Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out! 1.9 “Phantom of the Market”

Posted on December 2, 2023 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 the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, someone is stealing disgusting gourmet food!

Episode 1.9 “Phantom of the Market”

(Dir by Stan Harris, originally aired on November 27th, 1985)

Howard is super-excited because he has been named Cobb’s Manager of the Year! The manager of the year wins a Hawaiian vacation for two because, apparently, there’s not a single Cobb’s manager who has a large family. I get the feeling that the whole manager of the year thing is a scam to give the the company’s managers an excuse to go to Hawaii with their secretaries. That’s certainly what Howard is planning to do, though at least he’s actually unmarried and dating Edna.

(Being a Canadian company, I would think Cobb’s would reward its employees with a Discovery Islands vacation but no, Cobb’s would rather send its employees to the USA.)

Howard’s employees even go through the trouble of making and hanging a big banner congratulating Howard. Of course, they hang it upside down but Howard is in such a good mood that he doesn’t even yell about it. Unfortunately, Howard’s mood is soon ruined when a corporate stooge (played by Grant Cowan) shows up and tells Howard that his store is missing $400 worth of gourmet meat and that Howard is going to lose his job if he can’t figure out what has happened to the missing inventory.

Feeling that it might be an inside job, Howard and Alf spend two nights at the store in hopes of catching whoever it is. The first night, Howard falls asleep and wakes up in his underwear. Somehow, the thief took all of his clothes without waking up Howard. Howard wraps himself in the banner, which I would think would make him look even more undressed than when he was just wearing shoes, boxers, and his undershirt. (How did the thief undress Howard without taking his shoes off? Again, how did Howard sleep through that?) The second night, Howard discovers that Cobb’s actually has a basement and that basement is occupied by Henry Weinberg (Antony Parr).

The well-dressed and well-fed Henry explains that his family used to own the land on which the store was built. Henry has been living in the basement of various Cobb’s stores for several years and he’s been stealing their food. He gives Howard a box that he says contains the ashes of his grandfather. Howard is surprisingly accepting of all this.

The next day — yay! All of the missing inventory is back. Howard gets to keep his job and go to Hawaii. Henry shows up in the story and tells Howard that he stole replacement food from all the other grocery stores in the area. After Henry leaves, Alf informs Howard that Henry is actually a comedian who used to do a bit about putting his grandfather’s ashes in a box. As Henry speaks, Howard discreetly spills the ashes onto the flood and kicks them underneath a shelf. Yikes!

This was kind of a strange episode but, in this case, the weirdness worked to the show’s advantage. In previous episodes, Don Adams sometimes seemed to be overacting. In this episode, everyone was acting bizarrely and, as such, Adams’s exaggerated reactions actually fit well with the situation. Add to that, this episode featured the return of Viker, the dumb but very confident electrician played by Gordon Clapp. As played by Clapp, Viker’s earnest stupidity was definitely the high point of the episode.

Next week, everyone car pools to work! I really can’t imagine that going well but we’ll find out what happens soon!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out 1.4 “X-Ray Marks The Spot”

Posted on October 28, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s physical time!

Episode 1.4 “X-Ray Marks The Spot”

(Dir by Stan Harris, originally aired on October 23rd, 1985)

Oh, the drama never ends in Canada!

Cobb’s has just switched over to a new insurance plan and all of the employees are going to have to get physicals to make sure that they qualify. That means that everyone has to come in on Monday, regardless of whether it’s their day off or not. (Since the store only seems to have 3 cashiers and one stockboy, I’m not sure they can afford to give anyone a day off.) The physicals will be done right in the store parking lot which …. wait, what? That’s a bit intrusive.

(Actually, I assume they have some sort of mobile doctor’s office but that’s never really made clear in the dialogue, which led me to imagine all of the characters getting poked and prodded in the middle of the parking lot.)

That’s not the only problem! Murray the stock boy put a lot of cans in the storeroom and, after a torrential downfall, he discovered that he put all the cans underneath a hole in the roof. The cans got wet and their labels peeled off. Christian suggests just donating the cans to charity and taking a tax write-off but Howard points out that some of the cans were dog food. “Okay,” Christian says, “give it to poor people with pets!”

(Actually, that’s not a bad idea….)

Howard, himself, is upset because he nearly got run over by a kid driving a car. He tells Edna that he hates kid. Howard picks the worst time to tell Edna this because, before coming to work, she took a pregnancy test and guess who is expecting?

Edna tries to keep the news from Howard until he’s in a better mood but then she discovers that she’ll have to get an x-ray at the physical and, when she tells Howard why she can’t do that, Howard is not particularly enthused about the prospect of being a father. Edna gets upset and leaves Canada for Florida!

How will all of this get resolved?

Well, the mystery of the cans is solved when Murray gets them ex-rayed. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to sell people food that was just zapped with radiation but whatever.

Edna leaving is temporarily resolved when Marlene, who is the best character on the show, become Howard’s new secretary. Marlene turns out to be so bad at her job that I was cringing at my own memories of my first day as an administrative assistant. Fortunately, Edna returns and takes her old job back.

She also tearfully tells Howard that the test was incorrect and she’s not pregnant. Edna sits down at her desk, opens the desk drawer, and discovers the stuffed Panda bear that Howard bought while she was gone. “Awwwwwww!” the studio audience said. And, I’ll be honest, I said it too.

The first half of this episode really didn’t work for me, largely because both Don Adams and Dinah Christie (in the roles of Howard and Edna, respectively) had a tendency to go BIG in their performances and that pretty much made it impossible for me to really get emotionally involved with their story. It was a bit too obvious that they weren’t lovers but that they were instead just two actors reciting their lines. The second half of the episode was a marked improvement, when both Adams and Christie dialing back their performances and actually talking like real human beings. Shaky start aside, the episode did kind of earn that “awwww” from the audience.

Next week, a contest goes wrong!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out 1.2 “Labor and Other Relations”

Posted on October 14, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Canada goes on strike!

Episode 1.2 “Labor And Other Relations”

(Dir by Stan Harris, originally aired on October 9th, 1985)

I am two episodes into Check It Out and my favorite character is Marlene, the cashier played by Kathleen Laskey. She’s my favorite specifically because she has the same attitude that I would have if I was working as a cashier. She doesn’t care about the customers, she doesn’t worry about showing up for work on time, and she takes her first break ten minutes after the store opens. Plus, out of everyone who works at the store, she has the best fashion sense.

This episode also established that Marlene is the “shop steward” of the Cobb’s union. No one has ever joined the union, other than Marlene. But that changes when mean old Mrs. Cobb (Barbara Hamilton) announces that employees of Cobb’s will, from now on, only be allowed to take two coffee breaks a day. Marlene declares this to be an outrage and invites everyone — except for manager Howard (Don Adams) and assistant manager Christian (Jeff Pustil) — to a union meeting at her apartment. Soon, every employee of the store is outside, picketing. Meanwhile, Howard and Christian are forced to bag groceries and deal with customers.

Frustrated by the fact that everyone has joined the union, Howard goes outside to confront the picketers. Murray (Simon Reynolds), the young bagger who has a crush on Marlene, asks Howard to hold his sign so that he can run into the store and use the bathroom. (Wouldn’t that count as crossing the picket line? I’ve never been a member of a union so I’m not really sure how all of this works.) Howard agrees to hold Murray’s “Cobbs Is Unfair” sign. Of course, a local reporter snaps a picture of Howard and soon, he’s on the front page of the newspaper.

Howard is just not having a good week. First off, we learn, in a scene that goes on for way too long, that he’s still struggling with impotence and hasn’t had sex with Edna (Dinah Christie) for weeks. (Edna is also Howard’s secretary and a member of the union so really, it seems like there’s all sorts of issues here.) And now, he’s on the front page of the newspaper, picketing his own store. Ms. Cobb shows up to fire him, saying that she was also responsible for “firing the Shah of Iran” back in 1979. (What?)

Fortunately, the other employees of Cobb’s come to the rescue by barging into Howard’s office and announcing that they’ve voted him into the Union and therefore, Ms. Cobb can’t fire him for picketing. Howard gets to keep his job, even though I was under the impression that members of management are not allowed to join a union. Howard agrees to give everyone back their coffee breaks, even though that was a corporate policy and it was established early on that Howard didn’t have the power to change it.

This was a weird episode. I’m going to guess that it was not at all a realistic depiction of a labor dispute. There was way too much time devoted to Howard and Edna discussing their lack of a sex life. That said, Marlene’s attitude saved the episode. Even though she didn’t care about her job, she still brought the company to its knees. Woo hoo, you go, Marlene!