What a fun show! You got Shep's evil Jamaican lookalike Julian with that snazzy Panama hat, mon! You got jail-bar-bending telekinesis! And you got a good kid who risks his life to rescue a friend! All that and action, excitement, death traps, and even some cheesecake to sweeten the deal. Okay, you do get the killer's moll warbling "It's My Turn" and some garage band twice grinding out nondescript metal music, but geez, even considering those wince-worthy moments this episode deserves way better than a 3.4 rating with 47 votes!
The plot of the innocent person accused while their evil lookalike runs free is an old one but given new life here. The diamond trafficking, cop-killing Julian is an opportunity for Lou Gossett Jr to do something fun besides teach class and lecture Matthew. Here he gets to speak with an accent, wear a cool Panama hat, and even kiss a girl!
Speaking of that hat, where did the police round up five of them on short notice for the suspects to wear in the lineup? Does the chief's brother-in-law own a haberdashery that supplies the local gendarmes with chapeaus for all seasons?
Et tu, Julian Wilkes Booth? Did you notice Julian shoots the detective, then jumps onto the stage and scurries across it to a successful escape just like happened back in April 1865 at the Ford Theater in Washington? And it was in a Ford Edsel that the evildoers chased Matthew. Ominous parallels for greater minds than mine to parse.
Hey, tell me that turtlenecked thug didn't really send his Edsel to the car crushing lot after it suffered a fender bender?
The bad guys here were dim bulbs who didn't even misspend their lives watching too much television. If they had, like me, they would have known better than to walk away before seeing crushed the car into whose trunk they stuffed Matthew.
Another TV trope that was given a refreshing twist here was the rush to catch the bad guys before they could board the plane to freedom. Matthew's telekinesis made short work of that meddling Miranda-rights-reciting cop. Then Matthew goes all O. J. running through the airport. This would have been so much easier post-9/11 where Julian wouldn't even have his Bruno Maglis back on his feet before Matthew tackled him.
Louis Gossett Jr was impressive as Julian. I thought of his two characters as distinct persons as the show unfolded, and just wish there was more of Julian and that Jamaican accent. Also underutilized but boosting each of his scenes was John Aprea as T. J. Howard, the crooked studio owner (aren't they all?). C'mon, you knew he was a bad guy when you saw all the Bee Gees paraphernalia in his office, right? Aprea was at this same time also working the right side of the law as Lt. Vincent Novelli on MATT HOUSTON.
And the gratuitous cheesecake award goes to... Amy Steel as Pam Elliott, who after escorting Matthew out her bedroom window turns to the camera and pokes out the eyes of the audience at home. Let's just say there must have been a chill breeze blowing by (never mind that it's SoCal).
Pam takes a powder for most of the episode, enjoying only two short scenes. No time for puppy love when the fate of Shep and ultimately Quadris itself hang in the balance. This one was really dedicated to Matthew playing the third Hardy Boy (he had the hair for it) and amateur sleuthing in dark alleys, snooping in file cabinets, and getting bound, gagged, blindfolded and locked in a car trunk before stealing some poor jerk's truck and leading a very patient policeman in a conga line to the airport.
A ton of entertainment packed into fifty minutes. Hey, I heard this series had a cult following rivaled only by that of MANIMAL and AUTOMAN, so why aren't the fans turning out here on IMDb to pump up the ratings? Staring at that 3.4 and employing to the utmost our nascent telekinetic powers just ain't gonna do it (believe me, I know!).
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