Tag Archives: TV

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 2.16 “The Oddest Couple”

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 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, Viker needs help!

Episode 2.16 “The Oddest Couple”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on February 8th, 1987)

Viker has been kicked out by his wife, Mrs. Viker (Laura Henry).  Mrs. Viker apparently doesn’t have a first name.  Even Viker calls her “Mrs. Viker” whenever he talks to her.  Because he has been kicked out of his house, Viker has started sleeping on Howard’s couch.

Howard tells Viker that he can’t sleep on his couch, which just leaves Viker with one other option.  He moves in with Howard!  Normally, I’d wonder how Edna would feel about this but Edna is not in this episode.  In fact, there’s no mention of Howard being involved and his apartment suddenly looks like a tacky bachelor pad.  He even has a round bed in the living room.

As you can guess by the episode’s title, Howard and Viker make for an odd couple.  It’s not a case of one of them being a neat freak and one of them being a slob.  In fact, they’re both pretty neat.  It’s just that Viker can be a little weird.  He gargles extremely loudly.  He takes everything that he hears literally.  He spends a lot of time talking about his bunions.

Howard attempts to bring Viker and Mrs. Viker together but, when Mrs. Viker catches Viker teaching Marlene how to dance (more about that in a minute) in the store’s aisles, she declares that she can’t trust Viker.  But then Howard invites Mrs. Viker to his apartment, where he has prepared a romantic dinner for the Vikers.  That’s all it takes for the Vikers to fall back in love and apparently have sex in Howard’s living room bed while Howard waits in the hallway outside.

Why is Viker teaching Marlene how to dance?  Because a good-looking customer named Philip (Richard Hardacre) has asked Marlene to come to his country club!  Marlene gets all dressed up, does her hair nicely, and looks forward to her date.  But then Richard shows up looking like he’s the bassist in Sex Pistols cover band.  Richard says that it’s “punk night” at the country club and he wanted to impress his friends by bringing “an actual punk.”  Realizing that she was being used, Marlene tells Richard to get lost and then she, Murray, and Christian go out for pizza.  Awww!  Since this show usually features those three characters at odds, it’s kind of nice to see them all going out as friends in this episode.

(In real life, Kathleen Laskey, who plays Marlene, is married to Jeff Pustil, who played Christian.  Even though their characters are usually rivals, the chemistry between the two performers is obvious.)

This was an okay episode.  It made me chuckle a few times.  It’s obvious that, after the first half of the second season, the showrunners realized that Don Adams and Gordon Clapp made a great comic team.  Check It Out is a show that works best when it embraces absurdity and few characters are more absurd than Gordon Clapp’s Viker.

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 10/13/24 — 10/19/24

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I watched a lot of  horror movies this week but I didn’t watch much television.  Starting on November 1st, I’m going to have a lot of shows to get caught up on.

I caught the latest installment of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez.  Like a lot of Ryan Murphy’s recent miniseries, American Sports Story started out strong but the last few episodes have felt like padding.  It’s not that the episodes aren’t contributing to the story.  This week, we watched as Aaron committed what was apparently his first murder and as he started to show signs of CTE.  But it’s still hard not to feel as if each episode is basically 20 minutes worth of story stretched out to 50 minutes.  We’re halfway through this series and it has yet to really give us a reason why we should care about Aaron Hernandez.  He just comes across as being an idiot, regardless of his athletic skills, his terrible childhood, or his status as a self-hating gay man trying to survive in a homophobic culture.  He doesn’t seem to be worth all of this trouble.

I watched Hell’s Kitchen.  The chefs continue to compete at a high level and they continue to have disastrous dinner services.  Hell’s Kitchen is one of the few reality shows not to have massively changed its format over the past four years.  The producers know there’s no need to fix something that’s already working.  If only the producers of Big Brother and Survivor understood that!

I watched an old episode of Night Flight on Friday.  It featured Elvis snarling at the camera.

I watched the episode of Dr. Phil in which Phil and cult expert Rick Ross confronted a guy who said he wasn’t a cult leader despite the fact that he clearly was.  There’s a lot negative things that can be said about Dr. Phil’s show but the episodes where he exposed cults and their leaders were always entertaining and worth watching.

I watched and reviewed Homicide, Miami Vice, and The Love Boat!  I also watched and shared several episodes of One Step Beyond.

And that’s it!

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 3.3 “The Death Waltz” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond is called The Death Waltz.  It’s about what happens when, in 1860, two calvary officers fall in love with the same young woman, Lillie (Elizabeth Montgomery).  Lillie has a great time playing the two men against each other but, when one of them is killed by Apaches, she rather heartlessly goes to a dance with the surviving suitor.

Unfortunately, for her, the dead man’s ghost decides to go to the dance as well….

The episode originally aired on October 4th, 1960.

Enjoy!

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 4.4 “Once Upon A Ledge”

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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Arnold Horshack gets to be a hero!

Episode 4.4 “Once Upon A Ledge”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on October 2nd, 1978)

Seriously, what is going on at Buchanan High?

Gabe is vice principal but he’s away at a teacher’s conference.  Horshack and Washington are once again running the student store.  Epstien is once again working for the audio visual department.  Barbarino is nowhere to be seen.  This new Sweathog, Beau, is apparently the most popular guy in school, even though this is only his second episode.  Perhaps the strangest development is that Julie is now working as Mr. Woodman’s administrative assistant.  When did this happen?  I can’t even remember what Julie’s previous profession was but I don’t think it had anything to do with education in general or Buchanan High in specific.

Mary Johnson (Irene Arranga) is a shy student who feels that she doesn’t have any sort of identity in the school.  She’s one of three Mary Johnsons at Buchanan High.  She’s not Mary Johnson the Jock.  She’s not Mary Johnson the Cheerleader.  She’s Mary Johnson, the one with the perfect teeth.  When she tells Woodman that she wants to transfer into the remedial classes so that she can be a Sweathog, Woodman tells her that her C-average makes her ineligible.  She can’t even succeed at being a bad student.

Feeling lost, Mary climbs out on a ledge and threatens to jump.  Woodman, Julie, and each of the Sweathogs tries to talk her in but it’s only Horshack who is able to get through to her.  Horshack actually walks out onto the ledge himself so that he can talk to Mary about what’s it’s like to feel like an outsider.  Horshack gets Mary to come in, though he nearly falls off the ledge himself.

While binging and reviewing this show, it’s occasionally been easy to criticize Ron Pallilo’s performance as Arnold Horshack, though I think the real culprits were the show’s writers, who tended to make Horshack into such a strange character that I don’t think anyone could play him without being annoying.  But, to give credit where credit is due, Pallilo gives a really good performance in this episode.  Indeed, in some ways, this episode feels like a throw back to season one, when the Sweathogs still had a bit of grit and angst to them.

This was a simple but effective episode, even if the absences of both Gabe Kaplan and John Travolta were definitely felt.  (Nothing against Stephen Shortridge — who I’ve seen give good performances on The Love Boat and Fantasy island — but Beau was no substitute for Vinnie Barbarino.)  Still, it was nice to see Pallilo get a chance to once again play Horshack as a human being as opposed to a walking punchline.  And, for once, Woodman got to show his nice side, as he tried to help Mary feel better about her place in the school.  This was a surprisingly well-done episode.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.14 “Face of Evil”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

It’s sequel time!

Episode 2.14 “Face of Evil”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on February 6th, 1989)

In this sequel to the first season episode Vanity’s Mirror, Joanne Mackey (Gwendoline Pacey) returns to Curious Goods for the first time since the death of her younger sister, Helen.  Joanne reveals that she’s the one who stole the cursed gold compact at the end of Vanity’s Mirror, explaining that she simply had to have something that belonged to her sister.  Jack is not amused, telling her that she should have turned it over so that it could be stored in the vault.

Calm down, Jack.  Joanne knows she did something wrong and she’s trying to make amends.  She is especially concerned because the compact is now in the hands of an aging supermodel named Tabitha Robbins (Laura Robinson).  Tabitha is upset that her career is struggling and she’s been told that not even plastic surgery can reverse the fact that she’s just not as young as her competition.  Tabitha has figured out that anyone whose face is caught in the reflection of the mirror will either die or, at the very least, suffer a terrible disfigurement.  Apparently, in this case, the antique’s curse changes depending on who owns it.

I have mixed feelings about this episode.  On the one hand, I could relate to Tabitha’s feelings about aging.  No one wants to age and that’s doubly true when you’re working in an industry where youth is the most valuable commodity.  I also enjoyed the very 80s fashion shoots that were featured in this episode.  On the other hand, there were a lot of rather silly scenes of Tabitha trying to catch Ryan and Micki’s reflection in the mirror while Mick and Ryan ducked around with their hands over their faces.  There’s no other way to put it other than to say it all looked really goofy.

The biggest problem with this episode is that the majority of it was taken up with clips from Vanity’s Mirror.  Every few minutes, Joanne would think about Helen and we would get a flashback.  Unfortunately, a lot of the flashbacks didn’t even feature Joanne so you have to wonder how exactly she was able to remember them.  The constant flashbacks made this episode feel like a clip show and you know how much I hate those.

In the end, Tabitha accidentally catches her own face in the mirror’s reflection and she immediately starts aging.  I guess that’s the risk you take when you try to use a mirror as a weapon.  Micki and Ryan finally retrieve the compact and Jack mentions that Joanne could have saved a lot of lives by not stealing the compact in the first place.  Look, Jack — she feels bad enough already!  I’m sorry everyone isn’t beating down the doors of the antique shop to give you their cursed items.  Get off Joanne’s back!

Oh well.  At least the evil compact will hurt no one else….

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 2.27 “The Clown” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond originally aired on March 22nd, 1960.  The title of this episode?

The Clown.

Scared yet?

You should be.  Clowns are creepy!

Watch the episode below and find out just how creepy!

Enjoy!

Retro Television Review: T and T 3.19 “Turner’s Tale”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, things get trippy as Mr. T tells a story about a magical forest.

Episode 3.19 “Turner’s Tale”

(Dir by Patrick Loubert, originally aired on May 12th, 1990)

T.S. and Decker discover a little kid named Daniel (Amos Crawley), who is hiding out underneath the boxing ring at Decker’s gym.  Figuring that Daniel ran away from home after getting in trouble for something, T.S. tells Daniel a story while Decker tries to track down Daniel’s parents.

As you can guess from the episode of this title, the majority of the episode is a dramatization of the story that Turner tells.  (The story is also told in rhyme, just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.)  In Turner’s story, Daniel (Sean Roberge) and his sister Terri (Kistina Nicoll) move into a happy forest that is populated by people dressed up as mice, rabbits, and owls.  When Daniel enters a forbidden part of the forest and picks a flower, the police show up and Terri is taken away.  So, Daniel has to go to the police captain’s castle and admit what he did so that Terri can be set free and the forest can be happy again….

What?  No, I’m not kidding.  That’s the plot of this episode.

Okay, this is a weird one.  For 24 minutes, T and T goes from being a show about Mr. T solving crimes to a show about a teenager walking through a magic forest and trying to return a forbidden flower to the cops.  I can’t imagine that anyone really watched T and T for the action but if they did, this episode probably really pissed them off.

But I don’t know.  Maybe I’m getting sentimental as I mature but this episode was actually really sweet and kind of cute.  Mr. T really got into telling the story and there was a funny moment where Turner suddenly realized that he had no idea how the story was supposed to end.  One thing that has always remained consistent about T and T is that Mr. T was always at his most likable when acting opposite kids and trying to teach life lessons.  He and David Nerman made for a good team in this episode and watching them play off each other, it was easy to understand why Decker was the only one of the show’s supporting characters to appear in all three seasons of T and T.  There’s not really much else to say about this episode.  It was clearly made for kids and the lesson is that you should never be scared to tell your parents the truth, even if it means getting punished.  It’s pretty simple but the episode had a few funny moments and everyone seemed to be having fun.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.21 “The Torch”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, its the most shocking episode of Highway to Heaven yet!

Episode 2.21 “The Torch”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on March 12th, 1986)

Everett Salomon (Herschel Bernardi) is a Holocaust survivor who has become wealthy and successful in the United States.  In poor health and in need of a heart transplant, Everett spends most of his time giving speeches about his experiences in the concentration camp.  He is disturbed by the rise in Holocaust denialism and has dedicated his remaining years to battling the scourge of Neo-Nazism.  In a disturbing scene that brings to mind the horrible images of the October 7 attacks, a Nazi named Cal (Robert O’Reilly) sneaks onto Everett’s property in the middle of the night and murders his dog.

Cal is a follower of Jan Baldt (Paul Koslo), a Neo-Nazi and a Holocaust denier who has turned his basement into a shooting range so that he and his buddies can fire their guns at pictures of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Moshe Dayan.  Jan is consumed by hate and he’s teaching that hate to his young son, Rolf (played by a very, very young Mark-Paul Gosselaar).  While Jan rants about conspiracies and bankers, Rolf cleans the guns in the basement.

At a Nazi rally, Jan’s speech is interrupted by Everett’s son, Joseph (David Kaufman).  Cal proceeds to make his way through the crowd and ends up shooting Joseph dead.  When Everett hears the news, he has a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital by two paramedics, Jonathan Smith and Mark Gordon.  Meanwhile, while Jan and Cal celebrate in their basement, Rolf picks up a submachine gun and, not realizing it’s loaded, pulls the trigger and guns both men down.

Everett finally gets the heart transplant that he’s needed ever since he was first liberated from the camps.  Unfortunately, that heart comes from Jan Baldt.  At first, Everett refuses to accept the heart but then the ghosts of his parents and of Joseph appear to him and tell him that he has to continue to live and let people know the truth about what happened in the camps.

Later, Everett leaves the hospital and tells the reporters waiting outside that he will never be silent.

This seems to be one of the episodes of Highway to Heaven that anyone who has ever watched the show remembers.  Because the show is usually rather gentle and non-violent, this episode can be a rather jarring viewing experience.  The first time I saw it, the only thing that stunned me more than Joseph’s death was the subsequent deaths of Jan and Cal.  The episode ends on an uplifting note but I always find myself wondering what happened to Rolf.  Without his father around to brainwash him, will Rolf be able to learn something other than hate?  Or is it too late for him?  Is Rolf damned to follow in his father’s footsteps?

With the current rise of anti-Semitism, this episode still feels incredibly relevant.  There’s really not much difference between Jan Baldt’s rants and the stuff currently being spewed by Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and Brianna Joy Gray.  This episode reminds us that “never again” has to be more than just a catch phrase.

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 2.25 “The Haunting” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond, a man suspects that his best friend is having an affair with his fiancee.  What better way to take care of the problem than by leaving his friend to die on the side of a mountain?

It seems like the perfect crime and the man might get away with it …. but only if he can do something about the ghost who seems to be stalking him in the days leading up to his wedding!

As always, this is supposedly based on a true story.

This episode originally aired on March 1st, 1960.

Enjoy!

Retro Television Review: Malibu, CA 1.14 “Murray For Mayor”

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 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, Dennis Haskins guest stars!

Episode 1.14 “Murray for Mayor”

(DIr by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on January 24th, 1999)

Upset that his favorite tree stump has been slated to be destroyed to make room for a new road, Murray decides to run for mayor of Malibu.  When they discover that Murray’s father has given him a check for $20,000, Scott and Jason declare themselves to be Murray’s campaign managers.

Being two sociopaths, Jason and Scott proceed to spend the money on things for themselves.  It doesn’t matter, though.  Murray soon finds himself rising in the polls.

Who is Murray’s opponent?  It’s none other than Dennis Haskins, of Saved By The Ball fame!  Haskins plays himself in this episode, offering up a bunch of vacuous plans and slogans while continually having to explain to people that Mr. Belding was just a character that he played on television.  When Haskins learns that Scott and Jason have been using the money on things like a new television, he informs them that he will report them to the campaign board unless Murray loses.

Being two sociopaths, Jason and Scott try to sabotage Murray’s campaign by telling Murray to make increasingly outrageous promises.  But it doesn’t matter …. Murray wins the election!

Yay!  Jason and Scott are going to prison!  The show’s over!

No, not quite.  After making sure that his stump will be saved, Murray resigns as mayor.  Dennis Haskins announces that he’ll be running to replace Murray and, for some reason, this means that he’s dropping his investigation into Jason and Scott’s financial activities.  I don’t think that’s the way it works but whatever.

Meanwhile, Tracy is learning how to be a magician.  She accidentally handcuffs herself to Stads, totally ruining Stads’s date with some random guy.  Luckily, Tracy later handcuffs herself to the same guy and convinces him to give Stads a second chance.

(Where would mediocre sitcoms be without aspiring magicians and handcuffs?)

This episode was actually not as bad as it probably sounds.  Casting Dennis Haskins as himself and then having him spend the entire episode angrily saying that he’s tired of talking about Screech was actually kind of clever and probably a good reflection of what was actually happing in Haskins’s life at the time.  With its story of a washed-up celeb running for political office, this episode actually felt a bit prophetic.  (Just a few months before this episode aired, Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota.)  Just as Ben Savage had to spend his entire congressional run dealing with questions about why he no longer talks to the cast of Boy Meets World, Dennis Haskins finds his entire campaign defined by one role.

In the end, this episode predicts our cynical future.  Murray is elected despite being an idiot.  How often does that happen nowadays?