Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 5.18 “Double Blind”

Posted on July 26, 2026 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, Bayliss and Pembleton are partners again and again, they find themselves on two different sides of the same case.

Episode 5.18 “Double Blind”

(Dir by Uli Edel, originally aired on April 11th, 1997)

Where do I put my hate? Tim Bayliss asks his Uncle George (Robert Bornarth) at the end of this week’s episode.

Uncle George is the man who abused Bayliss when he was younger. The final few minutes of this episode features Bayliss tracking down George to the decrepit house that George calls home. Stepping aside, Bayliss sees that George is now an old man with a persistent cough. The messy house is full of empty liquor bottles. George is a pathetic, frightened old man and it’s obvious that he doesn’t have much longer to live.

Bayliss has just finished investigating the case of a chef who was found shot to death in his home. It quickly became obvious that the chef was abusive and that he was shot and killed by his teenage daughter (Monica Keena). Pembleton sees it as justifiable homicide but Bayliss says that it doesn’t matter that the victim was a terrible person. The fact that he was shot three times (twice after he was already on the ground) proves that it was a deliberate execution. For once, Bayliss is the one saying that the law is the law while Pembleton is the one worried about the human cost of their investigation. It’s such a reversal in their usual pattern that Pembleton has to laugh. And yet, it works. Having found his previously lost faith, Pembleton now believes that there is more to existence than the letter of the law. Pembleton also realizes that Bayliss wants to call it a murder because, deep down, he wishes he had done the same thing to his uncle. The victim’s daughter did what Bayliss could never bring himself to do.

It’s an interesting storyline, featuring great work from Andre Braugher and especially Kyle Secor. Unfortunately, this episode had a few other plotlines that weren’t quite as interesting. Kellerman and Cox continued their tentative, emotionally-damaged romance, with Kellerman finally confessing that he was suicidal when Cox last visited him on his boat. Meanwhile, Lewis supported former patrolman Chris Thormann (Lee Tergesen) when the man who blinded him came up for parole. The Lewis storyline was a sequel to a first season episode and I appreciated that the show made an effort to maintain continuity. That said, it just wasn’t that interesting of a story.

Still, that final scene with Bayliss and his uncle was undeniably powerful. Seriously, what is Bayliss going to do with all of his hate? There are no easy answers.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell 2.11 “1-800-Crushed”

Posted on July 25, 2026 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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Zack becomes Nitro!

Episode 2.11 “1-800 Crushed”

(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on November 17th, 1990)

“Hello, mate. It’s me, Nitro!”

Uhmm …. hi, Nitro. Why do you sound like Zack Morris?

Because Zack is Nitro!

In this episode, Zack decides that the best way to become a millionaire would be to wait for his parents to die so he can inherit their money…. no, actually, he decides to start a teen advice line and charge everyone $2.00 per call. He recruits Lisa to provide advice and Screech to …. hang out. I don’t know what Screech is doing there, to be honest.

Lisa takes most of the calls but, whenever she gets wrapped up (“Not now, Zack, I’m talking to a girl who hates shopping!”), Zack mans the lines. Because he doesn’t want anyone to know that he came up with the stupid idea of starting the Teenline, he calls himself Nitro and speaks with what I guess is meant to be an Australian accent.

Unfortunately, Lisa solves everyone’s problems and the phones strop ringing. Zack fires her and then he and Screech proceed to give everyone bad advice. Soon, the entire school is on edge. Even worse, Zack tells Kelly’s never-before seen little sister Nikki (Laura Mooney-Hubbert) that she should do whatever it takes to win the man of her dreams.

“Mrs. Zack Morris,” Nikki dreamingly responds.

Later, when both Kelly and Nikki call the Teenline at the same time, Zack gets confused as to who is on which line and he tells Kelly to dump her boyfriend and he tells Nikki that she’s the only girl for him.

Bayside is in chaos and only Mr. Belding can fix things. After an art class descends into chaos, Belding tells Zack, “My school will be a happy school or else.” Bye bye, Teenline!

But what about Nikki? Zack dresses up like a nerd and meets her at the Max. He says that he likes insects. Nikki likes them too! Finally, Zack confesses that he likes Kelly. Nikki tells Zack that he’s a loser for not being honest to begin with and she has a point. Kelly, wearing a blonde wig, overhears the whole conversation and takes Zack back. Nothing’s more romantic than dating a pathological liar, I guess.

This episode …. actually, I like this episode. It’s a good example of what Saved By The Bell occasionally got right. It’s a silly story that focuses on the chemistry between Zack & Kelly and Slater & Jessie and it does so without getting too preachy. This episode is lightweight and cheerfully shallow and exactly what you want from Saved By The Bell.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 7/19/26 — 7/25/26

Posted on July 25, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Big Brother (24/7, CBS, Paramount+, Pluto TV)

I’ve been sharing my thoughts on Big Brother here.

Homicide: Life On The Street (Peacock TV)

My review will drop tomorrow.

The Larry Sanders Show (HBOMax)

Rip Torn could make any line funny.

Saved By The Bell (Tubi)

My review will drop in an hour.

Survivor (CBS, Wednesday Night)

CBS is reshowing Survivor 50 this season. I missed it when it originally aired but I’m having trouble getting into the reruns. The 90-minute runtime is a problem for me. Survivor is the perfect 60-minute show. At 90 minutes, there’s way too much filler.

TMZ Investigates: The Reiner Murders (Tubi)

TMZ takes a shallow look at the murders Rob and Michele Reiner. This special offered up no new insights but it did serve as a reminder of what a loser Nick Reiner was (and is).

Watched and Reviews:

Retro Television Review: Baywatch 2.12 “Reunion”

Posted on July 25, 2026 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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001. The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.

This week, Mitch goes to his high school reunion!

Episode 2.12 “Reunion”

(Dir by Gus Trikonis, originally aired on January 27th, 1992)

Mitch gets laid.

That’s pretty much the plot of this incredibly simple episode.

It’s time for Mitch’s 20-year high school reunion but he doesn’t want to go because he’s worried about seeing his ex-wife, Gayle (Wendie Malick). However, at the last moment, Mitch suddenly does decide to go. He meets up with Gayle, who is wearing a blue dress that is simply to die for. With Gayle’s help, Mitch also rescues the class bully (Tim Rossovich) after two former high school outcasts (Tom Villard and Glenn Morshower) bury him in the sand just as the tide starts to come in. And then Mitch and Gayle go back to the Buchanan house and do it like it’s prom night.

Fortunately, Hobie is gone for the weekend. (It’s kind of funny how Hobie is always off with relatives or friends whenever Mitch needs the house to himself.) I will say that, as a child of divorce, there’s nothing more painful than thinking your parents are going to get back together just because one of them was still in the house when you woke up in the morning. Hobie is spared the trauma of Mitch and Gaye’s post-reunion hook-up.

Mitch, however, is disappointed to learn that Gayle has a boyfriend and that she’s going to be marrying him. The only reason Gayle went to the reunion was to work out her feelings about Mitch. Hasselhoff handles the revelation with his trademark emotional earnestness. Left unmentioned is the fact that having sex with Mitch apparently convinced Gayle that she should marry the other guy.

Finally, someone left a baby in Eddie’s lifeguard station. Eddie and Shauni looked after it for the weekend. This led to a lot of, “Wow, sometimes babies smell bad,” humor. In the end, the baby’s father shows up to get the baby but it turns out that he doesn’t actually have custody and that his ex-wife left the baby at the lifeguard station specifically to keep her safe from him. Obviously, this couple has issues that will not be resolved by a high school reunion hook-up.

Even by the standards of Baywatch, this was a remarkably empty episode. Between Mitch quickly getting over the fact that Gayle is getting remarried and Eddie and Shauni taking care of a random baby, it was hard to escape the feeling that nothing really matters on this show. There are no real consequences to anyone’s actions. No one has any sort of emotional conflict that can’t be solved with a musical montage. Eddie and Shauni end the episode thinking about what it would like to be parents. They’ll be over it in a week.

Baywatch was a show where nothing really mattered and that’s probably why it was so popular.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 2.20 “Dust to Dust”

Posted on July 24, 2026 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

The cannibals are back!

Episode 2.20 “Dust to Dust”

(Dir by Bill Froehlich, originally aired on February 25th, 1990)

Tony Dow, Amy Lyndon, and Sandahl Bergman, the three cannibals from Prime Cut, are back! They are now all living together and are members of Cannibals Anonymous. For months, they have resisted the urge to taste human flesh. But, when an escaped prisoner breaks into their home, they give into temptation and have a good meal.

Uh-oh, it turns out that escaped prisoner was actually an astronaut who returned to Earth infected with a space virus that eventually reduces its victims to dust. And now, the cannibals all have the virus! The government abducts them and takes them to an underground lab where a group of scientists dispassionately watch as they become hypersexual before going insane and turning into dust. One scientist (Tim Russ) sympathizes with the cannibals and soon, the entire lab is infected.

This episode had potential but it ultimately failed because it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be funny or scary. There’s a lot of terror to found in the idea of being held prisoner until your transformed into blue dust. At the same time, the symptoms of the space virus were so over-the-top and the actors went so overboard in performing those symptoms that it was hard to really care about any of it. Having the victims quote a movie before turning into dust probably seemed like a good idea but it doesn’t work in execution. The whole thing ultimately felt like a community theater production of The Andromeda Syndrome.

Not even Freddy appeared to be that interested in this episode.

Only two more episodes to go!

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.3 “Haunted”

Posted on July 24, 2026 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Daily Motion.

I apologize for the delay in posting this review. I was feeling under the weather last week. This week, I feel well enough to share this review of one of the most emotional hours of television that I’ve ever watched.

Episode 4.3 “Haunted”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on October 23rd, 1985)

This episode begins where the previous one ended. After crashing his car, Stephen Craig and his wife, Yvonne, are rushed to the Emergency Room. Despite the best efforts of Drs. Chandler and Axelrod, Stephen dies in the ER. Yvonne goes into labor, eventually giving birth to Dr. Craig’s granddaughter. Dr. Mark Craig and Ellen show up shortly after Stephen has been pronounced dead. While Ellen immediately slips into denial (“That’s not Stephen!”), Dr. Craig calmly tells Chandler that he knows Chandler did everything that he could.

Throughout the episode, Ellen struggles with her grief while Mark holds back his emotions. He suspects that Stephen was once again using drugs and he even goes to the autopsy to see for himself. While Stephen’s organs are being weighed, Dr. Craig starts to talk about how he was never close to his son but how, when Stephen was young, they used to read Dr. Seuss together. “Thank you Sam I Am,” Dr. Craig recites under his breath, right before hearing that Stephen had used cocaine shortly before dying.

For Dr. Craig, Stephen’s renewed drug use is an excuse to refuse to mourn for him. For Ellen, Stephen’s drug use is proof that his father was too critical and pushed him too hard. Ellen tells Mark that he never cared about Stephen except for when Stephen said he wanted to be a doctor. As the episode ends, Dr. Craig sits in his office and thinks about the words of Dr. Seuss and finally, he starts to cry.

I cried too. I cried a lot while watching this episode. This was the most emotional episode of St. Elsewhere that I’ve watched so far. Both William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett were heartbreaking as a couple who each dealt with their grief in their own way. It was hard to watch Ellen fall apart in the Emergency Room but it was even harder to watch Dr. Craig fall apart as he realized that his wife was right. When Stephen was young, the only time they were close was when they read that Dr. Seuss book. And now, that memory is all Dr. Craig has left.

There were other things that happened in this episode, of course. One thing about St. Elsewhere is that there are always several stories going on at once. Elliot worried about his weight, even after discovering that his girlfriend liked the fact that he wasn’t thin. Dr. Caldwell spent the weekend at a recently purchased house in Cape Cod and Fiscus showed up unannounced. Dr. Morrison encouraged the other male residents to donate sperm. Dr. Westphall continued to try to push through his efforts to make St. Eligius a community-centered hospital. But none of the other stories could match the power of Mark and Ellen Craig losing their son. In fact, I found myself resenting being taken away from the Craigs. “Who cares about Cape Cod!?” I said, “The Craigs have lost their son!”

This was not an easy episode to watch but, in the end, it was powerful, it was touching, and it made me cry.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.13 “Snow Queen: Part One”

Posted on July 23, 2026 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, we have part one of a two part story.

Episode 1.13 “Snow Queen: Part One”

(Dir by Tony Mordente, originally aired on March 23rd, 1985)

This week’s episode features two tough guys who are both named Dennis.

Dennis Farina appears as Vic Terranova, a gangster who owns a nightclub and who loves country music. McCall is working undercover as a country-western singer in order to take both him and his cocaine-dealing operation down.

Meanwhile, Dennis Franz appears as Sgt. Jackie Molinas, a sleazy detective from New York who comes to Los Angeles to extradite Sally LaPone (Lycia Neff), a former New York drug dealer who relocated to Los Angeles after she witnessed a murder in the Big Apple. Sally is now the exclusive drug dealer for rock star Darby Slash (Brendan Hughes). When she’s arrested at a raid on one of Terranova’s clubs, Molinas demands that she be turned over to him. Correctly assuming that Molinas is planning on killing her, Sally escapes his custody. Molinas’s search for Sally leads to him apparently killing both Darby Slash and also one Hunter’s informants.

Hunter can’t prove that Molinas is the killer but he suspects it. It seems like he could just ask his Mafia relatives if Molinas is working for the Mob but this show has kind of forgotten that Hunter has relatives in the Mafia.

This episode was part one of two so this review is going to feel incomplete. When the episode ended, McCall had gotten a job singing for Terranova and Molinas was closing in on Sally. We’ll see how it all plays out next week. For this week, I’ll simply say that Dennis and Dennis delivered. Dennis Farina was properly smooth as Terranova. Meanwhile, Dennis Franz turned Jackie Molinas into one of the sleaziest, most obnoxious characters that I’ve ever seen. He’s the type of guy who walks into a place, insults all of the men, crudely hits on all of the women, and then attempts to murder a stranger. Franz made Molinas into a character worthy of loathing.

I always find it interesting when Rick Hunter has to deal with a bad cop. It’s like the show is saying, “Yes, Rick kills a lot of people but at least he’s not that guy!”

We’ll see how things work out next week.

Retro Television Review: Decoy 1.39 “The Lost Ones”

Posted on July 23, 2026 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958. The show can be viewed on Tubi!

This week, Decoy comes to an end.

Episode 1.39 “The Lost Ones”

(Dir by Arthur H. Singer, originally aired on July 7th, 1958)

The final episode of Decoy finds Casey dropping in on Elsa Kramer (Phyllis Newman), a recently-released juvenile offender who Casey previously arrested. Casey just wants to check on her and to welcome her back to society. But, when Casey steps — unannounced, which may be okay in New York but seems rather rude to my Texas sensibilities — into the family’s small kitchen, she discovers Elsa’s abusive father is dead and Elsa is holding the gun. Elsa makes a run for it. Elsa’s mother (Adelaide Klein) and brother (Morton Lighter) say that Elsa shot her father in self-defense.

Casey doesn’t think Elsa pulled the trigger and is determined to find Elsa and learn the truth before Elsa is arrested again. Not surprisingly, Casey’s right. It was her brother who killed their father. Elsa took the blame because her brother was going to medical school whereas Elsa really didn’t have much of a future to lose.

In some ways, this episode is an appropriate send-off for Casey and Decoy. It has some location footage of New York, which was always the show’s main appeal outside of Beverly Garland’s lead performance. It features Casey trying to prove that a seemingly guilty person is actually innocent. That’s certainly preferable to what we saw last week.

At the same time, this episode had some of the same flaws that were present in quite a few of Decoy’s final episodes. The dialogue was a bit overbaked. Even worse, the acting from the supporting cast was not particularly impressive. Morton Lighter was so twitchy as Elsa’s brother that there wasn’t much doubt as to who the guilty party was. This episode also featured Casey meeting with the least intimidating street gang in New York history. The whole thing lacked the authenticity that distinguished Decoy at its best. I’m not really sure if the show’s producers knew that this would be the final episode of the series. If they did, they allowed to show to end on a bit of anticlimactic note.

So, that’s it for Decoy. For the most part, it was a good show. The last few episodes were perhaps a bit too melodramatic for their own good. One got the feeling that the show’s writers were under orders to “liven” things up. But the early episodes made great use of the New York setting and, throughout the series, Beverly Garland gave a great performance as the tough but compassionate Casey Jones.

What will I be watching next? I’ll let you know next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.9 “Team Picture”

Posted on July 22, 2026 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

Welcome to 2013!

Episode 4.9 “Team Picture”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on November 30th, 1988)

Weird, weird episode.

Taking place 25 years in the future, this episode features the ’88 California Bulls reuniting in 2013. Of course, since this episode was made in 1988, its version of 2013 is a bit different from the one that we all lived through. The 2013 of this episode is a dark and depressing dystopia, with militarized police and …. well, maybe it wasn’t that much different from what we lived through.

In 2013, former wide receiver Billy Cooper is a reporter who is hoping to go from the sports desk to the anchor desk.

TD Parker (OJ Simpson) is now the mayor of Los Angeles.

Zagreb is still playing in the NFL.

Doug Clayton is a Nobel prize-winning scientist.

Dr. Death works at a lumber yard.

Mad Dog owns twenty-five “sex discos.”

Bubba Kincaid is now the “King of Beer.” After his bar was shut down and demolished, he started Bubba Beer, which we are told is the “last American beer.”

And Jethro — well, no one has seen Jethro for ten years. Bubba tried to get Jethro to join him in his Bubba Beer business but Jethro refused. He went into wrestling and then he vanished. Most of his teammates are angry with him. They view him as being a crybaby who needs to man up.

In this episode, Jethro resurfaces at the Dodds Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles. He’s got a bomb strapped to his chest and he’s threatening to blow the whole place up. TD and Billy both try to talk to him but Jethro doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. Dr. Death approaches him and encourages him to blow himself up. Finally, Bubba goes to Jethro and apologizes for abandoning him. Unfortunately, Bubba gets shot by a robot sniper and is transformed into a pile of blue ash as Jethro watches.

And that’s how the episode ends!

I appreciated the fact that this episode was so weird. It pretty much came out of nowhere and I’ll be surprised if it’s ever referenced again. Probably the most interesting thing about it is that all of the Bulls ended up becoming jerks. No one seems to really care that Jethro might die. For that matter, Jethro isn’t that upset when Bubba gets killed.

I imagine when this episode aired, it was meant to be a commentary on how uncertain the life of a pro-athlete can be once they’re no longer playing. For every success story, there’s someone else who ends up losing all of their money and being exiled to the fringes of society. Seen today, it’s hard to watch Jethro without thinking about CTE and all of the former players who have succumbed to it.

This episode was so odd that it defies a traditional “good or bad” classification. I appreciated it for trying to do something different.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 8.2 and 8.3 “Vicki and the Fugitive/Lady in the Window/Stolen Years/Dutch Treat”

Posted on July 22, 2026 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, we have a two-hour episode of The Love Boat!

Episodes 8.2 and 8.3 “Vicki and the Fugitive/Lady in the Window/Stolen Years/Dutch Treat”

(Dir by Robert Scheerer, originally aired on September 29th, 1984)

This week, the crew is assigned to a European cruise! Aboard the Royal Viking Sky, the crew and their passengers sail from England to the Netherlands and back again. This is one of those episodes that was shot on location and, as always, the scenery is lovely.

The stories on the other hand….

Vicki falls for a deckhand named Peter (Patrick Cassidy). In fact, Vicki even finds herself falling in love with him. (In this episode, it’s established that Vicki is now 17. Is she old enough now to actually get paid a salary for all the work she does on the boat?) However, Peter is actually Anton, a young man who is being pursued by Interpol. The show spends a lot of time trying to make it appear as if Antono is a criminal of some sort. Actually, he’s just a royal prince who ran off because he wasn’t ready to accept his official duties. Vicki is happy to discover that Anton isn’t a criminal but unhappy that he now has to stay behind and rule a kingdom in Europe.

Captain Stubing probably could have helped Vicki during all of this but he was too busy pursing a romance with Inga Van Damme (Elke Sommer), a mysterious passenger who, much like Anton, appeared to be keeping a secret from her romantic partner. Telling Stubing that she couldn’t be with him, Inga left the ship early. Stubing wandered all over Amsterdam, searching for her. And he discovered her …. working as a madam. “It is legal here,” Inga explains. “But is it morally right?” Stubing replies.

Speaking of being morally right, Dr. Foster (Pat Harrington, Jr.) finds himself on the boat with both his wife (Eileen Brennan) and his mistress (Teri Copley)! Wow, how many times can the exact same thing happen on the Love Boat? As always with this show, the husband went back to his wife but, fortunately, his mistress met someone while leaving the boat. “Can I help you with your bags?” the charming stranger asks. “Are you married?” the former mistress replies.

Finally, Danish Lisa Anderson (Cloris Leachman) meets Erik Larsen (George Kennedy), another Dane, on the boat. (George Kennedy speaks with his normal American accent.) Erik falls in love with Lisa (Hey! That’s my name!) but Lisa is haunted by memories of her former lover (Tim Robbins) being dragged away by the Nazis during World War II. At first, it seems that Lisa is too haunted by what happened to move on. However, it is eventually revealed that her former lover is Erik Larsen! Somehow, Tim Robbins grew up to be George Kennedy. In her memories, it appears that Lisa betrayed Erik but actually, by pointing him out to the Nazis, she bought him time. While everyone else in the town square was being executed, Erik was being interrogated and, because of this, he was still alive when the Americans returned.

So, here’s the problem. Cloris Leachman, not surprisingly, gives a great performance as Lisa. And George Kennedy, once you get over the idea that he’s supposed to be Danish, gives a pretty good performance as Erik. But flashbacks of Nazi atrocities feel very much out-of-place when mixed in with scenes of Vicki dating a prince and the doctor trying to balance being on a cruise with both his wife and his mistress. Tonally, this episode is all over the place.

That said, the scenery’s lovely (am I repeating myself) and Ted McGinley fit in nicely with the rest of the crew. Pat Klous isn’t bad as Judy but, at least at this point in the season, she doesn’t have the same sort of brother/sister chemistry that Lauren Tewes had with Fred Grandy and Bernie Kopell. McGinley, of course, had the advantage that, while he was new, he still wasn’t replacing anyone. Poor Pat Klous still has to escape from the shadow of the former cruise director.