User Reviews

Episode 81(the first of five hour long broadcasts on Monday nights that closed out the original series)begins with Jodie and Maggie attending a sauna where an informer(Herb Braha)points them to Malibu to find Wendy; after following cowboys,clowns,and fire eaters,her mother's tastes have now centered on "Minja warriors," who plan to train the child as one of their own,locking up Jodie and Maggie in a dungeon(Hiro:"my men will swarm on you like the Cubans on Miami!") Armed with only a gun and a baseball bat,Sheriff Burt singlehandedly captures Tibbs and his syndicate confederates,including a Godfather(J.J.Barry,not the same one played by Richard Libertini),who tries unsuccessfully to bribe Burt.When Jessica catches El with a hooker,he tries to explain his actions by claiming that she was a "bad girl,"(aka a slut who's going to Hell),and that Jessica is a "good girl" who will go to Heaven,thereby proving that El Puerco("The Pig")really IS a male chauvinist pig.Fearing that her baby can fly,Mary visits Dr.Drell(Earl Boen),her gynecologist,who tries to convince her that her baby "came from County General,not Mars." Mary breaks the news to a disbelieving Chester that her son Danny needs a kidney from a blood relative,and that he is Danny's actual father,from a relationship that preceded his marriage to Jessica; afraid after so many years to lose her sister's love,she now shares her secret with Jessica,who feels betrayed and unforgiving.Danny also cannot believe that his real father is Uncle Chester,the one man he respects least in all the world,but she quickly rights the situation(Mary to Danny:"you don't have to forgive me ever, but there's one big reason why you could never hate Chester,he gave me you") Governor Jack Rhodenbach(Michael Currie)appears on television with Burt,planning to offer the heroic Sheriff the new job of heading his war on crime; since neither he nor the director(Joel Brooks)can get his name straight,they both start referring to him with a new nickname,"Bat Campbell."

My pet peeve is that Burt meets the governor of Connecticut. The problem is that this isn't the governor of Connecticut we've been introduced in this universe before. In fact, the governor of Connecticut is Burt's cousin (by marriage) and this fact doesn't get mentioned. The fact that the governor is Mary & Jessica's cousin Gene Gatling wasn't just revealed in a casual comment that we could ignore. There was a whole t.v.show about it called Benson starring the family butler which was running concurrently.

They could have easily used the mayor or a senator but instead chose the governor.

This part of series was getting repetitive with Danny's third love in two years. Jessica's tenth lover in two years.

The best thing about this part of series is that we learn that the Tate family wealth actually comes from Mary & Jessica's family, the Gatlings when it was suggested that it came from Chester's family. Mary & Jessica's mother (the majors wife) disinherited Mary and gave the family fortune to Jessica to bribe Chester to marry her since she was not very bright. Chester was blackmailed into the marriage even though he liked Mary.

We learned in first season that Mother Gatling took the baby Corinne from Mary & Jessica's brother Randolph & Ingrid and gave it to the Tate's to raise leading to Ingrid's vendetta against the family (justified, in retrospect).

Mother Gatling was the most interesting character never shown on the show.