Yank Azman | Through the Shattered Lens

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!

This week, Oscar will haunt your nightmares….

Episode 2.8 “Read My Lips”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on November 21st, 1988)

When you watch as much horror as I do, you automatically assume that anyone who is a ventriloquist is going to have an unhealthy relationship with their dummy. Sometimes, the dummy is alive. Sometimes, the dummy is possessed. Sometimes, the dummy is just a dummy but the ventriloquist has decided that it’s alive and urging him to kill. (For some reason, evil ventriloquists are always male.) I’ve seen a lot of creepy ventriloquist dummies but nothing quite compared me for Oscar….

AGCK! I mean …. LOOK AT THAT THING!

Oscar is at the center of this week’s episode of Friday the 13th. Oscar is wearing a boutonniere that once belonged to the noted ventriloquist, Adolf Hitler. The boutonniere not only brings Oscar to foul-mouthed life but it also inspires whoever owns Oscar to commit countless murders. When we first see Oscar, he is owned by Edgar Van Horne (played by a youngish Billy Drago). After Edgar attempts to break his bond with Oscar, Oscar drives Edgar crazy and then invites another ventriloquist, Travis Plunkett (John Byner), to be his owner. Things don’t turn out well for Travis either.

Sadly, Jack is not in this episode. With its emphasis on desperate nightclub performers and Oscar’s corny sense of humor, it’s hard not to feel that this storyline would have been right up Jack’s alley. Instead, it’s left to Micki and Ryan to deal with Oscar and the ventriloquists. Micki’s best friend from high school, Gabriella Montrose (Linda Griffiths), is planning on marrying Edgar but, needless to say, that all goes out the window once Edgar loses his mind and end up in a mental hospital. For the most part, Micki and Ryan are largely bystanders in this episode. All of the action revolves around Oscar and his unfortunate owners.

Billy Drago gives a wonderful performance as Edgar, making him both frightening and, in the end, surprisingly sympathetic. Edgar is desperate to escape the clutches of Oscar but, in the end, it turns out that he’s grown addicted to performing with Oscar and the attempt to quit cold turkey leads to him losing his mind. (Many episodes of Friday the 13th feature storylines that felt as if they were meant to be a metaphor for drug addiction and that’s certainly the case here.) John Byner plays his role a bit more broadly than Drago but still, it’s hard not to feel bad for Travis as he comes to realize that he’s in over his head with Oscar.

This was an effectively creepy episode, even if it did owe an obvious debt to the 1978 film Magic. Oscar makes for a memorable monster. Hopefully, he’ll never be seen again.

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!

T.S. Turner protects a man who finds some money! Didn’t he already do this?

Episode 2.12 “Wendell’s Story”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on January 30th, 1990)

Who is Wendell?

Wendell (played by Wayne Robson) is beloved figured in this show’s fictional Canadian city. Wendell lives on the streets, sleeping in a tent in an alley and spendinh his days eating whatever food he happens to come across. Wendell is good-natured and he doesn’t take it personally when the local teenagers toss a half-eaten apple at him. Wendell is such a nice guy that, when he comes across a duffel bag full of money, he doesn’t keep the money for himself but he instead starts handing it out to random people. It’s his way of thanking everyone for helping him and everyone is very polite about waiting their turn to be handed some money.

Way to go, Wendell!

Unfortunately, the duffel bag belonged to two incompetent crooks named Errol (Gareth Bennett) and Fritz (Dominic Cuzzocrea). Now, when I say incompetent …. listen, T and T has featured it’s share of dumb criminals but there have never been any dumb as these two. Not only do they lose the duffel bag but they also continually lose track of Wendell. They’re the type of crooks whose ammo clips regularly fall out of the guns. These guys may be incompetent but they do fire a gun at T.S. at one point. T.S. escapes injury but, as he explains to Amy, shooting at him makes things “personal.”

T.S.’s plan to protect Wendell and catch the bad guys is to have his friend Decker wear a fake beard and pretend to be Wendell. It’s a good plan, except the bad guys come up with a similar plan and, as a result, there are two fake Wendells wandering around and T.S. has to figure out which one to beat up. T.S. gets so confused that it gives the bad guys time to to get the drop on him. Fortunately, the bad guys once again fail to load their guns correctly, which gives T.S. and Decker time to knock them both out with one punch.

This was not a particularly complicated episode. Nor was it a very suspenseful one, as the bad guys were such idiots that they never came across as being any sort of threat. More time was spent with Wendell teaching Joe how to live on the streets than on the villains trying to get their money back. (Why is Wendell teaching Joe how to live on the streets? It was T.S.’s idea, which leads me to wonder if T.S. is planning on kicking Joe out of the gym at some point in the near future.) As for Amy, she spent most of this episode setting up her new office and getting annoyed with the perfectly nice guy who had an office across the hall. The show may be called T and T but it’s usually one T who gets to do anything.

This was a bit of a forgettable episode but Mr. T did yell, “Hey, fool!” after the bad guys attempted to shoot him so that was kind of fun.