Synopsis: Supervillain Dr. Zin wants to disrupt the world’s gold markets. This involves murder, a kidnapped scientist who can do quasi-alchemy, a henchman disguised as a maharajah, and some extremely irate big cats. I don’t think Zin has an efficiency expert on staff.
Tip 16. Courage! There is often a light at the end of the tunnel.
See?
…Of course, sometimes that light is coming from a secret science lab.
The cutting edge of modern…I don’t even know.Maybe this is Dr. Pretorius from Bride of Frankenstein and Bandit used to be a mastiff.
You know what they say: where there’s bubbling alembics, there’s hope.
Next time: I screw up my courage and start taking a look at one of my childhood favorite books.
Welcome to Finally! Friday, an occasional feature to break up the (loooooong) list of things I need to revisit for Found-Again Fridays. Inspired last year when I watched Flashdance only 30 years after I first meant to, I’ll be writing about stuff you… and sometimes I… can’t believe I never watched/read before—and for this week, it’s 1970s crime drama The Streets of San Francisco.
Why Finally? It’s a police drama with a young Michael Douglas in it. If you had any idea how much Law & Order I’ve seen, or how many times I’ve watched Romancing the Stone, you too would be flabbergasted.
…by my not having seen Streets, that is.
The Premise: San Francisco homicide detectives Mike Stone (Karl Malden, who to a demographic including me will forever be “the guy from the American Express ads”) and Steve Keller (Michael Douglas) solve a variety of crimes, from armed robberies gone wrong to apparent political assassinations.
It’s the classic buddy-cop formula: Keller is a bit more the charge-ahead man of action, while the older Stone is craftier (and has an uncanny ability to talk crazed killers into giving themselves up). Still, neither is a slouch in any department, and most of the fun lies in watching them work together to find the killer. And like some of the shows that followed it—Simon & Simon and Magnum, P.I. come to mind—the city itself becomes a kind of supporting character in Streets of San Francisco.
As does Douglas’s hair. Look at that—it’s a force of nature! Or a force against nature. It’s definitely a force, at any rate.
The Verdict: If you are the sort of person who watches Dragnet ’67 for the funky clothes and slang, you’ll love this show. If you like cop shows, you’ll like this show. If your hobby is spotting character actors, you’re going to yell “Vic Tayback!!” a lot. (You’ll also see David Soul as a man hiding his ethnic background and David “Ellery Queen’s dad” Wayne as a newspaper seller.) And if you’ve ever seen Police Squad!, you’re about to find out why they did that title-card gag. Tremendous fun, just dated enough to be interesting rather than absurd.
Might go well with: Seafood, Dragnet, and to the surprise of no one, Romancing the Stone. You have to admit that hair is incredible.
Synopsis: Supervillain Dr. Zin wants to disrupt the world’s gold markets. This involves murder, a kidnapped scientist who can do quasi-alchemy, a henchman disguised as a maharajah, and some extremely irate big cats. I don’t think Zin has an efficiency expert on staff.
Tip 15: Beware reversals of fortune.
Someone* once said that man is the most dangerous game.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Even so, Dr. Quest’s spy mission to India proves the contest for first runner-up is what you might call fierce.
*The fellow who wrote the story of that name was Richard Connell. No idea why I have to look up that information every time I need it, yet can remember enough old musical instruments to make Hangman opponents want to take it live-action.
Next time: Yet to be determined.
Next time on tQfM!: More spying, less, um, tigering.
Synopsis: Supervillain Dr. Zin wants to disrupt the world’s gold markets. This involves murder, a kidnapped scientist who can do quasi-alchemy, a henchman disguised as a maharajah, and some extremely irate big cats. I don’t think Zin has an efficiency expert on staff.
Tip 14: There’s nothing wrong with mixing cutting-edge and old-school interests.
Case in point: Dr. Zin, international supervillain. His current interest is the age-old alchemical pursuit of turning non-gold things into gold—well, gold enough to fool people—even though he’s a very early adopter of this sweet video-phone system.
“It’s known as…VisageTime.”
But isn’t it always the way? No matter how hipsterishly obscure your hobby may be, someone you can’t stand is also into it:
Author’s note: this is where I tried for several minutes to make a “phlogiston…before it was cool” joke. You’re welcome.
It’s okay to feel possessive of your interests: it’s less okay to, say, kill people with a poisoned needle about it.
Next time: If you thought Ginger Snaps was scary, I give you Tom Cruise in a funny little outfit.
Why Found-Again? I remember loving this show during its original run, but now that I look it up, I can’t figure out how I even managed to watch Picket Fences; I was in college at the time, and TV reception in the dorm was frequently abysmal.* (The exception was Fox, which is how I watched The X-Files.) I must have liked the show even more than I thought.
The Premise (“What Have We Here?” Version): Imagine if Northern Exposure eloped to the mainland US to marry Law & Order, and they compromised by living in Wisconsin.
The Premise (Official Plot Version): Picket Fences centers on the smallish town of Rome, WI, and especially on the Brock family. Father Jimmy (Tom Skerritt) is the sheriff at a time when Rome happens to be fielding some extremely weird crimes; his wife Jill (Kathy Baker) is the town doctor.
This face is merited at least once an episode.Behold, the woman who helped make Mister Frost worth (re)watching.
Though the whole town is an endless source of intrigue, much of the action centers around Sheriff Brock’s police station, where deputies Kenny and Maxine (Costas Mandylor and Lauren Holly) are always on the job—and, if memory serves, occasionally each other. And if you wondered what Holly Marie Combs got up to before Charmed, she plays the oldest Brock child here.
I have, however, saved my favorite for last. I’d forgotten until I saw Fyvush Finkel’s cheery face how much I love the character of Douglas Wambaugh, the lawyer who might as well be a Weeble the way he pops back up after getting smacked down in court. Wambaugh is relentless and never at a loss for words, and he is my hero.
He’s also running for mayor in season 1, which is probably only one reason that guy would have a poster of himself.
The Verdict: I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect this show to have aged well, and parts of it haven’t. But I still love Picket Fences and all Rome’s townspeople. It’s been a long time since I saw a show full of “quirky” characters who nevertheless feel real; maybe it’s an art we’ve lost, or maybe it’s the result of my being without cable for ten years. The latter seems likely.
Might go well with: All kinds of cheese, for all kinds of reasons.
*Previous generations told of walking to school in the snow; lying on my dorm bed and looking almost straight up at the TV on top of the wardrobe—the only way I could get Animaniacs to come in clearly—somehow doesn’t have the same ring of hardship, but will definitely hurt your neck.
Synopsis: A scientist friend of Dr. Quest is kidnapped by credulous Amazon tribespeople who wish to sacrifice him. Dr. Quest ends up captured too, and it’s up to Race Bannon to do the silliest thing he can in this vaguely racist cartoon in order to save everyone.
Sometimes there comes a time for drastic action: when the chips are down, the odds are long, and the tribesmen want to put a couple of scientists into a pit for ill-explained reasons. In other words:
Tip 13: When the going gets tough…
…Then whatever you do, don’t strip off and jump into the leech- and germ-infested waters of the Amazon. That would be silly.
Sometimes you just have to learn from bad examples rather than good ones, campers.
The less said about this particular bad example, the better.
Still, it rescued the scientists. New episode next Monday!
Synopsis: A scientist friend of Dr. Quest is kidnapped by credulous Amazon tribespeople who wish to sacrifice him. Dr. Quest ends up captured too, and it’s up to Race Bannon to do the silliest thing he can in this vaguely racist cartoon in order to save everyone.
Tip 12: Try not to overlook the obvious.
Sorry to leave you all stranded in the jungle with the hordes of generic monkeys. I trust you got through the holidays, even if it may have taken a little work with a machete.
Now that we’re all back at base camp, let’s kick off the new year with one of the most basic lessons of all.
…Except for all the Po-Hos, of course. They’re pretty fluent in it.
In the immortal words of Depeche Mode, people are people. Even Dr. Quest screws that one up sometimes.
Next time: Still debating the merits of a review vs. a new Musical Interlude for Friday.
Next time on The Quest For Monday!: A little something for the ladies, and inclined gentlemen.
I’ve occasionally suspected, but am now convinced, that there’s some deranged Netflix subscriber who only returns old movies after hitting the DVDs with a mallet. So while I await a non-cracked replacement for our originally scheduled Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, I turn to an old favorite.
Why Found-Again? Ten years ago, I watched this animated show almost constantly. I was out on my own for the first time after my separation from the Future Ex-Husband and badly in need of coping strategies; though I’ve never been sure what “watch The Critic and Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow daily” was supposed to accomplish in this regard, that is certainly what I did for four months straight. The Critic is probably Found-Again because I need it less than I used to, and that is probably a good thing.
The Premise: Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz) is a snooty TV film critic and perpetual underdog. His ex-wife can’t stand to look at him. His makeup lady is against him. His adoptive family, except for his sister Margo, treats him like a second-class citizen. His boss, Ted Turner-alike magnate Duke Phillips, wants him to stop giving blockbusters bad reviews. His best friend is a beloved action-movie heartthrob. And his dating life runs the gamut from Misery to Barney the Dinosaur, which you have to admit is an unusual damn gamut.
Some of my favorite episodes:
“Marty’s First Date”—Jay’s son starts out awkward, but ends up… er, smuggling himself to Cuba in a cello case.
Not a great plan.
“Miserable”—In which Jay has even worse luck with women than his kid does.
“Dr. Jay”—Jay’s boss Duke is given four years to live and Jay decides to cure him, while having the same sort of luck Jay always has.
“All The Duke’s Men”—if only for this part:
The Verdict: Judging by the way I quote along with it, I’m still very attached to The Critic. Some of the contemporary celebrity/movie jokes the show made are a bit outdated, but surprisingly—depressingly?—few. Smart, funny, and underrated.
The episode “Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice” is also good, but these days it tends to make me sad.
Why Found-Again? Friday the 13th: The Series was my favorite of a trio of shows I watched as a teen with the express purpose of scaring myself witless at one a.m. (the other two were Monsters and Freddy’s Nightmares, the Nightmare on Elm Street anthology series). When I found out Amazon has the show streaming for Prime members, I knew two things:
This would more profitably use time spent on my other weird Amazon streaming interest, which is finding the cheesiest made-for-TV detective movies I can and watching them anyway;
This was going to be a Found-Again Friday post in a hurry—better yet, a Found-Again Friday post about something I don’t hate. Whew!
The Premise: Cousins Ryan and Micki find that they’ve inherited their creepy, evil uncle Louis’s* cursed antique store. Not being evil themselves, they embark on a quest to retrieve all the murderous antiques Louis sold over the years and store them safely (we hope) in the store’s vault. They’re hindered in this by both the artifacts and the occasionally not-dead-enough uncle, and helped by Jack Marshak, a man who never lets the fact that he is an actual SORCERER get in the way of being overpowered by bad guys at dramatically appropriate moments.
Aside from the quality issues inevitable for a show in a then-undervalued genre made in the weird dark age right before CGI started catching up with the human imagination, Ft13:tS has only one problem: the character of Ryan. He’s a lot like his partial namesake Richie from Highlander: The Series—so much so that I find myself wondering if all Canadian shows were once required to have an annoying, supposedly street-smart guy as a main character. (Both shows still beat Forever Knight, in which I’m pretty sure that guy is the titular protagonist, but that is a Found-Again Friday for another time.)
The Verdict: With a few exceptions, Friday the 13th: the Series is one of the purest monster-of-the week shows ever—I’m hedging only because Kolchak might have an unbeatable lead there. Yes, it’s cheesy—among other things, you’ll encounter a creepy doll, voodoo snakes, a riff on The Phantom of the Opera, chanting Satanists, Jack the Ripper’s blade, and an amusing reference to Boris Karloff. But the show is also great fun, even when the plot is so obvious you could swear it was lit by a cursed antique lamp.
Might go well with: Red wine, anything you have to cut up with a knife.
Synopsis: A scientist friend of Dr. Quest is kidnapped by credulous Amazon tribespeople who wish to sacrifice him. Dr. Quest ends up captured too, and it’s up to Race Bannon to do the silliest thing he can in this vaguely racist cartoon in order to save everyone.
Tip 11: This is the most important animal you will ever see (in the Jonny Quest universe, anyway):
Cebidae ubiquitous jonnyquestensis, this time found in the Amazon.
Don’t bother looking for him again—we’ll find him. He’s quite the globetrotter.
Next time: On Friday I’ll finally stop torturing myself with these things and torture my readers instead, as it should be. The next time I decide to watch Beyond Therapy and An Awfully Big Adventure within months of each other, for heaven’s sake someone stop me.
