Starring:
Jeremy London as Billy Rabe
Jeff Fahey as Bearded Man
Joanna Gleason as Mrs. Rabe
Jim Metzler as Stan Rabe
Devon Odessa as Linda
Justin Chapman as Little Billy Rabe
Gary Grossman as Sheriff
Ace Mask as Science Teacher
Maureen Teefy as Chrome
Written by: Kevin Rock, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines
Directed by: Gilbert Adler
Whereas the first episode, “Dream of Doom”, played to the strengths of its low budget, it is episodes like “Anatomy Lesson” that helped to kill this series before it ever had a chance to shine. The focus on special effects, which somehow manage to be every bit as terrible now as they were back when they first aired, takes the viewer right out of the story, while the twisty finale twisted itself right out of my interest level, lingering on an implausible finish that makes very little sense. Part of its failure stems from its short run-time: this feels like a 50- or 60-minute episode cut in half, which doesn’t allow much time to build up the required amount of character development to make any of this work.
“Anatomy Lesson” focuses on little Billy Rabe. He’s the son of the town’s coroner, and looks forward to sneaking into the basement while his father performs autopsies. He seems to be getting to do that more and more frequently lately, because there’s a serial killer loose in the town, dispatching child molesters and other unwanted scourges of society. (Maybe an inspiration for "Dexter"? Haha, just kidding...that would have required author Jeff Lindsay to watch a series that no one even knows ever existed.) But there’s something much more sinister within Billy than just morbid curiosity--he frequently gets the urge to kill. Our first clue to this behavior is after his father (Jim Metzler, in a great performance) catches Billy snooping in the basement; he is banished to his room, where we discover he stole one of his dad’s scalpels. Then, a nearby cat “meows”. A grinning Billy closes in, scalpel extended and ready to cut. He comes down on the window sill--only to have the cat jump into the arms of a bearded man, who tells him to go to bed. Terrified, Billy obliges.
Flash-forward to the present. Little Billy Rabe is growing up so fast--he’s a teenager already, and is now played by Jeremy London. But his urges haven’t subsided…in fact, if anything they seem to have gotten stronger. So when a hot, stereotypical high school slut named Linda (Devon Odessa) comes on to him, his first thoughts aren’t of making out with her, or taking things even further--no, he just wants to kill her.
That night, as things are getting hot and heavy in her car, he pulls her hair back. She thinks he’s just getting into it, so she leans her head back, going along with his aggression. But Billy grabs a knife instead, and goes to plunge it into her unprotected neck--but a hand gets in the way, absorbing the weapon. That hand belongs to the same bearded man that appeared to him when he was a younger child! Linda is terrified, unaware of just how close to death she was; Billy is only angry that he didn’t get to finish the job. He tosses the keys to Linda, and tells her to leave, while he exits the car to track down the bearded man (Jeff Fahey), who ran away after saving her life.
After catching up to him, the bearded man informs him that he’s intervened because a killer needs a good reason to kill, like offing sex offenders and other murderers. Billy, in the heat of the moment, goes to kill the bearded man…only to discover that he’s not all that he appears to be. Then a bunch of even more stupid shit happens, and what starts off as a fascinating episode goes from 60 to zero in record time.
I don’t want to reveal the ending, but that is where all the cheesy effects come in, and they range from just plain bad, to astonishingly embarrassing. I will say that the acting is pretty solid here--I can’t remember if that’s the case with all of them, but they seem to get some pretty talented people for such a low budget. I guess that’s probably the main plus to having a production crew consisting of Robert Zemeckis and Walter Hill and Joel Silver (to name just three of many), which probably helped with landing them some solid B-list stars.
In the end, there’s just very little here to recommend. The buildup is rather intriguing, and it’s pretty neat to see some small shards of “Dexter” in here, what with the serial killer offing murderers and other lowlifes and all (though such plot points have probably been around for years, so I’m in no way insinuating this was an influence). But for an installment that relies pretty heavily on its ending, to have such a terrible finish pretty much blows any air out of the momentum balloon, making it all come crashing down.
EPISODE RATING: 4/10
Whereas the first episode, “Dream of Doom”, played to the strengths of its low budget, it is episodes like “Anatomy Lesson” that helped to kill this series before it ever had a chance to shine. The focus on special effects, which somehow manage to be every bit as terrible now as they were back when they first aired, takes the viewer right out of the story, while the twisty finale twisted itself right out of my interest level, lingering on an implausible finish that makes very little sense. Part of its failure stems from its short run-time: this feels like a 50- or 60-minute episode cut in half, which doesn’t allow much time to build up the required amount of character development to make any of this work.
“Anatomy Lesson” focuses on little Billy Rabe. He’s the son of the town’s coroner, and looks forward to sneaking into the basement while his father performs autopsies. He seems to be getting to do that more and more frequently lately, because there’s a serial killer loose in the town, dispatching child molesters and other unwanted scourges of society. (Maybe an inspiration for "Dexter"? Haha, just kidding...that would have required author Jeff Lindsay to watch a series that no one even knows ever existed.) But there’s something much more sinister within Billy than just morbid curiosity--he frequently gets the urge to kill. Our first clue to this behavior is after his father (Jim Metzler, in a great performance) catches Billy snooping in the basement; he is banished to his room, where we discover he stole one of his dad’s scalpels. Then, a nearby cat “meows”. A grinning Billy closes in, scalpel extended and ready to cut. He comes down on the window sill--only to have the cat jump into the arms of a bearded man, who tells him to go to bed. Terrified, Billy obliges.
Flash-forward to the present. Little Billy Rabe is growing up so fast--he’s a teenager already, and is now played by Jeremy London. But his urges haven’t subsided…in fact, if anything they seem to have gotten stronger. So when a hot, stereotypical high school slut named Linda (Devon Odessa) comes on to him, his first thoughts aren’t of making out with her, or taking things even further--no, he just wants to kill her.
That night, as things are getting hot and heavy in her car, he pulls her hair back. She thinks he’s just getting into it, so she leans her head back, going along with his aggression. But Billy grabs a knife instead, and goes to plunge it into her unprotected neck--but a hand gets in the way, absorbing the weapon. That hand belongs to the same bearded man that appeared to him when he was a younger child! Linda is terrified, unaware of just how close to death she was; Billy is only angry that he didn’t get to finish the job. He tosses the keys to Linda, and tells her to leave, while he exits the car to track down the bearded man (Jeff Fahey), who ran away after saving her life.
After catching up to him, the bearded man informs him that he’s intervened because a killer needs a good reason to kill, like offing sex offenders and other murderers. Billy, in the heat of the moment, goes to kill the bearded man…only to discover that he’s not all that he appears to be. Then a bunch of even more stupid shit happens, and what starts off as a fascinating episode goes from 60 to zero in record time.
I don’t want to reveal the ending, but that is where all the cheesy effects come in, and they range from just plain bad, to astonishingly embarrassing. I will say that the acting is pretty solid here--I can’t remember if that’s the case with all of them, but they seem to get some pretty talented people for such a low budget. I guess that’s probably the main plus to having a production crew consisting of Robert Zemeckis and Walter Hill and Joel Silver (to name just three of many), which probably helped with landing them some solid B-list stars.
In the end, there’s just very little here to recommend. The buildup is rather intriguing, and it’s pretty neat to see some small shards of “Dexter” in here, what with the serial killer offing murderers and other lowlifes and all (though such plot points have probably been around for years, so I’m in no way insinuating this was an influence). But for an installment that relies pretty heavily on its ending, to have such a terrible finish pretty much blows any air out of the momentum balloon, making it all come crashing down.
EPISODE RATING: 4/10
FULL EPISODE
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