Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.4 “Tails I Live, Heads You Die”

Posted on May 17, 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, a flip of the coin leads to tragedy!

Episode 2.4 “Tails I Live, Heads You Die”

(Dir by Mark Sobel, originally aired on October 21st, 1988)

Finally, Jack, Micki, and Ryan have a night to relax. Jack does some reading while Micki poses for Ryan, who is apparently a sculptor now. Micki says that it’s unfortunate that Ryan is stuck having work at Curious Goods when he has so much artistic talent. Micki has a point, even if this is the first time that we’ve heard about Ryan’s artistic interests.

Suddenly, the phone rings. A reporter named Tom Hewitt (Bill MacDonald) is calling because he’s heard that Jack is an expert in the occult. Tom says that he’s tracked down a Satanic cult that is planning on doing something big. He tells Jack where he can find all of the evidence that Tom has gathered over the course of his investigation. While Jack and Ryan head over to the bus depot where Tom has hidden his research, Micki stays at the store. As for poor old Tom, he ends up dead with the image of a bloody ram’s head imprinted on his forehead.

Looking through Tom’s papers and photographs, Jack discovers that the head of the Satanic cult is a taxidermist named Sylvan Winters (Colin Fox) and that Sylvan is in possession of a coin that is imbued with Satanic energy. When the owner of the coin flips it, it leads to the death of whoever is standing nearby. After the coin kills someone, it can be used to bring someone back to life.

First, Jack goes to the taxidermy shop with Ryan but the two of them fail to find the coin. Later, Jack returns with Micki and the two of them stumble on a Satanic ceremony. When they are spotted by Sylvan and the cultists, Jack and Micki make a run for it. Sadly, they get separated. While Jack manages to escape from the cultists, Micki is caught by Sylvan. Sylvan flips the coin and …. KILLS MICKI!

Seriously, Micki’s death took me totally by surprise and it actually left me feeling really upset. I’ve got red hair. Micki has red hair. Micki tends to be a skeptic. I tend to be a skeptic. Micki was pretty much me on this show! And now she’s dead? Agck!

Arriving at the taxidermy place, Ryan sobs over Micki’s body and then tells Jack that, after he gets the coin and destroys Sylvan, he is done with the cursed antiques business. Ryan says that he’s ready to live his life and he can’t handle losing anyone else close to him. (Remember that Ryan’s father was killed by a cursed pipe last season.)

Returning to the taxidermy studio, Ryan and Jack discover that Sylvan is planning on using the coin to raise two powerful warlocks and a witch so that they can combine their power to bring Satan into the world. However, Ryan and Jack steal Micki’s body from the morgue, put a mask on her to make her look like the witch that Sylvan wants to raise from the dead, and then the replace the witch’s body with Micki’s body. As a result, Sylvan brings Micki back to life. (Ryan and Jack’s plan is incredibly complicated and I’m kind of surprised that they were able to pull it off. But who cares as long as Micki is no longer dead.) Satan gets angry, the taxidermist studio collapses. and Ryan grabs the coin and flips it in front of Sylvan. Sylvan dies but the coin is still out there.

But no matter! The important thing is that Micki comes back to life! Yay! And Ryan decides not to leave Curious Goods, mostly because he’s in love with his cousin, though that’s something that the show rarely acknowledges.

By the time this episode came around, Robey, Chris Wiggins, and John D. LeMay had developed into a tight enough ensemble that Ryan’s tears and Jack’s anger over the death of Micki felt very powerful and very real. As well, Colin Fox was a wonderfully hissable villain. He was so smug that I couldn’t wait to see him get his comeuppance. This was an excellent episode.

Next week, Ryan falls in love with a cursed violinist because Ryan is never allowed to be happy for long.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th The Series 2.3 “And Now The News”

Posted on May 10, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Jack is on vacation so Ryan and Micki try to retrieve an antique on their own. Near disaster ensues. I swear, why is Jack always running off? How can you take a vacation when your job is to literally save the world? You know who never got a decent vacation? Atlas.

Anyway, onto the episode….

Episode 2.3 “And Now The News”

(Dir by Bruce Pittman, originally aired October 14th, 1988)

With Jack on vacation, it falls to Micki and Ryan to track down the latest antique, a cursed radio that will reveal information to its owner as long as the owner uses the radio to kill a certain number of people. (The radio brings people’s greatest fears to life. So, if you’ve got a thing about snakes, watch out!) Micki and Ryan discover that the radio is currently in the possession of Dr. Avril Carter (Kate Trotter), who works at the local mental hospital and who is murdering patients so that the radio will help her with her research. Dr. Carter really wants to win that Nobel Prize.

Ryan and Micki really probably should have waited for Jack to come back because their attempts to get the radio back leads to one disaster after another. Ryan even manages to get electrocuted while trying to climb over the hospital’s security fence. Micki, meanwhile, does manage to get into the hospital but she is soon reminded that the majority of the patients are serial killers and perverts.

The best thing about this episode is that radio actually has a voice. Henry Ramer provides the voice of the “radio announcer,” who says stuff like, “And now the news …. after this murder” and such. At the end of the episode, it even taunts Dr. Carter when she fails to kill the required number of people and announces that Carter will never win a Nobel Prize. (The radio then proceeds to electrocute her.) In a nice touch, the announcer continues to talk to Ryan and Micki even when they’re taking it down to the vault. It offer to help them out in their quest, in return for a certain amount of murders. Micki and Ryan end up tossing the radio back and forth between the two of them. The episode even ends with a freeze frame of the radio in the air. Hopefully, they got it into the vault eventually.

This was a fun episode. The mental hospital was a atmospheric location, the radio was an inspired antique, and Kate Trotter gave a good performance as the villainous Dr. Carter. After two less than enthralling episodes, And Now The News was a definite return to everything that worked about the first season.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.2 “The Voodoo Mambo”

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Micki, Ryan, and Jack get involved in voodoo!

Episode 2.2 “The Voodoo Mambo”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 7th, 1988)

This episode opens with Micki and Ryan watching a street party that just happens to be taking place in front of Curious Goods. It’s a Haitian voodoo party and, judging from Micki and Ryan’s comments, it is apparently some sort of annual event that takes place wherever this show is supposed to be set.

(If Curious Goods was set in New Orleans, I could maybe buy this without giving it too much thought. But the show is filmed in Canada and, judging from the states that were specifically mentioned over the course of the first few episode, it appears that Curious Goods is meant to be located in the Northeast. How many voodoo street parties do you see in New Jersey?)

Micki and Ryan want to join the party but Jack insists that they first meet his old friend, Hedley (Joe Seneca). Hedely is a powerful voodoo priest and he has traveled to the city so that his daughter, Stacy (Rachael Crawford, who was on the first season of T & T until her character vanished), can become a priestess. Ryan is obviously attracted to Stacy but the attraction goes nowhere, which I guess is good considering that every woman who likes Ryan ends up dying in some terrible way.

Meanwhile, good-for-nothing Carl Walters (David Matheson) is in danger of losing the mansion that has been in his family’s possession ever since their days as plantation overlords. Carl finds a voodoo mask in the basement. Whenever he puts the mask on, the spirit of a voodoo priestess named Laotia (Suzanna Coy) rips out someone’s throat. Laotia wants to rip out the throats of the city’s top voodoo priests so that she can gain their powers. Carl agrees to help because part of the deal is that Carl will get what he wants as well. I’m not sure what Carl wants, though. Money, I guess. But it doesn’t matter because, of course, Laotia is really only concerned with what she wants.

This episode had some atmospheric moments, especially in the scenes featuring the big party outside of Curious Goods. There’s also some black-and-white footage of actual voodoo ceremonies that is randomly inserted throughout the episode. I assume that black-and-white footage is meant to be a flashback or something like that, though the show never really makes it all that clear. That said, this episode was a bit on the dull side. Carl and Laotia were not particularly interesting and this is the second episode this season to feature an old friend of Jack’s. (That wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that we’re only two episodes in.) This episode felt a bit tired, as if someone entered the production office and shouted, “I need an episode about Voodoo! You’ve got 48 hours!”

Next week, hopefully, thing will be a bit more interesting.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the second season beings with the return of Uncle Lewis!

(For a dead guy, Lewis sure does return a lot.)

Episode 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on September 26th, 1988)

The second season begins in much the same way that the first one ended, with Uncle Lewis (played, as always, be R.G. Armstrong) trying to re-enter the world of the living.

This time, he’s doing it through mirrors. According to Jack, a mirror that “witnesses” an occult ceremony becomes a doorway to the dark realms that sit between Heaven and Hell. Lewis lives in the dark realms and, since he was a big fan of mirrors, his reflection occasionally appears in the a mirror at Curious Goods. When Micki and Ryan find evidence that Lewis owned a house, they ignore Jack’s warning and go to investigate on their own.

They discover that the decrepit house is being used as a hideout by Buddy (Charle Landry) and Eddie (Louis Ferreira), two criminals who have just held up a gas station and killed an attendant. Buddy wants to go straight and was pretty much coerced into taking part in the robbery. Eddie, on the other hand, is a total psychopath who ties up both Micki and Ryan and laughs when they try to warn him about Uncle Lewis.

The house, not surprisingly, is full of mirrors and soon, Buddy gets sucked into one of them. When Buddy returns to the house, he’s possessed and shooting electricity from his fingertips. He kills Eddie and then chases Ryan and Micki around both the house and the dark realms.

Jack and his friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) watch all of this reflected in a shard of reflective glass that they found at the antique store. Whenever things start to get really exciting or scary at the mansion, we cut to Jack and Rashid staring at shard of glass and saying, “Get out of there, Ryan!”

Eventually, Jack goes to the house, enters the dark realms and distracts Lewis long enough for Ryan and Micki to destroy all of the mirrors in the house. Jack manages to escape just in time, Buddy apparently become unpossessed and the ghost of Uncle Lewis declares that he will return. Lewis’s constant shouts of “I’ll be back” are such a cliche that they can’t help but be a bit charming, especially since R.G. Armstrong always seems to be having so much fun chewing the scenery whenever he shows up as Lewis.

The second season premiere did an effective job of reminding old viewers and informing new viewers about what the show was about. The haunted house was an effectively creepy location and the dark realms were nicely atmospheric. I do wish that the premiere had not once again deployed the tired idea of Micki and Ryan ignoring Jack’s warning about impulsively investigating something on their own. I mean, that has never worked out for them. You would think that Ryan and Micki would have learned the lesson by now. Otherwise, this episode got the second season off to a good start.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, season one comes to a close with a trip down nightmare lane.

Episode 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

(Dir by Mac Bradden, originally aired on July 25th, 1988)

It’s clip show time!

To be fair, the first season finale of Friday the 13th does come up with a clever way to justify being a clip show. Micki and Ryan get trapped in the vault of Curious Goods with an ancient, Egyptian urn that causes people to confront the memories of their worst fears. Not surprisingly all of Micki and Ryan’s worst fears are connected to the cursed antiques that they’ve spent the past year seeking out and dealing with.

So, once again, we get to see the cursed doll that started the series. We see the weirdo wandering around with his cursed cupid statue. We see the vampire. Oddly enough, we don’t see the pirate ghosts or the gangster who killed Micki’s boyfriend, even though both of those events were very traumatic for Micki. We don’t see the magic pipe that killed Ryan’s father, despite the fact that episode ended with Ryan in tears. We don’t see the newscaster who killed Ryan’s girlfriend or the cursed quilt that nearly caused Ryan to get burned at the stake. In short the clips seem to be a little bit arbitrary and they also all seem to come from early in the season, which leads me to suspect that this episode was put together long before it actually aired.

The cursed urn and the flashbacks are all a part of yet another attempt by Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) to return to the world of living. Fortunately, Jack’s friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) shows up and helps to push Lewis back into the netherworld. It’s always nice when one of Jack’s associates shows up to help. It creates the feeling that there’s an entire magical underground out there, all dealing with cursed antiques and malevolent spirits. While Ryan and Micki deal with their bad memories, Jack and Rashid are the ones who save the day and it makes for a nice conclusion for the first season. Our heroes may have started out as skeptical amateurs but now they’re a strong team. Micki and Ryan know that they can count on Jack, which is good considering that almost everyone else that that they get close to ends up dead.

The first season of Friday the 13th: The Series was pretty good. The horror was effective. The cast had a lot of chemistry. With a few exceptions, the cursed antiques were all interesting and worked in genuinely clever ways. The show had a sense of humor but it never let it get in the way of mayhem. Even the fact that the show claimed to be set in America even though it was clearly filmed in Canada and filled with Canadian actors only served to increase the dream-like atmosphere.

Will the second season live up to the first? We’ll start to find out next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.25 “What A Mother Wouldn’t Do”

Posted on April 12, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, a crib from the Titanic demands blood!

Episode 1.25 “What A Mother Wouldn’t Do”

(Dir by Neill Fearnley, originally aired July 18th, 1988)

After being told that her unborn child should be aborted because it’s just going to die anyway, Leslie Kent (Lynne Cormack) seeks peace inside an antique shop called Curious Goods. The shop’s owner, Lewis Vedredi (R.G. Armstrong), shows her an antique crib that he says was on the Titanic. Leslie is intrigued by the crib and, six months later, she is overjoyed when her friends reveal that they have purchased the crib for her as a gift. Seriously, who wouldn’t want a crib that was once used by a baby who probably drowned in icy water when the Titanic sank?

The crib does have a special power. It can cure sick babies! Of course, the cure only works if the crib’s owner first kills seven people in a body of water. After baby Allison is born, Leslie and her husband Martin (Michael Countryman) start killing random people in an effort to save their baby’s life.

It presents quite a moral quandary. If Micki and Ryan don’t retrieve the cursed crib, Leslie and Martin will continue to kill. However, if they do get the crib, Allison will die. Are they prepared to sacrifice an innocent baby just to get their hands on the crib? To its credit, Friday the 13th: The Series didn’t shy away from these questions. In this episode, the villains are not unsympathetic. Martin hates to kill but he’s trying to save his baby. As for Leslie, the episode’s title says it all. What wouldn’t a mother do to save the life of her baby? As disturbing as the murders may be, they’re nowhere near as frightening as the cold and clinical way that Leslie is ordered to get an abortion at the start of the episode.

In the end, both Martin and Leslie end up sacrificing themselves to save Allison’s life. But Allison disappears from her crib, leaving a terrified Micki to wonder if the evil within the crib has taken her. Fear not. As the final shot show, her babysitter Debbie (Robyn Stevan), grabbed the now healthy baby from the crib and then got on bus to start a new life. The baby looks up at her and smiles for the first time. Awwwww!

This was a good episode, with Micki and Ryan both coming to realize that the owners of the antiques are often as much victims as those they harm. Chris Wiggins dif good job of portraying Jack’s single-minded determination to find all of Lewis’s cursed antiques while Lynne Cormack and Michael Countryman were poignant as two villains for whom you couldn’t help but feel some sympathy.

Next week, season one comes to an end!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.24 “Pipe Dreams”

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Ryan discovers that Uncle Louis’s latest victim is his own father!

Episode 1.24 “Pipe Dreams”

(Dir by Zale Dalen, originally aired on July 11th, 1988)

Ryan has been invited to the wedding of Connie (Marion Gilsenan) and Ray Dallion (Michael Constantine). Ray is Ryan’s estranged father. As Ryan explains it to Micki, this is only the latest of Ray’s many marriages. Ray has spent his entire life trying to get rich and he often neglected his son while pursuing his dream. Ray will do anything to get rich. Ryan feels that there are more important things than money, like tracking down cursed antiques. Ryan decides to go the wedding but he brings his cousin Micki along with him for moral support. I mean, considering that Micki has just lost two potential husbands in a row, why wouldn’t she want to attend a wedding?

As the result of inventing a new type of gun, Ray has come into money. Ryan is horrified that his father would get rich off of weaponry but Ray explains that he was inspired by Uncle Louis. If Louis could get rich just by running a rinky dink antique store, why can’t Ray get rich from his inventions? Ryan explains that Uncle Louis got rich by selling cursed antiques and selling his soul to the Devil and now, Ryan and Micki spend all of their time traveling around the country (which is totally Canada, regardless of what the show occasionally claims) and trying to undo Louis’s evil. Ray doesn’t seem to be particularly surprised by any of this.

Ray has an antique of his own, a pipe that Louis gave to him. Whenever Ray smokes the pipe, it produces an orange smoke that disintegrates anyone that it surrounds. You know that gun that Ray invented? Well, it turns out that he didn’t actually invent it. Instead, he stole it after using his magic pipe to kill the original inventor. When Jack shows up for the wedding and informs Ryan of all of this, Ryan cannot believe it. He may be estranged from his father but Ryan can’t accept that he’s turned evil. But, as we all know from previous episodes, using the cursed antiques is like getting hooked on drugs. Once you use it once, you become addicted to using it again and again.

This is yet another episode of Friday the 13th that ends with a freeze frame of someone sobbing. In this case, it’s Ryan crying. As easy as it id to poke fun at how often Ryan and Micki end up either sobbing or staring at the camera with a forlorn look on their face, it’s actually a sign of the show’s intelligence that it realizes and acknowledges that dealing with cursed antiques is going to take a mental and emotional toll on someone. Both Ryan and Micki has lost a lot of people this season. In this episode, Ryan loses his father and, due to the performances of John D. LeMay and Michael Constantine, it definitely carries an emotional punch. Like so many of the “villains” on this show, Ray was not inherently evil. Instead, he was a man who lost his soul due to Louis’s evil deal with the Devil. The best episodes of Friday the 13th are tragedies and that’s certainly the case with this episode.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week …. OH MY GOD, IT’S JOHN STOCKWELL!

Episode 1.23 “Badge of Honor”

(Dir by Michelle Manning, originally aired on July 5th, 1988)

Victor Haas (David Proval) is a club owner and also the head of Canada’s most violent ring of counterfeiters. Detective Russ Sharko (Val Avery) is obsessed with taking Victor down. Victor attempts to dissuade Sharko by using a car bomb to take out Sharko’s wife. That just makes Sharko more determined. However, when Sharko’s obsession leads to a bust-gone-wrong and a dead cop, Sharko is kicked off the force. Sharko now has to take Victor and his man down on his own. Fortunately, he happens to own an antique sheriff’s badge. When he pins the badge on someone, that person suffers a violent death.

This sounds like a job for Micki and Ryan. (Jack, again, is out of town.) However, Micki and Ryan are distracted by the arrival of Tim (played by one of my favorite 80s leading men, the superhot John Stockwell). Tim is Micki’s ex-boyfriend and soon, he and Micki are picking up where they left off. (When the season began, Micki was engaged so I guess Tim must have been the boyfriend before the fiancé.) Ryan gets jealous because — surprise! — he’s kind of in love with Micki. Of course, just a few episodes ago, Ryan was in love with a preacher’s daughter. And then, after that, he was in love with Catherine, who was murdered by an evil journalist. Ryan seems to fall in love easily so….

Actually, wait a minute. RYAN AND MICKI ARE COUSINS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, RYAN!? Of course, they’re not first cousins but still …. it just doesn’t seem right!

Anyway, at first, it seems like Ryan might be correct to be suspicious of Tim because Tim approaches Victor and offers to help him with his counterfeiting ring. But then we learn that Tim is with the FBI! Why is the FBI working in Canada? I guess maybe the show’s producers were still trying to convince viewers that Friday the 13th took place in America, despite the fact that all of the directors and most of the actors were Canadian and the show itself was clearly filmed in wintry Canada. (This episode is a bit of an oddity in that all three of the main guest stars — David Proval, John Stockwell, and Val Avery — were born in the Lower 48.) The important thing is that Tim’s a good guy but — uh oh! — Tim also gets shot and dies at the end of the episode. Micki is a little bit sad but Ryan is kind of relieved because it means he’ll have a chance to hook up with his cousin….

SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL!?

This episode got a little bogged down with all of the counterfeiting stuff. It felt more like an episode of Miami Vice than Friday the 13th. The badge was also a bit of a boring antique because it didn’t really do anything other than kill people. Other antiques changed the personality of the people who owned them and demanded a quid pro quo for their powers. This antique is far more simple and kind of dull.

Oh well. It’s a less-than-memorable episode but John Stockwell was hot and I’m a bit disappointed that he apparently won’t be making a return appearance.

Next week, we meet Ryan’s father and discover that he’s not a good man at all!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.22 “The Pirate’s Promise”

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, there’s something in the fog! Can Micki and Ryan stop the horror of the thing in the fog? FOG!

Episode 1.22 “The Pirate’s Promise”

(Dir by Bill Corcoran, originally aired on June 27th, 1988)

In the 18th century, a group of pirates killed their captain, Angus McBride, and stole his treasure. They used the money to start a seaside village in New England and to become respectable citizens. Over two hundred years later, the spirit of Captain McBride is hanging out in the fog and desiring vengeance on the descendants of his crew.

Hmmm …. this sounds familiar.

This episode has more than a little in common with John Carpenter’s The Fog. This time, as opposed to it being the result of an anniversary curse, it’s a crazed lighthouse keeper named Joe Fenton (Cedric Smith) who summons the ghost of Captain McBride with a cursed foghorn but otherwise, much of the plot and the show’s imagery feels as if it was lifted directly from Carpenter’s classic horror film. Captain McBride emerges from the fog several times during the episode. He kills his victim’s with a hook and then tosses a few coins at Joe.

Micki and Ryan show up in town to retrieve the foghorn. (This is another episode in which Jack is not present.) It’s interesting how these cursed antiques often tend to end up in small towns, like the one in this episode or The Quilt of Hathor. The previous few episodes featured Ryan having to say goodbye to someone as a result of a cursed item. This time, it’s Micki whose heart is broken when the sweet proprietor of the local history museum is stabbed with a saber while trying to protect her. The episode ends with Micki sobbing while Ryan tries to comfort her, which is quite a change from how these things usually go. For once, Micki is the one who gets to show emotion while Ryan is the one who takes a more pragmatic approach to dealing with the horrors of the cured antiques.

As for the episode, it wasn’t bad. Director Bill Corcoran did a good job of creating a properly ominous atmosphere and Cedric Smith was perfectly creepy as the evil lighthouse owner. The low-budget was evident by the fact that the time itself seemed to be nearly deserted. Even though the town was described as being small, it still seems like it should have been home to more than just a handful of people and I found myself wondering if maybe the show decided to save money by not hiring extras. That minor quibble aside, this was an effective episode as long as you were willing to overlook the plot’s similarity to Carpenter’s film.

Next week, hopefully, Jack will come back and maybe Micki will have cheered up. Someone likeable dies in every episode so you would think they would be used to it by now.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.21 “Double Exposure”

Posted on March 15, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, a reporter uses a cursed camera to make the news!

Episode 1.21 “Double Exposure”

(Dir by Neill Fearnley, originally aired on May 16th, 1988)

As you may remember, at the end of the previous episode, Ryan reluctantly left the Pentite Community and returned to Toronto so that he could continue to help Micki and Jack track down the cursed antiques. When he left, he promised Laura that he would always love her.

Well, that didn’t last long. This episode opens with a Ryan in a photobooth, taking pictures of himself and his new girlfriend, Cathy! RYAN, YOU CAD! Now, in Ryan’s defense, Cathy is played by Catherine Disher (who previously played the supercool Sophie in the first season of T and T) and she seems like a much better match for Ryan than the somewhat dour Laura. Cathy and Ryan actually have fun together! Of course, this is Friday the 13th and that means that all fun is temporary.

There’s a serial killer stalking Toronto and Ryan just happens to witness him murdering his latest victim in an alley. To Ryan’s shock, the killer appears to Winston Knight (Gary Frank), a television news anchorman who is currently getting huge rating because of his reporting on the killings. But how can that be? When Ryan witnesses the murder, Winston is live on the air, delivering the news. Winston even gets a phone call from someone claiming to be the murderer.

Winston speculates that the killer might be an obsessed fan who is wearing a Winston Knight mask. Of course, the truth of the matter is that Winston is using a cursed camera to take a picture of himself. The picture then turns into a doppelganger of Winston. The Doppelganger commits a murder, Winston reports on the tragedy, and then, after five hours, Winston sets the negative on fire and the Doppelganger is destroyed. If Winston doesn’t destroy the negative after five hours, Winston will be the one who is destroyed and the Doppelganger will become human. It all sounds a bit complicated, to be honest. You have to wonder how Winston managed to figure all of this out.

Anyway, the important thing is that Winston is eventually exposed as the murderer. While trying to kill Ryan at the antique store, the Doppelganger is stabbed by Ryan. It doesn’t hurt the Doppelganger until Winston fails to burn the negative and vanishes from existence. The Doppelganger becomes human and then promptly drops dead of his wound. Ryan conquers another cursed antique but, unfortunately, not before the Doppelganger murders Cathy. The episode ends not on a note of triumph but instead with Ryan looking at a picture of Cathy and tearing up.

Wow, what a dark episode! Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that, on this show, Ryan is basically a very naive and very earnest teenager. He falls in love easily, he always believes that things will turn out for the best, and his heart is broken nearly every time he has to retrieve an antique. Jack is used to the pain and Micki is a bit of a cynic but Ryan is still trying to balance happiness with the psychological damage that comes from seeing the worst things possible on a weekly basis. John D. LeMay and Catherine Disher were adorable together and it was hard not to get a bit upset when Cathy fell victim to the Doppelganger. This episode was sad but undeniably effective.

Poor Ryan!