The Hitchhiker: O.D. Feelin' (1986)
Season 3, Episode 7
2/10
The Hitchhiker--O.D. Feelin'
3 April 2013
Warning: Spoilers
Anthology series have good, bad, mediocre, and forgettable episodes; in particular, anthology series that last a little while. Then you have those really rotten apples like "O D Feelin'" that leave a heavy stench in the nostrils. Woof, what a stinker! A bag of what seems to be cocaine drifts from hand to hand with those who come into its possession winding up dead. Infantile characters speaking infantile gibberish, dying because of the desire to gain power, wealth, and status on the drug-infested streets of a New Age Punk era only the 80s could provide. Whether dying because the coke is too strong, or pushing a friend in front of a train, or poisoning a drink, these characters find the product too irresistible to share with others, perishing through betrayal or chicanery. The ending is so ludicrous and visually stupid (the bag is opened with a scalpel by KISS' own Gene Simmons, portraying a corporate drug lord in a humongous high rise, with the powdery substance geysering forth, eventually filling the whole room, turning him and his suited, sinister goons into skeletons!), it puts the exclamation point on how dreadful this drivel is. I can't imagine the series produced very many episodes as stinky as this turd.

The cast can be thanked for some awe-inspiringly insipid characters, especially Sandra Bernhard as a male drug pusher (dressed basically as a clown, walking in a hump, with a cane), Lisa Dunsheath as bimbo Orchid, and Leon Isaac Kennedy as a pimp. Poor Dennis Burkley—typically known in the 80s as a big, burly biker bully or brute who carries his weight to push smaller people around—is saddled with a doofus sidekick to Michael Des Barres' "Wiseman". Joe Flaherty has a colorless (if he can't entertain you with a character, you know something's wrong…) part as the "cutter", respected as the man who weighs product, in turn establishing the price tag/sale value on the streets. Barres seems to understand his part reasonably well, while Simmons doesn't do too badly at summoning a bit of menace as the drug lord in a fancy suit, sitting behind a big desk in his corporate office, not taking too kindly to Kennedy's attempts at negotiating a bit of a fee for delivering the product to him (not without a bit of a push). The problem the entire cast faces is trying to accomplish something with the dialogue and characters they're stuck with. It's a futile task none of them could overcome. Its one salvation is that Bernhard's time on screen is short.
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