Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a 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 entire series can be found on YouTube!

This week’s episode is a sad one.

Episode 3.17 “Jack-In-The-Box”

(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on April 23rd, 1990)

After her lifeguard father drowns, a young girl named Megan (Marsha Moreau) uses a cursed jack-in-the-box to get revenge of those who she blames for his death.  Seeing the jack in the box when it opens leads to people drowning.  A janitor drowns in a pool.  One guy drowns in a car wash.  The deaths are grisly but it brings back the spirit of Megan’s death father.  Or, at least, that’s what Megan thinks.  Personally, I think the spirt was a demon in disguise because some of the things he suggested were really out there.

This was a really sad episode.  In an amazing coincidence, Micki knew the lifeguard’s family and she spent most of this episode on the verge of tears.  Meanwhile, Megan’s mother dealt with her sadness by becoming an alcoholic and Megan killed  a number of people just so she could spend some time with her “father.”  This episode was well-acted and well-written and really not the right sort of thing for me to watch at a time when the one-year anniversary of my Dad’s passing is quickly approaching.  This was an episode that not only left Micki in tears but it left me in tears as well.

Okay, enough sadness!  This was a good episode.  The third season has been uneven and I still miss Ryan’s character but this episode showed that Friday the 13th was still capable of being effective even as the show came to a close.