Tag Archives: review

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 2.15 “Black Pearl”

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 Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, the bicycle mayhem continues.

Episode 2.15 “Black Pearl”

(Dir by Terence H. Winkless, originally aired on January 5th, 1997)

TC arrests a woman named Alana (Angela Shelton) on drug and assault charges, just to discover that she’s an undercover DEA agent.  TC fears that Alana is in over her head and he tells Alana’s superior, Enright (John Michael Bolger) that he needs to pull her out of the operation.  Enright is like, “Whatever, bicycle boy.”

And, to be honest, I think Enright kind of has a point.  Why are the bicycle cops always trying to tell other law enforcement agencies what to do?  Every episode, either TC or Palermo and Chris gets a really angry look in their eyes and starts barking out orders at people they barely know.  It’s bad enough that they ride bicycles.  Do they have to act like a bunch of self-righteous pricks as well?

Speaking of bicycles, Victor has to get recertified to be a bike cop.  Uh-oh, sounds like Victor could lose his job!  Even worse, Victor’s partner in this episode is Chris so not only is Victor in danger of getting fired but he has to spend an entire week listening to Chris put him down.  Seriously, there are few characters in the history of television that I dislike as much as I dislike Chris Kelly.  Chris is the type who dismisses everyone’s problems before then launching into her hundredth monologue about how much it sucks going from being an Air Force pilot to a bike cop.

Victor trains with Hans Rhey.  In this episode, everyone is like, “Oh my God, Hans Rey!”  I had no idea who Hans Rey was.  I looked him up after this episode and apparently, he was a superstar on the bicycle circuit.  Hans does a lot of clunky bike tricks  As was so often the case withe professional athletes who played themselves on shows like this, he wasn’t much of an actor.  If anything, this episode reminded me of how stupid most people look riding their bicycles in the middle of the street.

Victor gets recertified.  Alana ends up dead.  Presumably, TC’s upset but since the actor playing him was only capable of one fascial expression, it can be hard to tell.  In the end, the real tragedy remains how dorky everyone looks on the bicycles.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.5 “Roarke’s Sacrifice/The Butler’s Affair”

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.  Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites.  Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week, Roarke is haunted by a past love.

Episode 7.5 “Roarke’s Sacrifice/The Butler’s Affair”

(Dir by Cliff Bole, originally aired on November 12th, 1983)

This is an odd episode.  Both of the stories deal with love.  In one of them, Lee Meriwether plays a woman who is in love with her butler, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.  She comes to Fantasy Island with a group of friends, all of whom are very judgmental about the idea of Meriwether dating a member of the help.  Mr. Roarke deals with the situation by threatening to reveal all of their secrets.  He explains that he does a thorough background check on everyone who comes to Fantasy Island.  I’m not sure if I buy that because some really bad folks have come to the Island.  Anyway, this story ends with Zimbalist starting to loosen up and Meriwether saying that she was going to continue to train him to be her boyfriend once they returned to the mainland.  I’m not sure if this is so much a love story as much as it’s a “I want to have sex with someone who I pay so they can’t ever say no” story.

The other story is a bit more interesting.  Julie Mars (Cyd Charisse, who I adore) is a dancer who walks with a cane.  It turns out that she and Roarke have been in love for years and the implication is that Roarke spent time with her off of the Island.  This is really a big deal.  It goes against everything that has always been implied about Roarke in the past.  Roarke never leaves the Island, that’s what we believed.  It turns out we were wrong.  He’s not only left the Island before but he’s fallen in love.  Julie’s fantasy is to be able to dance again.  Roarke grants her fantasy and Edmond Rome (Cesar Romero) wants to puts her in a show.  Roarke knows that the only way Julie can continue to dance is if she forgets the love that she has for Roarke.  That doesn’t quite make sense but Roarke just goes with it.  She leaves the Island, acting as if Roarke is just a friendly acquaintance as opposed to being the love of her life.

That was sad!  What made it especially sad is that Roarke doesn’t really have anyone to talk about all of this.  Tattoo was close enough to being an equal that Roarke could open up to him.  Lawrence is just a butler.  Some people confide in their butler.  Some people — as seen in this very episode — fall in love with their butler.  Roarke, however, is lost without Tattoo.

Poor Roarke!

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 4.8 “Wheels of Justice”

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 Prime!

This week, not Ponch can smile his way out of the darkness.

Episode 4.8 “Wheels of Justice”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on December 21st, 1980)

The streets of Los Angeles are dangerous in this week’s episode.

Stan West (Basil Hoffman) is a reckless driver who is constantly causing accidents by driving too fast and making unsafe lane changes.  He gets away with it because he keeps changing his name.

Arthur Holmes (Joshua Bryant) is a drunk who Jon and Ponch have pulled over several times.  Arthur gets away with it by claiming, after every accident, that his wife was the one driving,  Denise (Christine Belford) goes along with it, even though she hates the fact that she’s enabling her husband.

A group of cheerleaders drive around and do their cheers while driving!

Finally, a gas leak at the hospital leads to all the newborn babies being loaded into an ambulance for transport.  When the ambulance is side-swiped by Stan, the babies end up at the station.  Getraer gives everyone a lesson on how to properly soothe a crying baby.  It’s cute but it’s also so manipulative that it leaves you feeling oddly used.  But, hey, at least it’s cute!

This episode of CHiPs took a serious turn towards the end when the drunk driver swerved to avoid the cheerleaders and the end result is that his wife was thrown from the car and killed.  When the car was shown crashing in slow motion, the wife’s mannequin actually fell out of the car.  While I imagine that was probably not planned, it still created a memorably macabre image.  In the end, Arthur ends up sobbing while Denise lies dead just a few feet away from him.  That’s a pretty dark ending for an episode of CHiPs.  Not even a quick scene of the officers holding the babies could change the fact that this was a really downbeat episode.

And you know what?  There’s nothing wrong with that.  Driving drunk is selfish, stupid, and dangerous and CHiPs deserves some credit for not holding back.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 4.15 “Indian Wars”

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 can be purchased on Prime!

This week, Castillo goes undercover!

Episode 4.15 “Indian Wars”

(Dir by Leon Ichaso, originally aired on February 26th, 1988)

The Vice Squad is trying to take down Colombian drug dealer Acosta (Joe Lala).  Acosta does not trust gringos so Crockett can’t pretend to be Burnett this week.  Instead, he’s temporarily promoted to head of the Vice Squad while Castillo goes undercover.  Castillo explains to his bosses that, as a Latino, he’s the only one who can do it.  I’m not sure that I really buy Castillo’s argument.  Do you mean to tell me that, in Miami, there’s only one Latino detective working Vice?  If that’s true, someone really needs to talk to whoever is in charge of giving the detectives their assignments.

Acosta is soon taken out of the picture and replaced by the even more evil Levec (played by the great character actor, Joe Turkel).  Castillo discovers that both Acosta and Levec are being attacked by a paramilitary force that is made up of Native Americans.  Tubbs goes undercover as an anthropologist and discovers that the local Indian chief has made a deal with the drug dealers and his son (Patrick Bishop) is not happy about it.  However, it turns out that the chief’s son is actually an aspiring drug lord himself and that his whole vigilante act is really just his way of getting rid of the competition.

This was not a bad episode, particularly when compared to some of the other episodes that aired during the fourth season.  Joe Turkel made for a great villain and the scenes of the Indians attacking the drug dealers were properly atmospheric.  The episode even includes a small homage to the final showdown from Scarface.  Philip Michael Thomas was mildly amusing when he pretended to be a nerdy anthropologist.  Meanwhile, Don Johnson was barely in this episode at all.  This episode was all about Edward James Olmos’s smoldering intensity as Castillo.

Again, it wasn’t a bad episode but it still felt like it was missing something.  As with so much of season 4, it felt like the show was just growing through the motions.  In this case, it went through those motions with a bit more skill than it did in some of the season’s other installments.  This episode didn’t feature any aliens or any bull semen.  That made it a definite improvement over at least two season 4 episodes.  Still, this episode largely felt like Miami Vice on autopilot.

Retro Television Review: Degrassi High “School’s Out”

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 Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991!  The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi

School’s out!  What does the future hold for the students of Degrassi High?

“School’s Out”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on January 5th, 1992)

The series finale of Degrassi High left viewers with a few unanswered questions, particularly concerning the future of Joey and Caitlin’s relationship.  Indeed, when the series ended, the majority of the characters still had another year left in high school.

School’s Out, a television movie that aired on CBC Television in 1992, was an attempt to bring closure to the Degrassi story.  Starting with everyone but the perennially academically challenged Joey Jeremiah graduating, School’s Out deals with the final summer before everyone leaves for college or adulthood.  Joey asks Caitlin to marry him and, when she says she’s not sure that she’s ready, he instead cheats on her with Tessa Campanelli.  Joey loses his virginity to Tessa.  Caitilin eventually loses her virginity to Joey (and, at the time, assumes that she’s his first as well).  Snake does not lose his virginity over the summer and spends almost the entire film in a funk about it.  Wheels becomes an alcoholic and ends up in prison after he crashes his car and kills a kid.  Lucy, who was Wheels’s passenger, ends up blind and crippled.  Simon and Alexa finally get married.  Snake, meanwhile, drops the first F-bomb ever heard on Canadian television.  Caitlin drops the second.  “You were fucking Tessa Campanelli!?” As for Tessa, she ends up pregnant, has an abortion, and then apparently hops on a bus and vanishes.

Things got dark!

I’ve already reviewed School’s Out once.  It’s not only a classic Degrassi film but it’s a great teen film period.  Rewatching it, I truly was struck by just how incredibly dark things got in School’s Out.  Degrassi High had its share of dark moments but never to the extent as seen in School’s Out.  I mean, Wheels’s goes to prison!  Watching Degrassi High over the past few months, it was easy to see that Wheels was destined to eventually end up in some sort of trouble.  He was too angry and too self-centered and not willing to take responsibility for his actions.  There was a reason why, even before the events in School’s Out, Snake was distancing himself from his former friend.  Still, Wheels is a character who grew up over the course of the show.  It’s still strange to think that the quiet “good kid” from Degrassi Junior High eventually grew up, developed a drinking problem, killed a child, and was sentenced to prison.  As easy as it is to dislike Wheels, it’s still hard not to mourn who he could have been if a few things had just gone differently in his life.

That actions have consequences has always been one of the main themes of Degrassi.  By lying and cheating on Caitlin, Joey not only loses the love of his life (albeit temporarily) but Tessa herself is left to suffer alone.  Lucy, with a brilliant future ahead of her, makes the decision to get into a car being driven by the drunk Wheels and, when we last see her, she’s in a hospital bed and unable to see.  School’s out and sadly, the students at Degrassi High can no longer escape the real world consequences of their actions.

School’s Out was meant to bring closure to Degrassi.  And it did, for nearly ten years.  Of course, all good things come back to life.  Degrassi: The Next Generation would premiere in 2001.  We’ll start looking at it next week.

Brad reviews THE LAST STAND (2013), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

After eight years of serving as Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger made his big comeback as an action movie star in director Kim Jee-woon’s THE LAST STAND (2013). Sure, he put in a little work on the first two EXPENDABLES movies, but those were really just glorified cameos. Here, Arnold was front and center for the film’s 107 minute running time. This was an exciting time for me, because like most action movie fans, I loved him and had truly missed seeing him consistently kicking butt and taking names on the big screen. I gladly made my way to the movie theater in January of 2013  for a large tub of ‘corn, a big Mr. Pibb, and the true return of an action megastar!!

In THE LAST STAND, Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens, a former LAPD narcotics officer who chose to leave the big city and take a job as the sheriff of the quiet, southern border town of Sommerton, Arizona. It won’t be quiet for long after notorious drug kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) makes a daring escape from FBI custody. Cortez immediately heads towards the border in a souped up Corvette where an advanced group of highly trained gunmen, led by Burrell (Peter Stormare), are waiting to help him cross. Cortez and his small army of mercenaries appear to be on a collision course with Sheriff Owens and his ragtag group of deputies, including Mike (Luis Guzman), Jerry (Zach Gilford), and Sarah (Jaimie Alexander). Knowing they’re outgunned and outmanned, Sheriff Owens asks for additional help from ex-military man and current drunk Frank Martinez (Rodrigo Santoro), as well as the crazy local gun nut Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville). Add to this mixture, FBI agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) and his team’s attempts to try to stop Cortez before he gets to Sommerton, and the stage is set for lots of action! 

I really liked THE LAST STAND when I saw it at the movie theater in 2013, and I really liked it again when I revisited the film this week. I made it a habit many years ago to not read reviews of a film before I go see it at the theater. I had found that reading potential negative comments could affect my viewing of a film, so I cut that out. As such, after totally enjoying myself with THE LAST STAND, I was surprised that the film wasn’t received very strongly by the audience or critical community, and I was even more surprised that it completely flopped at the box office, only bringing in a total of $12 million in the United States during its run. For me, the film delivered what I was looking for… Arnold Schwarzenegger kicking ass, spouting off some good one-liners, and outsmarting and outmuscling his much younger adversaries! No critic or keyboard warrior can take that away from me, as THE LAST STAND is an entertaining movie with a good cast. Heck, even the great Harry Dean Stanton pops in for a surprise cameo at the beginning of the action. 

I also appreciate the fact that THE LAST STAND is the American directorial debut of the great South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, who has directed some of my favorite South Korean films, including A BITTERSWEET LIFE (2005) and I SAW THE DEVIL (2010). His direction brings some Asian flair that results in stronger, more graphic violence, as well a penchant for jarring changes in tone between humorous character interplay and sometimes violent tragedy. In a movie designed primarily as a piece of entertainment, I appreciate those more over-the-top touches that lift it above the norm. 

Overall, I easily recommend THE LAST STAND to fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger and old-school action movies. It’s not a Schwarzenegger classic in the same way as movies like PREDATOR (1987), TERMINATOR 2 (1991), and TRUE LIES (1994), but it’s still a fun ride!