Carl goes to a Halloween party thrown by his friend Bob.  He is quickly busted by Bob because he was not invited.  Seems Carl just got a divorce and Bob’s wife decided Carl should not be invited.  Bob might be costumed as Lincoln, but he sure lacks Abe’s backbone.

Bob is clearly not a historian, though.  While his get-up does, admirably, include a bullet wound, it is in the center of his forehead.  Hey, Bob, John Wilkes Booth wasn’t firing from the stage, you know!  Every school kid knows Lincoln was shot in the temple. ^[1]

Carl’s ex Linda sees him at the party.  She quite reasonably asks if she needs to get a restraining order.  Then she tells Carl that you can’t make someone love you no matter how much you hit them.  Zing!  I hope they aren’t setting Carl up to be the protagonist here.  By the time he says he should have killed her and threatens his host, I speak for the audience in saying, what an asshole!

Carl goes into the kitchen and hurls a pumpkin against the wall.  He is witnessed by another guest in leather thigh-highs, platinum hair, and a plain white cat-like mask.  She overheard Bob & Linda, and sides with Team-Bob, which is a warning sign right there.  Bob asks what she is dressed as.  She answers, “a body-bag . . . a synthetic shell with a corpse inside.”  It might not read like much, but it is a beautiful response in context.  Kudos.

Carl goes back to Molly’s apartment.  She peels off the gear to reveal underwear that is much less leathery, and a lot of skin which is not leathery at all.  The cat-face stays on, though.  Carl jokingly — which is far out of character for this dullard — asks if she is making sexual overtures.  She replies, “I don’t do overtures.  The curtain goes up or it stays down.”  Again, kudos!

They have the sex.  At Carl’s suggestion, they leave the masks on.  There is gratuitous nudity of Carl’s butt and appropriate nudity of Molly’s boobs.  She tells him to really go at it and take his aggression out on her, but all he really does is some enhanced humping.  That’s enough for Carl to get a little girly, remove his mask and blurt out his real name and occupation.  It only takes about 2 minutes before he is his old violent self.  Granted, in those 2 minutes, he did find her collection of sawed-off human faces, so maybe this time he is justified.

He tries to remove her mask, but just claws her face.  She cries, “It was never a mask, Carl!  It’s the way  I was born!”  He is immobilized thanks to the drink she gave him earlier . . . hour earlier.

Everything does not need to be explained, but it just feels like too much is left unanswered:

• What caused her to be this way?
• How does her deformity lead to cutting dudes’ faces off?
• She was at Bob’s party; does he know her?  He seemed to be enforcing the guest list pretty ruthlessly.
• Carl has 3 separate visions of one of Molly’s previous victims.  Why just that guy?  Budget issues?

This could have been overcome stylistically.  There are a few interesting choices and compositions, but it is not sustained.  It really feels like one of those Hitchhiker episodes where something happens,  but for no descernable reason. We’re just supposed to accept that oddity in place of plot.

The “mask” is more off-putting than intriguing.  And Carl is so buff for a 40 year old dude that it is creepy.

I can see a good episode buried in here, but there were some iffy choices.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Even this is not accurate as he was shot behind the ear.  I guess it just worked for the old joke.  But the better joke is the one about Mrs. Lincoln.  Best ever, maybe.
• Title Analysis:  Appropriate, but that’s it, no awful pun?  Plus we had Only Sin Deep in season one.

Superlawyer Geraldine Ferrett — kudos on that last name — is hauled into the Stuecksville Courthouse for driving an unlicensed vehicle.  She calls her office to let them know where she is.  When she pronounces Stuecksville the way any sane human being would, a local corrects her that it is pronounced Sticksville.  No, it is clearly not.  If ever a situation cried out for an umlaut . . .

As Geraldine is looking over photos of public executions that should be de rigueur in every courthouse, Austin Haggard introduces himself.  The town has appointed him to take Geraldine’s case.  She just wants to pay the fine, but Austin advises against that because “this is a very strict town.”

. . . I could tediously recap all the working parts and short scenes — you know, as usual.  But time might be better spent just stating up front that this episode was a lot of fun.  There were a lot of fun ideas, the roles were well cast and performed, and it had a nice comic-book look to it.  Really, one of the best.

That said, there were several choices that confused me.

For unknown reasons, Austin Haggard is wearing Buddy Holly glasses, a big mop of hair, a bow tie, and a too-plaid, too-small, two-button jacket.  No one else is so strangely costumed.  I can think of two reasons why, one serious and one not funny.  1) the suit is a shorthand visual clue for a switcheroo that comes later, and 2) this somewhat masks the presence of Peter MacNicol who has a Jack Blackian talent for ruining nearly any project he appears in.

Geraldine talks to a local who is on trial for Felonious Auto Sales, i.e. rolling back the odometer.  Her first clue that this court means business is that he is found guilty and they cut his nose off.  Hunh?  I expect — nay, demand — a little more irony from TFTC.  I dunno, just spitballing here, maybe they could have rolled his eyes back in their sockets.  Ya get some “rolling back” irony, and a neat white-eyes visual.  I mean, that vagina they left in the center of his face was swell, it just lacked that extra level.

There are three courtrooms, A, B, and C.  A different judge presides in each.  All three are played by the same actor.  Again, I don’t see the point of this choice.  Tim Curry pulled off a triple-play in an earlier TFTC episode, but he’s Tim freakin’ Curry!

Geraldine is charged with driving an unlicensed vehicle because they say her license plate has an invalid number of characters.  Since the state has a monopoly on distributing licensess, wouldn’t this be impossible?  Nitpicky, but it just seems like an odd choice to build the episode around.  It did, at least, give them a chance to show off her SUE EM license plate.

For her heinous crime, she is immediately put in the pillory.  She can hear screams of agony from the other cells, but at least she has a private room.  Wait, a couple of figures emerge from the corners.  A man with hole in his chest says she killed him by suing his pacemaker company into bankruptcy.  For some reason, the hole seems to have teeth like Norris’s chest in The Thing.  Why?

A filthy, bloody woman complains about not being able to afford a doctor because lawyers cause them to pay so much for malpractice insurance.  OK, but what does that have to do with her being slimy?

There is another man beside her with his arm twisted behind his neck —  likewise no explanation.

Austin shows up and the figures disappear.  He says her appeal was granted.  I’m not sure what means as the judge still summarily pronounces her guilty.  However, her community service punishment is to become the new public defender . . . in hell!  This is where the wacky costume pays off — Geraldine is now dressed in Austin Haggard’s zany outfit, except with a mini-skirt.

So we have an episode with several lazy minor choices which still turns out to be one of the best.  Even the casting works in spite of expectations.  Peter MacNicol, usually insufferable, is a hoot as Austin.  Catherine O’Hara is not usually cast as a sexy babe, and wasn’t believable as a lawyer so evil that she went to hell.  And yet, she too was great.

Despite my bellyaching, there were some clever moments in the writing.  I especially appreciated how they finally nabbed Geraldine for soliciting a handicapped client.  Only later do you understand his responses about how he was injured.

This is what TFTC should be more often.

A black stretch limo drives into the forest.  Frank Stallone lets Kate Vernon and Robert Picardo out of the car.  This is years before Kate could have mocked Picardo for being on Star Trek Voyager while she was on the superior Battlestar Gallactica. Although both probably got a laugh out of Frank.^[1]

To be honest, the story kind of bores me.  Also, I’m slumming with some Jack Daniels after recently drinking single malt and Gentleman Jack.  Combine that with the fact that this is the last episode of the season, and that I might not continue with TFTC due to it’s poor reputation in the last two seasons, and I’m calling an audible.^[2]

Kate Vernon was downright MILFy in Battlestar Gallactica.  Here, she is merely insanely hot.  While she has had a great career, but I’m baffled why she isn’t a superstar.  C’mon, the Academy couldn’t find room for one more white chick?  It might be the liquor typing, but this is bullshit.  Let’s just close out the season with pictures of Kate Vernon . . .

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Oh, I’m sorry — we could have accepted Till Death Do Us Part or Till Death Us Do Part.  Not funny or ironic, but at least coherent.
• ^[1] Frank Stallone gets the last laugh . . . four platinum albums, ten gold, and a slew of TV episodes to his credit.
• ^[2] I hope that makes sense.  I find football even less interesting than this episode.
• Kate Vernon is the daughter of Dean Wormer.

I only have a vague idea how TV works.  Actually, I have no idea how TV works.  I have a vague idea how TV production works, just based on assumptions and logic.  Surely, in the list of producers there is someone who does more than collect a check, someone who oversees the entire series — which seems critical for an anthology series.  That’s why it baffles me how TFTC can have such wild swings in tone.

The episode (after the odious Cryptkeeper) has a deadly somber opening, fittingly in a morgue.  No score or ambient sounds at all, just footsteps, a drawer being opened and a couple of guys talking.  The detective tells Clancy Brown that Dan King, the founder of his company, took 40 CCs of Exthion-B in the neck.  Exthion-B is a new preservative that big pharma is working on.  The detective says the stiff’s head won’t rot for 100 years.  In his pocket is a note, not in his handwriting, saying “I have not forgotten or forgiven.”

When asked if he has any enemies, Brown flashes back to six years earlier in the Amazon.  Things get a little livelier as we at least get some jungle sounds.  There is also a drum-beat in the background, though sadly not synced with the guys seen playing drums on-screen.  Brown pours their new experimental drug down the gullet of
an old savage man and seals him up in a crate.  He should be grateful, in a few years, people will be paying $750 a day to get that drug.

Back in the present, Brown arrives home to find the same “I have not forgotten or forgiven” spray-painted on his wall.  There is also a voodoo doll which has a red-devilish left side and a republican right side (well, blue suit and red tie, anyway).  So, really 100% evil in Hollywood terms.

The same detective comes over and again asks Brown if he has any enemies.  More reliable than LSD, this again induces a flashback.  While down in the Amazon, in order to secure the secret Exthion-B herb, he had to offer his employee Alex as a sacrifice to the natives.  Brown pours the drug down Alex’s gullet and buries him in a crate also.

Back in civilization, Clancy is being interviewed by original MTV VJ, the amazingly 80’s-coiffed Mark Goodman.  Clancy shows him some apples that were treated with Exthion-B 2 years ago and are still fresh and crispy.  Wood used in your home will never rot, your clothes will never fade.

Unfortunately, his assistant Colin tells him the FDA is holding up their approval of Exthion-B.  He also suggests that Brown check on his associate Kevin because if another employee ends up dead, it could hurt the business.  Brown goes to Kevin’s apartment and finds him dead with a syringe of Exthion-B still plunged in his neck.  And the same note pinned to his shirt.

Sadly, not even Exthion-B can preserve the style of the Members Only jacket Brown is wearing in this scene.

Brown goes back to the office and kills Colin.  Alex gives him a slow-clap.  Brown is stunned as Alex has been dead for 6 years.  He shows Brown that the hand-writing on the notes is the same as his own; but Brown doesn’t seem to remember writing the notes.  He decapitates zombie Alex.

So let me get this straight . . . Brown has been killing his co-workers and leaving a note that says “I have not forgotten or forgiven”?  OK, Brown is the one who murdered the old native and Alex, so what does that even mean?  Wait, you say, this is his evil side talking.  No, his evil side would be OK with the murders to make a profitable drug — this would have to be his good half talking.  But why would the good half commit murder?

The next day, Brown’s doctor recognizes the doll as a voodoo god that maintains the balance between mans good and evil halves. Desperate, Brown offers the doctor the profits from Exthion-B to remove his evil half.

The next day, we see Brown only in profile as he orders a syringe of Exthion-B to be brought to him. When he gets the syringe, he tells his secretary that he has beat the curse that Alex put on him. The doctor destroyed his evil half, the half the curse feeds on, so it became null and void.  His secretary turns on the light revealing Brown to be half-normal and half dead.  Brown lifts the syringe to his neck.

Really, I could not be less interested.  The flatness of the episode is mind-numbing.  No score except some occasional drums, obnoxiously 1980’s “style”, Clancy Brown in a suit, just nothing seems to work.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Nah, too easy.  At least the “half” makes sense, but they botched the pun as usual.  Maybe something like “Not Half-Horrible” would have worked better as it plays off the established phrase “not half-bad.”  Except that he was half-way horrible.
• Another first time and only time director.
• Kudos on the art direction in the episode.  Whether they were authentic or not, the objets d’art were fabulous.  Also the curare d’art