I’ll say this for The Miracle of Alice Ames, at least it wasn’t painful just to watch.  Why Are You Here? is the most visually offensive episode since New Year’s Day.

A limo rolls up in front of a club and an unctuous windbag pops his head out of the sun-roof.  He is “Jerry Rulack, Duke of the Night” on the TV show Night Sight.  I give the episode credit for its prescience in predicting the future of TV.  Not so much for predicting reality shows like The Kardashians, but for predicting how shitty TV in general would be.  The show being filmed in this episode is like every DJ portrayed on TV — they would draw an audience of close to zero.

Jerry gets out of the limo and leads us to “. . . clubs like this.  Currently the hottest or coolest club in town.”  He promises to take us in and ask the question which is apparently the beloved catch-phrase of the series which is sweeping the nation:  “Why are you here?”

We follow him through the crowd in the club.  A mixture of punks, dandies, flashing lights and coke-heads.  Nothing wipes that game-show host smile off his face, though.  And the finger-snapping — what the hell is all that finger-snapping for?  He approaches a woman at the bar who is dressed like the widow at a Corleone funeral and asks her name.  She is the only character I don’t hate so far as she screams “F*** off!” in his smirking face.  Then he springs his A-material, “Why are you here?” and she just scream-screams in his face.  And he never missed a snap with those fingers.

He travels through the club filming more weirdos, punks, coke-snorters, and — the horror! — two gay guys.  The blaring music, flashing lights, frequent camera edits and finger-snapping go on and on and on.  He sees a couple making out and asks his idiotic signature question, “Why are you here?”  The woman shows her boobs and the episode even manages to make that boring.

Jerry interviews some dandy in the coke-room.  He appears to be wearing a blazer over a wife-beater which shows way too much chest hair.  Was there ever a time when this would have been cool?  He also appears to be using a make-up pencil to accentuate his butt-chin.  He leads Jerry and his crew up to a private area to see “the most beautiful, sweetest, sought after, fought over, richest girl” in town.

The girl turns out to be Helen Hunt up in the VIP room surrounded by hanger-ons.  Jerry asks his usual insipid question, “Why are you here?”  She says, “Nowhere else to go,” and he gives her insipid answer a big raspberry, thumbs-down and childish face. Honestly, who would watch this shit? And who would watch this shit?

With the exception of Jerry’s barely-seen crew, every character in this episode is repulsive.  I had hopes that Helen Hunt might elevate the material, but was disappointed.  She has always seemed like a nice person, but she is just grossly miscast in this role.  Maybe her relatability was supposed to be a counterpoint to her bum-exploitation ^[1] and crack-smoking ^[2], but it really just made me want to watch Twister again.  Unfortunately Brad Davis, who is on screen nearly every second, is dreadful.

There actually was something here that could have been salvaged.  It was a target-rich environment for satire — the club scene, reality TV, divas — but nothing lands.

Garbage.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] In the homeless meaning, not anal.
• ^[2] In the drug meaning, not anal.
• Rated 3rd worst episode of the series in IMDb’s increasingly credible ratings.
• Also from this director:  The Legendary Billy B.  Despite being born in New Zealand and working down-under during the 1980’s, even Ray Bradbury Theater knew better than to hire him.

The episode begins with a bit of German Expressionism; and I believe that expression is ausgezeichnet! ^[1]  It was an unexpected bit of black & white artistry in a frequently dreary series with rain, fog, shadows, odd angles, Kafkaesque police, and big-ass clocks just scary in their size and starkness.  I guess a whole episode in this style would have been too much, but what an awesome opening!  Alas, it was just a Traum.

Brainiacs Jimmy and Ron have just busted out of jail, but they aren’t exactly besties.  The older, tougher Ron is only tolerating Jimmy so he can help him find a house with a safe containing payroll cash.  They have stopped to hold up a gas station.  Since they are already on their way to a big payday, I assume they’re going to shake it down for some cheese nachos and Red Bull.

Jimmy keeps the elderly clerk occupied with some mindless small-talk while Ron cases the joint.  When he brings some beer to the register, the clerk asks him for ID despite him being 34 years old.  Panicky Jimmy pulls out a pistol, and the old guy awesomely pulls out one of his own.  Ron awesomely pulls the clerk over the counter and throws him into a display.  He takes the pistol from Jimmy and points it at the clerk.  The old man says, “Please, I got a wife and kid!”  I’m on your side, dude, but your kid must be in his fifties by now.

Left to Right: Ron, phallic symbol, Jimmy

The old clerk is again awesome as he turns over some shelves and makes a run for it.  Of course, circling the aisle in a 400 square foot gas station convenience store isn’t much of an escape plan, but he had guts.  Ron pumps him full of leaded.  Apparently his thorough casing of the joint overlooked the two monitors sitting prominently on the counter.  They flee, with Jimmy taking an awesome tumble out the door.

Jimmy leads them to a model home which they break into.  There is supposed to be a safe in the basement.  While Ron goes treasure-hunting, Jimmy checks out the house.  When he spots a creepy kid sitting on the stairs, he panics and tries to get Ron to leave.  In a struggle, they fall over the railing and a gunshot rings out — and you better remember it or nothing else will make any sense at all.  They are busted by the whole family — little Billy, his attractive parents and their hot 20 year old blonde daughter Denise.

Ron demands to know where the safe is, but they deny there is a safe.  Ron takes the daughter upstairs looking for a big score and also the loot, while Jimmy holds the gun on Mom, Dad and Billy.  When Mom & Dad hear Denise’s screams from upstairs, they beg Jimmy to go up and stop Ron or at least close the door.  Seeing the nice family, Jimmy feels a part of him is missing.  More than anything in the world, he longs to be part of a family like this.

Denise gets away from Ron and runs downstairs.  Wanting to help the family, Jimmy points the gun at Ron. That goes about as you expect — Ron takes the gun from him and murders the entire family.  Again, this is awesomely — sorry — executed.

The next morning, a car pulls up outside the model home.  A realtor shows the house to a woman. Inside, we see that Billy, Denise, Mom and Dad are actually mannequins being used as HomeFill to make the home seem more homely.  One is more homely than the others, though.  Among the beautiful, well-dressed family sits sleazy Ron, clearly a real human.

A happy, less-crazy, neatly-dressed Jimmy comes down stairs and speaks to the mannequins before leaving.  The realtor tells the woman Jimmy is on the construction crew.  The crew is around the mannequins so much, they treat them like people.  Especially Denise, I suspect.

The house-shopper sees that Ron has bloody shirt and runs screaming from the house like she has seen black mold.

The episode is just full of interesting compositions, cuts and tracking shots.

The craftsmanship on this episode blows away every other episode so far. The opening black & white scene, a lot of creative camera-work, and some good perform-ances make this one something special.  The ending seemed like a complete non-sequitur until I did a rewind.  I deduct points from myself for that, not from the episode.

Yeah, you could raise a lot of questions about the logic of the denouement, but why would ya?  Just enjoy it — nobody likes a nit-picking dumb-ass giving his . . . dopey . . . unsolicited . . . opinions . . . . or something.

Great stuff.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] I originally wrote Scheiss, gratuitously showing off a dirty German word I learned in the gymnasium; no, not das Gymnasium, an actual gymnasium.  But the episode deserved better, even in jest. And also deserved a better jest.
• What Morgan Reeves (Denise) did in the 1990s:  One Stormy Night . . . interesting; Night Sins . . . steamy; Winter Heat . . . yeah, baby; Half a Dozen Babies — d’oh!
• This might be the first episode not available on YouTube.  And why does the DVD stick it the 8th track behind vastly inferior episodes (they are not chronological)? Why are they keeping this hidden, man?
• Title Analysis:  Good job.  Simple, but relates to the mannequins in the house as well as Jimmy’s longing for a home and family.

It wasn’t much of a twist, but way to blow it in the opening credits.

It is almost a certainty that an episode centered around a rock band or rock musician will be as dreadful as most episodes with a Christmas theme.  That Outer Limits episode with Sheena Easton was tolerable because it was The Outer Limits and had Sheena Easton.  The Christmas episodes have to be mawkish or show that miracles do come true. In the rock & roll episodes, the miracle is that anyone on-screen cares about the god-awful music or the repulsive artists.  Even trying to introduce a edgy vibe by using someone like Henry Rollins or Iggy Pop usually serves only to demonstrate how utterly vacuous and laughable they are.

Kirstie Alley and Andy Summers are hiding outside a house spying on a couple coupling like a couple of rabbits.  It seems like a fairly mundane story until Summers recognizes the girl as being the man’s sister.  Kirstie is giddy — this will finally catapult her to the big time!  Publicizing people’s most intimate moments can only lead to fortune and a long career as the fine people at Gawker can tell us.

When the story and pictures are published, Kirstie shows her excitement by buying a fake fur coat.  Summers is a little more sympathetic, showing her a new headline, “Actor’s Wife Takes Life After Illicit Love Nest Exposed.”  Her main concern is that another magazine is stealing her story.  She does calm down again when Summers reveals he has been sneaking pictures of the titular Legendary Billy B. who is supposed to be dead.

Summers tells her, “Billy B. was one of the original acid rockers, the greatest American guitarist pre-Hendrix, the big rock sex god after Elvis and before Jim Morrison.” Unlike the other three dumb-asses, his death was not self-inflicted by drugs — he was shot on stage 20 years ago. And unlike two of those three, he seems to be alive.

Kirstie is ready to get the scoop and ruin his retirement, but Summers is again the voice of reason.  He was just stalking Billy B. for his own amusement; a defense which has never worked for me.   She talks him into making it a story.  They go to his house and jump the wall.  Kirstie mentions how Billy B. appeared only 25 in Summers’ pictures, but he should be in his fifties.  Summers says rock & roll keeps you young.  To be fair, in 1987 he had no way of knowing what Keith Richards would look like in 2017.^[1]

They break into the house and hear guitar riffs that could only be coming from Billy B. They follow them to the 2nd floor which smells like “beer and piss and vomit.”  They follow some flashing lights up to the 3rd floor.  They catch Billy B. playing the guitar.  He stops and says, “Glad you could make it.”

When Kirstie suggests a comeback, he tells her, “I’m not exactly one of those forgotten cult heroes, you know.  If I can still make you shiver on record, I’m not forgotten am I? Don’t it make you shiver just to hear my music?  Don’t you just want to rip your clothes off when see me?  I don’t ask, I don’t say anything.  I just play.  That is what it means to be a rockstar.”

Summers busts him for giving the exact same inane response he gave a reporter 20 years earlier.  His other dopey answers are also rehashes of old interviews.  They want some new material, so Summers challenges Billy B. to play more than a simple riff.  When he seems unable, they peg him as a phony.  He pulls a gun on them. Summers proves to be quite agile as he leaps through a glass window, then jumps from the 2nd story.  Sadly he is killed by Red or Sonny or whatever Billy B.’s lackey is named.

Kirstie is able to run downstairs (Note to self: Be nice!).  On the first floor, she hears more guitar riffs, although these are not as terrible as the others.  She finds the real, more age-appropriate, Billy B., but he is unresponsive.

She increases his IV to a VI, but that doesn’t do much other than get him shaking.  Young Billy B. shows up with Red or Sonny.  Young Billy B. admits he is actually the son of Billy B.  This is not much of a shocker as the opening credits listed “Brad Dourif as Billy Baltimore Jr.”  They inject Kirstie with something and hook her up to an IV just like Billy Baltimore Sr.  For what reason, I have no idea.

The extent to which this episode is redeemable depends on how much you like Kirstie Alley.  As it happens, I like her, so she mitigated the awfulness.  I can imagine her over-the-top performance would grate on many people.  Despite being a musician, Andy Summers seems like a decent guy.  His acting isn’t up there with Roger Daltrey’s, but he was a nice addition.^[2]  Overall, though, it is just another mediocre music episode in an often lackluster series.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Although credit is due for being alive at all.
• ^[2] FYI, Sting is an asshole.
• In 6 months, Kirstie Alley would begin her run on Cheers. Sadly, I don’t think she did much running after that (Note to self: Nicer than that).
• I saw no opportunity for a Kobayashi Maru reference.

Gary Busey.

That’s it.  Join me tomorrow for The Outer Limits.

Wait, what?  This was 3 years before riding a motorcycle without a helmet made him seem like he had played too much football without a helmet? OK, then.

Seeing the date of his skull-cracking crash, I am stunned.  I thought after his accident, he had immediately become . . . shall we say, erratic.  However, the crash was in 1988.  He still had the relatively subdued performances in Point Break, Under Siege and The Firm ahead of him.  Whatever, like Randy Quaid in Night Visions, it is just nice to see him young and healthy.

Busey plays Reverend Nolan Powers, a radio evangelist.  We join him mid-call with an adulterer who has been sneaking out for nooners at the Airport Ramada Inn.  He tells her he is going to play a song for her, but strangely nothing is done with this. The music seems to be as stock as the first DVD releases of WKRP, so I guess budgetary issues stopped them from doing anything interesting with it.

His takes a call from a shoplifter, and he then has another untrustworthy type in the studio, a network reporter from Weekend LapWatchdog.  His last call of the day is a young man, but his call is distorted with feedback as he requests What a Friend We Have in Jeebus (availabe since it entered Public Domain in the year of our Lord 1206).  After the show, reporter Eric Sato rides with Powers in his Lincoln back to the Reverend’s modest 12,000 square foot parsonage.

We’re still only 5 minutes in, but the direction and set design are already pretty impressive.  We got some nice dizzying aerial shots of the station and tower.  The building has huge letters WGOD on the roof.  Even more amazing are the 10-foot tall letters in front of the building.  If this is where the budget money went, I can listen to some generic hymns.

Sato would like a tour of the house, but Powers does not invite him in.  Powers hears What a Friend We Have in Jesus coming from the attic.  His mother is playing his brother Gerald’s records again.  Even though Gerald ran off, Mom still adores him, living in his old attic bedroom with the college pennants and model airplanes.  Powers rips the record-player’s ^[1] power cord from the wall, but it continues playing.

The next day, caller #1 is pain-killers, and that is how his callers are designated on his call screen — atheist, mid-life crisis, pain-killers.  The mysterious young man calls again, but without the feedback and distortion.  He tells Powers, “I want to save your soul, or do you want to die a sinner?”  The microphone gives a spark and the caller ominously says, “You’ll be hearing from me.”  Could this be Gerald?

Later, Powers is putting on an anti-abortion show at the local mall.  Once again, this looks great.  It is filmed in a real split-level mall, it has a banner with a logo, the many extras are dressed neatly in a nice mid-western style.  The Armani-clad reporter comes in just in time to hear Powers wonder if maybe “Jesus has already returned and was flushed down an abortionist’s toilet.”  Gotta say if that’s your philosophy, it is a pretty good question.

That night, Powers makes a phone-call and the Gerald-voice answers. He is watching a replay of the rally and his mother thinks she sees Gerald in the crowd.  Powers goes to the garage, grabs a shovel and gets in the Lincoln.  On the radio, he again hears What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  Gerald’s voice comes on the radio and taunts Powers over how he abused Gerald when they were kids, and accused him of being a mama’s boy.

Powers drives back to the station.  You pretty much know what is going to happen, but the specifics are carried out with genuine creativity and style.  It is not a one-man show, but Busey really blows everyone else off the screen.  He does what I have seen many others fail at in the course of this blog — he comes off as a believable voice on the radio. As things fall apart, I see him as a real person breaking down, not a caricature or latter-day Busey.

Great stuff.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] For the kids, that is an actual player of records — mono with a jagged needle and scratchy speakers.
• Other nice little flourishes:  The cross on the phone, in headlights, and as the hood ornament of the Lincoln; the microphone dripping blood.
• I watched this on You Tube where it has French subtitles.  Over there, the station is D.I.E.U.  Pretty clever, but now that I think of it, why do WGOD and DIEU have periods?  They aren’t abbreviations.
• Gary Busey will play another evangelist in The Outer Limits.  In Season 6.  God help me.
• There actually is a WGOD in The Virgin Islands.
• Fun Fact: I learned from this episode that old CRT computer monitors had a red incandescent bulb in them.  OK, that’s a cheap shot at a good episode, but it is weird how long they lingered on it.
• 

Car door dented before the suitcase hit it.

Richard Shepard comes home and is good-naturedly shouting to his wife upstairs about his bad day.  He says, “You should have seen what they were throwing at me.”  At just that moment, a large suitcase crashes to the bottom of the stairs.  This could have been a good laugh; actually, I did laugh.  Sadly, no one involved in the production seemed to recognize the gag.  Even after a 2nd bag crashes down, Shephard barely reacts.

Ellie walks down the stairs after the bags.  She has thoughtfully packed them for Richard because she is throwing him out of the house.  One of the bags opens as he is carrying them to the car.  In anger, he flings another bag against the door of his Porsche, leaving a nice dent in the car which I suspect was an accident.

He goes to the home of his friend Carl.  Several years earlier Carl’s wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return.  Fortunately they do not have to share the apartment as Carl is heading to New York.  That night, Shephard hears howling.  He investigates and finds a white dog and — for no reason I can figure — a blow-up sex doll.

The next morning, still wearing the same double-breasted suit — that’s reason enough to break up with a dude right there — Shephard goes in search of Ellie.  He goes to her hair salon and starts flipping up hair dryers in search of her.  He is man-handled, tossed out and given such a slap by the fabulous owner ^[1] of the salon.  That’s not a story I’d tell down at the VFW Hall.  The dog witnesses the whole scene.

In another non-sequitur that I can’t figure out, Shephard makes a little fort for the dog. He has turned the sofa upside-down and spread some pillows to make it very homey. The dog comes home after walking himself and is covered with blood.  Shephard takes him into the shower and hoses him off — still wearing the double-breasted suit.  At least it is getting cleaned.  The next morning — as he awakens still in the same suit — the dog fetches him the paper.  The salon owner has been killed.

The next day he goes to an analyst who seems to have treated both him and Ellie.  He accuses the shrink of having a lesbian affair with his wife which is troubling as it 1) broke up their marriage, and 2) was a breach of medical ethics, and 3) took place off-camera.  The therapist assures him this is a delusion he has concocted to explain the break-up.  He seems to be wearing that same suit, BTW.  And it’s not like it is ragged, as a metaphor for his breaking down.  If still looks like a pretty nice suit except for the double-breastedness.  Oh, the dog kills her too.

Carl comes home from New York to find his home has been wrecked.  I still can’t figure out what the point of this is.  Carl is understandably peeved, but Shephard tells him not to be angry.  Just to be safe, the dog kills him.

The next day, still in the same suit, Shephard takes a Polaroid picture of he and the dog posing in front of a mirror.  Ellie calls and that seems to upset the dog.  Shepard goes to her house to protect her.  When she tells him he is his own worst enemy, the dog attacks him and pushes him off a balcony.

Of course, there is no dog.  As it is attacking him, we see Shephard from Ellie’s POV defending against a non-existent dog.  Just in case we don’t get it, we then see the Polaroid which has developed to show no dog in the shot.  Shephard is the dog.

I was highly critical of Michael O’Keefe’s (Shepard) performance for most of the episode. He was never much of an actor, but here he just seemed all over the board.  The revelation that he was nuts helped explain away some of that; many of his mannerisms are meant to imitate a dog.  The basics of the story were great.  I just wish I understood the sex doll, the sofa fort, the destruction of Carl’s house, and the symbolism of wearing the same suit day after day.  I guess the destruction is what you would expect from a dog.  Maybe the suit was like the dog’s fur — he can’t change it.

There’s a melodrama that permeates every episode of this series.  Despite it, this turned out to be a good episode.

I rate it 5 in dog years.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] This guy was a dead-ringer for the love child of David Letterman and Joe Pisopo.
• Directed by a pre Dead Calm Phillip Noyce.
• In the commentary, Noyce says the dog is only seen from Shephard’s POV, but that’s not true.