ziklag1990 Reviews

I Love Lucy: Lucy Writes a Play (1952) Season 1, Episode 17

Very funny, one pedantic caveat

[8/10 · 27 November 2023]

I think this one's funnier than some episodes people always cite as 'classics'. Just for the heck of it I asked a (much younger) Latino friend--who'd never seen I Love Lucy, believe it or not--if he thought the exaggerated fake Cuban accents were racist or funny (I don't think we need to worry about British opinion regarding the accents in the English setting version of Lucy's play); he said, "I think it's funny, but I can see why someone would think it's racist." He was a bit more taken aback by a couple All in the Family episodes I had him watch.

So I really like this one, but of course not everything in any sitcom installment makes perfect sense. In this case, just about every problem up to the eventual disaster at the play competition could've been avoided if Lucy had simply told Ricky at the start that the play judge was that big film producer "Darryl B. Mayer". But then the episode would've been about ten minutes long.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: The Monkey's Paw--A Retelling (1965) Season 3, Episode 26

Grueling

[28 March 2021]

I'd really like to say the other reviews here are wrong and the episode is actually spellbindingly brilliant, but no such luck. It really is mind-achingly slow and a chore to watch; at times I could feel myself trying to mentally speed up the pacing. A small scene when the male lead goes into the bathroom to fetch a glass of water and decides to make a wish on the monkey's paw is dragged out forever, the only reason for which I could see is that someone suddenly realized they didn't have enough commercials to get them to the necessary running time.

A maybe partial explanation for the ghastly lugubriousness is that they're trying for a strangely baroque tone; the characters strike odd, formalistic attitudes and speak remote, unreal lines of dialogue. A scene where a crowd gathers outside a house in silence at first seems like it's supposed to be real, then it's implied it was imaginary, and then it's back to real again. The source material for the episode is very brisk and straightforward leading to the climax, and that approach is far preferable to the arch, pretentious tone taken here.

It's hard to judge the acting when the performers are forced to utter those peculiarly off-base lines they're given, but Jane Wyatt is very beautiful and has a strong presence, and it's interesting to see Lee Majors in his youthful bloom, long before The Six Million Dollar Man with his hardened, scowling visage. I'm not sorry I watched the episode, but if I ever decide to do it again I'll be sure to have a strong drink on hand.

I Dream of Jeannie: My Master, Napoleon's Buddy (1967) Season 2, Episode 28

Goofs galore

[6/10 · 31 January 2021]

The episode is as undemandingly amusing as the series ever was; this is a personal issue, but as a European history buff the glaring historical errors had me gritting my teeth. You don't go to a fantasy sitcom for an accurate history lesson, but I'm glad the "Goofs" section caught most of them. One oddity that isn't just historically wrong but contrary to common sense is the scene where Josephine tries to verify Tony's story that Napoleon will divorce her and marry the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, and in the next scene we see the Archduchess as a baby (inaccurately, as Goofs points out) in a bassinet. France was a very powerful country, but I find it hard to believe their leader's wife could get the infant princess of a foreign power transported to Paris in a few hours' time just to rebut the claim of some guy in prison.

Hazel: Hazel's Tax Deduction (1962) Season 2, Episode 7

More grueling than funny

[3/10 · 15 November 2020]

Shirley Booth was a wonderful actress, and the show had some funny episodes, but Hazel's habit of yammering and yammering and fouling things up is in hyperdrive in this one. She's so obtuse about it she starts to seem feeble-minded; and less amusing than someone you want to punch.

Leave It to Beaver: Mistaken Identity (1961) Season 4, Episode 28

Shades of Real Life

[8/10 · 20 December 2019]

This is a typically funny, relatable and semi-serious Beaver episode. What jolted me, watching it this morning before work, is the part where Richard can so easily set up someone else by giving their name. This isn't just TV sitcom stuff; a former acquaintance of mine who was continually messing up black sheep of his family (and had no ID) gave his upright, white sheep brother's (living in another state) name/info whenever he was picked up for drunk in public, petty theft, etc--and no, no one checks at that level of "criminality". It all came up when his Good Brother applied for a high-level job with a gov't agency and was turned down because of "his" record. Even when he proved it wasn't him but his awful brother, he was re-turned down for the job because the agency didn't want an employee with that kind of family drama.

Just an anecdote. Take it as you will.

Leave It to Beaver: Box Office Attraction (1963) Season 6, Episode 23

Well, I am SHOCKED

[6/10 · 28 August 2019]

Yeesh, what a tramp. In MAYFIELD? Run, Wally, run!

Abandoned (2010 Video)

Let's complicate things just for the fun of it

[4/10 · 29 July 2019]

Even with her crazy hair, I kind of like Murphy in her final role; this may be partly due to off screen issues, but as the woman caught in a scary maze of What's really going on? Who can I trust?, I prefer her genuine fragility and uncertainty (watch her shrink when an officious jerk sneers at her story) to that patented feisty determined thing Valerie Bertinelli would've brought to the part.

Still, the movie's ridiculous at its very core in a way it's hard to believe no one brought up before shooting; instead of concocting this elaborate twisty-turny scheme, couldn't the bad guys have just gone to her house and held a gun to her head to get her to transfer the money? And then, I don't know, shot her?

The Golden Girls: Charlie's Buddy (1987) Season 3, Episode 12

Fashion sense

[7/10 · 14 April 2016]

Pretty good episode, but what sticks out for me is Dorothy and Blanche accidentally buying that same dress, and (considering the fact that Blanche IS the prettier and generally more attractive one) how much better the dress looks on Dorothy. Blanche is too short for it, and looks like a pumpkin way past picking time. Kind of amazing she couldn't see that; and that she didn't return it immediately and find another one.

Other than that, again, pretty good episode. Not their best, and and I kind of found the Rose/Charlie's supposed old friend plot line kind of yucky. Maybe because of the actor playing the buddy. It was hard to look at anything but his eyebrows, and when I finally managed to things got worse.

The Golden Girls: Ebb Tide (1989) Season 5, Episode 11

You'll laugh, you'll cry, etc

[8/10 · 2 April 2016]

Sitcoms have always had trouble mixing laughs and pathos (part of the problem is there isn't enough time for the complexities to play out; the other part is such shows generally don't attract the greatest writers in the world), but "The Golden Girls" did it better than most. They blended things so (generally) skillfully that sometimes a single line of dialogue could make you laugh and tear up simultaneously. This episode about Big Daddy's death is a pretty good example.

Another thing: I know it isn't cricket to expect absolute consistency from sitcoms episode by episode, since the writers often change basic facts over the years to fit new story line directions, but one thing stuck out in this one; when Blanche's sister Virginia berates her for "never being there for the family", I couldn't help thinking Blanche should have come back with, "Oh really? How about in Season One when I volunteered to give you one of my kidneys when you were dying?!?"

The Lucy Show: Lucy Meets the Berles (1967) Season 6, Episode 1

Twilight settling in, and it's sad

[5/10 · 2 February 2015]

Lucy excitedly braying "It's Ruta Lee, the movie star!!!" is as good a marker as any for the end of Lucille Ball's reign as TV's funniest and most valuable star, and the the start of that tired recycling of threadbare, out of date shtick and punch lines that comprised the latter part of her career.

I "love Lucy", and I'm not trying to be a jerk, but using the same writers, the same themes, forcing the same old slapstick, only slightly reworded gags, madcap schemes and antics, etc, from the past onto a new decade and a leading lady now aged past the point of being crazy-funny in such situations and began to look crazy-pathetic-sad, had to yield, to put it mildly, diminishing returns.

I guess that with "The Lucy Show" it's a little understandable (if hardly admirable) that Ball would feel safest sticking with what had worked before. By the time of her last, dismal effort "Life With Lucy", with it's corny lines and creaky (literally) physical "comedy", there was no excuse--neither for her not seeing that transplanting the old onto a new era couldn't work, and for no one around her telling her so. Compare her set, stubborn clinging to the past with the aged stars of "The Golden Girls", adjusting and changing and moving to new forms and structures of humor, using their gifts honed over many years, and applying them to the present.

Designing Women: Julia Drives Over the First Amendment (1989) Season 3, Episode 22

...thankfully, First Amendment survives...

[26 January 2015]

I normally don't take "issues" sitcom episodes seriously, but I'll admit this one shocked me. That people whose professional calling is creative expression would issue propaganda (and it IS propaganda; Julia clearly represent the show's views) against free speech is revolting. It's an example of Liberal meeting Conservative in authoritarian ideology.

Sitcoms had done episodes taking easy potshots at right-wing censorship, school book-banning, etc--the rep for such efforts often played by that guy who resembled Jerry Falwell, normally dressed in a light-blue, cheap suit. Easy to slam someone trying to ban "Catcher in the Rye"--a cause we can all rally around, of course; it gets murkier (and more dangerous) when the book is "Huckleberry Finn" and the complaint isn't "dirty words", but racism; or when porn isn't attacked by some southern yokel fulminating against "dirty pitchers", but gender oppression and exploitation, etc. Is it more awkward to defend free speech against that kind of threat? Probably; which is why it's even more important.

(As far as the quality of the episode itself, there are some funny lines; but mostly it's dry and preachy, and cheats by giving all the good lines to the pro-censorship characters)

The Golden Girls: Dorothy's New Friend (1988) Season 3, Episode 15

Mostly good, last minute fail

[7/10 · 4 January 2015]

Pretty funny, especially when Rose and Blanche (who is arbitrarily turned into a rube for plot purposes) are confronted with Dorothy's new friend, an intellectually snobby novelist who drives a wedge in the "girls'" friendship. Of course, it all has to be fixed with Dorothy rejecting her new buddy and returning to the fold, but the script's way of arranging the resolution virtually amounts to a deus ex machina. It hardly seems likely that this self-consciously artsy (and undoubtedly liberal) novelist would belong to an anti-semitic club--where would she take Norman Mailer for lunch? It's a jarring false note, and although Dorothy's righteous denunciation gets its obligatory burst of studio audience applause, I was rolling my eyes.

I Love Lucy: Pioneer Women (1952) Season 1, Episode 25

What year is this again?

[7/10 · 20 August 2014]

Funny episode, but the writers seem to think that everyone in 1900 lived in a log cabin somewhere in the Appalachian backwoods. I'm pretty sure most people back then bought bread and butter from the grocery store just like we do today. (And of course, electricity and hot running water weren't exactly unknown at the time) I personally thought the highpoint was the surprise visit by the reps from the Women's Society League (always a treat to see Florence Bates) I know most people would probably say the bread coming out of the oven scene, but even as a kid I was saying "How did all that bread fit in the oven? Did it bust out the back and through the wall?"

The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1962)

One-shot Pony

[5/10 · 21 July 2014]

Very, very skimpy "the aliens are coming" movie. The acting is more than ordinarily bad, although the scientist father amusingly suggests a cross between Leave it to Beaver's Hugh Beaumont and Vincent Price. His neglected wife appears to be zonked on Xanax throughout the film, which might charitably explain her strangely sluggish, tepid reactions to rather momentous events.

The dialogue is sub-rudimentary and doesn't even qualify for the respectable term "pedestrian". The screenwriter doesn't seem to have the basic awareness of how people talk to each other; e.g., when one person says A, the other will likely respond with B. This is especially frustrating when we're trying to get get specific information and a character fails to ask the obvious question from the one who has that information. Conversations are so disjointed, missing so many self-evidently necessary links, and so awkwardly inarticulate that the hopeful viewer may see it as some kind of deliberately murky screenplay experimentalism. This hope would probably not be justified.

So despite what you may have read in other reviews here, this is not a "pleasant surprise", an interesting "find" or anything like that. It is terrible movie, in every category just about reaching the awfulness level of average porn, without the obvious mitigating factors.

But for all of that, I was glad I stuck it out until the end. The final shot is genuinely chilling, even shocking, and made me feel far less embarrassed about my perseverance.