Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 2.4 “Operation Bannister”

Posted on April 27, 2024 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, Howard has an operation …. maybe.

Episode 2.4 “Operation Bannister”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on October 24th, 1986)

A foolish attempt to impress a blonde customer by lifting and carrying a crate full of bottles lands Howard in the hospital. He’s scheduled to have a hernia operation. It should be a simple procedure but there’s a problem. Howard’s a wimp.

Seriously, Howard spends this entire episode in a state of panic. First, he has to deal with an ER doctor who is — *gasp* — a woman! Then he discovers that the doctor who will be operating on him is barely out of medical school and looks like he’s about 16 years of age. Then, he discovers that his roommate at the hospital is full of horror stories. I guess it’s a good thing that Howard knows how to escape from hospitals because he ends up doing it several times. Of course, every time, he’s promptly recaptured and sent back for his operation.

This episode ends on a curious note, with the store’s staff putting on a “welcome back” party three days after Howard’s operation just for Howard to reveal that he once again escaped from the hospital and, instead of getting the operation, he spent three days hiding out in a hotel. He didn’t even let Edna know what he had done. Two burly orderlies show up at the store and drag Howard back to the hospital as the end credits roll.

So, did Howard ever actually have the operation? I’m going to assume that he did but it’s interesting that the episode leaves the storyline unresolved. Instead of being about the operation, the episode instead becomes a meditation on fear and the foolishness of trying to escape fate. Howard is very good at running away from his problem but, no matter how hard he tires, the orderlies always track him down. Like the Grim Reaper, Canadian hospital orderlies cannot be escaped.

I hate hospitals so I could relate a bit more to this episode than some of the other episodes that I’ve seen of this show. As an American who gets tired of hearing about every other country’s supposedly perfect health care system, I appreciated that this episode showed that hospitals suck no matter what country you’re in.

That said, I have to admit that, while watching, I got a bit annoyed with Howard. I mean, first off, he shouldn’t have tried to pick up that crate to begin with. Secondly, if you don’t want to have the operation, don’t have it. Don’t keep returning to the hospital just because Edna and a bunch of orderlies yell at you. And if you do decide to return to the hospital, own that choice and stick around until the operation’s done. I understood Howard’s feelings but he still came across as being a bit of a wimp in this episode. Nobody likes a wimp.

Next week, according to the imdb, Howard’s niece will make an appearance. Let’s hope she has more guts than her uncle.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Check It Out 1.11 “Love on Sale”

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Attention shoppers, tonight’s episode is weird.

Episode 1.11 “Love on Sale”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on December 11th, 1985)

Weird episode.

Mrs. Cobb (Barbara Hamilton) wants to open up a store in Saudi Arabia so she assigns Howard to give a speech to a group of “Arab investors,” while she spends the night seducing a sheik. Howard agrees and is told that, if everything works out, he could end up as the President of Cobb’s International. Going from being the manager of grocery store to an international business tycoon would be quite an accomplishment. Of course, Mrs. Cobb also expects Howard to dress up like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. This leads to both Edna and Murray punching him out because they initially don’t recognize him in his costume.

Meanwhile, Murray is trying to raise $150 so that he can buy Howard’s old car, which is apparently sitting on a bunch of milk crates somewhere. Murray is a teenager who doesn’t even know how to drive but he really wants that car. How can Murray earn $150?

(Just consider that apparently, Murray doesn’t even make $150 a week from his job at Cobb’s.)

After a customer gives Murray a five dollar tip after Murray introduces him to a female shopper, Murray decides that he’ll start hooking up the single shoppers in return for a ten dollar payment. Howard thinks that this is a fine idea, as long as Murray doesn’t try to hook up anyone who is married. (Personally, I can’t think of anything that would make grocery shopping more awkward than having a 15 year-old bagboy trying to convince me to date someone while I’m looking over the produce but whatever.) Soon, Murray is making all sorts of money but then a Vice detective shows up and arrests Howard for running an escort service.

While dressed like Lawrence of Arabia, Howard is thrown in jail. In his cell, there are two burly men who continually threaten to beat him up, a skinny guy who talks about how he ate someone’s face, and a male lawyer who is wearing hot pink high heels. Murray, Christian, and Alf show up at the station and explain that they were all involved in getting people dates at Cobbs and, as a result, they’re all tossed in the cell as well.

Somehow, Howard and his employees do get released because, the next day, Howard comes to work and discovers that every swinger in the city is eager to shop at his store and Mrs. Cobb is not upset about Howard missing the meeting with the investors because Mrs. Cobb was able to seduce the sheik. Howard says that he can’t wait to be in charge of Cobb’s International because then he’ll be able to get a harem, which leads to Edna punching him.

Weird, weird episode. It’s hard to even review this episode because it really does take place in its own rather surreal reality. That said, I kind of appreciated the episode’s nonstop jokiness. There wasn’t a serious moment to be found here and, while some of the jokes fell flat, some of them worked surprisingly well. It’s an extremely silly episode that doesn’t add up to much but it’s just weird enough to be entertaining.

Retro Television Review: T and T 2.9 “Hostage”

Posted on December 15, 2023 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, Amy, T.S. and Joe get involved in a — ugh — hostage situation!

Episode 2.9 “Hostage”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on November 28th, 1988)

Fleeing from the police after a botched robbery, two sweaty crooks, Rook (Lawrence King) and Larry (Angelo Rizacos), duck into Don’s Sporting Goods and end up holding 8 people hostage, including Amy and Joe! What a scary situation! These eight Canadians probably just wanted to buy new hockey jerseys and now, they’re being held hostage!

The police, of course, are ineffectual. T.S. tracks down the ex-wife of one of the men but she can’t convince him to come out of the store. The two crooks don’t want to go back to prison so they’ve demanded a lot of money and a plane and they’ve given the Toronto police only two hours to meet their demands. Inside the store, Amy tries to reason with them. Rook knows that things have gone too far and that they need to surrender to the police. But Larry is sweaty and violent and determined to escape with the money.

I groaned a bit when I saw what this episode was going to be about. I absolutely dread sitting through anything that involves hostage negotiation. There’s really not much that can happen in a story like this, other than the hostage takers doing a lot of yelling and the negotiators saying, “You’re going to have to give us more time!” It’s really not much fun to watch people getting guns pointed at their heads while some loser rants and raves about how he’s going to pull the trigger unless he gets what he wants. With the exception of Dog Day Afternoon, hostage taking is usually pretty boring to watch.

Probably the biggest mistake that this episode makes is that it sidelines T.S. Turner for much of the action. The main appeal of T and T is the chance to watch and hear Mr. T take down the bad guys. T.S. spends the majority of this episode just standing around and only he gets to call one person “brother.” Finally, during the final few minutes, T.S. ends up crawling around in the building’s loft so that he can break through the ceiling and take out the hostage takers but, by the time he does, the two criminals have already turned on each other. For once, it falls not to T.S. to capture the main bad guy but for the bad guy’s accomplice to shoot him in the back.

All in all, this was a disappointing episode. Amy failed to talk the criminals into giving themselves up and T.S. failed to capture the criminals by himself. What is Canada even paying these two for?

Horror On TV: The Hitchhiker 6.3 “Riding the Nightmare” (dir by Christian Duguay)

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, a woman who is having an affair with her sister’s husband (uh-oh, don’t do that) starts having surreal and increasingly frightening nightmares about a white horse. Is she being warned of her impending death?

This episode originally aired on October 5th, 1990.