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Reviews
Murder, She Wrote: The Perfect Foil (1986)
Why the rush?
Murder She Wrote should have had two-parters, this episode definitely should've been one - Gorgeous costumes, camera work, lighting and sets - good character work and actors - but rushed and unfinished.
It was an amazing time in television that gave us so many wonderful shows with just the right mix of drama and light heartedness, and with such high production values, but if only they could've known how lacking that sort of thing would be today, they'd have valued it more, given episodes like this one more time, given the story and the characters more time to breathe and develop, and given the audience more time to bathe in the gorgeousness of this episode.
Cheers: Coach Returns to Action (1982)
What were the writers thinking?
"Coach Returns to Action", where Coach is endearingly embarrassed by his crush on his new neighbour, Nina (played by a woman in her early 30s), inexplicably, however, Diane encourages him to ask her out. Coach's crush was believable but not Diane egging him on, such a strange choice, forget father, Coach is like a grandfather, loveable, just not in that way.
I'm giving the episode 3 stars and not 1 because I love early Cheers, even when the story's shaky, the atmosphere is special, the wit is always present, and this head scratcher of an episode isn't without it's stand out moments - take for example, a pristine Diane and a dishevelled Carla rallying together to give a pep talk to Coach, in Cheers' shabby men's bathroom no less!
This is a Coach episode, and Nicholas Colasanto is wonderful, you love him as Coach despite the material the confused writers gave him (and Shelley) to work with. It's worth watching for him.
The ending of the episode has Coach pulling a sad-sack trick to have Nina take pity on him, and then what? We don't know, it isn't made clear. Again, Coach makes sense this episode, Diane encouraging him to humiliate himself, makes none.