The sexy Fuchsia Monroe is trying to get some attention from her husband / business partner Evian.  When he is more interested in closing a deal, she grabs one of the dudes in the office and begins seducing him with a Hillaryesque “When I see something I want, I take it. Rules aren’t for me.”

The camera pulls back to reveal this is a soap opera being watched by two housewives folding laundry — Janet and Louise.  Janet thinks they should be more aggressive and take-charge in their relationships.

When Dr. Leon gets home, he gives Janet a quick kiss then goes down to his basement lab.  He feels that his new anesthetic might have saved the life of a patient he lost today, so might want to check Wikipedia for what anesthesia actually does.

When the TV goes out during a crucial moment in her soap opera, Janet calls the cable company.  They send out their studly installer “Abel, with the cable.”  After some sexual innuendo, he installs her cable.  Before they can really get down to it, he is called away on one of them cable emergencies you always hear about.

A few days later, Leon catches them making out and tries out his new long lasting anesthetic on them.  Bottom line, he does a head transplant.

Fine story, some great casting, and appropriate directorial tone for the series for a change. But for some reason I just couldn’t get into it.  I blame my self.  This is a good episode even if I’m not appreciating it right now.

If nothing else it features the beautiful Faye Grant.  She was probably best known for fighting the reptiles as Dr. Julia Grant in the original V.  Now she is probably best known for being married to the reptilian Stephen Collins.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  I can’t even guess how it connects to the story.
• This is Connie Johnson’s only writing credit.  Luckily, they teamed her up with veteran Doug Ronning who has two writing credits, both on TFTC.
• Strange how people are popping up in twos:  Carol Lynley, Harry Guardino, and now Alan Rachins.

Charles McKenzie is directly addressing the camera.  He is a newspaper reporter, flashing back to what most reporters apparently do instead of pursuing stories — sleeping in a bar.

Bartender Mike wisely suggests he might want a cup of coffee, but McKenzie calls him a “drink-pusher working in a skid-row gin-joint.”  A woman walks in, he buys her a drink, not sure if she’s a hooker or not.  They go back to his place, she spends the night, he spends no money, so I guess she isn’t a hooker.

The next morning he goes to see his old editor to beg for a job.  The editor tells him to bring him a murder story. This being TFTC, you kind of know where this is going to go.

Every lead he pursues turns into a dead end; but not the good kind.  Trying to lay off the booze, he goes to a diner.  The owner strangles his wife while McKenzie is there, so he has his murder — he’s back in the business!  When he checks the body, it is the woman he spent the night with.  Even worse, she is still alive.

So he kills her.

Really about as dull and predictable as this post.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Nice title, relevant to the plot.  Too bad it was wasted on such a blah episode.

OK, you’ve got my attention.

The beautiful Liz Kelly (the beautiful Michelle Johnson) is waitressing at a honky-tonk bar that is far beneath her.  With her looks she should be working in a classy place . . . with a tuxedoed maître d.  Or stripper pole.

One of the local losers starts hitting on her and she just wants to get away.  He grabs her and says, “I bet if I got you drunk enough, I could have you out in my truck in no time.”

I love this line because he could have said “bashed your skull with a rock” instead of “got you drunk” and his conquest would have been just as noble.  And given her complete inability to resist, in his fantasy he doesn’t even opt for a hotel with clean sheets — the truck will do fine. Efficiently says it all about the character.  That, and his name is Banjo.

Luckily there is one gentleman in the bar.  Steve Dixon, owner of the local timber company, puts a pistol to Banjo’s neck and tells him to apologize to the lady.  Liz likes a man defending her and gives him a drink and a slow dance.  By the end of the night, he asks her to marry him and she accepts.  Being no looker, Dixon made sure to mention he was rich.  But I’m sure that had no impact on her decision.  At least no more than a few drinks or getting bashed in the skull would have.

The next day Dixon is in the bunkhouse talking to his men.  Liz shows up in a pair of Daisy Dukes and a halter, making him furious.  He is even more furious at the men ogling his wife.  He smacks down one of them for a misheard comment.

Liz quickly grows bored with life in the lumber camp, then a cute new worker named Ted starts.  He is not a fan of chainsaws, preferring to do it the old fashioned way with an axe.  As great as he is at it, it is still hugely inefficient, but they need someone for the upcoming lumberjack contest.  Liz sneaks down to the worksite and watches him chop the wood all sweaty and muscles a-rippling.

Liz wastes no time summoning the new guy up to the main house to move some boxes; one box in particular.  She just happens to be in the shower at the time.  When she tries to seduce him, he runs out in fear of Dixon.

Ted decides it is time to leave the camp, but Liz catches him in the bunkhouse and they start making out.  Dixon catches them and gives him a beating.  Then he whacks him several times in the head with an axe.  But to be fair, he used the side of the axe, so Ted kept his head.  Ted ended up alive but blind.

Apparently a beneficiary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Ted is welcomed back to the crew of the lumber camp.  But you can’t have a blind guy swinging an axe — that’s just crazy.  So they give him a chainsaw.

Later that day, they have Ted chainsaw through a vertical log.  It has been hollowed out and Dixon is inside.  Once the blood starts spraying on his face, even Ted gets it.  He asks if there is another one, and it is revealed that Liz has also been put into a hollow tree like a Keebler MILF.

Another good episode.  Brion James was great, hamming it up in just the way this series requires.  Michelle Johnson was also great, although the cigarettes were a major turn-off.

Post-Post:

• Michelle Johnson was last seen in First Anniversary, in another marriage to a below-average Joe.
• The Mathesons must really love Michelle.  This episode was written by Richard Christian Matheson; First Anniversary was written by his sister, based on a short story by their father.
• Title Analysis:  Another misfire — OK, splitting wood, and referring to Liz as sloppy seconds, I guess.  Better choices:  Something like Mourning Wood or Don’t Axe me Again.
• I was sorry to see Brion James died in 1999.  He will always be the “nice” Cajun in Southern Comfort to me.

Homeless-American Robert (Vincent Schiavelli) has been out trolling the garbage cans for food.  When he hears his partner Dancer screaming, he runs back to their crib in the alley. Digging through the rubble for his friend, he pulls out a severed hand, still grasping a bottle of hooch.

He is so horrified, he doesn’t even check to see if Dancer had finished the bottle before casting it away. Unfortunately, he is spotted and leaves a bloody hand-print leading him to be identified as the Homeless Killer.

Reporter Dale Sweeney (Steven Weber), on the other hand, wakes up with a hot blonde in his bed.  He quickly kicks her out and races to his assignment to cover the opening of a cemetery by the Grateful Homeless Society.  He reasonably asks the chairman (Rita Wilson) if the money spent on the dead might be better spent on the living — a question no reporter in America would have the balls to ask at a fancy press conference.  In print, yes, but never would they dare to embarrass the official at the gala in front of their friends — it simply isn’t done.

After being fired, he goes home to take a well-deserved leak.  He is stopped mid-stream by Robert.  He spotted Sweeney at the ceremony and insists that he write a story saying that he is not the Homeless Killer.  He tells Sweeney to go to the inaugural planting at the Grateful Homeless Society cemetery and he will see what is really happening.

He does go to the burial, but understandably leaves early to bang the GHS chairman. Having missed the story at the cemetery, he searches for Robert.  Unfortunately, he has been murdered.

Finding an eviction notice on his apartment door, Sweeney is desperate for a story.  So he goes to the next burial and this time hangs around for the show.  That night, he sees the replaced sod starting caving in.  He starts digging — as usual on TV — a beautiful hole with perfect right angles that would take one alchy/smoker in a suit at least 12 hours to dig.

His suspicions are rewarded when he finds a flat door at the bottom of the pit.  He struggles to pull the door open, but since he is standing on the door, that doesn’t make much sense.  Luckily for him,the door opens the other way, and he drops into a cavern.

When he hears someone coming, he hides in a coffin which happens to already be occupado by Robert — dead, bloody, decaying, but smelling about the same.  When he is able to open the coffin, he is in the middle of an elegant dining room . . . on the table . . . surrounded by A-1 Sauce and Wet-Naps.

The GHS Committee enters and admits they are the Homeless Killer. Down here, they are known by their full name, Grateful Homeless, Outcasts and Unwanted Layaway Society (or GHOULS — an even more tortured acronym than SHIELD or PATRIOT Act). They begin peeling off their masks to reveal their true demonic faces.

No real twist or irony here, but still a great episode.  It had several great little scenes and a lot of clever dialogue; more clever than is usually seen on TFTC.  Writer / Director Manny Coto really understood this series, too bad this was his only script.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Mess, indeed.
• Manny Coto also wrote If These Walls Could Talk.
• In both that episode and this one, there is a female character named Tillman.

A group of 14 (?) year old boys emerge from a theater swearing in the way teenage boys do — having no more concept of how to effectively use the words than most screenwriters.

They are joined by their video-camera wielding pal who, by the rules of 1980’s stereotypes, is Asian.  They head down to the Esbrook Mortuary to film a “real” horror movie.  They break in and find the body of Mrs. Groves, the librarian.

The boys hide in various nooks, crannies and coffins as the undertaker enters with his dinner.  He has conveniently built the traditional “slab” into a 3D contraption so he can spin Mrs. Groves to a vertical position.  He whacks her in the face with a mallet so he can form a smile.  He then jams a hose into her to Hoover out her insides.

The doorbell rings and all of the boys except Norm are able to escape.  From his position under the casket, he can only see a man in snake-skin shoes who is “expediting” the flow of bodies to the undertaker.

They identify the pharmacist Mr. Grundy as the other man.  Breaking into the mortuary again, they discover the undertaker has been swindling Grundy.  They secretly let Grundy know, so Grundy comes to kill the undertaker, but the undertaker kills him first.

The boys come out from hiding and each has a camera on him.  They jam the Hoover into him and start sucking his insides out.

One of the boys notes that the librarian now has a smile on her face.  This is a little confusing since the undertaker had already used the mallet to put a smile on her face — removing the suggestion of a supernatural element form the story.  However, we only got a look at the mallet-induced smile from the side, so maybe she ended up with a bigger smile.  Either way, the muddled writing kills the ending.

Really nothing more than that.  Blah.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Just a mess — they could have at least gone with “Funeral Palor?” And did they mean pallor or parlor?  Palor isn’t even a word.
• The movie the boys come out of is Radio Flyer.  It is unlikely to draw a lot of teenage boys, but was directed by one of the producers, which I guess is more important.
• Second appearance of Zemeckis Pizza.