Tag Archives: television

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 11/24/24 — 11/30/24

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Spending this Thanksgiving week with my sisters, I didn’t watch a lot of television.  I did watch and review episodes of Homicide, Degrassi High, Miami Vice, CHiPs, Fantasy Island, Baywatch Nights, The Love Boat, and Monsters.

And, earlier today, I watched episodes of CHiPs, Degrassi High, Baywatch Nights, Monsters, Malibu CA, Check It Out, and Friday the 13th: The Series and I wrote up reviews that will post over the course of the upcoming week.  It’s always nice to have a head start on all of that.

On Tuesday, Erin and I watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  Charlie Brown really was way too nice about Peppermint Patty inviting herself over to his house and then getting upset over being served popcorn.  Myself, I love the fact that Snoopy had a fully cooked turkey that he basically hid from everyone else until it was just him and Woodstock at the house.

On Wednesday, I watched the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen.  I was not surprised to see Lulu eliminated.  I hope Brandon wins this season.

I watched bits of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and also the four football games that were played on Thursday.  My cousins were really into the football games.  I said I thought it would be nice if everyone could win and I got booed and accused of being a commie.  As for the parade, it just made me wish that I was in New York to see it in person.  Maybe next year!

On Friday, I watched episodes of two old 90s shows — Rollergames and Happy Hour.  They were both enjoyably dumb.

And that’s it for this week!

Retro Television Reviews Will Return On December 2nd!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Thanksgiving!  Due to the holiday, Retro Television Reviews will be taking a few days off!  This feature will return on Monday, December 2nd, with Miami Vice and CHiPs!

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend everyone!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Monsters 2.24 “The Family Man”

Posted on 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 Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, the second season of Monsters reaches its conclusion!

Episode 2.24 “The Family Man”

(Dir by Michael Warren Powell, originally aired on June 3rd, 1990)

Neil (Calvin Armitage) is not happy.  The young son of Angie (Annie Corley), Neil is upset that she is dating a condescending psychologist named Warren (Michael O’Gorman).  Making things even worse is that Neil seems to be the only person who dislikes Warren.  Even Neil’s older sister, Terri (Kelli Rabke), thinks that Warren is a great guy and would be a wonderful stepfather.

Adding to Neil’s problems is his terrible eyesight.  He’s recently gotten new glasses, which he cannot stand.  He would rather wear the glasses that once belonged to his late father.  When Neil puts those old glasses on and looks at Warren, he is shocked to see that Warren is actually a lizard-like alien with sharp teeth.  It doesn’t take long for Warren to figure out that Neil has seen through his human disguise but, as Warren explains it, no one is going to believe Neil.  Instead, Warren is just going to drain the life forces of Angie, Neil, and Terri, killing them as he’s killed so many other humans.

At first, it looks like Warren is correct.  Angie refuses to listen to Neil and she also refuses to put on the glasses.  As for the glasses themselves, they are eventually shattered by Warren.  What can Neil possibly do!?  Luckily, the glasses were not the only thing that Neil’s father left behind….

The second season finale of Monsters owes a great deal to They Live, with the exception being that, instead of seeing how he’s being manipulated by the media, Neil uses his glasses to discovers that his potential stepfather is actually a murderous lizard person.  I think that anyone who has ever watched in horror as their divorced or widowed mother dated a new weirdo will be able to relate to this episode.  I remember, immediately after my parents got divorced, I tended to view almost every guy that my mom talked to as being a potential lizard person.  Eventually, of course, I came to accept that not all strangers were alien beings.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met an actual alien or an actual lizard person.  That’s good luck on my part, I suppose.

As for this episode, the lizard person makeup was effective and Michael O’Gorman certain gave a good performance as the manipulative Warren.  Probably the most disturbing thing about Warren was the he didn’t seem to be particularly worried about Neil discovering his true identity because he knew there was no way anyone was going to believe a word that Neil said.  That said, the episode really was a bit too much of a rip-off to be totally successful.  Still, if you’re going to rip someone off, you might as well rip off the best.

The second season of Monsters ends on an above average note.  The season itself was, overall, uneven.  There was some very good episode and, unfortunately, there were also some very bad ones.  I guess that’s to be expected with anthology shows.

Next week, we’ll begin the third and final season of Monsters!

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 5.7 “The Lady from Laramie/Vicki Swings/Phantom Bride”

Posted on 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!

The Love Boat promises something for everyone!

Episode 5.7 “The Lady from Laramie/Vicki Swings/Phantom Bride”

(Dir by Jack Arnold, originally aired on November 14th, 1981)

As I did with this week’s episodes of Miami Vice, CHiPs, and Fantasy Island, I’m going to save time by doing this one bullet point style.

  • Before getting to the storylines, I want to point out that this week’s episode was directed by Jack Arnold.  Jack Arnold may not be a household name but he directed some of this site’s favorite science fiction and monster movies, including Tarantula, The Incredible Shrinking Man, It Came From Outer Space, and The Creature From The Black Lagoon!
  • As always, this cruise presents us with three stories.  One of the three stories definitely does benefit from Arnold’s macabre touch.  Juliet Mills and Buddy Hackett play Kate and Julian Garfield, who are married psychic researchers.  The board the boat in search of a ghost.  Captain Stubing doesn’t believe in ghosts and good for him!  (Neither do I!)  However, Gopher is totally convinced and he’s soon wandering around the boat with a bunch of garlic hanging around his neck.  Gopher, they’re looking for ghosts, not vampires!
  • At one point, Gopher is convinced that he’s managed to take a picture of a ghost but it’s actually just Kate looking through a porthole.
  • I have to admit that I groaned a bit when I saw that Juliet Mills was going to, once again, be a passenger on The Love Boat.  But then I remembered that Hayley is the Mills sister that gets on my nerves.  Juliet and Buddy Hackett had a surprising amount of chemistry.  They were likable together.
  • It is kind of funny that there are certain guest stars — like Juliet Mills — who show up over and over again but who always play different characters.  I’m always waiting for someone on the boat to be like, “Hey, weren’t you here last week?”
  • The least interesting story featured Nancy Dussault as a plain-spoken (or maybe just annoying) widow from Wyomin’ who fell in love with an Italian gigolo (Cesare Danova) who was on the boat with a rich socialite (Marti Stevens).  Cesare Danova played the mob boss in Mean Streets and the mayor in Animal House.  He did not look happy at all to be on The Love Boat.
  • Poor Vicki!  In this episode, 14 year-old Vicki pretended to be 18 in an attempt to flirt with Todd Andrews (Patrick Labyroteaux), a teenager who was traveling by himself.  The Captain grew very worried about Vicki, especially after he heard Todd suggesting that he and Vicki had fooled around late into the night.  (Todd was lying and, oddly enough, everyone seemed to be strangely forgiving of Todd’s actions.)
  • At one point, The Captain tells Vicki that he wanted her to spend time with people her own age.  Vicki replies that she was the only fourteen year-old on the ship.  And, seriously, Vicki has a point.
  • Vicki living on the ship has always seemed kind of strange to me and I always appreciate the episodes that try to honestly deal with the situation.  How can you not have mixed feelings about spending your teen years on a boat, largely surrounded by people who are quite a bit older than you?  That said, Gavin MacLeod was always at his best when he was playing Stubing as a father and Jill Whelan was refreshingly non-cutesy in the role of Vicki.  As a result, you couldn’t help but feel that, ultimately, the Captain and his daughter were right where they belonged.
  • This was an okay cruise.  The ghost storyline was fun.  MacLeod and Whelan tugged at the heartstrings.  When it comes to good stories on The Love Boat, two out of three is not bad at all!

Next week — The Love Boat goes on a Thanksgiving cruise!  (If only I had started reviewing The Love Boat a week earlier than I did, the timing would have been perfect.)  ‘Til then, set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance….

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.20 “Hot Winds”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, the world goes mad!

Episode 2.20 “Hot Winds”

(Dir by Parker Stevenson, originally aired on May 3rd, 1997)

A hot wind is blowing down from the hills and into Los Angeles.

People are going crazy in the streets.  Strangers are attacking each other for no reason.  Riots are breaking out.  The world seems like it’s gone off its axis and no one knows how to react.  Is the heat driving everyone mad or is it something else?  Diamont Teague tells Mitch and Ryan that he suspects that something supernatural is happening.  Mitch, as usual, argues that people in Los Angeles have always been crazy.  Not like this! Diamont says.

Is Diamont correct?  As he, Mitch, and Ryan leave the office, they run into an aggravated man who proceeds to beat on a brick wall until his hands are covered in blood.  Mitch assumes that the man must be on drugs.  Diamont says that they need to drive out to the desert so that they can find the source of the wind.  Mitch is skeptical until he starts seeing a ghostly image of a robed man carrying a scythe.

It’s a long trip out to the desert, made even longer by the rioting and the madness all around.  Mitch stops long enough to keep a woman from throwing her baby over a ledge.  But, as soon as Mitch grabs away her baby, the woman jumps anyway.  It’s quite a fall and somehow, the woman survives.  Luckily, Mitch is there to render CPR while the crazed crowd watches.  The world may going mad but Mitch is still a lifeguard, dammit.

Driving through the desert, Ryan wonders why she, Mitch, and Diamont aren’t going crazy like everyone else.  It’s a good question.  Seriously, last week was a lot of fun because it gave us a chance to watch the Hoff got possessed by a demon.  It’s hard not to regret that he didn’t get a chance to go crazy in this episode.

In the desert, the robed man with the scythe dances.  The scythe apparently is what sends down the hot air.  If Mitch can get the scythe away from the man, the violence can stop.  Who is the man?  Apparently, he’s a devil worshipper.  Ryan suspects that there might be hundreds of similar people out there.  Maybe they’re the ones who are responsible for all the madness in the world!  Has Ryan already forgotten that, a few episodes ago, it was established that the Knights Templar secretly controlled the world?

This episode was actually not bad.  The scenes of people suddenly going mad were effective and the man in the desert was actually a pretty ominous image.  Even the show’s overreliance on Dutch angles felt effective for once, drawing the audience into a world that was permanently off-balance.  I enjoyed this episode and I’ll remember it the next time I see a stranger yelling on a street corner.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 5.19 “Face of Love/Image of Celeste”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites.  Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week …. hey, where’s Tattoo!?

Episode 5.19 “Face of Love/Image of Celeste”

(Dir by Don Chaffey, originally aired on March 20th, 1982)

Once again, as I did with Miami Vice and CHiPs, I am going to save time by doing this review bullet-point style.  It’s the holidays, after all.

  • After two (or was it three) weeks of just Roarke and Tattoo, this episode features only Julie as Roarke’s assistant.  Apparently, Tattoo has been busy helping a guest fulfill a “Cinderella fantasy” but things have gone wrong.  The carriage turned back into a pumpkin.  The horses turned back into mice and are now running all over the Island.  Tattoo is not seen in this episode, which is a shame because the last few episodes (featuring only him and Roarke) really did feel like a throw-back to the first two seasons of the show.
  • It’s been kind of weird during this season, continually hearing that various fantasies are going wrong.  That’s not the Fantasy Island that we all know.  Fantasy Island has previously been portrayed as a place where Roarke would never allow anything to truly go wrong.
  • Julie doesn’t really do anything as Roarke’s assistant in this episode.  Roarke tells her who each guest is and gives her the details of their fantasy but that’s pretty much it.
  • Laura Jensen (Erin Gray) has spent her life with a face that was scarred during a housefire.  She’s grown up to be bitter and angry.  She’s just gotten out of prison and she’s brought to the Island by her parole officer, Ron  (Monte Markham).  Ron’s fantasy is for Laura’s scars to go away so that Laura can let go of her anger and live a norma;l life.
  • Though initially weary, Laura is amazed when Roarke gives her a magical cream that causes her scars to temporarily vanish.  In fact, Laura appears to be ready to get on with her life and accept that she and Ron are in love.  But then Laura’s sleazy ex (Larry Manetti) shows up and tempts her back to her old ways.  Don’t worry.  It all works out in the end and Ron and Laura leave as a couple.  However, I get the feeling that Ron’s going to lose his job as a parole officer.  Falling in love with a parolee and taking a tropical vacation with her seems like something that would go against every rule in the book.
  • The other fantasy was slightly more interesting, if just because it featured Paul Gauguin.  When Celeste Vallon (Joanne Pettet) discovers that Roarke owns a Gauguin portrait of a woman who looks just like her, Celeste requests to go back to the past and be that woman.  Roarke agrees, even though he warns her that she will also have to make a very serious decision, one that could change history.
  • Right away, this fantasy ran into a major stumbling block.  The Gauguin painting looked absolutely nothing like something that Gauguin, one of the great post-impressionists, would have painted.  Instead, it’s a very conventional painting.
  • The second stumbling block is that the legendary and charismatic Gauguin is played by the handsome but mild-mannered Robert Goulet.
  • What Celeste discovers is that she is directly descended from the woman in Gauguin’s painting.  The woman was Gauguin’s mistress and was engaged, against her will, to marry a soldier (Christopher Stone).  If Celeste agrees to remain with Gauguin, then Gauguin will never paint another painting.  If Celeste agrees to return to France, her ancestor will lose the love of her life but Gauguin will continue to paint.
  • Celeste chooses not to change history.  Good for her!  Of course, that’s kind of an easy decision to make when Celeste isn’t the one who is actually going to have to live the rest of her life in Paris, dreaming of returning to Tahiti and Gauguin.
  • I wanted to like this episode more than I did.  The parole officer bringing one of his parolees to the Island felt strange to me and the Gauguin story would have worked if the painter had been anyone other than the Paul Gauguin.  If they had come up with a fictional painter, perhaps Goulet would have seemed more appropriate in the role.  As it was, this episode felt bland and miscast.
  • Herve Villechaize was an accomplished painter so it’s a shame he wasn’t present for the Gauguin story.  It’s previously been established that Tattoo is quite a painter himself so this episode definitely feels like a missed opportunity.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.22 “Ride the Whirlwind”

Posted on 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, Baker takes charge!

Episode 2.22 “Ride The Whirlwind”

(Dir by Larry Wilcox, originally aired on March 10th, 1979)

Just as with the week’s episode of Miami Vice, I am going to do a bullet-point review of this week’s episode of CHiPs because, quite frankly, it’s the holidays and I’m pressed for time.

  • In order to combat a crime wave that has apparently broken out in the nearby California hills, Baker has suggested creating a three-person dirt-bike team.  His hope is that the team will be made up of him, Ponch, and Sindy.  However, when Sindy gets delayed while helping a stranding motorist and ends up missing the morning briefing, Baker is forced to pick Grossman (Paul Linke) instead.
  • “Yay!” you might be saying.  Seriously, Grossman is a far more entertaining character than Sindy.  However, Ponch, Baker, and Sindy are not happy about it.  My personal feeling is that if riding a dirt bike was that damn important to Sindy, she should have arrived on time.
  • Ponch pays Grossman forty dollars to fake an injury so Sindy can take his place.  Grossman takes the money and then explains that he would have done it for free, just because he can tell who much riding a dirt bike means to Sindy.  If it meant so much to her, she could have showed up on time!
  • The dirt bike patrol is a huge success.  One guy rides through an old woman’s lettuce patch on his bike.  Baker tracks down the miscreant and not only gives him a ticket but also gets a date with the guy’s girlfriend.
  • Larry Wilcox also directed this episode, which perhaps explains why, for once, Baker’s the one who gets a date as opposed to Ponch.
  • Ponch busts a city councilman who later explains that he was just riding his bike recklessly because he was having a midlife crisis.
  • Sindy busts a punch of PCP dealers.  It takes her two tries, however.  The first time she chases them, she falls off her bike and sprains her ankle.  The second time, she proves that she belongs on a bike.
  • That’s good because Getraer is in a total panic about putting a woman on any sort of motorcycle, even just a dirt bike.  “If she gets injured,” Getraer warns Baker, it’ll be bad news for the entire department.  Getraer, I guess, hasn’t noticed that the entire second season had pretty much centered on just how hyper-competent Sindy is.
  • The stars of this episode were the California scenery and the stunt people.  The members of the dirt bike patrol all wear bulky uniforms and face-obscuring helmets, in order to disguise the fact that Larry Wilcox, Erik Estrada, and Brianne Leary are clearly not the ones who are actually riding the bikes.
  • Noted character actor Paul Koslo appears as one of the PCP dealers.  He’s believably redneck-y.
  • This episode featured some impressive stunts, which is really the main thing that most people ask for when it comes to a show like this.  That said, I do think the episode would have been more with Grossman as a member of the team.

Next week: Season two ends!

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 3.9 “Baby Blues”

Posted on 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, the Vice Squad investigates a baby broker!

Episode 3.9 “Baby Blues”

(Dir by Danial Attias, originally aired on November 21st, 1986)

In honor Miami Vice‘s violent nature (and in recognition of the fact that it’s the holidays and I’ve got a lot of things that I need to do), I’m going to review this week’s episode bullet-point style!

  • The episode starts in Colombia.  Babies are being kidnapped from local villages.  In  some cases, they’re literally snatched from the arms of their mothers.  The babies are taken to Miami where a sleazy lawyer named Howard Famiglia (Tommy Koenig) essentially sells them to wealthy families.
  • Maria Escobar (Patrice Martinez) illegally crosses the border to search for her son in Miami.  She nearly dies in the attempt.  When she and a planeload of babies are discovered on a Miami runway, law enforcement gets involved.
  • Castillo doesn’t think that the case is one that Vice should be investigating.  Gina and Trudy set him straight.
  • It doesn’t take long for the Vice Squad to discover that Famiglia is a baby broker.  One of his customers is played by a young Stanley Tucci.  The customer is willing to testify against Famiglia.
  • Famiglia sends his henchmen out to intimidate and kill all of the witnesses.
  • Famiglia also kills his main hitman and then booby traps his apartment.  When Crockett and Tubbs jump out of the exploding apartment, it looked like Tubbs leg caught on fire.  “Wow,” I said, “that really looked real!”
  • It turns that it was real.  Philip Michael Thomas’s stunt double was severely burned as a result.
  • Eventually, the Vice Squad is able to trick Famiglia into believing that Maria is being kept at a local hospital.  Famiglia sets up a meeting for women looking to adopt.  While the women watch an educational film, Famiglia crawls through a ventilation shaft and tries to enter Maria’s room.
  • SURPRISE!  That’s not Maria in that hospital bed …. it’s Gina!  The Vice Squad shoots Famglia dead, leaving his corpse awkwardly hanging out of the hospital room wall.  For some reason, that sight really disturbed me.
  • Maria is reunited with her son but, upon realizing that he now has a life and a family in America, she decides to let him stay with his new parents.  She is then deported back to Colombia, where she will probably be killed by the same people who stole her baby in the first place.
  • Overall, this episode suffered because the villain was miscast.  Looking at the imdb, the majority of Tommy Koenig’s credits appear to have been comedic.  He’s an actor who looks like he should be on a sketch comedy show and not a gritty crime drama.  Even when Famiglia is crawling through an air duct with a gun, he just looks goofy.  Plus, considering that he had a people working for him who were willing to murder, would Famiglia really have gone to the hospital himself?
  • Stanley Tucci and Tommy Koenig should have switched roles.
  • This episode gave Trudy, Gina, Switek, and Zito more to do than usual.  That was good.  This show often underused its supporting cast.
  • Miami Vice was often a cop show with a political subtext.  In this case (and I’m just pointing it out, I’m not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing), the subtext was that America’s immigration system sucked, as Maria only had a limited amount of time to  find her son before being deported.  But then she decided to leave him in America rather than take him back to Colombia.  Miami Vice was not just political.  It was also usually kind of depressing.

Next week’s episode features Bill Paxton and Wesley Snipes!  I’m looking forward to it!

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi High 1.3 “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

Posted on 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 Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

This week, it’s time for another Degrassi divorce!

Episode 1.3 “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on November 13th, 1989)

I’m running a bit late tonight so here is a very quick rundown of this week’s episode of Degrassi High.

  1. Joey is so consumed with his band (which has now been renamed The Zits) that he doesn’t seem to notice that his girlfriend, Caitlin, is more interested in political activism than forgettable pop music.  Caitlin is offended when Joey tries to convince he to wear a bikini for a Zits music video.  Soon, she is having lunch with douchey environmentalist Claude Tanner (David Armin-Parcells).
  2. Joey does convince Allison (Sara Holmes) and Amy (Jacy Hunter) to appear in his music video while wearing bikinis, albeit in return for him paying them forty dollars that he got from Snake and Wheels.  Snake and Wheels are offended at the idea of their money being spent to hire girls to wear bikinis.  Lucy is offended that Joey wants to borrow her video camera to shoot “a sexist video.”  Long story short: Joey does not shoot his music video but Snake and Wheels start to take more interest in his plans for the band.
  3. Lucy admits to LD that she has a crush on Wheels.  This would usually be a minor point but it’s actually really heart-breaking for those of us who know that Wheels is destined to nearly kill Lucy while driving drunk.
  4. Erica doesn’t want everyone to know that she had an abortion but rumors are spreading through the school.  Nancy (Arlene Lott), who has been on the show since Junior High, finally gets some dialogue when she awkwardly asks Heather if the rumors about Erica are true.  This scene not only reveals that people know about Erica’s abortion but it also answers the question of why Nancy usually wasn’t given any dialogue.
  5. Erica is upset when someone paints “Baby Killer” on her locker.  Well, who wouldn’t be?
  6. The episode’s main storyline features Michelle’s parents breaking up.  BLT is hopeful that this means Michelle will decide to move in with her mother and say goodbye to her father, who doesn’t want Michelle dating BLT because BLT is black.  But, when Michelle sees how helpless her father is (he can’t cook and doesn’t separate colors while doing the laundry), she decides that she has to stay with him and BLT will just have to keep seeing her in secret.
  7. Yes, this is another divorce episode.  Degrassi usually did a pretty good job with divorce episodes and that’s a good thing because it’s never easy for someone to watch their parents split up.  I know that from personal experience.  This episode handled things well, though I have to admit that Michelle is one of those characters who I always tend to forget about.  (Either that or I mix her up with LD.)  If this episode was made today, Michelle probably would have dramatically denounced her father and then moved out of the house.  I appreciated that Degrassi High took a more realistic approach to the story.

Next week …. more drama!

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 1.8 “And the Rockets’ Dead Glare”

Posted on 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, Detective Munch takes a stand!

Episode 1.8 “And the Rockets’ Dead Glare”

(Dir by Peter Markle, originally aired on March 17th, 1993)

Is John Munch a stoner?

That’s the question that Stanley Bolander finds himself considering during this week’s episode of Homicide: Life On The Street.  At a crime scene, Munch displays an encyclopedic knowledge of marijuana and later, while talking to a narcotics detective at the station house, both Munch and Bayliss argue that drugs should be legalized.  That night, as they wait to bust a man who earlier killed a drug currier, Bolander flat out asks Munch if he gets high.  Munch refuses to answer.

Of course, those of us watching already know.  Of course, John Munch gets high!  He’s played by Richard Belzer, the thin, middle-aged man who never takes off his sunglasses and who is continually rattling off trivial knowledge in a mellow tone of voice.  Munch not only gets high but he was probably high through this entire episode.  Whenever Munch appeared on another television show, he was probably high then.  And when he eventually ended up on Law & Order: SVU, he was probably so stoned that I’m surprised Stabler didn’t put him in a headlock and start yelling about how he didn’t want Munch serving as a bad example for the youth of New York City.

There’s no surprise that Munch would be in favor of legalizing drugs.  (It’s a bit more surprising that straight-laced Bayliss would agree but whatever.)  What was surprising, to me, was how I reacted to his argument.  There was a time when I was 100% enthusiastically in favor of legalizing all drugs, or at least leaving it up to individual states.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that it’s not that simple.  Legalizing drugs is not the societal cure-all that many of us assumed it would be.  Then again, weed is kind of boring now that it’s socially acceptable so maybe the best way to keep people off of drugs is to broadcast nonstop YouTube commercials featuring middle-aged suburbanites talking about how much they love their edibles.

(To be honest, Munch and Bayliss’s sudden advocacy for drug legalization reminded me of one of the things that always makes me laugh about Law & Order, i.e. the tendency to have blue-collar cops, who are not exactly the most liberal of constituencies, suddenly start talking like MSNBC pundits.)

While Munch argued for drug legalization, Pembleton considered whether or not to accept a promotion, Kay testified in a murder trial and accepted the offer of a dinner date from State’s Attorney Ed Danvers (Zeljko Ivanek), and Corsetti and Lewis drove to Washington D.C. to investigate the murder of a Chinese dissident.  Officially, they went to D.C. so that they could question the people at the Chinese embassy about the victim and the possibility that his murder was related to politics.  However, the real reason they went to D.C. was so that Crosetti could visit some historical sites and expound on his theories about who really killed Abraham Lincoln.  A somewhat sinister secret service agent (played by Ed Lauter) was happy to show them around in return for them not making trouble at the embassy.  Crosetti was excited.  Lewis was considerably less impressed.  I enjoyed the DC storyline, if just because I’m both a history and a conspiracy nerd and, when Jeff and I last went to our nation’s capital, I got excited about seeing some of the same locations that Crosetti got excited about.

This episode was a day-in-the-life episode, with all of the detectives getting their share of attention.  (Even Felton, who accompanied Kay to the courthouse, got a few moments to shine.)  If the episode didn’t have the emotional impact of Night of the Dead Living, it still did a good job of portraying the comradery of a group of people who are linked by their knowledge of what it’s like to see others at their worst.  In the end, Pembleton turns down the promotion and finally, joins his fellow detectives for an after-work drink.  I’m glad he did.  They’re good company.