In a purely perfunctory opening, a man comes out of his beach-front home and goes running with his dog. Scoundrel Rick Hinton enters the unlocked house and goes through his desk.  He finds an envelope full of cash, but only takes some of it.  He goes into the bathroom where the man’s wife was clearly expecting him.  They have the sex. Elapsed time:  2 minutes (including the sex).

I understand they used this opening to establish Hinton as a playa on the playa.  It is just so disconnected and laughably condensed that it leaves you thinking it should have more meaning.  Strangely, though, it takes the extra time to establish him as a thief, which plays absolutely no part in the rest of the episode.  He’s not even a very good thief — he takes enough money that its absence will be noticed, but he doesn’t take it all so it might be thought misplaced.

Next, at a marina, he spots a woman struggling with the sails on her boat.  Again, the narrative is so compressed it is just crazy.  From stranger on the dock, through flirtation, to him being hired takes literally 35 seconds.  Her husband Cameron pops up through a hatch.  She says she hired the stranger to help on the island. Her husband refers to him as a “cabin boy” and says, “Welcome aboard, young man” to the 30 year old.

On the island, Hinton sees Cameron chopping up some mushrooms. Cameron spears a mushroom and holds it up, proclaiming it morcellus esculente, but I think he means morchella esculente.  He also calls it “the ambrosia of mushrooms”, but I’m not sure there really would be a fungus of the gods — wouldn’t they kinda be above that?  In any case, people who make such a fuss over mushrooms are even more insufferable than wine snobs.  And WTF uses that Olive Bar at Fresh Market?  But I digress . . . Miranda pops in to assure Hinton that the mushrooms are safe; Cameron grows them in the basement. He says, “Mushrooms are admirable creatures.  So much more reliable than people.”

Hinton learns that Cameron is a movie director.  He asks if Cameron has directed any thing he’s seen and Cameron zings both Hinton and himself pretty good, “Unfortunately, just the sort of thing you would see.”  Miranda reels off his oeuvre, Sister of Dracula, House of Cadavers, Beach Blanket Bloodbath.  Hinton has seen that last epic, but says, “It was a little opaque.”  As usual, The Hitchhiker doesn’t know a funny line when they have one.  However, it does give Cameron another opportunity to demean Hinton as a “house-boy.”

He grabs a bottle of tequila and takes a swig before unsanitarily offering it to Hinton. Cameron proclaims — again with the proclaiming! — it, “The only proper drink, really.  You know, the Mexicans sometimes put a little worm in the bottom of the bottle.  That’s how you can tell the best tequila.”  Actually, you find a worm at the bottom of a bottle of mescal, not tequila.  Except that you don’t usually find one there, either.  And it isn’t a sign of quality.  And it’s a moth larvae, not a worm.  Other than that, he is spot-on.

Hinton deftly accuses Cameron of emulating the worm — soaked to the gills, seeing life through the bottom of a booze bottle.  The drifter working as a cabin boy then tells the guy who owns the yacht and island getaway, “I know a has-been when I see one.” Cameron harrumphs and goes out to “check the traps.”

After Hinton gives Miranda a few smooches down below — in the basement, I mean — she is ready to dump Cameron.  The scene also informs us that Hinton is claustrophobic and that the basement door will slam shut by itself and lock you in.  Fortunately Miranda keeps a spare key in a jar.  She later shows Hinton a pistol and tells him Cameron sometimes hits her.

They start kissing, but Cameron gets back from his trap-checking.  She runs out to meet him and Hinton goes to the basement.  For no reason that I can figure, he takes the basement key out of the jar where it is usually kept and transfers it to a bottle of tequila. He is planning to lock Cameron down there?  That’s a pretty lousy hiding place.  Why leave it there at all?  Is it some kind of metaphor for the tequila worm?  I don’t get it.

That night, Cameron orders Hinton around as “house-boy” to fetch some booze.  Hinton suggests champagne and invites him downstairs to pick out a good vintage (ahhhh). Cameron instead sends Miranda downstairs to get the champagne saying, “Nothing but the best for our servant.”  After she leaves, Cameron calls an audible ^[1] and decides on martinis.  Cameron again demonstrates his knowledge of mixology by making martinis with no vermouth, no olives and no onions, which sounds a lot like straight gin.  Miranda couldn’t find the champagne, so returns with tequila.  Cameron says they are celebrating his new production.

He rambles on about a prince and a princess and a troll as a metaphor for their triangle. Cameron pulls a knife, but Hinton pulls a gun.  Hinton accidentally shoots him.  Miranda brains Hinton with a tequila bottle.  I must say she does it with such force that it is my favorite shot of the episode.

Blah, blah . . . the shooting was staged.  Miranda and Cameron drag Hinton to the basement.  When he wakes up, through the door, they tell him it was all in good fun and that he can catch the ferry at 9 am.  It seems like a prank they have played before.  He scrambles to get the key, but it was in the bottle of tequila Miranda took upstairs the previous night.  Hmmm . . . there are two possible scenarios:

1. Miranda showed Hinton where the key was kept, so she believes he will get out safely.  In that case, while she and Cameron are yukking it up over their little charade, isn’t she worried he will unlock the door and kick their asses?
2. Miranda is aware that Hinton moved the key and purposely chose that bottle to take upstairs.  Unfortunately, there is zero suggestion off that.  Why would she leave the bottle with the key in it in plain sight upstairs?  She and Cameron seem to honestly be in love and think this was all a hoot.

And once again, what kind of place is a liquor bottle to hide a key?  Everyone knows, the have to finish a bottle of booze after you open it or it will go bad.  Did Lucille Bluth teach us nothing?

While the pacing was choppy in the beginning, I do appreciate that they didn’t pad out the episode . . . boy, do I appreciate it!  At its most basic level, I did like the story and the twist — just the details were a little loopy.  Thank God they had Jerry Orbach as Cameron to carry the episode.  His energy helped distract from Michael Wood’s dreadful performance as Hinton.  He has had a long career, so maybe this was just an early misstep.  Season Hubley was entirely adequate as Miranda.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] This might not be used correctly.  Football bores me just as much as wine.
• Director Clyde Monroe is a one-credit oneder.

The episode begins with an art exhibit so uninteresting and devoid of talent that it could be real.  Three models are caked with mud and hanging from ropes.  One of them complains when she begins to bleed.  The photographer, Simon, tells his assistant Nishi to give them some money to get rid of them.  Or, as we say in the real world, pay them.

He later arrives at a showing of his dreck.  The vacuous, trend-sucking ignorati wildly applaud him as he walks into the party like he was walking onto a yacht.  A sad little critic in a please-notice-me suit and please-please-notice-me over-sized glasses ridiculous even for the 1980’s lavishes praise on the smug artiste.  He responds, “I don’t care what you critics think.  You’re just policemen.”  I applaud his refusal to be swayed by critics, but he speaks as if he is saying something profound and is profoundly not.

The great Simon pulls an automatic weapon from beneath his Jedi robe; yeah, he is dressed in a robe.  He says, “Would you like to see a suicide?” and places the barrel in his mouth.”  Before I can say yes, he swings the rifle around and shouts, “How about a mass killing?”  He then blasts automatic weapon fire over the heads of his cowering sycophants.  As he leaves, blonde model Christina gushes, “You’re incredible.”

The sheeple naturally give him a standing ovation — now that standing up will not get their heads blown off.  Christina runs after him to his car.  She begs him to let her pose for him.  He says, “To model for me you have to be a victim, a slave.”  Who could pass up that opportunity?  She gets in his car.

That’s it for me.  The big city art elite are laughable and ripe for derision and satire, but this comes off as one of their own products.  The only emotion it evokes is tedium.  We have the thoroughly unlikable anti-hero because decency is for the rubes.  We have the empty headed poser desperate to be part of this hollow world.  Compound that with the usual terrible 1980s light shows and synths and this is unwatchable.

Go read The Painted Word instead.  It won’t take much longer than the episode and, unless you’re reading in a dim light, will be easier on the eyes.

Post-Post:

• From the writer of the dreadful The Legendary Billy B, but I blame the director for that one.

The episode opens with carefully composed shots of a priest killing himself.  The shots call attention to themselves, but in a good way.  They don’t take you out of the story, but they do let you know the director isn’t just a point-and-shoot guy — hey, it’s TV’s Carl Schenkel, director of the great Homebodies.

Tom Skerritt is playing the role he was born to play — Tom Skerritt.  The mustached, stoic, competent, weary everyman / manlyman he is portraying this time is Detective Frank Sheen.  He goes to the scene of the crime — an abandoned convent — but no one answers his knocks.  As he looks for another way in, a POV shot from inside the house begins shaking, a plastic tarp over the window melts and reveals Sheen standing in the snow below through the hole.  Way to go, Carl! ^[4]

He finds a way in and sees a nun sitting alone surrounded by a hundred candles.  He knocks on the glass door of the chapel, but she does not respond.  We do see that, like most TV nuns, she is a beautiful young woman.  He goes to the church to get a key and is a complete dick to the priest.

The priest tells him the house is infested by demons.  Years ago “a young nun desecrated the blessed sacrament by committing suicide on the holy altar.”  After hearing sounds of howling and banging on walls, and finding excrement smeared on the walls, the convent was shut down.

After that blatant bit of exposition, Sheen returns to the convent with the key.  He sees the young nun.  She says she was a novice here.  The dialogue is a little dry, but it is intriguingly shot.  Schenkel shoots her very close so that the entire frame is her cowl tented over her lovely face like she is peeking up from under the sheets.  If that was the intent, more kudos to Carl; if not, I really need to get some help.  She says she knows Sheen is a cop “by the bulge . . . of your gun.”  She tells him to watch out for the demon and walks away.

Sheen walks upstairs and finds the usual haunted house stuff — shaking, noises, being pushed down by an invisible demon.  He goes back to Father Exposition ^[1] for more info.  He tells Sheen there is no nun there, the convent has been closed since 1910.

He goes back — whew — to the convent, drinking from a liquor bottle he got from a diner.  Hitting the hooch in the room where the suicide occurred, he has a B&W flashback to an argument with his ex-wife and ex-daughter.  He lost his temper and smacked his daughter.  She ran out onto a fire escape and fell to her death.

Back in the abandoned convent, he hears a noise — his ex-wife Linda walks in.  Well, he seems to see Linda, but we see the young nun.  She says she doesn’t care about her new husband’s big house or big car — she mercifully ends the big list there.  She tells Sheen she wants him back.

I won’t even mention the doggie-style chalk outline of the the priest’s suicide. However, I did like that Schenkel had Sheen collapse in that pattern after getting drunk.

Meanwhile, Father Exposition finds an old newspaper about the novice who committed suicide at the convent.  The headline says February 19, 1912, but he said the convent had been abandoned since 1910.  Of course, the newspaper banner also says February 19th was a Thursday when it was actually a Monday, so it is clearly fake news.  The picture is of the nun. ^[3]  Even though this provides no useful information that he did not already know, he speeds out to the convent to see Sheen.  Spoiler: Sheen shoots him.

Sheen and Linda/Nun have just made out.  From behind, he says he loves her (no, I mean orally verbally).  She turns around and says, “I love you too, Daddy.”  He screams his daughter’s name.  The police find him in a corner blankly clicking empty chamber after empty chamber into his mouth.  The cops just let him click away, but how do they know he isn’t just Russian-Rouletting his way to the money-shot?

This is another one you don’t want to think about too much.  It is always complicated when a character sees someone different than the audience.  They were wise to cast an actress that had a small birthmark on her nose.  Even at that, I was not positive who I was seeing at least one time.   I believe it was the same actress at all times in the convent scenes. ^[5]  It was just jarring then that he screams his daughter’s name when we have a close-up of the woman we met as the nun.  Yeah, that was the jarring aspect.

We are never told what the first priest did that caused the nun/demon to drive him to suicide, but I think we can all make up our own story.  Also, another pair of hands give him the pistol he uses to kill himself.  I guess we can assume that was the nun/demon.  I suppose a priest was not as likely to be packing his own heat as a cop.

So maybe a little over-written with the jumping back and forth between the priest and the convent; and a little under-written on the characters and story.  This is a case where cell-phones would have actually improved a story.  Still, Schenkel keeps things moving along and gives us some good visuals.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Yeah, like Basil.
• ^[2] Father Exposition then calls the diner looking for Sheen.  He asks if they have a customer about 40 — Tom Skerritt was 53 at the time.  F’in actors, man!
• ^[3] Not unusual in the days before HD and dumbbell bloggers, but the story does not match the headline.  It is, at least, religion-related.  It is about church leaders publishing a guide “which will include sections on homosexuality.”  Probably not a how-to.  I thought the article was being a little harsh referring to the “Anglican Primate Archbishop,” but apparently Primates are a thing in the church.
• ^[4] It would just be churlish to point out the inconsistency.  In in the DVD commentary, Schenkel points out in a future room-quake that the contents are not moving; it is just in Sheen’s mind.  If that is the case, who is imagining this room-quake?
• ^[5] I take it as confirmation that the wife and daughter are not credited.  Because for flashbacks, you don’t need actors or sets.  It’s not real, right?
• This is the second consecutive post to feature an incestuous relationship.
• As Sheen is first driving to the convent, he has Reverend Nolan Powers from WGOD on the radio.  I appreciate the call-back even if it doesn’t make much sense.  1) Sheen is not a believer, so would not be listening to a Christian station, 2) this case is unrelated to Nolan Powers, so he is not doing research, 3) Powers died in the episode that which aired four months earlier (or maybe would be in an asylum).
• The only IMDb credit for writer William Kelly.

You touch me, he dies. If you’re not in the air in thirty seconds, he dies. You come back in, he dies.

God, the 1980s — cultural nadir of America.  The big-shoulder clothes, the rolled up jacket sleeves, the parachute pants, the over-produced music, the synths, the big hair, the punk motif, the MBA-mentality, the manic coke-snorting yuppies, The Hitchhiker. Confidence is not high.

Sandra Bernhard (playing the charmingly-named ‘Rat’) witnesses a drug deal.  She is pure 80’s homeless / punk chic with spiky bright yellow hair.  There is a Mexican Stand-Off between three white guys, a black guy and no Mexican guys that leaves them all dead guys.  Rat walks onto the scene and makes off with a wristwatch and a brick of cocaine.

She walks home tapping a crystal-knobbed cane in front of her.  Wise Man — a true 80’s dude with both a tiny pony-tail and a mullet — says to his rotund, inevitably-named associate Fool, “Look who’s tapping his way down the street.”  OK, Sandra Bernhard was always kinda androgynous, but I don’t get the use of his.

Wise Man and Fool follow Rat to her, by definition, Rat-infested home. They peek in the window and see that within seconds she has already thinned the herd by overdosing on the coke.

Damn them for actually giving me a good laugh as they enter her hovel via crashing through the window. They take the cocaine . . . I mean with them.  A few seconds after they leave, partners of the drug-dealers break in.  It’s just as well Rat OD’d or she would have been murdered twice by now anyway.  Looking out the window, one of them sees, “Wise Man and that fool” running away, so I guess Fool isn’t his given name.

The episode is wearing me down as usual, but this time in a good way.  Yeah, the 80’s atmosphere is awful, but if you look beyond that, there are some fun performances and dialogue here winning me over.  Sadly Fool does not survive the scene.^[1]  His death forfeits logic and the laws of physics for a shock laugh, but that seems like a good trade to me this time.

Wise Man goes to see The Chemist (played perfectly by Joe Flaherty). Whether it was intentional or not, his ditsy blonde assistant Orchid gets a laugh from me by calling him Wiseman ^[2] as if it were his name. While Chemist and Wise Man are weighing the cocaine, Orchid pours some champagne — hey, there’s a brick of coke right there! ^[3] We are tipped off that Orchid has slipped poison into one of the glasses.  Son-of-a-bitch if I wasn’t fooled again!  She killed The Chemist and she and Wise Man end up in the sack.

Orchid leaves Wise Man and takes the cocaine to The Duke.  The drug-dealers, always a step behind, find Wise Man and kill him.  Now he is Dead Man.  And on it goes through The Duke and Mr. Big.

The ending . . . well, I don’t even understand what happened.  It was fun and unexpected and looked great, though.  The Hitchhiker could use a lot more episodes like this.

Great stuff.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Played by the then ubiquitous, now dead, always likable Dennis Burkley.
• ^[2] Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger who just didn’t care when he pronounced Batman like it was his name.
• ^[3] I’ve got an I Get a Kick Out of You shaped hole right there with nothing to go in it.  Yeah, I could have linked to Blazing Saddles, but I always wondered if Frankie really mentioned Cocaine.
• The top picture caption is an Escape from New York reference.  I had mashed up a comparison, but they don’t look as similar as I remembered.

A couple of low-lifes go into a blues club where we hear blues so bad it is giving me the blues.  One of them orders a scotch and drops a $20 bill on the floor.  A stiletto heel stamps on it.  He says to the shapely owner Jackie Dresser, “You’re not my mother” which I don’t understand at all.  He follows her to the 2nd floor which is conveniently located upstairs.

She says a girl likes a little tenderness and says, “Tell me you like my smile.”  He replies, “Yeah, wrapped around my you-know-what.”  I am generally critical of the overuse of profanity but this is a drug kingpin and a whore — no need to be coy.  He cops a feel and discovers she has breast implants that are so bad they are actually on the outside.  While he is gawking at the gelatinous nippled blob in his hand, she kills him.  She puts her floozy wig on the corpse, kills his lackey, and leaves.

Turns out she is a hit-man ^[1].  The next day she meets with her handler to collect the $25,000 payment for the contract on the man she just killed.  He has another assignment for her, a blackmailer of women, but she says she is going on vacation.  There is literally nothing about the rest of this scene that I understand.

She writes on a piece of paper, and gives it to him.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“The hottest thing since Juliet.  At least that’s what I heard.”

“How do you know?”

“Phone book.  Try her out.”

It would seem that she is giving him the name of a substitute hit-man.  But who is Juliet? The most famous one is Juliet Capulet, but I don’t remember her being a killer (although her shenanigans were lethal to Romeo).  Googling “Juliet the Assassin” gives me nothing, so I am baffled.

Let’s say it is the name of a fill-in assassin . . . she found her in the phone book?  AAAAssassins r Us?  Is that before AAAA Bail Bonds?  And given what happens later, Jackie doesn’t know what she looks like?

Back at her place, she dolls up like she’s going to the prom.  Her bedroom is lined with pictures of a guy.  One of the pictures is signed “Bill Hagerman”.  Is this her boyfriend?  He signs his full name? It probably isn’t a movie star because she is in one picture with him.  I’m baffled.

She fantasizes aloud about going to the dance, then to the lookout where he will do things to her.  She suddenly takes off a shoe and throws it at the mirror. I have no idea why.  She is topless, though, so you make allowances.

She heads for a B&B in the mountains.  Her 1-week stay costs $4,500.  If a B&B charges me $4,500 one of the B’s better stand for the aforementioned you-know-what.  In her room, she makes a call to Bill.  She says she saw a handsome guy, “but not as handsome as you.”

Johnny, the local tennis pro, is massaging a middle-aged blonde when he spots Jackie.  They go out to eat, but the blonde finds them and accuses him of standing her up.  After a scene in the restaurant, Jackie and the Johnny go out to his convertible and she also puts her top down.

That night, she makes a call to Bill and the camera pans across a shrine of photos that Jackie is keeping.  She is on the phone again: “You were so wrong about him.  He’s sensitive and shy and so sexy.  I can’t keep my hands off him.  I swear I haven’t felt this way about anybody since you.”

It takes only seconds to get Jackie’s third topless scene, frankly the only reason to keep watching.  She and Johnny are in bed making out.  I don’t know where he was during that phone call.

The next morning, the blonde pounds on Jackie’s door looking for Johnny.  She is just coming out of the shower, and we almost get another look.  We see more of her pictures.  It appears that Bill cheated on Jackie so she killed him, launching her life of crime.

Jackie goes to Johnny’s room to tell him the blonde is looking for him and admits she isn’t married.  She sees he has a file of B&W pictures of their hook-up last night.  He was going to blackmail her, so she kills him.

The blonde comes back and breaks into Johnny’s room.  She sees a body in the bed, and says, “You slut” which makes no sense.  From her POV, she can only see a little of the person’s head.  Why would she assume it was Jackie alone in Johnny’s room?  She sees someone walking to Johnny’s convertible and uses a remote detonator to blow it up.

This also problematic.  The blonde looks out the window and sees someone walking toward Johnny’s car.  True, Jackie is wearing a hat, but it is clearly not Johnny.  On top of that, as seen in the picture, SHE EVEN TAKES OFF THE HAT AND LOOKS BACK AT THE BLONDE!  You’re thinking, she wants to kill Jackie too for banging Johnny — but blonde says, “Goodbye Johnny” before she detonates the bomb.

Surprise!  Blondie is meeting with Jackie’s boss.  She is dressed more stylishly and is sporting a punky new ‘do that looks good on her.  She is a hit-man too.^[1]  She apologizes for taking so long, says she couldn’t shake the bimbo her target was with.  She collects her $25k.  Her handler says he didn’t realize she was an imitator of Jackie.  But she doesn’t even know who Jackie is.

He has a newspaper with a picture of Johnny dead in bed.  As she walks away, he calls after her, “Who was the guy in the car?”  Hmmmm, two guests at the B&B are missing.  One is found dead in his room.  Who could the burnt body be?

This one rivals The Miracle of Alice Ames for making my head spin.  I was repeatedly puzzled by the dialog, motivations, and logic.  That’s too bad because there is a good episode to be had here.  The sub-plot about the old boyfriend is unnecessary.  I guess it is to explain how she became an assassin — it is her boyfriend that she is killing on each contract.  But who cares why she became a hit-man?  The basic mistaken identity twist would have been sufficient.

These problems hobble a nice performance by Lucy Gutteridge as Jackie.  She is believable as the rough prostitute, but when the wig came off she transformed into a lovely woman for the rest of the episode.  And what a smile.  And those eyes.  Susan Tyrrell is also good, making a similar transformation.  I completely bought her as the frumpy housewife, but at the end she was surprisingly believable as the spunky punky hit-man.^[1]

On the basis of their two performances, I kind of liked it, but boy did that script need another pass.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] I will not be writing hit-woman.
• Lucy Gutteridge starred in the vastly underrated Top Secret!.
• It took 3 story credits and 1 teleplay credit to come up with this.
• The director is responsible for 5 episodes of Ray Bradbury Theater.