Rate The Last TV Show Episode You Watched

[mkaroly]

Last night I finished up watching ST:TNG season 2. There were definitely some duds in that season: Where Silence Has Lease, The Royale, and Shades of Gray (arguably the worst episode EVER due to the Writer's Strike); I wanted to like The Icarus Factor more than I did but I wish they had spent a little more time with the father/son storyline. There were definitely some stellar episodes as well. Some of my favorites were:

Elementary, Dear Data - I liked the tension factor in that one as well as Picard and Moriarty's final discussion.

Loud As A Whisper - Just a well-written episode that was thought-provoking and has a great score by Ron Jones.

The Measure of A Man - Very thought-provoking and powerful episode.

Q Who? - Although the Borg are "routine" by now, going back and watching this episode I thought the Borg were such a great concept. That episode made me feel extremely uneasy and I felt the hopelessness of the Enterprise's situation as the Borg pursued them. Great accomplishment.

The Emissary - This may arguably be my favorite episode from the season. I had forgotten about this one. First off, Suzie Plakson is hands down the HOTTEST Klingon female ever! Lol...holy crap! Secondly, I tend to enjoy the forays into Klingon culture and character; when ST:TNG is at its best I tend to forget that this is all fictional and embrace the characters/alien cultures as if they actually existed. In other words, I'm so lost in the story that I forget I am watching a fictional story. Dorn and Plakson really SOLD their relationship and I totally bought in to it. The episode ended with a very moving goodbye between the two, and dare I say the show was romantic in a way. I loved the tension in the relationship between traditionalism and modernity, something that works really well in Ozu's postwar films. This was an amazing episode.

Overall I think this season was a bit better than season one but still not quite there. As I said earlier somewhere, Dr. Pulaski did not work for me. From the start she was the only character who I felt really didn't belong with the chemistry of the rest of the group. She had her moments (The Icarus Factor was probably the best episode she was in), but her rigidity as a character did not mesh with the complexity and range of the others. I am glad Gates McFadden came back in season three.

[Eric Paddon]

A slew of "Hawaii Five-O" episodes from Season 6 (1973-1974). The series IMO continued to churn out consistently good work up to an artistic peak with the Season 9 debut episode "Nine Dragons" and then after that it was a downhill coast to the final lackluster season.

"Hookman"-A taut thriller pitting McGarrett against a vengeful ex-con who lost both his arms and is out to kill all the cops who put him away. The villian is played by a non-actor double amuputee who does an outstanding job communicating the menace and evil of the character. Morton Stevens won an Emmy for his score for this episode.

"Draw Me A Killer"-A very disturbing episode about the ultimate loser/nerd in life who is so obsessed with a comic strip heroine that he goes out to find real life lookalikes for the villains in the comic strip and murder them. It's because of the disturbing psychological profile of the killer that you can look past the ridiculous conceit of his being able to easily find FOUR dead ringers who by an even more incredible coincidence all have the same profession as the ones in the comic (and then we have to throw in a girl who looks like the heroine too). 40s film noir bombshell Audrey Totter has a brief role as a shrewish widow of one of the victims.

"Charter Of Death"-A crime boss, his son-in-law and daughter abandon a yacht after murdering the other passengers but they take ashore bubonic plague and its a race against time to catch them before an epidemic breaks out. It's always strange for me to see game show host Bert Convy (as the son-in-law) in these kind of acting roles but he does a good job. Nehemiah Persoff plays the distraught crime boss.

"One Big Happy Family"-Another disturbing episode showing us some truly repulsively distrubed killers (and giving us a reminder of how we didn't need graphic violence to communicate that revulsion), in this case a white trash family led by Slim Pickens who have left a killing spree of more than 150 victims behind them all over the country while stealing only small change amounts to live off of as they go from place to place. McGarrett's bewilderment at the end reflects perfectly the audiences.

"Tricks Are Not Treats"-A less effective tale involving the murder of a pimp and the rivalry between other pimps and loan sharks. The irony is the murdered pimp is played by Ron Glass and the loan shark who orders it is Gregory Sierra, a year before both would be appearing together on "Barney Miller"!

One of the best cop shows of all time and the remake can't hold a candle to it.

[Eric Paddon]

Some more Hawaii Five-O episodes mixed and matched, including William Shatner's hilarious guest appearance in S5 as a Dallas-based private eye with the worst fake Texas accent you ever heard in your life. Also a couple episodes of "Kojak" which gives us the New York equivalent of Five-O for good gritty 70s cop fare (though I always hated Cacavas's rearrangement of Billy Goldenberg's theme music).

I'm fascinated as a "Batman" fan by the Kojak S2 episode "Slay Ride" which is a tale of convention guests finding themselves thrown to their deaths from hotel windows and rooftops. The reason being is that we have two former Batman henchmolls in this episode, first Francine York (from the "Bookworm" episode, and also remembered as a dominatrix on "Lost In Space") and in top guest billing Julie Gregg who was the Penguin's moll in the last S1 episode and then had a walk-on in the Batman movie as the French nightclub singer. You get an insight into the difference between a talented actress and a limited actress if you remember both from "Batman" and then watch this "Kojak" episode because York is still playing the same type of role, in this case a busty high-class hooker who dresses in a way to emphasize her attributes, whereas Gregg gives a very brilliant performance as a troubled drug addict who knows the terrible secret of why these killings are taking place.

[Eric Paddon]

Discovered the short-lived 1973 series "Hawkins" starring Jimmy Stewart as a forerunner to the character Andy Griffith would later play in the 80s as Matlock. Because the Goldsmith theme and pilot movie score was released as an FSM title, this is why I always wanted to finally see it.

The films are lightweight disposable 70s entertainment where the fun is mostly from the familiar faces of the day. Ultimately if one is a fan of the lighter NBC Mystery Movies, they'll like this ("Hawkins" aired on rival CBS) too. It's weird though how the only other show they came up with in rotation with this was "Shaft" which is about as far removed from this as you can get!

Because the three scores Fielding wrote for this series are also on CD, I'll likely now find myself picking that up too!

[AndyDursin]

SALE OF THE CENTURY

I hadn't laid my eyes on this NBC daytime staple since I was a kid -- and like a lot of things you haven't seen in forever, it's so odd how the familiarity comes running back to you after just a few minutes, like it was buried in your subconscious for the longest time. At any rate, it's great to see Game Show Network now running reruns of this Jim Perry hosted '80s show that ran for the bulk of the decade (I was too young for the earlier '70s version of the show). This is a fun, lightweight blend of a poor man's Jeopardy with Lets Make a Deal type elements, complete with a canned crowd/laugh track, and overly eager contestants who look like they were either rejected for roles on NBC's daytime soaps or came straight out of a nursing home (there's not much middle ground).

Perry is fast on his feet and his "Fame Game" questions are a riot ("I was born the son of a pauper in 1933..."). It's also funny how the "current" questions firmly date the shows in a very specific time (one show I watched mentioned the home video release of E.T., plus referenced SHOOT TO KILL and MYSTIC PIZZA!).

It's certainly not a great show, but it's so fast and enjoyable that I can see why I liked it so much when I was younger.

Don't know what happened to Perry, but here's a clip of him singing Memory from CATS on some local TV telethon! (how does anyone have clips like these?!?!). And incredibly, he's not half-bad either, really bringing it home at the end.

[Eric Paddon]

Jim Perry is long retired now. He was actually much older than he appeared when he was hosting "Sale Of The Century" and before that "Card Sharks" thanks to a hair-dye job. He was a legend in Canada where he hosted a game show there called "Definition" for close to twenty years I think that overlapped both of his well-known US game shows.

The episodes that GSN is currently airing are unfortunately from the show's final six months from late 1988 to 1989 by which point in time the original format had been changed twice. In the original version from 1983 to 1984 a champion accumulated cash in the game to have a chance to buy an expensive prize that he could either take or he could come back to try and win a game again and run up his bank account for a more expensive prize. In 1985 this was changed to a bonus round of trying to pick prizes from a board and you kept the first one you matched. This last format with the "puzzle" bonus round was just dull and had no connection with the concept of the earlier version of the game.

There's a famous blooper I remember watching when a prize offered was an Admiral "A La Mode" refrigderator and the male model was dressed as an admiral seemingly tasting from some whipped cream concoction and when Jim came over to sample it, he then to his horror discovered it was shaving cream!

[AndyDursin]

The episodes that GSN is currently airing are unfortunately from the show's final six months from late 1988 to 1989 by which point in time the original format had been changed twice. In the original version from 1983 to 1984 a champion accumulated cash in the game to have a chance to buy an expensive prize that he could either take or he could come back to try and win a game again and run up his bank account for a more expensive prize. In 1985 this was changed to a bonus round of trying to pick prizes from a board and you kept the first one you matched. This last format with the "puzzle" bonus round was just dull and had no connection with the concept of the earlier version of the game.

I noticed the music was a bit different, same theme but different arrangement...and you're right, that "puzzle" bonus round is laughable. 4 questions in 20 seconds, if you don't get it on the fourth word given, you're never winning anything.

Are they showing anything from earlier in the show's run? Or are they just airing certain shows? They don't seem to be airing them in any particular order either. The last two days they had some young guy on there as champion and Perry was talking about Christmas, then the next show there's a whole other champ and he's asking if "everyone enjoyed the parades and football games"! lol.

Oh well, at least it's running. Haven't seen it in a while.

[Eric Paddon]

Yes, the revamped theme music is also why that final era of the show's run isn't remembered as fondly as the earlier eras. We alas don't know if all the tapes of the NBC episodes survive. Word is, is that the first year or so of the run was wiped out (which included the first model, the vapid blonde airhead Salli Julian, and most of model #2 Lee Menning; Summer Bartholomew came on around 1985). When USA did reruns in the 90s they were mostly reairing shows from the syndicated nighttime run of 1985-86.

Unfortunately when GSN shows old shows now they only tend to license a portion of a show's run rather than have the whole run at their disposal like in the good old day of 1994-2004.

[AndyDursin]

I usually watch their Pyramid reruns during the summertime. Are they showing basically the same set of episodes -- the $25K CBS version and the $100K syndicated night time show? Do they run through them fast?

[Eric Paddon]

My understanding is they only show one year or so of the respective runs rather than the whole run and then just go back to the beginning of that cycle. For some time, Match Game reruns were only one year of the run.

I stopped watching GSN altogether once my tape collection had all the vintage programming I wanted, plus the fact that GSN was now eliminating the vintage end credits with the fee plugs.

GSN only aired the New York based "$20,000 Pyramid" back in 1997-98. They only have the episodes from June 1978 to the end of the run in June 1980 with the earlier years wiped out of existence (your friend's two appearances that he recorded don't exist in the Bob Stewart/GSN vault!)

[Eric Paddon]

"Dr. Kildare" has made it to DVD at last from Warner Archive. I had never seen the show before other than two or three episodes on You Tube uploads and I was anxious to finally see it for the first time, especially given the availability of the music on the FSM CD (though alas, to my disappointment I now have learned of one score from S1 that should have been included but wasn't). The show has proved to be a fascinating discovery for me with some brilliantly done episode, especially the pilot but I was especially blown away by the episodes "For The Living" and "Season To Be Jolly" respectively. The former gives us a tale of mercy killing that is presented much differently from how the subject would be treated today, while "Season To Be Jolly" now gets my vote for the greatest Christmas episode of a TV series next to the Dragnet Christmas episode. I've so far seen just one terrible episode in the first dozen, "Hit And Run" which gives us an over the top Richard Kiley obsessed with not wanting his injured son to be operated because of his crazed obsession about surgery being fatal.

[Eric Paddon]

Somebody has been posting all the old "Donny And Marie" variety show episodes to YT of late. I found something that fascinated me in seeing a show that not only had Raquel Welch as a guest but also a sketch sending up "Battlestar Galactica". It was a typically bad sketch, but a fascinating curio of what variety shows in that era did.

But when I looked over the other entries this one really jumped out at me.

"Entire Donny & Marie Osmond Show With Cindy Williams & BRUCE KIMMEL!"

Must have been a lousy week trying to find guests!

[AndyDursin]

Do you have the link to that particular episode?

You can imbed it here using the Youtube link on the top of the posting bar (just put the video ID between the tags).

Beyond that I'm not commenting

[Eric Paddon]

Here's the link. I'm not embedding!

[AndyDursin]

LOL