On Christmas Eve, a miserly businessman is visited by a series of ghosts who help him understand the true meaning of Christmas, along with showing him a frightening vision of a possible future.
And that businessman was named …. Benedict Slade!
Yeah, the name’s have been changed and the action has been updated to Depression-era New England but this is basically the story of Scrooge. Henry Winkler stars as the Scrooge character in the 1979 made-for-TV movie. His old age make-up was done by none other than Rick Baker!
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 1986. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, we begin season two of Fantasy Island!
Episode 2.1 “Homecoming/The Sheikh”
(Dir by Earl Bellamy, originally aired on September 16th, 1978)
The second season of Fantasy Island begins with a bizarre mishmash of tones.
As usual, there are two fantasies. The first fantasy features David Birney as Alan Boardman. As Mr. Roarke explains it, Alan served in Viet Nam. He was horribly burned in battle and captured by the Viet Cong. He spent years, as an amnesiac, in a POW camp. In the United States, he was reported to have been killed in action. Finally, he was released from the POW camp and he underwent extensive plastic surgery. He now looks completely different than he did in his past life. It was only after the plastic surgery that Alan remembered who he was. He also remembered that he had a wife (Lynda Day George) and a son (Ronnie Scribner). Alan comes to Fantasy Island, hoping to be reunited with his family. However, there’s a complication. Alan’s wife has remarried and she still believes Alan to be dead. Alan meets his wife and his son but he has to pretend to be a stranger. Alan must decide whether to reveal his true identity or to accept that his wife has moved on and now has a new life.
Wow, that’s really dark! It’s an extremely serious story, one that ends on a bittersweet note that will leave no one truly satisfied. David Birney and Lynda Day George both give intense performances as they struggle to come to terms with the horror of the Vietnam War….
Meanwhile, the other fantasy features Arte Johnson as Edgar, a meek school teacher who wants to be a sheikh with a harem. Seriously, that’s his entire fantasy. Of course, once he becomes a sheikh, he discovers that his servant (played by Sid Haig) is a part of a conspiracy to murder him. It also turns out that a member of the harem is actually one of Edgar’s fellow teachers, Yasmine (Georgia Engel). Yasmine’s fantasy was for Edgar to finally notice her so Roarke’s solution was to force her to be a member of a harem! (Really, Mr. Roarke?) This fantasy is played for laughs and the comedy is extremely broad. It’s somewhat jarring to go from David Birney obsessing on the war to Arte Johnson grinning at the members of his harem. It’s such a tonal mismatch that it makes it difficult to get invested in either fantasy.
While all of this is going on, Tattoo is feeling depressed and suffering from ennui. Mr. Roarke solves this problem by giving Tattoo a tiny car that he can drive around. In this episode, Mr. Roarke doesn’t seem to openly dislike Tattoo as much as he did during the first season so I’ll be interested to see if that trend continues. Reportedly, Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize did not have the best working relationship but, in this episode, Roarke and Tattoo actually seem to have a vague respect of one another. It’s a change of pace.
Anyway, this episode doesn’t work because the fantasies don’t really mesh well. However …. SID HAIG!
After three eccentric businessman arrange for a young couple to get together right before the holidays, a plane crash kills the three men. However, their ghosts remain on Earth to watch over the couple and to take care of some unexpected holiday business. The film is a holiday film and a comedy and a romance and a musical and a ghost story and a melodrama and finally an oddly sincere meditation on life and death.
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 Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
We’re part of the team, never alone….
Episode 3.3 “First Game of the Season”
(Directed by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 20th, 1997)
I hope this episode isn’t stupid, I thought as First Game of the Season began.
My hopes were dashed immediately as the episode opened with Teddy begging his teammates to sign his underwear for luck. This was followed by Coach Fuller discovering that the new assistant principal was his ex-fiancée. (“Whoooooo!” the audience said.) Then Michael went crazy because the first game of the season was going to be against his former team, Lynwood High. Michael started pressuring everyone during practice and even encouraged them to skip study hall so that they could practice some more. That led to the team getting detention. (Seriously? It’s freaking study hall. Everyone skipped study hall when I was in high school.) The team nearly lost to Lynwood until Michael set his ego aside and blah blah blah, Anyway, the final score was Deering 57 and Lynwood 56. Yay!
(As usual, the actors playing the Lynwood team were convincingly athletic, even if they looked more like football players than basketball players. Why did this show never realize that casting athletic actors as the rival players only highlighted how much the main cast struggled when it came to convincing the viewer that they were basketball stars?)
While all of this was going on, the Lynwood cheerleaders launched a prank war on the Deering cheerleaders. Mary Beth immediately pressured Kristy into retaliating. This is why I like Mary Beth. She is a force of chaos who continually encourages other people to escalate their behavior without ever running the risk of getting in trouble herself. Anyway, in this case, it leads to Kristy stealing the principal’s dog. And technically, that’s a crime and it never makes sense that Kristy is allowed to keep the dog a the school but you know what? The little bulldog was cute and he got to wear a lot of Wishbone-style costumes. That was fun,
Episode 3.4 “Fighting Words”
(Directed by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 20th, 1997)
This episode begins with the Tornadoes playing yet another game. Danny is struggling on the court and, from the stands, a bully taunts him. Normally, we would look to Coach Fuller to kick the guy out of his gym but …. OH MY GOD, COACH FULLER’S NOT THERE! Instead, there’s some short white guy that we’ve never seen before and he’s coaching the Tornadoes! It turns out that Coach Fuller has the mumps and will not be in this episode. I assume that means Reggie Theus had better things to do than show up for filming. I don’t blame him.
Anyway, realizing that he has a bully after him, Danny learns karate. However, his sensei tells him that karate is not used for fighting. Karate is used for discipline. When the bully dares Danny to a fight, Danny refuses to fight and proves that he’s the bigger man. All the students applaud him. Yay, Danny! Of course, in real life, backing down from a fight is a humiliation that would have followed Danny for the rest of his life.
While that’s going on, Kristy dates a cute but dumb boy named Joey. Joey is played by …. OH MY GOD, IT’S SCOTT WHYTE FROM CITY GUYS! This episode aired during the first season of City Guys, back when Scott Whyte still had good hair. There’s not really much to the Kristy/Joey storyline. Kristy pretends to be dumb to get Joey to like her. Eventually, she realized she would rather be smart so she dumps Joey. Joey doesn’t care because he’s cute. That’s pretty much it.
This was an oddly pointless episode, one that almost felt like it was written by a TNBC AI program of some sort. Coach Fuller would never have allowed this type of nonsense.
The year is 1972 and Santa Claus’s magic sleigh is somehow stuck on a beach in Florida! Can the children help Santa free his sleigh? If not, he’s going to force them to listen to another fairy tale! Fortunately, the Ice Cream Bunny is always willing to help …. eventually.
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 the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1988’s A Very Brady Christmas!
In A Very Brady Christmas, America’s creepiest family reunites for the holidays.
Mike and Carol Brady (played by Robert Reed and Florence Henderson, of course) have finally got their house to themselves! The children have all moved out. A few have even gotten married and started families of their own. Mike is still an architect, though he now has a mustache that, along with his gray hair, makes him look more like a retired porn actor.
With Christmas approaching, Mike and Carol have each been secretly saving up their money to give the other a trip. Carol knows that Mike loves Greece. Mike suspects that Carol would love to go to Japan. In the end, though, they realize that they would much rather have the entire family come together for Christmas! They buy tickets for everyone. Of course, what they don’t know is that each of the Brady kids has an issue of their own.
For instance, consider the youngest of the Brady kids. Cindy isn’t even herself anymore, mostly because Susan Olsen declined to return for the reunion and Jennifer Runyon was cast in her place. Cindy is away at college and she’s upset that she has to cancel her plans to go skiing just so she can spend the holidays with her family. Meanwhile, Bobby (Mike Lookinland) has dropped out of college so that he can race cars on the NASCAR circuit but he hasn’t told his parents yet! Of course, if Bobby never tells them, he can just keep pocketing that sweet, sweet tuition money.
Meanwhile, Peter Brady (Christopher Knight) is upset because his girlfriend is his boss and she makes considerably more money than he does. Jan (Eve Plumb) is secretly separated from her husband but, because it’s the holidays, they agree to pretend to still be together so that Mike and Carol don’t get upset. Greg (Barry Williams) has grown up to be a smarmy doctor but he is upset that his wife will not be joining him for Christmas with his parents. And Marcia (Maureen McCormick) is trying to keep everyone from discovering that her loser husband has lost his job.
And let’s not forget Alice (Anne B. Davis)! Alice finally married Sam The Butcher but their marriage is on the rocks….
Could the Bradys be more cursed?
Luckily, Mike and Carol are pretty good at uncovering problems and fixing things. (Except, of course, for that time that Mike never figured out that Marcia was acting strange because she wanted to surprise him with his father of the year prize….) Unfortunately, Mike is a bit distracted because his latest building was constructed with cheap material. When an earthquake causes the building collapse, Mike takes it upon himself to rescue two trapped workers. (Most of this takes place off-screen, of course.) When an aftershock hits, it seems like Mike might never emerge from the tomb that he helped to design.
Much like the show that inspired it, A Very Brady Christmas is painfully earnest and …. well, it’s a little dumb. Of course, the main appeal of The Brady Bunch was always the unapologetic mix of earnestness and stupidity but it’s a bit different when all the Brady kids are grown up and they’re still acting just as dumb as they did when they were younger. Robert Reed looks annoyed. Florence Henderson is trouper and gives it her all. With the notable exception of Maureen McCormick, none of the kids grew up to be particularly good actors. (In all fairness, Barry Williams is likable when he makes fun of himself but, in this film, he’s somewhat stiff as the most successful of the Brady kids.) That said, the family singing a Christmas carol while waiting to discover whether or not Mike is dead is one of those moments that is somehow both silly and effective at the same time. It’s pure Brady Bunch. To quote Tony Montana, it’s the yayo of nostalgia.
A Very Brady Christmas aired in 1988 and was enough of a rating success that it actually led to the Brady Bunch being (briefly) revived. Today, it’s impossible to watch the movie without imagining Gary Cole and Shelley Long as Mike and Carol Brady. Even the collapse of the building is no longer an effective dramatic moment due to it being referenced in The Brady Bunch Movie. When Mike does emerge from that collapsed building, you half expect him to say, “Wherever you go, there you are.”
In the end, the Bradys have a merry Christmas. I hope you have one too!
I did a lot of binge watching this week so the list below probably less impressive than it actually is. Anyway, here’s some thoughts on what I watched this week:
California Dreams (YouTube)
Yay! I’ve finally reaches season 3, which is what most people consider to be the start of “classic” California Dreams. I like season 3 because it’s the season that introduces the character to whom I most relate, Lorena.
Casey Anthony: Where The Truth Lies (Peacock)
I finally watched the Casey Anthony documentary on Peacock. This was basically a three-episode interview with Casey and the creepy weirdos who have been supporting her since she got away with murdering her daughter. Whoops, did I just show my bias? Oh well. Casey claims that she has spent the last ten years in hiding but now, she’s finally ready to tell her story and try to get people to blame her father for Caylee’s death. Of course, as many people have pointed out, Casey has frequently been seen at bars, concerts, and protest marches over the past ten years so I’m not really sure I’m buying into her social anxiety argument. Nor am I buying that Casey suddenly decided that it was time to present her side of the story. We all know that she got paid to appear in this documentary. Time are tough, especially when your claim to fame is that you probably got away with murdering your daughter.
Here’s a few thoughts I jotted down:
Casey cries a lot but she never actually gets any tears in her eyes.
Casey does a lot of performative cursing whenever she’s trying to convince the viewer that she was treated unfairly but it all sounds forced.
If nothing else, Casey obviously understands the power of presenting yourself as being a victim in today’s society.
After her acquittal, Casey was more or less adopted by two older men and two older women who worked on her defense team. The scenes in which they all meet and tell Casey how proud they are of her are creepy. One gets the feeling that Casey played on their paternal and maternal instincts in much the same way that she tries to manipulate the people watching the show.
The documentary makes one valid point, which is that the case against Casey was made up largely of innuendo and appeals to emotion. But then, the entire third episode uses the exact same technique to smear George Anthony as being a pedophile and a murderer. The documentary mentions that neither George nor Casey’s brother chose to respond to Casey’s accusations against them but, to be honest, why should they?
A few cops are allowed to explain why they think Casey is guilty. As opposed to when Casey speaks, they don’t get the benefit of heroic music playing in the background during their interviews. As well, there are no animated recreations of the police’s theory of what happened. Casey, however, not only tells her side but is helped by animated recreations of her story.
Not mentioned during the program was the claim that lead defense attorney Jose Baez told one of his investigators that 1) he was sleeping with Casey and 2) Casey had confessed to murdering Caylee. Indeed, for all the time that the program spent detailing how the members of Casey’s defense team have “adopted” Casey, it appears that she’s no longer in contact with Jose Baez.
Also not mentioned was that a real-life woman named Zenaida Gonzalez received death threats due to Casey lying about where she had left Caylee.
I never thought I’d see a true crime documentary as one-sided and smarmy as A&E’s The Murder of Laci Peterson but Casey Anthony: Where The Truth Lies proved me wrong. Shame on everyone involved and shame on me for watching it.
Don’t Pick Up The Phone (Netflix)
This disturbing, 3-part documentary from Netflix took a look at the so-called Strip Search Phone Call Hoaxes of the 90s and the early aughts. For several years, someone repeatedly called fast food restaurants and, after claiming to be a cop, said that one of the female employees had been accused of theft and that it would be necessary for the managed to strip search them. A lot of managers saw through the hoax and hung up but, disturbingly, a large number of them followed the orders of the caller. (The film Compliancewas based on one such call.) This was a disturbing and sad documentary but an important one. It took a look at what happens when authority is blindly trusted. There’s very little people won’t do under the pretense of “just following orders.”
After watching Don’t Pick Up The Phone, I watched a 2009 episode of Law & Order: SVU that was inspired by the Strip Search Caller. Robin Williams played the caller. It was a pretty uneven episode, as SVU tends to be sometimes. Williams had some good moments but overall, it was a bit too heavy-handed. At one point, Williams’s caller became a political activist and appeared on Morning Joe. “Did you guys catch Morning Joe?” Captain Cragen asked his detectives and I had to laugh. I’m sure blue collar New York cops schedule their entire day around catching the MSNBC lineup.
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 California Dreams, which ran on NBC from 1992 to 1996. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
Finally, it’s time for season 3 and the Lorena Years! But, first, we’ve got one final season 2 episode to get out of the way….
Episode 2.18 “Indecent Promposal”
(Dir by Miguel Higeura, originally aired on February 5th, 1994)
Both the 2nd season and the school year are coming to an end! That means that it’s time for prom!
Tiffani can’t wait to go to the prom. Jake thinks the prom is stupid. When Glenn, one of Tiffani’s patients from her days as a candystriper, offers to take Tiffani to the prom as a friend and to arrange for the Dreams to have a permanent summer gig, Tiffani reluctantly agrees. Jake, however, can’t shake the feeling that Glenn is going to try to make a move on Tiffani, which is just what Glenn does. Glenn kisses Tiffani. Tiffany rejects Glenn. However, Jake (who has decide to come to the prom afterall), witnesses the kiss and he gets so upset that he and Tiffani break up. This would be a big emotional moment if there had been any consistency, during season 2, as to when Tiffani and Jake were actually dating. Since the episodes were shown out of order, Tiffani and Jake would be a couple one week and then single the next. As a result, it never really seemed like Jake and Tiffani were together in the first place.
The prom didn’t work out. That’s too bad. Fortunately, season 3 is right around the corner!
Episode 3.1 “The Unforgiven”
(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 10th, 1994)
Finally! The third season has begun! And with it, we get a new title sequence:
This is the season that marked the beginning of what most people consider to be classic California Dreams. Frustrated with his diminished role on the series, Brent Gore declined to return for season 3. As a result, Matt was written out of the series with the excuse that the Garrisons moved. The California Dreams soldiered on without him, with Jake now at the center of the band and the show.
When the Garrisons left, foreign exchange student Sam moved in with the Costa family and became best friends with my favorite character on the show, Lorena. Lorena Costa (played by Diana Uribe) is the character to whom I most relate on this show. We’re both of Spanish descent. (My grandmother was born in Spain.) We’ve both got good hair. We both love to dance. We both tend to refer to ourselves in the third person. Lorena’s the best character ever!
Lorena is willing to allow the Dreams to practice in her loft but the Dreams still have two huge problems. They don’t have a replacement for Matt. And they need $500 to get their equipment back from a pawnshop. Why is their equipment at a pawnshop? I’m not sure but somehow, it’s Sly’s fault.
Fortunately, Sly has a solution. His musically gifted cousin, Mark (Aaron Jackson), has moved to California. Unfortunately, Mark has never forgiven Sly for ruining a performance that he was giving at Carnegie Hall. Apparently, Mark was playing the William Tell Overture and Sly yelled, “Hi-ho, Silver, away!” The only way to get Mark to forgive Sly is for Mark to give the performance again without Sly ruining things. Unfortunately, for reasons that are never exactly clear, Sly once again yells, “Hi-ho, Silver, away!”
Well, I guess that’s it for the Dreams, right? Unfortunately, Sly has booked the Dreams to play at a party being given by one of Lorena’s friends. With Mark refusing to join the Dreams, Lorena’s friend’s boyfriend is planning on beating up Sly. To save his cousin’s life, Mark agrees to forgive Sly, join the Dreams, and play the party with them.
I have to admit that I’m a little surprised that it took the Dreams that long to find a replacement for Matt. Considering that the Dreams already had a following at the end of the second season, I would imagine they would have a lot of people wanting to join the band. Maybe they’re all scared of getting on Jake’s bad side. Well, no matter. Things work out in the end!
As for the episode itself, it succeeds in doing what it needed to do. It introduces the viewers to Lorena and Mark and let’s everyone know what the show’s new direction is going to be. The humor is overly broad but the cast has genuine chemistry and Michael Cade’s portrayal of Sly attempting to fake sincerity while apologizing is genuinely funny.
Billy (Dylan LaRay) lives in Chicago and, at first glance, he’s typical of the many anonymous young men who we see everyday, working in dead-end jobs and just trying to make it day-to-day without having to deal with too much trouble. Billy works at a meatpacking plant, for a condescending boss who brags about being able to pay his daughter’s Princeton tuition while, at the same time, telling Billy that he needs to work harder sweeping up the place. “Do you think my daughter got into Princeton by taking sick days?” the boss asks, not seeming to realize that Billy will never be going to Princeton regardless of how many hours he spends pushing his broom around the warehouse. Indeed, Billy dropped out of school a few years ago. His mother, Gina (Lynn Lowry of I Drink Your Blood and Crazies fame), is suffering from Parkinson’s-related dementia and Billy is constantly rushing home to check on her. Billy never knows if he’s going to be embraced or attacked when he steps through his front door. Billy takes a daily regimen of pills to keep his mind stable. He obsessively washes and sanitizes his hands. He needs everything to be in its proper place but he lives in an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world.
The one thing that Billy has going for him is that he’s an artist. He’s created an entire fictional world through his drawings, one in which a group of people escape from a dying Earth but then continue to make the exact same mistakes in their new home. His mother’s maid, Myra (Jess Paul), even suggests that Billy should try to get his work published but Billy is resistant. His art is his escape and, though it’s never specifically stated, one gets the feeling that it’s an escape that he wants to keep only for himself. If Billy ever gets out of this world, he’s not planning on taking anyone along with him.
Billy is haunted by the things that he sees as he walks to and from work. Death, whether represented by a dead rodent under a car or by the run-down neighborhood in which he lives, seems to be all-around. After a rat invades his room and bites him, Billy is rushed to the hospital and, despite his frantic protests, he’s injected with the rabies vaccine. (The film’s use of rabies and it’s close-up of a hypodermic needle piercing Billy’s skin will remind some viewers of another Lynn Lowry film, I Drink Your Blood.) Whenever Billy is alone, he sees a hole growing on his arm, one that is full of coarse hair, almost as if there is something living within Billy’s skin. Fang mixes Cronenbergian body horror with visions of Romero-style urban decline. Billy’s Chicago is almost as run-down and bleak as Romero’s Philadelphia was in Martin. The stark imagery leaves little doubt that Billy, at the young age of 23, has basically advanced as far as he’s going to advance in the world. He’s hit a dead end and Billy’s sudden visions of open wounds, vacuous comedians, and rats would seem to suggest that, if there is another world out there, it’s not much of an improvement on the one in which Billy is leaving. Much like the characters in his artwork, Billy is trapped in a never-ending cycle of mistakes and decay.
Fang is a well-directed, well-acted, and well-visualized portrayal of life on the fringes of society, one that captures both the timeless theme of loneliness and the uniquely paranoid atmosphere of today. Though the COVID fears of the past two years are never explicitly mentioned, it’s hard not to think of them as Billy obsessively washes and sanitizes his hands and as he panics over getting the rabies shot. Billy, like so many people today, feels lost and powerless and even his fantasy of escape is tempered by the knowledge that a fantasy can still go wrong. Dylan LaRay does a good job of capturing Billy’s fear and his anger and Jess Paul is sympathetic as one of the few people to actually cares about what Billy and his mother are going through. Lynn Lowry steals the film, playing Billy’s mother as someone who is both frightening and heart-breakingly sad. Much like Billy, she’s no longer is control of her fears and her actions. Fang is a film that captures the horrors of everyday life.
Through the Shattered Lens 