Reviewing media such as games and movies, from a wide variety of genres based on my wildly fluctuating moods and interest. CURRENT FOCUS: Android mobile games. More Roblox reviews coming soon.
Starring:
Omri Katz as Marshall Teller
Justin Shenkarow as Simon Holmes
Mary-Margaret Humes as Marilyn Teller
Francis Guinan as Edgar Teller
Julie Condra as Syndi Teller
Tony Jay as Sir Boris von Orloff
Christian & Joseph Cousins as Harley Holmes
Shawna Casey as Maiden
Written by: Karl Schaefer Directed by: Sam Pillsbury
Well, ladies and gentleman, this might be it: the “breakthrough” episode of the series. As with all previous episodes, you can ignore the title...there's nothing here that will be scary for any child over the age of three, nor is it the show's point to scare. What it is, however, is a clever play on the typical “switch parts” trope, in which Simon's crazy brother, Harley, ends up in a mummy flick. But, as Marshall and Simon wonder, if he's in the television, then where's the mummy? In their house, of course!
It all starts on Halloween. For reasons never made clear, Simon's younger brother, Harley, who looks like he'd be the perfect age for trick or treating, is forced to stay at home and be babysat by Marilyn, Marshall's mom, while he and Simon go out monster hunting. At least, that's how the night's supposed to go. But as we already know, things in Eerie, Indiana often don't turn out the way they're supposed to. In this case, Marshall's father is stranded with a dead car, so Marilyn has to go pick him up. This leaves Marshall and Simon in charge of Harley.
Trying to make the most of the situation, Marshall decides to have Simon unwittingly film Harley playing with lizards, in the hopes that what transpires will be funny enough to win $10,000 on a certain home video show. That plan doesn't take long to backfire, and before Marshall knows it, he has a lizard of his own down his pants.
So they set Harley up in front of the television, forcing him to watch “Bloody Revenge of the Mummy's Curse” while they plan on keeping themselves busy. Bad luck follows poor Harley, though, and after biting down on the remote (?), he ends up in the mummy movie, while Marshall and Simon now have a mummy of their own to deal with. They might not have been able to go monster hunting, but one certainly found them!
As it turns out, this isn't a real mummy, but rather the actor that plays the mummy: self-proclaimed “international star” Boris von Orloff, a curmudgeonly old man who's been dead for fifty years. They hatch a plan to reverse the effects and send Boris back into the set of his own movie—which Harley is trashing. The scenes of Harley knocking stuff over and causing general havoc while the female star, who's stuck in the movie's loop and thinks she's being chased by the mummy, simply runs away and screams the whole time is the kind of thing that makes “Eerie, Indiana” special...it has a unique self-awareness missing from shows in general these days.
This is the first episode where everything felt like it was firing on almost all cylinders for me. The writing is pretty sharp, there are more than a couple laugh-out-loud moments...even a risque sex joke finds its way in there (courtesy of Marshall's stranded mom and dad). It's kind of a shame that Cindy continues to exist only in the background...it's like the creators were forced to include a cute female character, but didn't have any way to utilize her (though listening to her reciting shapes based on boys from her school, which she does on the phone to a friend, is pretty funny).
With all this in mind, I'd have to say this is the best episode yet, and the perfect example of what this show could be when it was on its A-game. I honestly have paid no attention to who's directed what thus far (until right now, obviously), but of the five episodes I've watched, Joe (Gremlins) Dante has directed three of them, with two going to Pillsbury...and in a blind viewing, I've disliked two of Dante's, and loved both of Pillsbury's. Who would have expected that, coming from a man whose most notable works are Free Willy 3, and the classic Lifetime film Fifteen and Pregnant?
Hopefully it can build off of this and continue on its upward trajectory.
Starring:
Yancy Butler as Lisa Gerou
William McNamara as Nick Boyer
David Leisure as William Tilbrook
Paul Williams as Dr. Mueller
Joey Buttafuoco as Frankie Carelli (yes, THAT Joey Buttafuoco)
Mark Folger as Scientist #2
Doug Llewelyn as Calvin Patterson
Dennison Samaroo as Scientist #1
Marc Segal as Bank Guard
Maureen Teefy as Chrome
Written by: Mark Verheiden, based on the "Weird Science" comic books, by William M. Gaines
Directed by: Ramon Menendez
Well, I praised the show’s first episode, “Dream of Doom”, for managing to be effective despite the show’s obviously low budget. I have also berated a couple additional episodes for trying to be too ambitious--the effects work in this entire show is shoddy, at best, and there are very few things that can ruin anything quite like bad special effects. Especially given the fact this show takes place in the future, at a time when technology runs rampant and has progressed beyond our wildest dreams. I thought the episodes that focused more on story and writing would be the better ones.
“Given the Heir” has ruined that idea for me. Here we have an episode that, aside from a couple of quick time travel sequences, have very little in the way of special effects; and yet, it’s an absolutely terrible, interminable bore. I kept sitting back, waiting for some kind of twist ending, only to be left hanging--this just may be the worst episode yet.
Yancy Butler plays Lisa Gerou, a woman who has a thing for a man named Nick Boyer (William McNamara). It is unspecified exactly what Boyer does, but judging from the women that are constantly vying for his attention, he must be famous for something. In order to appease him, she researches his likes and interests, then uses technology to mold herself into the perfect being for him. There’s just one little problem: All this is happening in 2006...as we learn, Nick died ten years ago, way back in 1996. So how can she meet up with him after he’s been dead for so long? Easy: Time travel. It’s still not common technology at this point, but after exchanging some sexual favors with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, he agrees to build a time machine for her. I guess even distinguished prize winning men are as shallow as the rest of us!
We think there might be some sort of attachment that the two shared at some point, but unless I’m missing something, Lisa is actually just an obsessed fan from the future. In fact, Lisa Gerou isn’t even her real name: she got it from blending his mother’s first name, with his favorite “French-Canadian Scotch Whiskey”. Well that’s kind of creepy. But her attention-to-detail does pay off--armed with her future knowledge, she is able to withdraw $50,000 from his secretive second account, even going so far as to have her fingerprint altered to perfectly match the one that he used to safeguard that bank account.
Needless to say, everything goes terribly wrong for her. Her schemes to get his attention--taking a large sum of money out of someone’s account will do that--work fine for a short while, but after finding her to be inadequate in the sack, he quickly grows tired of her. He thinks she’s scheming with the account manager at his bank, so he has his bodyguard kidnap him. The bank manager, Mr. Tillgood, swears up and down that he had nothing to do with it, but poor Nick doesn’t believe him. So Tillgood steals the bodyguard’s gun and shoots him, the bullet going through the bodyguard and hitting Nick in the neck. Bingo, just like in “real life“, Nick ends up dying in 1996, and not even Lisa’s time travel can stop that. The end.
Based on a little research, the episode of “Weird Comics” that this was based off of had the same title, but focused on a man who had to put off marrying his wife because he’s so poor. After meeting a time traveling relative, he’s convinced that he can come into wealth by having her kill an ancestor, thus passing the money onto him. Even that idea is stupid, so I’m not surprised that, even with the major alterations to the story, this one falls quite flat, as well. There’s nothing really exciting that happens, nor any twist at the end that brings everything around full circle, so “Given the Heir” ends up being irreversibly dull.
Starring:
Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn
Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Det. Warren Osborne
Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick
David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo
Paul McCrane as Det. Bob McIntire
Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander
James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose
Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin
Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso Kathleen Wilhoite as Patty Spence
Written by: William M. Finkelstein and Stephen Bochco and John Romano
Directed by: Arlene Sanford
Well would you look at that episode title? What a lovely little pun! Here we are back on the rough streets of LA, where anyone is prone to breaking out into song at any given time. This formula has not worked at all in previous episodes, so there’s really no reason to believe that it’s going to start working here, but stranger things have happened, right? Wrong.
In the last episode, we saw Patty Spence get locked away for admitting to selling her child for money. This interrogation was set up by Officer Vicki Quinn as an attempt to help her get her life back on track, but the sleazy, gravel-voiced Captain John Hollander had other plans, and abruptly asked to have her arrested. Vicki was hurt by this, and so was Patty, thinking that Vicki was the one that had her set-up. Well, in a surprise turn of events, Hollander, who “made the mistake of bringing it up” to his wife one night, reverses his decision, instead believing that she deserves a second shot.
This change of heart is actually pretty refreshing, because up until now Hollander has been nothing but a poorly-written sonofabitch; here, for the first time ever, we see that there might actually be a kindhearted man buried somewhere, very deep, under his tough exterior. While he’s the topic of the moment, I do want to mention his low-pitched, annoying voice. If that’s actually the way his voice sounds in real life, then I give him a pass; but if he talks that way to give the illusion that his character is “cool” and “tough“, well it’s one of the biggest failures of a cop show that includes song numbers. Every time he talks, it sounds like he’s trying so hard to convince viewers that he’s a no-nonsense macho-man that my wife and I automatically comment on how much we hate him.
Now back to the story: His suggestion to give Patty a second chance puts her in a courtroom, where she squares off against someone from Social Services, or some similar organization. Of course, Patty defies the odds by giving a heartfelt speech to the judge, who decides to get her out of prison and give her full custody of her child after all! Isn’t yawn-inducing predictability grand? (Actually, to the show’s credit, she surprisingly does not resort to singing…at least, during this scene.)
Introduced in this episode (as a one-off character, I believe), is none other than Gina Gershon, that hot, “star-of-the-moment” in the ‘90s, that was more or less quickly forgotten by the time the 2000s rolled around. In this, which I would actually presume to be one of her first roles (sorry, a fever and general disinterest prevents me from diligently double-checking the information as I normally would), she plays an actress being relentlessly stalked by a superfan, who she fears will eventually cross the line into physical harm. We are then subjected to a singing number from the fan, as he explains his obsession to us, complete with romantic sax music (?).
This brings me to another critique of “Cop Rock” and its song-and-dance format: It simply doesn’t understand who’s worthy of a musical number. When the show is at its “peak”, a term here used loosely to mean “not cringe-inducingly embarrassing”, it’s because it picks a subject that can sustain song treatment. For example, “He’s Guilty” from way back in the pilot. That song managed to be effective because it was catchy, and because it was convincingly executed…having the jurors suddenly don gospel garb and sing backup, as silly as it sounds, is a damn inspired choice, and the whole thing is pulled off with brazen confidence.
The only problem is, it sometimes seems to get a little overconfident, forcing us to listen to terrible, misguided attempts to rationalize its worst characters. We saw it a couple of episodes ago with the song “Baby Merchant”, in which a man who buys and sells babies (?) sings to a “prospective couple” (in this case a duo of undercover cops) about how they shouldn’t worry because he always comes through. Here, we get a psychotic loner singing about his love for a woman that feels threatened by him and wishes he would just go away. As with every other song in the show, it attempts to be earnest, to be straight-faced. On the one hand, I kind of get the point: I think it‘s the show‘s attempt to wear its heart on its sleeve, so to speak, and to get the viewer to care for even the lowest of low-lifes. But do they really think such connection with the audience is possible through poorly-written songs? How else are we supposed to take this besides self-parody? It’s just too ridiculous to work straight, something no one involved with the show seemed to understand at any point of its development cycle, and it‘s a big reason as to why the world of “Cop Rock“ is enmeshed in constant failure.
Anyway, we have to have this storyline spell potential trouble for the police department, so the actress asks out Detective Bob McIntyre, who agrees to go out on a dinner date with her. But things quickly get dicey when the superfan decides to take his obsession to the next level, opting to deliver her flowers in person. Even though Bob is there and about to apprehend the subject, the actress panics and shoots him dead. As of this ep, all that signals was the end of the relationship, but it might come up to be a bigger deal down the road (if it doesn’t, it’s a rather pointless single-use storyline, as neither are charged for any criminal wrongdoing).
Meanwhile, Captain Hollander also gets to be the focal point of another storyline when an epidemic of cocaine use is running rampant throughout the city. But these aren’t just low-income ghetto dwellers that are buying the stuff, but rather upper-class executives. One of them just happens to be the assistant of a city councilman, who of course has the power to pass an important bill for police funding. Reluctantly, they let him go, but once the same girl is captured again, Hollander decides to go against the grain and ignore the councilman’s pull.
Another side note on Hollander: The show goes through such great lengths to paint him as a level-headed, honest cop that it’s honestly disgusting. No one would ever behave like this, at least in the real world, circa 2016. He’s already gone out of his way to convict a cop that murdered a known cop-killer, and now he’s attempting to fight a highly influential councilman? Gag me out the door. I guess we’re supposed to appreciate his ethics, but they just feel so unnatural that it’s just another reason that it’s impossible to take him, and by extension, this show, seriously.
In the last bit (I’m going wildly out of order here), LaRusso starts falling in love with his attorney, who plans a trip to New York--and refuses to let him come with her. Is she hiding something? Or is she simply the womanizing LaRusso in female form? Either way, it’s obvious that he is not happy, as he even tries exerting some of his machismo on her, attempting to control her into submission. But even that can’t break her. It’s apparent that he’s not used to this kind of treatment from a woman…is he going to end up falling for her? If he does, will she reciprocate it? I kind of hope I don’t have to answer that question.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again: This show sucks. It has gotten to the point that I can’t even force myself to watch it more than once a week; at this point, I’d be glad to quickly force down the rest all at once, the way you used to force down liquor when you were younger, just for the sake of getting drunk as fast as possible. But I honestly can’t do it…my heart sinks every time I’m faced with the prospect of sitting down to one of these, and my mind desperately searches for more important things that I have to do, just to get out of it. Hopefully a future episode will change that, but I’m pretty sure we’re seeing the peak of the show, and getting an obvious glimpse as to why it was canceled.
