Retro Television Review: Welcome Back Kotter 3.11 “Barbarino In Love: Part Two”

Posted on February 24, 2024 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, Barbarino must decide between the Sweathogs and his new girlfriend!

Episode 3.10 “Barbarino In Love: Part Two”

(Dir by Bob Claver, originally aired on November 10th, 1977)

This week’s episode of Welcome Back, Kotter picks up where last week’s left off.

Because he is now dating Cassy, Barbarino has left Three Do’s and a Don’t. The Three Do’s are now trying to figure out how to turn their quartet act into a trio triumph and needless to say, they are happy with neither Barbarino nor Cassy. They’re angry at Barbarino for leaving them and they blame Cassy for distracting him from the talent show. For her part, Cassy is not happy to learn that the Sweathogs now hate her and she tells Barbarino that, just because they’re dating, that doesn’t mean that they can’t compete against each other in the talent show.

Gabe takes Barbarino down to the local diner where he attempts to explain why everyone’s mad. He places three empty glasses on the table in front of them and tells Barbarino to imagine that the glasses are the Sweathogs.

“Which one’s Horshack?” Barbarino asks.

“This one,” Gabe replies, pointing at the third glass.

“That don’t look like Horshack,” Barbarino says, “That looks like Epstein….”

And so it goes.

The important thing is that Barbarino eventually decides that it’s his duty to be the Don’t in Three Do’s and a Don’t. The majority of the episode is taken up with the group performing at the talent show and, just as last week, it’s hard not to notice that their act seems a bit old-fashioned. How many juvenile delinquents start a barber shop quartet? That said, with the return of Barbarino’s winning smile, they’re a hit with everyone but Mr. Woodman.

And that’s the end of that. It’s a bit of a silly episode and I’m not really sure why it needed to be split into two parts. The Sweathogs getting angry at Barbarino and Gabe helping Barbarino realize that he’s not the center of the universe is one of those plots that this show used a lot. You would think that, at some point, Barbarino would finally learn his lesson and stop doing stuff like this but you would be wrong. Of course, Barbarino’s whole thing is that he’s cute but dumb.

And he’s lucky that he’s being played by a young John Travolta, who had the hair and the smile and the attitude and the charisma to make Barbarino far more likable than he really had any right to be. Some people just have that star quality and one need only look at the scenes where Travolta acts opposite Gabe Kaplan, Marcia Strassman, and Ron Pallilo to understand why John Travolta was the one who ultimately walked away from this show as a star.

Next week, Gabe is tempted to sell out and become vice principal!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

Posted on February 23, 2024 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, Micki screws up and Ryan finds love!

Episode 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on May 2nd, 1988)

Looking to retrieve a cursed quilt that allows its owner to enter other people’s dreams and kill them, Micki and Ryan go undercover as members of the Pentite Sect.

Who are the Pentites? Basically, they’re Mennonites except for the fact that they’re called Pentites. They are a hard-worked and religious community, one that eschews modern technology. The members of the sect dress modestly, they don’t sing or dance, and they do everything that their leader, Reverend Grange (Scott Paulin), tells them to do.

Effie Stokes (Kate Trotter) is in love with the Reverend and wants to become his wife. She also happens to own the Quilt of Hathor and soon, she is entering the dreams of her romantic rivals and killing them. While Effie is trying to win the love of Reverend Grange, Ryan is falling in love with Grange’s daughter, Laura (Carolyn Dunn). Quicker than you can say Witness, Ryan is temping Laura to dance and being forced to fight Laura’s suitor, Matthew (Diego Matamoras), while balancing above an open flame pit. I don’t think Mennonites do that, which is probably why the Pentites broke off from them in the first place.

Micki does figure out that Effie is the one with the quilt and she even manages to grab it away from her. However, when she tells Ryan that it’s time to return to the antique shop, Ryan replies that he can’t go with her. Ryan has fallen in love with Laura and is planning on living the rest of his life as a Pentite.

Micki returns to the shop and, heartbroken, she tells Jack that she lost Ryan. Jack then reveals that she also managed to grab the wrong quilt. So, basically, Micki really screwed up.

This is a two-part episode so I imagine that Micki will return to the Pentite community next week and hopefully, she’ll pay attention and grab the right quilt this time. Will Ryan return to the civilization with her? Considering that John D. LeMay didn’t leave the show until the end of the second season, I imagine he probably will.

This was a pretty good episode. The scenes where Effie entered the dreams were well-directed and definitely achieved a nightmarish intensity. Some of the Pentite stuff was a little bit silly but John D. LeMay really sold his decision to stay with the sect. With everything that we’ve seen of Ryan on this show, his decision actually makes sense. Ryan has always been the one searching for deeper meaning while Micki is the more down-to-Earth member of the team.

Next week: Part two of the Quilt of Hathor!

14 Days of Paranoia #8: Reality (dir by Tina Satter)

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

One day in 2017, Reality Winner (Sidney Sweeney), a yoga instructor who also works as a government translator, returns home from grocery shopping to discover that the FBI is outside of her house. Agents Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchant Davis) have a search warrant and they explain that they also have some questions to ask her.

At first, both Garrick and Taylor are very friendly. In fact, they’re almost too friendly. Whenever Reality asks for more details about what is going on, they ask her about her pets or about whether or not she enjoys her job. They ask her about her background and about the last trip she went on. The conversation is cheerful but it’s hard not to notice that, while Garrick is smiling, burly FBI agents are ransacking Reality’s house. As Reality comes to realize, she actually is in a lot of trouble. Because she sent classified material to the Intercept, she is about to be arrested and prosecuted under the espionage act. It’s going to be a while before she sees her house again.

Reality was released last year and aired on HBO. It’s a film about which I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it showed how the government goes about prosecuting its citizens. From the minute that Reality started talking to the FBI agents, I started yelling at her to shut up and get a lawyer. No matter how many times they ask about your dog or how interested they seem to be in your recent trip to South America, agents of the FBI are not your friends! Since the film’s script was largely a transcript of the actual interrogation, Reality presented a lesson in just how exactly law enforcement agencies like the FBI lure people into a false sense of security before dropping the trap on them.

On the other hand, this film also left me wondering just how much of a dumbass one has to be to throw away their career and their freedom for a trash organization like The Intercept. Reality says that she was 1) upset over the election of Donald Trump (understandable) and 2) she resented being forced to watch Fox News at work when she would have rather watched Al Jazeera. One needn’t be a fan of Fox to realize how ludicrous it is to suggest that Al Jazeera would somehow be less propagandistic.

There’s a moment, at the start of the film, where Reality — while standing outside of her house — stares at a toy truck on the other side of the street. The toy has a big Confederate flag decal on it and the symbolism is so heavy-handed that it almost made me laugh out loud. It leaves the viewer with no doubt that the film is very much on Reality Winner’s side and the film does her a great favor by casting the instantly likable Sydney Sweeney in the title role. (Oddly, we occasionally see pictures of the actual Reality Winner over the course of the film, all of which invertedly serve to remind us that the real person is not as appealing as the actress playing her.) Josh Hamilton and Marchant Davis are both appropriately menacing as the passive aggressive FBI agent and the scene where Hamilton goes from being friendly to being serious is truly jolting.

Since the film’s script is based on the actual transcripts of the interrogation, director Tina Satter inserts a film glitch whenever the characters mention anything that has been redacted. The film’s best moment comes when a particularly big redaction causes the FBI agents to vanish all together and, for a few moments, Reality can actually catch her breath and is free from their questions. The film did not make me any more sympathetic to Reality Winner (and, for all of its claims to historic veracity, it leaves out the moment she told her father that she wouldn’t be prosecuted because she was pretty and blonde) but it did make me feel empathy for anyone who has ever been targeted by the government. When the film’s epilogue suggests that Reality Winner was prosecuted and imprisoned for a relatively minor offense solely to scare off other whistleblowers, it’s hard not to disagree.

14 Days of Paranoia:

Retro Television Review: T and T 2.18 “Thicker Than Water”

Posted on February 23, 2024 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!

If you’ve ever watched T and T and thought, “I wish there was a lot less T in this show,” this week’s episode is for you!

Episode 2.18 “Thicker than Water”

(Dir by Harvey Frost, originally aired on May 8th, 1989)

This is a weird episode.

Ronnie (David Hewlett) and Steve (Gordon Michael Woolvett) are two brothers who have opened up a punk music venue in whatever part of Canada that T and T was filmed in. From the start, everyone is trying to shut them down. The other neighborhood business people claim that the club is bringing in a bad element. The police are unsympathetic whenever a fight breaks out. The fire department is always showing up with a list of regulations. The sinister person who loaned them the money to start the club wants the brothers to burn it down for the insurance money. Seriously, it’s not easy run a venue devoted to angry music that is best appreciated by people who like to fight. But, in the end, the brothers stick together and refuse to let Canada beat them down.

Yay! Take that, Trudeau!

(Yes, I know that Justin Trudeau was not in charge of Canada when this show was filmed but I’m too lazy to look up who was. Actually, T and T always pretended that it was set in the U.S. so I guess I should blame the first Bush. But seriously, everything about T and T screams Canada.)

So, why is this an episode of T and T? Well, Amy is their lawyer. (Sometimes, Amy practices criminal law and sometimes, she practices business law and sometimes, she just acts like a lobbyist. There’s nothing Amy can’t do!) Amy shows up at the club a few times. T.S. Turner also shows up once or twice and says, “Little brother, when you believe in something …. YOU FIGHT FOR IT!”

I’m going to guess that this was a backdoor pilot for a series that would have followed the brothers and their club. I have no idea if the pilot led to a series. It’s really hard for me to imagine what a potential series would have been like but I would say that I thought the club looked cool. I liked the rebellious attitude of the bands that performed there.

Like most backdoor pilots, this is a bit of a wasted episode. This is also the third episode in a row that hasn’t really featured Turner and Amy doing anything new. The previous two episodes were both clip shows and this episode isn’t even about them. These episodes are easy to review (yay!) but you do have to wonder what was going on behind the scenes during the latter half of the second season.

Music Video of the Day: With Love K…. by Kedr Livanskiy (2013, dir by Kedr Livanskiy)

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day is a recent one from Kedr Livanskiy. I always assume that all of Kedr Livanskiy’s videos either deal with vampires or takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This one seems to definitely take place in a world where, much as in Argento’s Tenebrae and Rollin’s Night of the Hunted, there are now far fewer people.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Highway to Heaven 1.22 “An Investment In Caring”

Posted on February 22, 2024 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, Jonathan encourages everyone to violate federal law.

Episode 1.22 “An Investment In Caring”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on March 13th, 1985)

Helen Spencer (Eileen Heckart) is an annoying old busy body who lives in one of those charming city neighborhoods that are only found on shows like Highway to Heaven. Even since her husband died, she has kept herself active by working as a cleaning lady at the Halstead Corporation, which is the same company that wants to not only tear down her neighborhood but also turn the local cemetery into a condo subdivision.

Fortunately, Helen’s new boarders just happen to be Jonathan Smith and Mark Gordon. Jonathan encourages Helen to rally the neighbors to take a stand against Halstead. He also encourages Paul Tarsten (Dane Clark), who was recently laid off from Halstead for being too old, to help Helen out. With Jonathan’s guidance, Helen goes through the trash at Halstead, finds some stock reports that really should have been put through a shredder, and then use that insider information to buy and sell a bunch of stock until soon, she and her friends are the majority stockholders.

“Only in America,” Ms. Zabenko (Elsa Raven) exclaims not once but five times, just in case you were wondering how heavy-handed this episode was.

Helen is able to save her neighborhood, save the cemetery where her husband is buried, and also take over the company. She also finds hints of romance with Paul, who is himself a widower. Their mission accomplished, Jonathan and Mark leave town….

…. which is good because I don’t see anyway that Paul, Helen, and Ms. Zabenko aren’t eventually going to end up in federal prison. Just about every piece of advice that Jonathan gave Helen led to her doing something illegal, from insider trading to corporate espionage to stealing from the office. Only in America, Ms. Zabenko? In America, we have laws against stock market manipulation.

This episode just irked me. Whenever people talk about Highway to Heaven being an unrealistic and cheesy show, this is the type of episode that they’re thinking of. It takes a lot to make a heartless corporation sympathetic but the overacted and rather smug neighborhood activists in this episode managed to do just that. In previous episodes, Jonathan and Mark have appealed to businessmen to get them to change their ways. In this episode, the head of Halstead isn’t given that opportunity. Instead, Jonathan — acting on authority from GOD — encourages a bunch of people with no business experience and no way of knowing any better to commit a bunch of federal crimes. Helen takes over the company but what does Helen know about running a company? When Halstead goes bankrupt, a lot of people who had nothing to do with the former CEO’s plans will end up losing their jobs. Way to go, God.

Finally, I should note that this episode begins with Helen’s former boarder telling her that he’s moving out because a voice in his head told him to move to Alaska. It’s only because he leaves that Helen has the room to rent to Jonathan and Mark. So, basically, promoting insider trading wasn’t enough for Jonathan. He also had to ruin some poor schmuck’s life by telling him to move to a state that he knows nothing about. Not since the Book of Enoch has an angel behaved so unethically.

14 Days of Paranoia #7: No Way Out (dir by Roger Donaldson)

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Trust no one in Washington would seem to be the message of this 1987 thriller.

Kevin Costner plays Lt. Commander Tom Farrell, a Naval Intelligence officer who is hailed as a hero after saving a shipmate who falls overboard. In Washington, Tom is recruited by a friend from college, Scott Pritchard (Will Patton), to work for Secretary of Defense Brice (Gene Hackman). Brice doesn’t trust the head of the CIA (played by future senator, Fred Dalton Thompson) and he wants Tom to serve as his mole within the service. What Brice doesn’t know is that Tom is sleeping with Brice’s mistress, Susan Atwell (Sean Young).

Still, Brice does suspect that the woman with whom he is cheating is also cheating on him. When he confronts her about it, their argument leads to him accidentally pushing Susan over an upstairs railing. Pritchard, who is implied to be in love with Brice, takes charge of the cover-up and decides to push the story that Susan was killed by a possibly mythical Russian agent who is known only by the name “Yuri.”

Tom assists with the investigation of her death, both because he wants to know who killed Susan and also because he knows that there’s evidence in Susan’s apartment that could be manipulated to make him look guilty of the crime. For instance, Susan took a picture of Tom shortly before her death. The picture failed to develop but, through the use of what was undoubtedly cutting edge technology in 1987, Naval Intelligence is slowly unscrambling the picture. For Tom, it’s a race against time to find the actual killer before the picture develops and he’s accused of both killing Susan and being Yuri.

Everyone has an agenda in No Way Out, from the ambitious Brice to the fanatical Scott Pritchard to the head of the CIA, who wants Brice to approve funding for a costly submarine. Even the film’s nominal hero has an agenda, which has less to do with finding justice for Susan and everything to do with protecting himself and his future. In fact, as is revealed in the film’s enjoyable if slightly implausible twist ending, some people in Washington have multiple agendas. The film portrays Washington as being a place where, behind the stately facade, everyone is a liar and everyone is ultimately a pawn in someone else’s game. If you have the right connections, you can even get away with murder. Loyalty is rewarded until you’re no longer needed.

It’s an enjoyably twisty thriller, one that makes good use of the contrast between Kevin Costner’s All-American good looks and his somewhat shady screen presence. The film introduces Costner as being a character who, at first glance, seems almost too good to be true and then spend the majority of its running time suggesting that is indeed the case. Gene Hackman is well-cast as the weaselly cabinet secretary, as is Sean Young as the woman who links them all together. In the end, though, the film is stolen by Will Patton, who plays Scott Pritchard as being someone who has unknowingly given his loyalty to a man who is incapable of returning it. As played by Patton, Scott is an outsider who desperately wants to be an insider and who is willing to do just about anything to accomplish that goal. He’s a version of Iago who never turned against Othello but instead devoted all of his devious tricks to trying to cover up the murder of Desdemona.

Even with an over-the-top final twist, No Way Out holds up well as a portrait of how the lust for power both drives and corrupts our political system.

14 Days of Paranoia:

Retro Television Review: In The Lion’s Den 1.1 “The Pilot”

Posted on February 22, 2024 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 In The Lion’s Den, which aired on CBS in 1987. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by James Burrows, originally aired on September 4th, 1987)

When she lived in New York City, Dana (Wendy Crewson) had an apartment, a boyfriend, and a job working as a producer on a very successful game show. But then she got fired and everything changed. Now, she has moved to San Antonio so she can work as the new associate producer of Lion’s Den, a PBS program featuring a lion puppet named Maynard.

The man behind the puppet is Keith (Dennis Boutsikaris), an infamously temperamental actor who, every day, announces that he’s quitting show business and storms off the set. Previously, it was up to Jerry (Jack Blessing) to coax Keith into returning to the set and shooting the show. But now that Jerry has a job with Steven Spielberg, it’s up to Dana to keep Keith happy.

Despite having hired her, Keith does not know who Dana is when she shows up on the set. He proceeds to re-interview her for the job, which means leering at her legs and trying to convince her to hug the puppet. Keith, I think, was meant to come across as being a charming rogue but, every time he talked to Dana, I had flashbacks to interviewing for jobs after college and all of the guys who stared at my chest and legs while I explained my passion for art history. Keith is a creep and the fact that he’s only nice when he’s talking through Maynard does nothing to change that.

It’s an eventful first day for Dana. One of the show’s sponsors (played by Fred Applegate) offers to allow Dana to rent his house but it soon turns out that he’s a bit of a sleaze. A neurotic writer (Brian Backer) fears that he’s going to lose his job because he wrote a script about football. (“I hate football!” Keith yells. Good luck living in Texas.) Proving the everyone had to start somewhere, Marcia Gay Harden plays the receptionist who helps Dana get out of having to talk to her ex-boyfriend. (“She’s meetin’ Willie Nelson.”) Harden plays the role with a Texas accent and, while it’s definitely exaggerated, she does a good job with it overall. (A quick check with Wikipedia revealed that, though born in California, Harden spent time in Texas when she was growing up and graduated from the University of Texas.) Eventually, Keith throws his daily tantrum and Dana has to find her own way to keep him from quitting show business.

The main problem with the pilot is that Keith is too much of a jerk. It’s hard to really care about someone who throws a tantrum every day, is abusive to his coworkers, and how uses an adorable puppet to sexually harass a woman who hasn’t even figured out where she’s going to be living in her new city. Personally, I think Dana should have quit as soon as Maynard demanded a hug.

And audiences agreed. This pilot aired once and that was it for In The Lion’s Den.

Music Video of the Day: HMFHM by Adi Ulmansky (2018, dir by ????)

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video is this melancholy mood piece from Adi Ulmansky.

For the record, HMFMH stands for Hate Myself For Hating Myself. Hey, we’ve all been there! I was there just three weeks ago! Fortunately, this week has been a marked improvement.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 1.21 “All In A Day’s Work”

Posted on February 21, 2024 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.

A lot of talented people came together to create this week’s episode of Monsters!

Episode 1.21 “All In A Day’s Work”

(Dir by Allen Coulter, originally aired on May 6th, 1989)

Steven Rose (James Morrison) is a graduate student whose studies of ancient magic have accidentally summoned a creature who looks exactly like him and who also follows him everywhere that he goes. Following the advice of a friend, Steven seeks help from a white witch named Fiona (Adrienne Barbeau). Fiona is willing to help but first, she needs to pick up her son, Ian (Brandon Bluhm), from school.

When she returns to her apartment building with Ian, she discovers that the doppelganger is waiting in the hallway and apparently, it wants Ian’s soul. Locking herself in her apartment with Steven and Ian, Fiona is forced to do the unthinkable. She commits a mortal sin by summoning a demon named Belphamelech (Eddie Velez). As she explains it to Steven, if she can get rid of his doppelganger than she will be forgiven for summoning a demon. And if she can’t get rid of the doppelganger, it won’t matter what happens.

There were a lot of talented people involved with this episode. Adrienne Barbeau, of course, is still well-remembered for her appearances in The Fog, Escape From New York, and Creepshow. Nearly two decades after his appearance here, James Morrison would find fame as Bill Buchanan on 24 and as the prison warden on Twin Peaks: The Return. Eddie Velez is still a regular on television. This was one of the first shows to be directed by Allen Coulter, who go on to direct some of the best episodes of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire.

Considering all of talent both in front of and behind the camera, it’s not a surprise that this is one of the better episodes of Monsters, an atmospheric and well-acted 21 minutes that nicely mixes horror with humor. The episode works best when it contrasts Fiona’s magic powers with the normal activities of her everyday life. She can get rid of demons and yes, she can cook up a love potion or two and yes, she knows all of the things to say to control a demon. But, in the end, her main concern is making sure that her son gets to and from school without incident and that everyone has a good dinner in the evening.

Interestingly enough, the episode ends in such a way that makes it feel as if it was meant to be a pilot for a television series that would have featured Fiona dealing with the supernatural on a weekly basis. She ends the episode with both a new romance and a new assistant and it’s easy to imagine all of the future adventures that they could have all had together. If this episode was meant to serve as a pilot, it didn’t lead to a series and that’s a shame because it definitely had the potential to be a lot of fun.