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!
This week, T.S Turner returns to the ring!
Episode 2.14 “The Contender”
(Dir by Alan Simmonds, originally aired on February 13th, 1989)
T.S. Turner meets Kevin Hart!
No, not that Kevin Hart.
Instead, the Kevin Hart in this show is a boxer and he’s played by an actor named Phillip Jarrett. (Kevin Hart, I immediately, noticed was very handsome for someone who made his living getting punched in the face by professionals. I checked with the imdb and I was not surprised to learn that Phillip Jarrett was a model before he went into acting.) Kevin Hart is a contender for the championship but his trainer has vanished. With the big fight coming up, Hart’s manager asks T.S. Turner to train him for the fight.
Kevin Hart turns out to be a boxer with an attitude. He shows up at Decker’s Gym with his entourage and is miffed to discover that Turner is running late. “What does T.S. stand for?” Hart demands to know, “Too Stupid?”
“Temporarily Sorry,” Turner says as he steps into the gym.
“Temporarily?”
“Yeah,” Turner growls, “I was sorry but now I’m not.”
Turner works hard to train Hart. Or, at least, it appears that he works hard. For the most part, we just see a montage of Hart doing physical stuff while Turner yells at him. Despite Turner’s efforts, Hart doesn’t even seem to care about the fight. He does care when someone takes a shot at him in the gym. Pressured by Turner, Hart finally confesses that he agreed to take a dive. He also says that all of his other fights were fixed as well. That’s why his former trainer ran away. He didn’t want to be involved with a boxer who was owned by the Canadian Mafia.
Turner doesn’t have any time for that attitude. He tells Hart that he has the talent to win the fight on his own. He also tells Hart that it’s time to fight like a man and win. Inspired by Turner’s words, Hart does just that. By the end of the show, Hart is the champ. I imagine he’s got the mob after him now but oh well. I mean, Sonny Liston reportedly upset the mob and he still managed to live a full and exciting life until his mysterious death at the age of 40. So, I’m sure boxing’s Kevin Hart will be fine and maybe, some day, he’ll change his mind about hosting the Oscars.
The way to make watching this episode entertaining is to pretend that Mr. T was playing Clubber Lang and not T.S Turner. Apparently, in an early draft of his script for Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone wrote a scene in which it would be revealed the Lang changed his ways and became a preacher after losing his rematch with Rocky. So, this episode of T and T — and really, the entire series — works best as Clubber Lang fan fiction. As Rocky said at the end of Rocky IV, “Everybody can change!”