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gclarkbloom
Reviews
Murder, She Wrote: Town Father (1989)
Cabot Cove, the "Big City??"
As a Wyoming native, the producers and scriptwriters have staged a rather typical ignorance of the facts about Wyoming, and Casper in particular
First, Annie Mae's accent is a kind of Appalachian hill folk dialect. Wyoming folk do not have such an accent.
Second, , Casper has a population of between 55-60 thousand, is the financial and Business capital of Wyoming's oil and natural gas industries, has a fine university and boasts a regionally acclaimed symphony orchestra; all of which would make IT the "Big City" vs. Sleepy Cabot Cove...
Another crude put-down of my home state by coastal fools.
Matlock: The Class (1993)
....bottom of the class...
...this episode features the mystery surrounding the disappearance snd suspected murder of a member of an elite school's Law Club...
...the difficulty of working with young actors who are in the process of honing what, if any true acting skills can be that the believability of the script writing, and the capability of the casting supervisors, the directors, producers...and even the abilities of the principal actors are placed in jeopardy....
....as anyone even tangentially associated with the film and television industry is familisr with the ultimate influence of having a pretty or hsnddome visage; which often severely trumps any true ability...
...this is certainly the case during this ill-advised episode....replete with ham-fisted over-acting, lots of "eye rolls" on the part of young "pretty boys and girls" who were given the role to be aesthetically pleasing...and nothing more...
Gunsmoke: The Jailer (1966)
Legend hams it up
This episode was much-touted in TV "sneek peek" promos at the time on CBS..."Gunsmoke" being the network's long haul cash cow...consistently earning sky-high Nielsen ratings and, thereby commanding the highest per minute advertising fees of any program up to that time...
...it was also packed with stars and a supporting cast most film producers would envy...led by the indomitable ( and out of work) Bette Davis, who per usual, plays her strong-willed self...making her bitter arch rival Joan Crawford look like a Girl Scout...
...Bruce Dern is brilliant in his demented role of the eldest son, Luke...and Julie Sommars and Tom Skerrett shine as the humane, yet terrrified youngest son and daughter-in-law...
...the primary plot motivation in this episode highlights the strong, yet unacknowledged partnership between Matt and Kitty... a topic which generated thousands of fan letters sent to Paramount each month...
...Jim Arness, Ananda Blake and the cast and crew of "Gunsmoke" were riding the wave of the series' continuing dominance...and provided Paramount with more than enough cash to pay Davis's ouylanfish acting fees...
Diagnosis Murder: Getting Mad, Getting Even (2000)
..."Diagnosis Embraces Cougarism"...
...one of the newest social phenomenons around the millenium was the notion of "the Cougar"...the concept of older women actively pursuing men many years their junior...
...fed by actress Demi Moore's dating, and subsequent marriage to the star of "That 70's Show" star, Ashton Kutcher... it was a cause celeb among women pointing out how very different and hypocritical the double standard was in this area... older men bedding, dating and marrying much younger women was proof of their virility; while older women doing the same with younger men was somehow perverted... like "robbing the cradle"....
...this phenomenon takes the form of Joanna Cassidy as Community General's Chief Administrator, Dr. Wesley dating and then cohabitating with a much younger character Brett, played by 15 years younger blond hunk, John Scneider...
...it is later revealed that Schneider's character is playing the good doctor as a chump, providing him legitimate cover for his muder of a prominent plastic surgeon who gave him a new face to avoid prosecution for his prior criminal activities... including murder...
... while both Cassidy and Schneider play their characters well... the believability of a sophisticated and savvy hospital administrator falling for the unctious and false charms of a cold-blooded manipulator and liar like Schneider's character, Brett rings patently untrue...and Cassidy's weak and emotionally dependent portrayal of a flattered and smitten older woman is absurd...
...this is a classic case where scriptwriters bend their characters to their given story line...and the resulting stew is inedible...
Matlock: The Mother (1990)
...smart, talented mom...dumb daughter...
...the great oerformance by veteran actress Shirley Knight, as the ling-time and dutiful and unappreciated legal Secretary, Phyllis Todd is in abdolute and unbelueveable contrast to the typically blonde bimbo performance of Beth Touissant as her jilted "used and abused" daughter, Angela Todd....
...Touissant, whose believability jived with a mindless "beach babe" or professional hooker is simply unbelievable as anything remotely close to "attorney material"...
... her early career revolved around modeling and appearances in MTV videos for various '80's pop rock groups...followed by brief roles on "Dallas" and the ill-fated WB prime time soap, "Savannah"...
...stick to the soaps, Beth... where lip implants and bottle blonde air-head looks are the norm; but leave serious drama to the pros...
Poirot: Triangle at Rhodes (1989)
...the inspiration for "Hotel Portofino"...
...the beautiful vistas of the Isle of Rhodes informed this episode of Poirot...
...in the 30's, Rhodes would have been a seething cauldron if intrigue, blackmail, mayhem and murder...with its historical tensions as an outpost of Greece ( it is just 30 miles from the Turkish port of Marmaris, but nearly 300 southeast of Athens), with the hamfisted elevation of thugs and street rowdies into Mussolini's sinister occupation... and topped off with an intresting cast of privileged British tourists...this episode is a sure-fire winner for fans of Christie's demure Belgian sleuth, Poirot...
...the cast includes a delightful assortmentof UK character actors, including Frances Low, Jon Cartwright, Annie Lambert and Peter Settelen..this episode delights and the writing is, as ever, first rate...
Gunsmoke: Father's Love (1964)
...a trio of talent...
...in this tale of romantic deception, 3 of Hollywood's best and most enduring character actors go to making this a vibid, memorable episode...
...Robert F. Simon, veteran authority figure actor played hundreds of such roles, most memorably as wacky General Maynard Mitchell on M*A*S*H...plays the sexually irrepressable "dirty old married man"...Jesse Price
...Ed Nelson...known most widely for his role as Michael Rossi on the blockbuster prime time soap, "Peyton Place"...and after hundreds of guest appearances, he retired to New Orleans to complete his BFA in fine arts at Tulane... where he went on to teach acting and screenwriting...
...finally, the "heavy you loved to hate", Anthony Caruso played loud-mouthed and racist Simms...was part of a group of Hollywood talent tapped to play mobsters, gamblers and criminal racketeers for early television...in spite of such imagery...Tony was a kind, gentle and devoted father, husband of 63 years... and a gardener...
Cannon: The Predators (1972)
...Colorado location, LA production values...
...as a life-long Rocky Mountaineer...there are some absurd decisions by Quinn-Martin which merit note...
...though hoods and gangsters in LA might drive a Lincoln Continental....no one would in Silverton...the Colorado filming location...
...the so-called "coyote getters" explosive devices were never authorized under Colorado law...this gives a false/slanderous image of real-life western grazing operations...
...in the opening scenes, Cannon disembarks from the famous Durango-Silverton Narrow Guage tourist train which runs the short route between Silverton and Durango...even casual viewers would have noticed this inconsistency in 1972...
...the producers at Quinn-Martin were lazy Southern Californians who obviously didn't do any research...and just didn't care who they smeared to "get the episode in the can"...
Magnum, P.I.: Blind Justice (1984)
...Thomas blows the prosecution's case...on purpose
... first observation:
1. ... when denied use of Robin's Ferrari by major domo Higgins as reprisal for destroying some very generic houhouse begonias, Thomas opts for a worn out and problematic Jaguar E-type which lives up nicely to the dersgatory reputation it has within the classic car community...that "... they spend more time in the repair garage than the owner's garage...."
....this choice of cars is a not-so-subtle plot jab at the supercilious Higgins, and his elevation of reverence for all-things British to unreasonable snobbery...
2. ...toward the climax of the trial against the defendant Greg...whom Magnum knows to be innocent of the crime, purposely leaves the tape recorder, containing a previously unknown recording with highly incriminating circumstantial evidence on the rail of the witness stand; thereby allowing a corrupt and high-priced defense attorney to "accidentally" record over the incriminating initial recording...
... but for Thomas's intentional oversight, the accused murderer would likely have been falsely convicted...
...while such antics on Thomas's part satisfactorily act for dismissal of murder charges for the defendant... the fact is that ANY prosecuting attorney... no matter how inexperienced... would have taken great care to secure such a recording....even if it was later ajudged to be inadmissable...
...all reviewers would be well advised to remember that this series... like nearly all others... is a result of the LA-LA Land fantasy writers...and NOT reality...by any stretch...
Magnum, P.I.: Legacy from a Friend (1983)
...Potts is the Pitts...
...Annie Potts, a genuinely talented comic actress, would later go on to much greater heights in the hit comedy series "Designing Women"...
...in this frankly irritating episode... she annoyinhly whines her way through every scene with a stereotyped "image of prople from Philadelphia"...
...her voice here is like fingernails on a blackbiard...you just want to cringe...
Gunsmoke: Daddy Went Away (1963)
...Chester Goode, you've done good...
...with the continuing success of their hit Western series, "Gundmoke"...sndvits move into a full hour-long format... the producers and writers were allowed much more time to "flesh out"their principal players...
...in later interviews, actor Dennis Weaver indicated that his decision to leave the show...not long after this episode was film centered around his constantly being made to portray Chester as a shallow, bumbling and naive character...
...well, screenwriter Kathleen Hite must have gotten the memo... because Chester moves from his typically self-absorbed goofiness through heartache to, finally helping to reconcile a broken marriage and a daughter lonely for her absent father...
...in this single episide, we observe the true Chester Goode...in all his complexiity and subtlety...and it was about time...
Gunsmoke: Quint-Cident (1963)
...a turn for the acting pro...
...in this whistful tale of a prairie farm woman, overlooked and eventually left abandoned by them after all of them die...
...this role, which could easily be over or under played, but in Mary LaRoche's hands it is just as it was written... a character who acknowledges a hard-scrabble, tragedy-filled life in a sardonic, yet undefeated manner...
...Mary starred in hundreds of stage and Hollywood productions; and she IS that type of omni-present character actor whose name you can't quite think of...
...Mary is often remrmbered for her roles in the films "Gidget", and "Bye-Bye Birdie"... and for dizens of trlevision episodes on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Gunsmoke", "Twilight Zone" among them...
...it IS a rare thing when a character actor's performance literally overshadows those of the entirety of the other cast members...and Mary's superb talents do just that in this episode...
..if you ever have a chance, be sure to catch one of Mary's sterling portrayals...she was a real gem...
Adam-12: Backup 1-L20 (1972)
...ooops, Sgt. McDonald seriously violates procedure...
...in the initial sequence, McDonald nabs a burglar and violates rule one if arrest procedure, he places a pillowcase loaded with the thief's loot right next to him in the back seat of the cruiser...
...even though the guy has cuffs on, he could easily have stashed some of the evidence (expensive watches and jewelry) into the area between the seat and back cushion...the difference in value coukd lower charges from grand larceny (a felony) to petty theft ( a misdemeanor)...perp back on the street....quickly...
...per ANY standard PD arrest procedure, the pillowcase should have been put in the patrol car's trunk...well away from the suspect...
...for being such a "stickler for portraying actual police pricedure...some in Jack Webb's crew goofed...bigtime...
Perry Mason: The Case of the Misguided Model (1966)
...Perry lays an egg...Miss America "snow plowed"...
...this episode is similar to many in the 9th and final season of "Perry Mason"...illogical, unexplained plot twists, seemingly important clues left hanging...all down to multiple scenes clumsily edited by a crew in a series that had, clearly "jumped the shark" ( was on its last legs)...
...the one thing.that stood out to me was Mary Ann Mobley's portrayal if the ambitious Sharon Carmody...who will stop at nothing to be selected as the "Snow Princess" schilliing powdered laundry soap...
...though script engineered, Mobley's character can be seen as a not-too-subtle broadside toward beauty pageants in general; and the vaunted Miss America Pageant in particular...the implication that the wholesome "all-American girl" imagee is just that...imagery....concealing the sometimes ruthless, back-stabbing machinations used by certain contestants and their backers to win the crown...
...Mobley clearly had acting ambitions beyond her year as Miss America for 1959...and as the criminally ambitious Sharon Carmody, she saw the "crown" of a career in film and television...and she exploited her "connections" to get it...
...Mary Ann joined former Miss Americas who went on to show business success, including Bess Meyerson, Lee Merriweather and Vanessa Williams...so, it clearly "pays to have been a princess"....
...Bert Parks and his fellows in the management of the Miss America Pageant organization would have been none-too pleased with this episode...
Perry Mason: The Case of the Unwelcome Well (1966)
....the sad waning years of a legendary actor...
...overriding the basic theme of unrestrained greed...lurks the sad spectre of a slurring obviously intoxicated veteran actor Wendell Corey...
...born the son of a Congregational pastor, Corey later worked as a summer stock actor with the Federal Theater Preject, a part of FDR's Works Progress Administration...
...after a run of on and off-Broadway theater roles starting in the early 40's, he was noticed by Hal Wallis, former Warner Bros. Production chief, then working as an independent producer at Paramount...which signed him to a contract in 1946...
...he debuted in 1947's "Desert Fury", and then proceeded on a prolific career as a suppporting actor in dozens of A-list studio films and later in scores of television series during the early 60's...
...by the time of this episode, Corey's alcoholism was on full display...
...like another long-time FDR Democrat, Ronald Reagan, Corey became a conservative Southern California Republican...and like Reagan, also served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and was later elected to the Santa Monica City Council...
...Corey's severe alcoholism culminated in his death in November '68 at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills...he was only 54 years old...
...though recognized for his acting ability, he was often an arrogant and abrasive personality...and as with so many actors of his generation, substance abuse ended his career...and his life...far too early...
Perry Mason: The Case of the Tsarina's Tiara (1966)
...phony Russians and Spanish-speaking Brazilians...
...bearing in mind that the era of this Perry Mason episode (1966) had Hollywood studios using Italians and Latinos to portray Native Americans...the general viewing public's kniwkedge if real Russian accents was primitive, or non-existant (ue. The voice of Mel Blanc in the cartoon " Boris and Natasha" on the "Rocky and Bullwinkle Show"...
...Virginia Field, born in London to a Vienna and Paris educated father and King's Counsel ( our Federal Prosecutor) St. John Field and her mother, a cousin of Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee (hence the name, "Virginia") ...was often given roles portraying Eastern European- types...her accent is as phony as counterfeit diamonds in her Czarina's long-lost tiara...
...on the contrary Leonid Kinskey WAS raised in St. Petersburg, and his accent is correct and true as Vyacheslav Gerzov, the Russian commoner/circus performer who claims his mother carried the tiara out of Russia during the Bolshevic Revolution..
...but the most glaring goof involves Hollywood-born Carlos Romero...who had dozens of roles portraying Latino characters...in this episode, he potrays Ricardo Arena, a Brasilia businessman ..who repeatedly speaks Spanish...NOT Portuguese, the official language of Brazil...
...while certainly not a noticable flaw at the time...such inconsistencies would render the entire episode absurd by current standards...
...this was amongst the final episodes of the Perry Mason series; and CBS obviously just wanted to "get it in the can"...
Perry Mason: The Case of the Twice-Told Twist (1966)
.. .the Wide, Wide World of Perry..
....two notable items regarding this episode....
1. ....all the networks were gradually converting their series to color production; and this was kind of a swan song salute to the long- running series by CBS....
2. ...the role of Lennie Beale, the young car stripper gang member who elicits Perry's reformist zeal is played by Ryan O'Neal's kid brother, Kevin.,.
Perry Mason: The Case of the Fugitive Fraulein (1965)
...Achtung, mein herr!!!...
...though many of the season 9 episodes featured highly implausible plot lines and rather stilted dialigue .. it is the ugly reality of Erich Honecker's deeply repressive and highly controlled society that is the main character here...
.. Honecker was a vain, deeply suspicious man; and his Stassi (security service) made spies out of nearly every German...with even the children and relatives of dissidents paid off with plum apartments for ratting out their iwn family members...
...as a modern day parallel...simply Google former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, raised in Perleberg, East Germany...you can observe first hand, her innate reluctance to speak forcibly or assertively...this comes from a childhood where literally anyone she spoke to could be speaking to might report their conversation..everyone had to proceed with deliberate suspicion and circumspection...whatever you might divulge unwittingly could cost someone their "privileges", their freedom, even their very lives...
...younger viewers should try to speak to a former East German to appreciate just how much if our " freedoms" we take for granted...
...veteran English actor Ronald Long turns in a stelkar performance as the uunctious opportunist Franz Hoffer, and French character actress Lilyan Chauvin is appropriately creepy as the orohanage matron...
...kudos to Earl Stanley Garner and famed director Arthur Marks for a timely, and suspenseful episode...
Gunsmoke: The Widow (1962)
...a respect for Native American traditions...
...unlike previous reviewers, I won't whine about a rather listless scritwritinh, nor label Joan Arthur's chracter of headstrong widow Mady Arthur as a "witch"....because to do so minimizes the true significance of this episode which aired in March of 1962...
...this era marked a time when Anglo Americans held highly deragatory points if view regarding native cultures; and terms such as "red savages" and "godless good-for-nuthin' injuns " were often spoken...growing up in Wyoming at this time I can tell you that this vile prejudice was real from my own experience...
...the forward thinking themes; that treaties entered into with native tribes were to be respected...and that an aerial burial by the Kiowa of an enemy leader was a sign of high respect...were nothing short of revolutionary at the time...
...kudos to writer John Dunkel and to Director Ted Post for a brave foray into a new era of respect toward indigenous cultures, which make this an important and significant episode...and well worth watching...
Emergency!: Dealer's Wild (1972)
...life is often unfair...
...in a classic expose of this cliche...Gage & DeSoto; as well as Drs. Brackett/Early/Mortimer and Nurse McCall give their all to save the bizarre assortment of cases thrown their way...
...DeSoto overcomes a rules-bound airport employee who couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag to talk down a brave young man whose dad has suffered a serious heart attack in their private plane...only to finally lose him...
...again, DeSoto is confronted with unhelpful onlookers and a prostitute mother as he searches for clues to a young woman's drug overdose...
...and the ultimate irony is a destitute man surviving his triple suicide attemp (slashed wrists/rat poison/gas poisoning) only to berate Dixie for the Rampart medical staff for saving his life; threatening to sue for "his being poked and prodded"...
...not only do our paramedics face intense medical challenges; but they must deal with lazy, self-absorbed, purposely uncooperative individuals whose actions throw up unnecessary obstacles...or who utterly fail in expressing anything approaching gratitude for their efforts...
...for these reasons...we owe a double debt of gratitude for their selfless dedication, compassion and tender loving care...just as true today as when this episode aired 50 years ago...
Gunsmoke: The Gallows (1962)
...Wester Pioneer Justice on Trial...
...this well directed, well acted episode of Gunsmoke revealed the fact that Court imposed death oenalties and true justice were, at times, mutually exclusive...
...the character of Pruit, excellently rendered by veteran actor Jeremy Slate, is owed $100 by an emotionally defeated, alcoholic Dodge City storage and Transfer business owner, Ax, played by Robert Stevenson who refuses to pay Pruit unless he gets drunk with him...after a drunken melee, Ax is killed with his own knife...and without any witnesses, Oruit is charged with his murder...
...in spite of the facts that Pruit saved Marshall Dillon's life; and that the only person to see Priit leaving the business is the town drunk; a by-the-book Circuit Court Judge convicts Pruit and sentences him to death by hanging...
...there was only one reprieve from a Circuit Judge's death penslty at the time; a Presidential Pardon...which was rarely granted...
...Pruit, though given multiple opportunities to escape by Matt Dillon; maintains a much higher level of chracter and integrity than the judge who convicted him, as well as the drunken sheriff's deputy in Hays City assigned to oversee his hanging...
...this episode aired in March of 1962, when the death penalty was a hot button issue...with more and more states passing legislation to outlaw it...
...as such, this was one of the most compelling episodes of Gunsmoke; and a fitting swan song for veteran director Andrew B. McLagan...
Gunsmoke: He Learned About Women (1962)
...a rare celebration of diversity...
...Hollywood in the days of the studio system was an industry dominated by WASP rich whites; aided and abetted in their stigmatization of people of color by rich and powerful Jewish men such as Louis B. Mayer and Darryl Zanuck...
..the result being that such legendary characters as Charlie Chan...and all Native Americans ...were portrayed by whites (usually Italians and Greeks)...
...in this episode, the character of Solis, portrayed by veteran actor Claude Akins benefitted from Atkins being part Cherokee; with a number of Hispanics playing same...
...during his final years, Claude Akins lamented that he had never been made to feel a true member of the Hollywood community...in spite if his hundreds if film and television credits...speaking volumes as to how the major studios/production companies are STILL dominated by the blinkered waspish crowd which has been in Hollywoid since the days of "Birth of a Nation"...in 1913...
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Thanatos Palace Hotel (1965)
...Hitchcock jumps the shark...
...as is typical with TV series which have rntered an irretrievable state of declining ratings, the producers resort to hiring well-known guest stars in a futile effort to staunch the bleeding...
...Andre Maurois and Artur Ross conspired on this weirdly fantastical script and teleplay that not even the lovely Angie Dickensin, aided by veteran actors Steven Hill, Barry Atwater and Bartlett Robinson couldn't rescue...
...filled with empty, useless platitudes...this episode under the direction of Laslo Benedek begins taking on water within the girst few moments...and which is nosing downward like the Titanic well before the final credits...
Perry Mason: The Case of the Tarnished Trademark (1962)
...a bevy of yelling...
...episode director Jerry Hopper must have been raised in a sawmill...
...and Swedish-born Karl Swenson, who is as belicose as a pissed off Brahma Bull in portraying the retiring Axel Norstaad....
...apparently, Jerry felt that "the louder the better"... but Karl knew, as do I that ALL Scandinavians tend to be very doft spoken...even taciturn...
...the upshot, all the yelling quickly overehelmed any real character development...overall a jangling, annoying episode...and dimply way below the standards of this premier series...
Perry Mason: The Case of the Shapely Shadow (1962)
Legal Illogic...
...at one point during the episode, Perry and Della meet Janice in Las Vegas, where the Vegas Police Lietenant remains nds Perry that he can't even represent anyone in a Nevada traffic court....
...the logic failure here is glaring...as a high-powered LA attorney , Perry would have routinely represented clients living in or with business dealings/holdings in Nevada...and would have msintsined s license to practice law in Nevada courts...