Tony Pandolfo | Through the Shattered Lens

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 Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week’s episode is stupid! Let’s get to it.

Episode 1.23 “The New Cook”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on May 2nd, 1999)

After a relative in Texas breaks his leg — *sigh* I can already tell you that I’m going to hate this episode — Peter announces that he has to go down to the Lone Star State to look after the ranch because, of course, everyone who lives in Texas owns a ranch. (Except for me apparently.) Peter leaves Jason and Scott in charge of the restaurant. Jason points out that he doesn’t get paid to be an assistant manager. He gets paid to be a waiter and you know what? Jason is perhaps the biggest douchebag to ever appear on a television show but, in this case, he’s absolutely correct.

Seriously, does Peter not have any adult employees that he can leave in charge? Jason and Scott are not managers. They are just his good-for-nothing sons who he hired because they were too irresponsible to be left on their own. Scott has grown a bit more responsible over the course of the season but neither he nor Jason really has the track record of someone who you would leave in charge of a complicated business. Jason and Scott do some pretty stupid things in this episode but it’s all Peter’s fault for being dumb enough to give them so much responsibility in the first place.

With Peter gone, it falls to Jason and Scott to hire a new chef for the kitchen. They hire Inga (Victoria Silvstedt) because she’s tall, blonde, and apparently comes from a country where there are no laws about nepo kids sexually harassing their new employees. Unfortunately, it turns out that Inga cannot cook. The head chef refuses to work with her and storms out of the restaurant. Because neither Jason nor Scott can work up the courage to fire her, they try to teach her how to cook. Then they try to run the kitchen themselves. A bunch of Texans are coming to the restaurant and they’re expecting lobster. Uh-oh, Traycee set all the lobsters free! She dumped them in the ocean. Hey, Traycee, you probably just killed all of those lobsters! Can no one on this show think?

(And seriously, what was this episode’s deal with Texas?)

Scott and Jason have to figure out what to do about their guests who claim to be from Texas but who all have the fakest accents that I’ve ever seen. Bleh. Screw this storyline. It’s too stupid. I’m done talking about it.

Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Murray is visited by the legendary surfer, Webfoot Wilson (Peter Flanders). Webfoot says that he’s putting together a charity for injured surfers. But, after Sam and Stads see Webfoot stealing money from the Surf Shack’s cash register, they realize that he’s just a con artist! Will they find the courage to tell Murray that his friend is a thief? Of course, they will. What a stupid B-plot but I will give credit where credit is due. Brandon Brooks’s performance as Murray was probably the only thing that worked about this episode. Murray may have started out as a standard weird sidekick but Brooks was actually able to make him into a surprisingly likeable and occasionally even funny character.

Next week …. oh, who cares? Something will happen.

As my friend Mark tried to warn me, this show sucks!

Episode 1.2 “Surf Sale”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on October 18th, 1998)

Why am I doing this to myself?

That’s the question that I asked myself as I watched the second episode of Malibu, CA. Why do I always decide to review the worst shows that I can find? And when I call Malibu, CA the worst, that’s not an exaggeration. The second episode, which I just watched, is 21 minutes of pure pain. Producing bad television was, admittedly, Peter Engel’s trademark but not Malibu, CA goes beyond just being bad. I mean, this is the first show that I’ve ever seen that makes One World seem brilliant by comparison.

The second episode finds Murray upset because a land developer is planning on tearing down The Surf Shack and replacing it with a luxury condo. The Surf Shack is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a shack that sells surfing equipment. Murray appears to be the Surf Shack’s only employee. Murray says that Surf Shack is his life. The Surf Shack must be saved and Scott and Jason are going to help Murray because they think helping Murray will impress their next-door neighbor, Samantha. Samantha is into causes and stuff. Plus, Murray has been her friend since kindergarten.

Murray is also the son of a wealthy man so Jason and Scott suggest that Murray ask his father to buy the Surf Shack. Murray says that he can’t because his father would then demand that Murray go to school, wear socks, and comb his hair. With the Surf Shack doomed, Murray gets a job working as a dishwasher at Peter’s restaurant but then he nearly burns the place down after he accidentally knocks out the chef by throwing a dish in his direction.

Murray finally agrees to ask his father to buy the Surf Shack. Murray is prepared to sell out. But then Peter, to make his sons happy, buys the Surf Shack from Murray’s dad and then makes Murray the manager. If Peter had the money to buy the Surf Shack, why didn’t they just go to him to begin with?

Meanwhile, Stats the Lifeguard, who desperately wants Scott to notice her, is harassed by Haji (Maulik Pancholy), a guy whose life she saved from drowning. Haj is Indian so the whole joke here is that Haj has an accent and tends to say stuff like, “In my country, if you save someone’s life, you are destined to be together.” However, Stats is in love with Scott and Haj isn’t willing to fight for her love because “It looks like he goes to the gym.” Haj trips over another girl on the beach and decides that she is the one who saved his life. I’m not sure why.

This was bad. It’s hard to put into words how bad this episode was. The storyline was stupid but that’s to be expected from a show produced by Peter Engel. Instead, this episode was bad because 1) there wasn’t a single likable person in the episode (even Stats ended up being pretty rude to Haj) and 2) there did not appear to be a single person in the cast capable of reciting their dialogue without sounding like they were reading it off of a cue card. The episode was bad because Murray’s issue with his dad seems to be that his dad expects his teenage son to actually go to school and not be a brain-dead washout. The episode was bad because the Surf Shack itself sits on the ugliest and smallest part of the beach and it’s hard to understand why anyone would want to put a condo in that location. (With mountains on either side, there’s really not any room for a condo.) Finally, the episode was dumb because it had the same plot as the pilot: Developers want build something on the beach so Scott and Jason pretend to care in an effort to impress Sam. Just as the pilot featured a disaster at Peter’s restaurant, this episode features a disaster at Peter’s restaurant. It’s only the second episode and this show is already repeating itself.

Oh well! At least there’s only 50 episode left….