Writer Jeffrey Hunt’s car is pulled out of the water.  A detective standing by is immediately suspicious of his wife Debby and his agent Tony Lynch. They also retrieved a notebook with three false-start letters:  Goodbye Debby, Goodbye Tony, then Goodbye Debby & Tony.  This was pretty prescient as the next scene is one of those godawful amber-bathed Cinemax style sex scenes with the wailing sax, but with an NQ of 0%.^[1]  This is not HBO, this is TV.

Thank God it is cut short by Librarian Vivian ^[2] who drags Tony away to discuss re-releasing Jeffrey’s books.  Left alone at the house, Debby takes a long steamy shower. No wait, she hears a noise and goes upstairs.  To take a shower.  No, she hears Jeffrey’s typewriter clacking away.  She sees a piece of paper roll up with the words: CAN’T LIVE WITH MYSELF.  DROWNING IN GUILT.  It is a sad commentary on this episode that 1) I have an idea where this plot should go, and 2) there’s not a chance in hell it will happen.

She is stunned to see Jeffrey come walking into the bedroom.  He says he faked his death because he wants what every writer wants:  Immortality.  He announces that they are going to disappear to Samoa.  He smirks and tells her “Today is the first day of the rest of my death,” possibly explaining his lack of success as a writer.

At a reading of Jeffrey’s books by Vivian and Tony, Debby waves Tony outside.  The director very nearly sneaks some humor into the episode before catching himself.  She tells Tony all about Jeffrey.  His bright idea is to kill Jeffrey for real.

To Debby’s credit, she is not thrilled at this idea.  More to her credit, in the next scene, she strips and climbs buck-naked into a Jacuzzi with Jeffrey. Within seconds, we see Tony’s hands around Jeffrey’s throat as he drowns him with an assist from the still-naked Debby.  The score in this scene is so nearly an exact duplicate of the shower scene in Psycho that I’m not sure if it was a homage or rip-off [UPDATE: Rip-Off].

They roll Jeffrey up in a tarp and toss him in the back of a pick-up truck.  Darn the luck, the police show up.  Debby manages to slip away and drives to the river to dispose of his body.  Once again, reports of his death are premature as he suddenly gets up and attacks Debby.  He throws her off a pier on to some rocks.  He then leaves a typewritten note on her windshield TONY FORGIVE ME.  I HOPE YOU GO ON WITHOUT ME. THE GUILTY MUST PAY.

Back at casa de Hunt, it becomes clear that Tony & Jeffrey were in cahoots.  They have a glass of wine to celebrate, but Tony’s is poisoned. The police show up again.  These are both the most diligent and most incompetent cops in the world.  The cops break in and find a note on the typewriter:  POISONED BY GUILT. A GREAT WRITER IS DEAD.  GOD FORGIVE US, DEBRA, FOR THE MURDER OF JEFFREY HUNT.

Jeffrey is spotted at the ferry and makes the world’s worst attempted escape.  He steals a car, rams the gate, and I assume plans to jump the car onto the departed ferry.  He misses by a mere 200 feet.  But what if he had made it?  Couldn’t they radio the captain to turn around, or just meet him on the other side?  So the car goes in the drink and he drowns just as was originally believed.  Nice.

I must admit I was way off-base.  An extra twist and a sexy murder scene redeem this episode from the trash I expected it to be,  It was still a humorless, melodramatic slog but it had some good qualities.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Nudity Quotient.  This was on HBO, right?
• ^[2] Madeleine Sherwood was a regular on The Flying Nun. Only worth noting because it had the greatest premise in the history of TV: a flying nun.
• Dayle Haddon (Debby) was on the cover of the 1973 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
• Jeffrey often calls Debby “mousy face” which is the least romantic gesture since John Travolta clawed Joan Allen’s face in Face/Off.
• Almost homophonically related: I’ve been requested this from Alexa a lot lately.

I decided to give this my undivided attention.  I would make no notes, and give it a fair chance.  The joke is on me because now I have to watch this piece of shit again.

First of all, why is this set in France? Did it originally air on Maison Box Office?  And how far is this hitch-hiker going, anyway?  If those opening desert scenes of him were France, stick to the 1989 domestics.

Brother Charles (Joe Pantoliano) operates The Church of Limitless Love.  Most of his parishioners seem to be seeking a hot meal more than the word of God.  This day, Alice Ames comes in from the cold.

After the sermon, Alice delivers soup to Brother Charles.  He wastes no time explaining that “love is love” and she is “deeply and unconditionally loved”.  He wants to build a new church.  “A temple where people from all over the world could come and feel safe.”

Alice is shown to a room that she will share with Melissa.  She is going out for the evening as Alice is getting into bed.  She says she has a “missionary position in the organization.”  I can’t cast any stones about lame, obvious jokes, but this is painfully shoe-horned in and delivered.  It does indicate to us, however, how Brother Charles plans to pay for his new gold and silver “castle in the sky.”  Of course, keen observers of the human condition might have figured that out as the opening scene of the episode was Melissa pushed against a brick wall getting bloody railed.

Even though nothing is ever explicitly said, Alice is given a new suit of hookerwear.  She puts it on and hits the street.  She picks up a guy who seems to be wearing the top half of a scuba suit, but is probably some fashionable Euro-wear.  Aquaman lays on top of her, and the next thing we see is him running out of the hotel room, covered by blood.  The hotel manager looks in and sees Alice with blood pouring from her hand.

Brother Charles rushes to the hospital to pick up Alice.  He is met by a policeman who thinks he can now bust Charles’s operation.  When did the French become such prudes?  On the way back, Charles stops the car and tells Alice to get out.  He says he “can’t have this kind of thing in my church.”  What kind of thing?  Because she seemed to be stabbed? Because it was stigmata?  I have no idea what the point was here.  She gets out, fortuitously, right in front of another church — one that doesn’t operate in a storefront.

She looks up at a statue and cries out that it is a test and she will prove herself to be a believer.  We see her wrapping her hands and feet, but where is she?  Then we see her walking through a hospital.  Then we see her being escorted out of the earlier hotel room by the police.  I can’t even begin to speculate what this series of events means.  Was it a flashback?  Did she return to the scene of the . . . well, it wasn’t really a crime.  What the hell?

She returns to Brother Charles who exploits her stigmata as “a living example of God’s work”.  The bucks are really rolling in.  Before the congregation, he unwraps her feet to show her bloody wounds.  As they gasp, he holds up her arms to show her bloody palms.  They again recoil, although it might have been at her shaved armpits.

After the service, Charles is enjoying a swig of sacramental vodka with Alice.  He accuses her, in the nicest possible way, of faking the wounds, then starts negotiating their split of the proceeds.  Charles climbs on top of her, and she cries, “This is the wrong kind of love!”  She seems scared to death as he forces himself on her.  Her hands begin to bleed and he dies — why, I have no idea. There is blood on his face — why, I have no idea.  Alice goes limp beneath him.  I guess she is also dead — why, I have no idea. The police know to come examine the bloody room — why, I have no idea. There is a very choppy edit back to the titular hitchhiker who explains nothing.  Not even HTF he got to France.

This is probably the most incoherent episode I have watched for this blog.  It is stunningly inept at every turn.  As with both previous Hitchhiker episodes, it is leaden and humorless; but that seems to be, inexplicably, what they are going for . . . so, kudos for succeeding.  Unlike the other episodes, here you are frequently left having no idea where people are, what their motivations are, and why things are happening.  I assume, at a mere 23 minutes, there were huge chunks of this that were even worse, so were edited out.  Was this like the last episode of The Twilight Zone, where they just bought a French short film and passed it off as original?

OK, everyone has an off week.  The exchange student director didn’t work out, the funding fell short, the story just didn’t translate from the page.  But after it is filmed and seen to be such a turd, WTF would you put it on Volume 1 of what can reasonably be expected to be a greatest hits compilation?  And in the third slot?

Rating:  This ain’t no miracle; this ain’t even a card trick.

Post-Post:

• From the director of Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay.  Maybe that’s what got my hopes up.
• Never got around to it above, but what about those scars on her wrist?  Another mystery.

We open with workmen clearing the debris from a massive roof collapse.  A reporter tells us the accident “left one man dead and one man miraculously alive” as we pan across a dead body on the ground.  A pulse is detected in a body previously thought to be dead.  But how did the reporter already know there was a survivor?  Where was this Nostradamus on Election Night?

The titular hitchhiker tells us, “Jane Reynolds works the night shift at an old age home, governing her charges with rules and an iron hand. ^[1] But there are some rules that bend when the night shifts.”^[2]  We meet her making the rounds in the television room, taking a board game away from some oldsters, taking a cat from an old lady, and reminding another that her husband is dead.

That night, her boyfriend Johnny drops by for some hanky-panky.  And by hanky-panky, I mean taking a look at the jewelry Jane has lifted off the old people.  Johnny quite rightly points out that these geezers would have had their assets picked clean by their kids by the time they end up here.

Their date is interrupted by a new patient being admitted to the home.  It is the revived man from the roof collapse.  Played by Darren McGavin, he is credited as “Old Man” which in this episode is about as helpful as crediting “White Guy” on Seinfeld.  Jane is immediately captivated by his ring which really looks more like a high school graduation ring than a precious jewel; or maybe it’s a ruby — I’m no icthyologist. ^[4] She gives up after she is unable to slip it off his bony finger.

Johnny comes back, and he too is stunned by the ring.  I can understand that maybe he’s never seen a high school graduation ring, but she’s a nurse, for cryin’ out loud!  They work together to remove the ring.  Johnny suggests Vaseline, but this is no time for love.  She suggests muscle relaxant, but he whips out a knife.  Fortunately, they are interrupted by an old lady in a wheelchair.  They wheel her out, and the cat comes into Old Man’s room.

Regrouping in the med room to get the muscle relaxant — I thought that knife idea had real potential —  the poor couple is again interrupted.  The patients are distraught that the old lady’s cat has been killed.  Jane gets so upset that she smacks one of the geezers.  Not that I approve, but she must be worn out — she apparently is the only nurse and works a 24 hour shift.

After dispatching the mob which actually remembers pitchforks and torches, she returns to find Johnny has gone.  She grabs the muscle relaxant and heads back to Old Man’s room.  She injects the old man and works the ring off his finger.  Suddenly he awakens and grabs her hand.  He sits up, breaking the restraints across his bed.  She runs, but Old Man ambles after her.  She barricades herself in the laundry room, but flees when she sees Johnny’s corpse.  Old Man relentlessly follows her as she tries to escape.  When he catches her, he slits her throat with a little knife hidden in the ring.

In a strange coda, the patients are assembled in the hall as the police investigate the murder.  It is filmed from the detective’s POV. ^[3]  He asks what happened, and an old lady leads them into the office.  They spin the chair around to reveal Jane, dead, with white hair and having aged a few decades.  Well, hadn’t the cops already found her?  Why else would they be there?

The last scene is a newly rejuvenated Darren McGavin seeing the headline RETIREMENT HOME SLAYING at a newsstand.  He must still have a menacing aura of evil around him because the newsstand guy totally lets him walk off with the paper.

There is a great episode here somewhere, it just isn’t on the screen.  Darren McGavin is squandered in the role of Old Man.  He is such an affable and comedic actor, that he should have been used in another episode because, God knows, this series is utterly lacking in humor.  He is fine here, but the role is undemanding.  Margot Kidder just doesn’t work for me at all.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Just like the coolly efficient, misunderstood Nurse Ratched.
• ^[2] Title Analysis:  I like it!  Much of it literally takes place during Jane’s shift at night.  It also conveys the otherworldliness of the night as things shift away from reality.  But why is it spelled as one word?
• ^[3] The commentary explains this was due to budgetary (i.e.union) reasons.
• ^[4] I know that is a fish-guy, but I can’t think of the fancy word for jeweler and I can’t find it on Google.
• In the commentary, and on IMDb there is talk of a nude scene.  I didn’t see it, and I can’t say I’m too disappointed.  If it was censored off the DVD, though, that I have a problem with.
• Directed by Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, Patriot Games, Salt)

Enough with the shots of guys’ sweaty sex chests.  This time it is somewhat less odious as on top of the layer of sweat, there is a layer of topless blonde.  Also because the guy is credited as “Bad Lover.”  The blonde sends him packing; and not in the good way.

Immediately after he leaves, the phone rings.  She asks who it is and the caller replies, “Charlie.  Call me Charlie” in a creepy breathless voice, which is not how I remember the commercial.  He continues, “I’m watching you.”  She spins around to see the condo facing her room.  After her recent performance, there ought to be a dozen faces against the windows.  He says, “I’m always watching you,” as he lowers the binoculars.  We see that he is taking no chances — over the phone, in another building, he is still wearing a mask to hide his identity.  He then opens a switchblade.  The scene it is not staged well-enough to demonstrate that she is actually seeing him rather than reacting to the sound on the phone.  However, there is still some residual goodwill from the boob-scene, so no problem.

She let’s out a scream and the camera pulls back to reveal she is on a monitor being drooled over by another three guys.  Inexplicably, the picture quality of her scene on the monitor is far superior to the picture quality of the rest of the episode.  How is that even possible?  Why didn’t they apply this same technology to the boob-scene, or even — crazy talk — the whole episode?

Sadly, the blonde actress Leda Bedell is not much of an actress.  She was forced on first-time director Alex Nolan by his producer.  The producer accuses him of making an “artsy-fartsy film” when it is clearly the standard humorless melodrama that Cinemax specialized in.

As Alex watches her rehearse the last scene of the movie, her male co-star Duncan has a hissy fit because she “is not giving me what I need.”  Alex chews him out and takes Leda into his office for a little private rehearsal, and maybe what he needs.  Fortuitously, they were shooting the death scene which includes a long kiss.  After the smooch, there is a very effective fake-out.  Kudos on that anyway.  She agrees to meet Alex for dinner that night.

As she is getting ready, there is a knock at the door.  A man with the same mask hands her a dozen roses.  The door closes, and when she looks back in the hall 2 seconds later. there is no one there.  The roses are still there, however, with a card that says RIP.  In her parking garage, she sees Duncan and accuses him of being flower-guy.  On the way to the restaurant, she sees the man in the mask following her on a motorcycle.

Alex is late, and Leda accuses him of being motorcycle-guy.  She thinks Alex did it to coax a good performance out of her.  There she gets a phone-call at her table from Charlie.  That night she gets another call from Charlie and sees him across the street in a window.  For a change, a woman in the movies does the sensible thing and calls the police. She goes with them to the apartment where he appeared, but there is just a harmless old man living there.

The police leave her downstairs.  As she goes up to her apartment, she sees the masked man in the stairwell. He starts swinging the switchblade, but she is able to get away and get to her apartment.  As she leans against the door, the knife plunges through right next to her head.  The masked man begins breaking through the door and . . . son of a bitch if they didn’t trick me again!

After shooting a scene, Alex repeats something the masked man said, so she runs away.  She discovers a mask in his office, so takes off.  That night, Alex gets a call,  “I’m watching you, always watching you.”  He turns and sees Leda wearing the mask in a window across the street. She continues, “Let’s do the last scene for real.”

They meet in a disco.  Alex admits he was the man in the mask.  He pre-recorded the phone-call.  He used fancy Hollywood make-up to pretend to be the shorter, older man across the street.  Their confrontation is very effective with Leda wearing the mask on the back of her head.  It is surreal to see her dancing that way, and when she spins around face-mask-face-mask.  She gets her revenge and does so is a logical way that calls back to an earlier scene.

There is so much to like here.  It is impossible to tell whether LaGena Hart is a bad actress or is effectively playing a bad actress, so I will give her the benefit of the doubt.  Peter Coyote is always good.  The script takes just enough turns, and the final face-off is visually arresting.  Unfortunately, that deadly 1980’s vibe is a wet blanket over the whole episode.

Still, it manages to be pretty good.

Post-Post:

• Thus starts the first post of The Hitchhiker – Vol 1.  The fact that they went all the way to Season 3 for the first episode does not bode well.
• Directed by Paul Verhoeven, later to make RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and oh . . . Showgirls.
• Writer Robert Avrech wrote an earlier episode which may show up later according to the logic of this set.  He also wrote the screenplay for De Palma’s Body Double.
• Bad Lover guy is actually married to LaGena Hart.  He was also Roy Munson’s dad in Kingpin.