  Unfortunately, the show didn’t really have the resources to do this particular story justice but it’s still hard not to admire the imagination involved.  Throughout the episode there are moments that work really well, like a sequence where Sarah has a vision of all of the different costumes that the woman has worn through the centuries.  The episode also ends with an entertaining little twist.  It’s effective, even if the scenes involving the actual spinning of the cocoon fall victim to the show’s low budget.

Billy Drago was a veteran screen bad guy, one who almost always cast as an evil henchman.  (In Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, Kevin Costner memorably threw him off of a roof.)  This episode gives Drago a rare leading role, though Richard is just as amoral and sleazy as the characters for which Drago was best known.  Drago does a good job in the lead, playing Richard as being a not particularly smart guy who is undone by his own cockiness.  If nothing else, it’s impossible not to enjoy seeing him get his comeuppance.

Next week on Monsters …. Adrienne Barbeau dabbles in the magical arts!

Love On The Lens: The Amy Fisher Story (dir by Andy Tennant)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Mary Jo Buttafuoco!

As seen in the 1993 made-for-tv movie, The Amy Fisher Story, Mary Jo (Laurie Paton) was just a normal Long Island housewife.  She was married to an auto mechanic named Joey (Anthony John Denison).  She had a family and a nice house and a seemingly perfect life.  But, one day, a teenage girl named Amy Fisher (played by a young Drew Barrymoe) showed up at her front door and claimed that her younger sister was having an affair with Joey.  When Mary Jo accused Amy of lying and then said she was going to call her husband, Amy pulled a gun and shot Mary Jo in the head.  That Mary Jo survived, albeit with partial facial paralysis, was a miracle.

The Amy Fisher Story was the third of the movies to be based on the true story of Amy Fisher and her affair with Joey Buttafuoco.  If Casualties of Love portrayed Amy as being an obsessed stalker who targeted a saintly man and if Amy Fisher: My Story portrayed Amy as a vulnerable teen who was groomed by a sleazy older man, The Amy Fisher Story suggests that perhaps the truth was somewhere in between.  As played by Drew Barrymore, Amy Fisher is immature, unstable, and self-destructive even before she meets Joey Buttafuoco.  As played by Anthony John Denison, Joey is a cocky and arrogant womanizer who grooms a teenage girl and leads her to believe that the only thing keeping them from being truly together is the fact that he has a wife.  (If Casualties portrayed Joey as being a dumb, salt-of-the-Earth type of guy and Amy Fisher: My Story portrayed him as being coldly manipulative and cruel, The Amy Fisher Story portrays him as being a self-centered idiot who did whatever he felt like doing without thinking about any possible consequences.)  Of all the performers who played Amy and Joey, Drew Barrymore and Anthony John Denison are the most convincing.  On the one hand, that lends a credibility to this film’s version of the events that led to the shooting of Mary Jo.  On the other hand, it also means that neither of the main characters is particularly likable.

The film instead tries to make a hero out of a reporter named Amy Pagnozzi (Harley Jane Kozak), who finds herself assigned to follow the Amy Fisher story when she would much rather be reporting on the upcoming presidential election.  Pagnozzi pops up throughout the story, commenting on the media feeding frenzy and generally acting annoyed by the whole thing.  The problem with this approach is that, for all of Pagnozzi’s condemnation of the country’s tabloid mentality, she’s still a part of the monster.  It’s hard to have sympathy for someone complaining about how a story is covered when they’re the one doing the covering.

Interestingly, for a film that condemns that way the story was covered, The Amy Fisher Story is probably the most tabloid-y of the three films.  Every sordid detail — from Amy and Joey’s motel meetings to Amy’s work as an escort to her subsequent dalliance with a gym owner — is provided in artfully filmed detail.  The result is a film that can feel a bit over-the-top but that’s exactly the right approach to take when it comes to a story like this.  When you’re making a movie about a suburban teenage escort who shoots her boyfriend’s wife, there’s really not much need or room for subtlety.  The Amy Fisher Story works because it fully embraces the melodrama and it features a performance from Drew Barrymore that remind us that, back before she became a permanently cheerful talk show host, Drew was a force of pure chaos.

When it comes to the story of the Fishers and the Buttafuocos, this is the film to see.

Love on the Lens: Amy Fisher: My Story (dir by Bradford May)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Amy Fisher!

In the 1993 made-for-TV movie, Amy Fisher: My Story, Amy Fisher (played by Noelle Parker) is an insecure teenager growing up on Long Island.  She goes to high school.  She has a boyfriend.  She has lots of girl friends.  She has a part-time job.  She has a car.  Everything should be perfect but it’s not.  For one thing, her creepy father (played by veteran Canadian character actor Lawrence Dane) likes to come into her room while she’s trying to sleep and sit on the edge of her bed.  Her mother (Kate Lynch) refuses to believe that there’s anything strange about the way her husband treats their daughter.

When Amy and her father take her car to the local auto body shop, she meets the handsome and slick Joey Buttafuoco (Ed Marinaro).  Amy is polite to Joey but Joey takes one look at Amy and he smiles in a way that immediately lets us know that he’s not to be trusted.  Soon, he’s going out of his way to spend time with Amy and eventually, he seduces her in the house that he shares with his wife, Mary Jo (played by Check It Out‘s Kathleen Laskey).  Soon, Joey and Amy are checking into cheap motels together.  Amy think that she’s in love with Joey and Joey says that he loves her (though only when he wants her to do something).

Joey eventually coerces Amy into becoming an escort, enjoying the stories of her spending time with other older men.  And yet, when Amy follows his orders and gets a gym membership, Joey freaks out when she attracts the attention of a man who is close to her own age.  For her part, Amy starts to wonder whether she and Joey will ever truly be together.  Joey insinuates that his wife would have to die before he could even think of marrying Amy Fisher.  Amy happens to have a friend who has a gun….

Amy Fisher: My Story largely plays out in flashbacks and is narrated by Amy as she sits in her jail cell.  It’s based on the same true story that inspired Casualties of Love, with the main difference being that this is Amy’s version of the story.  And it must be said that Amy’s version, with Amy as an insecure and abused teenager being groomed by a manipulative sociopath, feels considerably more plausible than Casualties of Love‘s portrayal of Joey Buttafuoco as being the misunderstood Saint of Long Island.  Working to Amy Fisher: My Story‘s advantage is that it doesn’t let Amy off the hook.  Ultimately, she’s the one who decides to knock on Mary Jo’s front door and then shoot her when she answers.  Amy is not portrayed as being a saint but she’s not a one-dimensional psycho either.  Instead, she’s a naive and emotionally damaged girl who is so desperate to feel loved that she allows Joey to push her over the edge.

Amy Fisher: My Story is a well-done look at a sordid story.  Ed Marinaro is appropriately sleazy and macho as Joey.  Noelle Parker gives a quiet but strong performance as Amy Fisher, playing her as someone who knows that she’s being manipulated but who still finds herself clinging to the smallest shred of hope that she’s not.  While the film never quite transcends its tabloid origins, it still provides a worthy reminder that there’s always a human behind the headlines.

Love On The Lens: Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story (dir by John Herzfeld)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Joey Buttafuoco!

As seen in the 1993 made-for-TV movie Casualties of Love, Joey is a saintly, salt-of-the-Earth blue collar guy who works as an auto mechanic on Long Island.  He’s also an aspiring drummer, one who struggles with a major cocaine addiction.  When his loving wife, Mary Jo (Phyllis Lyons), threatens to leave him and take the kids unless he cleans up his act, Joey checks into rehab.  Six months later, he leaves rehab clean and sober and dedicated to his family.  All of the other patients lean out of their windows and wish Joey well.  Everyone loves Joey!

Joey, the most handsome and sweetest auto mechanic in the state of New York, does have a problem, though.  A sociopathic teenager named Amy Fisher (Alyssa Milano) has grown obsessed with him and keeps intentionally damaging her car so that she can come hang out at the garage.  When the other mechanics say that Amy is hot, Joey agrees but that’s all he does.  Joey loves his wife.  When Amy tries to kiss him at a carnival, he shoves her away and then kisses his wife to make sure that everyone understand that Joey Buttafuoco is the best guy ever.  When Amy accuses Joey of giving her a STD, everyone realizes she’s lying because Joey would never have an STD in the first place.

And when Amy shoots Mary Jo in the face, the media and the police try to make it seem like Joey is somehow to blame but again, we know that he’s not.  Joey Buttafuoco is a name that means honor and respect.

Uhmm …. yeah.

So, this is story is very loosely based on a true story and by that, I mean that there was a teenager named Amy Fisher who shot a woman named Mary Jo in the face and later said that she was having an affair with her husband, Joey.  Apparently, there were three made-for-TV movies made about the case, all of which premiered in the same month.  Casualties of Love is told from the point of view of Joey and Mary Jo and it fully supports Joey’s initial claim that he never slept with Amy and she was just some obsessed psycho.

While watching this film, I got bored enough to look up the case on Wikipedia and I learned that, after this movie aired, Joey admitted that he did have an affair with 16 year-old Amy Fisher and he subsequently went to jail for statutory rape.  After getting out of jail, Joey divorced his wife and has subsequently been in and out of trouble with the law.  He also become a regular on TV court shows, where he would sue people who failed to pay him for fixing their cars.  My point is, Joey Buttafuoco sounds like a bit of a sleaze in real life.  That makes this film’s portrayal of him as being some sort of Saint of Long Island feel rather dumb.

Actually, it would feel dumb even if the real Joey Buttafuoco was a solid citizen.  Casualties of Love is one of the silliest films that I’ve ever seen, portraying Joey as being a streetwise former cocaine addict who was somehow too naive to realize that it would look bad to spend time in his office alone with Amy.  As Joey, Jack Scalia is very handsome and very sincere and he feels totally miscast as someone who spends hours working underneath the hood of other people’s cars.  Leo Rossi and Lawrence Tierney both show up, mostly so they can say, “Oh, what were you thinking!?” to Joey.  As Amy Fisher, Alyssa Milano gives an amazingly lifeless performance.  Occasionally she talk fast and plays with her hair.  This is the film’s way of letting us know that she’s supposed to be unhinged.  I mean, I do the same thing.  If you’ve got long hair, you’re going to play with it whenever you got bored.  It doesn’t make you crazy.

Unfortunately, though the film may be silly, it’s not much fun.  The direction is workmanlike and the film’s portrayal of Joey and Mary Jo’s marriage is so earnestly bland that the film never even rises to the level of camp.  The film ends with a warning that Amy would soon be eligible for parole.  (Oddly, it also points out that Amy could take college courses in jail, as if that was a bad thing.)  Meanwhile, “Mary Jo is taking it one day at a time.”  Fortunately, Mary Jo eventually took herself out of Joey’s life and filed for divorce.  That’s the happy ending this film lacks.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.2 and 4.3 “The Family Plan/The Promoter/May The Best Man Win/Forever Engaged/The Jurors”

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, The Love Boat heads to the Virgin Islands in a special two-hour episode!

(For syndication purposes, this episode is technically listed as being two episodes.)

Episode 4.2 and 4.3 “The Family Plan/The Promoter/May The Best Man Win/Forever Engaged/The Jurors”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on November 1st, 1980)

One of the cool things about The Love Boat is that, at least once per season, the cast and crew would actually film on location on an actual cruise.  You can always spot these episodes by the fact that they’re usually two-hours long, there’s more passengers than usual, and the guest stars tend to spend more time on the upper deck than in their cabins.  It may not sound like much but there’s just something undeniably fun about seeing the actual ocean while the ship’s crew and the show’s guest stars go through the motions.  It’s a reminder that we live on a beautiful planet and we should all make the effort to go out and see some of it.

The fourth season’s location shoot followed the boat as it sailed from the Virgin Islands to Los Angeles, with stops in Curacao, Venezuela, and Panama.  Along with all of the usual romance and laughs, this episode is a bit of a travelogue as Gopher, Julie, and the Captain all take their turn telling the passengers about the history of where they are sailing.  Isaac even gets into the act, pointing out the Virgin Islands to Doc Bricker.  (Being the walking HR nightmare that he is, Bricker can’t hear that name without making a comment about it.)  For a history and travel nerd like me, that was enough to make this episode fun.

As for the storylines, it was typical Love Boat silliness.  Promoter Larry Evans (Darren McGavin) is promoting a contest in which 50 engages couples will be married by Captain Stubing in a mass wedding aboard the ship.  (It’s kind of like what happens in cults, now that I think about it.)  One lucky couple will win money, a house, and a car.  Larry boards the ship with his wife, Sheila (Debbie Reynolds) and it quickly becomes apparent that their marriage is struggling, despite the happy facade that Larry attempts to put up.  When Larry’s plan for a network television special falls through, he’s offered a bribe by one of the engaged couples.  When Sheila learns that Larry is considering taking the bribe, she announces that she wants a divorce and then starts spending a lot of time with Captain Stubing.  Again, Vicki gets her hopes up that she’ll soon have a stepmother.

Meanwhile, Carl Lawrence (Peter Graves) boards the ship to try to keep his son, Ted (Brian Kerwin), from rushing into a marriage with Carrie (Erin Moran).  Meanwhile, Carrie’s mother, Mary Ann (Kathie Browne), boards to keep Carrie from rushing into a marriage with Ted.  Carl and Mary Ann are eager to work together to keep this wedding from happening.  But then Carl and Mary Ann fall in love and start planning a rushed wedding of their own.  “Are we hypocrites?” Carl wonders.  Yes, you are.  But you’re also Peter Graves so you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Tom McMann (Ted Knight) and Mary Hubble (Rue McClanahan) have been engaged for ten years.  Mary fears that Tom won’t go actually go through with the wedding and Tom suddenly finds himself unable to say the words, “I do.”  Can Isaac help them out?

Marv Prine (Don Most), who previously sailed on last season’s Alaskan cruise, boards as the best man for the wedding of his friend Brian (Lloyd Alan) and Emily (Charlene Tilton).  However, Brian decides he’d rather run off with an old girlfriend and he leaves it to Marv to break the news to Emily.  Marv can’t bring himself to do it so he keeps making excuses and promising Emily that Brian will meet them at the next port.  Marv falls in love with Emily but suddenly, Brian shows up.  When he finds out that Marv didn’t tell Emily the truth about him standing her up, Brian decides to go ahead with the wedding.  Emily becomes convinced that Marv was trying to steal her away from Brian but then she finds a receipt from a cheap hotel and she realizes the truth.  “You’re not a man,” Julie tells Brian.  WAY TO GO, JULIE!

Finally, the Captain assigns Doc Bricker the task of judging the couples contest.  Doc thinks that it sounds tedious so he passes the job onto Gopher.  However, when Doc sees that the other two judges are Valerie (Dawn Wells) and Rena (Ann Jillian), he conspires to take Gopher’s place.  While docked at Curacao, Doc sends Gopher assure to pick up some medical supplies.  Gopher, of course, walks up to a cop and asks for help finding “the drugs.”  When the cop doesn’t understand, Gopher says, “I want to buy drugs.”  Long story short, Gopher ends up in jail and the ship sails off without him.

Wow, that’s a lot to deal with!  But don’t worry it all works out.

Gopher meets a Spanish diplomat’s daughter and is not only freed from jail but he also gets a girlfriend and a limo for his trouble.  When the ship docks in Los Angeles, Valerie and Rena abandon Doc so that they can take a ride in Gopher’s new limo.

Larry does not take the bribe and saves his marriage.

Everyone else gets married.

Yay!  A happy ending!  Except, of course, for Vicki, who thought she was going to get a stepmother.  But don’t worry, Vicki. There’s still 6 more seasons to go.

This was a fun episode.  It made me want to take a cruise.  Interestingly enough, this is also a prophetic episode.  A cruise for engaged couples in which one couple wins a big prize?  Today, there’s not a network around that would pass on that.

See?  The Love Boat knew exactly where America sailing.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.14 “Backup”

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 Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!

This week, Eddie Kramer returns!

Episode 1.14 “Backup”

(Dir by Charles Bail, originally aired on February 24th, 1996)

Visiting his former home for re-certification, former Baywatch lifeguard Eddie Kramer (Billy Warlock) is patrolling the ocean when he comes across a boat that’s on fire and sinking.  Two people on a dinghy yell that someone is still on the boat.  Eddie boards the boat and doesn’t see anyone.  The two people on the dingy continue to insist that someone is on the boat, even as Eddie dives off of it.

Along with Baywatch regular Newman (Michael Newman, the real-life model for Mitch Buchanan), Eddie searches the now sunken boat.  And, to his shock, he finds a dead man on the boat.  Eddie does a classic “Nooooooooo!” but, being underwater, no one can hear him.

With everyone blaming him for the accident, Eddie continues to insist that no one was alive on the boat when he first checked.  Eddie’s old friend and mentor, Mitch Buchanan, decides to investigate the case himself and he soon figures out the truth.  The dead man did drown but he was already dead by the time the boat sank!  But who wanted to kill him?

It’s actually not much of a mystery as there are only two suspects and it is established early on that they’re working together.  In fact, they talk about how they committed the murder before Mitch even figures out that it was a murder so say goodbye to any suspense.  The truth of the matter is that the storyline was less about the mystery and more about trying to boost the ratings by reminding everyone that this was a Baywatch show.  It might have been more effective if the show had made use of a top-tier Baywatch co-star (David Charvet, Pamela Anderson) as opposed to bringing back Billy Warlock, who hadn’t been on the show for a few seasons before his guest turn here.  But then again, bringing on a “current” co-star would have begged the question of “Why do we need a new show to watch a story from the old show?”

There’s a second storyline, in which a man (Barry Pearl) is concerned that his mistress (Valerie Wildman) has hired a hitman to kill him.  Garner, Ryan, and Lou all stakeout the mistress and discover that she doesn’t actually want to go through with the plot and that her original plan was to kill the man’s wife.  The man is so overjoyed to discover that his mistress wanted to kill his wife that he literally jumps for joy.  This was a weird storyline but at least it featured the characters doing real detective work for once.

This was a breezy and entertainingly dumb episode.  This is perhaps the first episode to feature every member of the main cast doing something and there was a nice feeling of comradery amongst the regulars.  That said, the episode ended with Mitch pointing out that they had solved all the cases and then asking, “What do we do now?”  Uhmm …. how about you go to your other job, Mitch?

Seriously, I don’t know how Mitch balances everything.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 4.13 “The Man From Yesterday/World’s Most Desirable Woman”

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 the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion.

This week, the Island is full of damn liars.

Episode 4.13 “The Man From Yesterday/World’s Most Desirable Woman”

(Dir by Robert C. Thompson, originally aired on January 31st, 1981)

Bill Keating (Martin Milner) is a photojournalist who has reported from some of the most war-torn areas of the world.  He has spent years searching for a notorious mercenary named Calvin Doyle (Dennis Cole) and he believes that he has finally tracked Doyle down to Fantasy Island.  Bill swears to Mr. Roarke that his fantasy is to only do an interview with Doyle.

Of course, Bill’s lying.  Once Bill tracks down Doyle and discovers that Doyle has not only renounced his previous ways but is also the foster father of three native children, Bill reveals that his true fantasy is to shoot Doyle and get revenge for all the terrible things that Doyle did during his former life.

Marsha (Barbi Benton) is a frumpy, 39 year-old woman who says that she just wants to know what it’s like to be young and beautiful for a weekend.  Maybe she could even enter and win The World’s Most Desirable Woman pageant that’s being held on Fantasy Island.  Mr. Roarke and Tattoo take Marsha to the Island’s fountain of youth.  Marsha enters the fountain as a 39 year-old wearing a modest one-piece bathing suit.  She steps out of the fountain as a 21 year-old wearing a bikini.

Of course, Marsha isn’t being totally honest about her motives.  She is married to Hal Garnett (Bert Convy), the owner of Erotic Magazine and the sponsor of the pageant!  Her fantasy is to get revenge on Hal for all the years in which he’s neglected her for the younger women who appear in his magazine.

Two fantasies, two liars.  Mr. Roarke is fairly busy this week, showing up frequently in both fantasies (and even singing at the Most Desirable Woman pageant).  Mr. Roarke warns Marsha that she is getting too caught up in her newdound beauty.  Mr. Roarke also warns Calvin that Bill Keating wants to kill him.  Roarke allows Keating to take his shot at Calvin but he also arranges for the confrontation to happen on a rickety bridge so that the wounded Calvin can escape into the water below.  It’s interesting to see Roarke getting involved for once and Ricardo Montalban knew exactly how to deliver the character’s occasionally ominous lines.  Still, you have to wonder why he let these two liars on the Island on the first place.  Usually, he has pretty firm rules about stuff like this.  What if the bridge hadn’t broken and Doyle had died?  Mr. Roarke would look pretty dumb.

Fortunately, it all works out.  Having faked his own death, Doyle is able to leave the Island with his children.  And Marsha is informed that she will not go back to being 39 at the end of the weekend but will instead remain 21 and just age naturally.  Hal freaks out, realizing that men are going to be chasing his wife.  Roarke tells him that he better be good to her.

(Of course, Tattoo later takes a picture of Marsha and is shocked to see that picture is of the old Marsha, suggesting that the young Marsha is just an illusion that only Marsha, Hal, and I guess Tattoo can see.  It’s weird.)

Barbi Benton and Dennis Cole were regular guests to Fantasy Island and they both do well with their roles.  All of the lying felt a bit out-of-place for this show but at least Roarke got to be an active force in both fantasies.  All in all, this was a good trip to the Island.

Music Video of the Day: Bayou Boy by Graham Barham (2024, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Mardi Gras to all!

What can I say about this video other than it’s definitely authentic?  There’s a lot of people who will be able to relate to every word of this song.  This guy actually reminds me of more than a few of my cousins.  The fact that the song features more than a little Cajun French only contributes to the authenticity.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.14 “Rustling”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, CHiPs makes me cry!

Episode 1.14 “Rustling”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on January 12th, 1978)

This week’s episode of CHiPs featured a scene that brought tears to my mismatched eyes.

A drunk driver (played by G.W. Bailey) swerves across the highway and causes another car to flip over.  While Ponch chases after the driver, Baker goes to investigate the crash.  He discovers that the car’s driver is a 17 year-old girl named Susie (Pamelyn Ferdin) and she has been pinned under the wreckage.  He manages to free her and carry her away from the car before it explodes.  YAY!  Another life saved by Jon Baker, right?

That’s when Susie says that she can’t feel her legs.

That scene got to me.  It was far more well-acted than anything that I think one would normally expect to find on a episode of CHiPs, with both Ferdin and Larry Wilcox bringing a lot of emotional sincerity to their roles.  Susie realizes that she may never walk again.  Baker realizes that, just because he saved her from the car, he can’t save Susie from the other consequences of the accident.  I wanted to cry.  Actually, I did cry.

Now, I should admit that I’m recovering from a sprained ankle and I was doing my ankle exercises while watching this scene.  So, not only did I already have tears in my eyes (seriously, some of those exercises hurt!) but I was also feeling pretty emotional.  But still, even if I was just watching this scene while sitting on a couch, I think it would have had the same effect on me.

Of course, for the record, Ponch does capture the drunk driver (and the driver starts to sob when he realizes what he has done).  And, by the end of the episode, Baker is informed that Susie is going to be okay.  I was happy about that.

Excuse me, I’m starting to cry again….

Okay, believe it or not, that was only a small part of the episode.  The main storyline featured the great L.Q. Jones as a cattle rustler who, when he’s not driving his truck full of stolen cattle, rides a motorcycle.  Fortunately, after a lengthy chase, Baker and Ponch are able to capture him and his accomplice (Paul Tuerpe).  It was a pretty simple story but, at the same time, L.Q. Jones was one of those brilliant character actors who make even the most mundane of characters interesting.

Also, over the course of the episode, Ponch and Baker deal with an irate driver (Mill Watson) who claims that he was only speeding because his gear shift failed.  In court, Ponch is able to prove that the gear shift didn’t break by pointing out that the brake lights would have come on in that case.  (“Your honor,” the defense attorney says, “my client would like to change his plea to guilty.”)  Ponch and Baker also stop a magician and his assistant and are so fascinated by the magician’s tricks that they nearly forget to write his assistant a ticket.

Finally, Ponch arranges for everyone to meet at Baker’s apartment to throw him a surprise birthday party.  Whoops!  Baker’s birthday isn’t for another three months.  Ponch looked at Baker’s personnel file and misread his employment number as being his birthdate.  Oh, Ponch!  Still, the party is a success.  Getraer shows up with zucchini.  The magician shows up and performs a trick that involves tossing milk on Ponch and Baker.  What?  Well, whatever.

What’s important is that one scene that brought tears my eyes.  The rest of the episode may have been generic but that one scene was beautifully done and I’ll never forget it.

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 2.1 and 2.2 “The Prodigal Son”

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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, the second season with a two-hour long premiere!  Crockett and Tubbs are going to New York!

Episode 2.1 and 2.2 “The Prodigal Son”

(Dir by Paul Michael Glaser, originally aired on September 27th, 1985)

The second season premiere of Miami Vice opens with a series of set pieces.

In Panama, Crockett and Tubbs visit a secret military base in the jungle and are disgusted to learn how the Panamanian military gets information about drug smugglers.  Tubbs and Crockett find one horribly tortured man in a tent.  Tubbs gives him a drink of water and gets what information he can from the man.  Crockett and Tubbs leave the tent.  A gunshot rings out as the involuntary informant is executed.  When the shot rings out, both Crockett and Tubbs turn back to the tent in slow motion, stunned by the brutality of their allies in the Drug War.  Indeed, it’s hard not to compare the scene to the famous photograph of a South Vietnamese general executing a communist during the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam analogy continues with the next scene.  In the Everglades, Crockett, Tubbs, and the entire Vice Squad work with the DEA to ambush the Revilla cousins as they bring drugs into the U.S.  Sitting in the swamp, Crockett compares the experience to Vietnam, suggesting that the war on the drugs is just as futile and as costly.  And indeed, it’s hard not to notice that every drug dealer that Crockett and Tubbs has taken down over the course of this show has immediately been replaced by another.  The Revillas are just another in a long line of people getting rich off of other people’s addictions.

After the bust goes down, Crockett and Tubbs arrives at a celebratory party, just to discover that almost of all of the undercover DEA agents have been murdered and Gina has been seriously wounded.  There is something very haunting about this scene, with Crockett and Tubbs rushing through a penthouse and seeing a dead body in almost every room.

At a meeting in a stark office, the head DEA agent explains that his agency has been compromised and all of his undercover agents have been unmasked.  Someone has to go to New York and work undercover to take down the Revillas but it can’t be any of his people.  Since the Revillas are smuggling their stuff in through Miami, Miami Vice has jurisdiction.  Paging Crockett and Tubbs!

Working undercover as Burnett and Cooper, Crockett and Tubbs visit a low-level drug dealer (played by Gene Simmons) who lives on a yacht and who gives them the name of a connection in New York City.

From there, Miami Vice moves to New York City, where Crockett and Tubbs meet a low-level criminal named Jimmy Borges (played by an almost impossibly young Penn Jillette) and they try to infiltrate the Revilla organization.  Along the way, Tubbs meets up with Valerie (Pam Grier) and discovers that she has apparently lost herself working undercover.  Meanwhile, Crockett has a brief — and kind of weird — romance with a photographer named Margaret (Susan Hess).

(“I like guns,” she says when Crockett demands to know why she stole his.)

With Crockett and Tubbs leaving Miami for New York in order to get revenge for a colleague who was wounded during an operation, The Prodigal Son almost feels like the pilot in reverse.  Also, much like the pilot, the exact details of The Prodigal Son‘s story are often less important than how the story is told.  This episode is full of moody shots of our heroes walking through New York while songs like You Belong To The City play on the soundtrack.  (There’s also a song from Phil Collins, undoubtedly included to bring back memories of the In The Air Tonight scene from the pilot.)  It’s all very entertaining to watch, even if the story itself doesn’t always make total sense.  Indeed, you really do have to wonder how all of these criminals keep falling for Sonny’s undercover identity as Sonny Burnett.  You would think that someone would eventually notice that anyone who buys from Sonny Burnett seems to get busted the very next day.

Stylish as the storytelling may be, this episode actually does have something on its mind.  Those lines comparing the War on Drugs to the Vietnam Conflict was not just throwaways.  Towards the end of the episode, Crockett and Tubbs follow a lead to the offices of J.J. Johnston (Julian Beck, the ghost preacher from Poltergeist II).  The skeletal Johnston is an investor of some sort.  He has no problem admitting that he’s involved in the drug trade, presumably because he knows that there’s nothing Crockett and Tubbs can do to touch him.  Upon meeting the two cops, he immediately tells them exactly how much money they have in their checking accounts.  He points out that they’re poor and they’re fighting a losing war whereas he’s rich and he’s making money off of a losing war.  Beck gives a wonderfully smug performance as Johnston and it should be noted that, of all of the episode’s villains, he’s the only one who is not brought to any sort of justice.  Val almost loses herself.  Tubbs and Crockett don’t even get a thank you for their hard work.  The somewhat sympathetic Jimmy Borges ends up dead while the Revillas were undoubtedly been replaced by even more viscous dealers.  Meanwhile, J.J. Johnston relaxes in his office and counts his money.  This is the No Country For Old Men of Miami Vice episodes.

This episode is also full of familiar faces.  Charles S. Dutton, Kevin Anderson, Anthony Heald, Miguel Pinero, James Russo, Bill Smtirovich, Zoe Tamerlis, Paul Calderon, and Louis Guzman, they all show up in small roles and add to show’s rather surreal atmosphere.  This is Miami Vice at its most dream-like, full of people you think you might know despite the fact that they’re doing things of which you don’t want to be a part.

As for the title, The Prodigal Son is Tubbs and he is tempted to stay in New York City.  But, in the end, he joins Crockett on that flight back to Miami.  It’s his home.