Change Your Image
pdawgg-93468
Reviews
Murder, She Wrote: Murder Among Friends (1996)
To understand this episode, you need context
Why the Friends plot?
Imagine you're the Murder, She Wrote writing staff. For years your show has become a weekly staple in the homes of millions, you're praised and lauded, you've turned Angela Lansbury from a golden age bit player and Broadway star into one of television's most beloved and popular icons. Jessica Fletcher goes on to start filling up bookshelves and cheap tie-in CD-ROMs, there's no way that Murder, She Wrote could end anytime soon, you've dodged Angela leaving your series all together back at the end of the 80s. You're one of CBS' most beloved series in the lineup for thirteen long years running. How could anyone be able to take kindly old Jessica Fletcher off the air?
Then that show about young Gen Xers drinking coffee and complaining about their sex lives comes on the moment you're entering your 11th season, and by that summer, becomes a rising phenomenon. Within the years end, this show would go onto become one of TV's biggest hits, and now, the networks want in. But there's a problem - no youngins are going want to tune into a network whose most popular series include ones that revolve around the murderous light hearted exploits of former golden age actors playing senior citizen sleuths with successful careers who tie into their detective work.
Then the network throws your show the biggest blow ever - you're moved from your appointed timeslot on Sundays that for millions became a mainstay to Thursday nights, right in the crossfire of Friends-mania. Following a shift back, this season outside of a slew of TV movies, a novel series, and a point and click adventure game, would mark the last we'd ever see of Jessica Fletcher weekly.
It's okay for MSW standards, loved bits like how the implication that the studio created an entire production studio just for the sole existence of producing Buds (that not so subtle "We're Here For You" in case you didn't know who the writer' ire was up against this week adds to it) & and how no expense was made to distance the standins for the Friends cast to who they're actually supposed to be.
In the Heat of the Night: Crackdown (1989)
Emotionally stirring and above the rest
Having caught this episode halfway through, I was surprised at the ending and got me considering to watch the rest of this series at a later point.
I won't spoil it for you, but be prepared, it's not the typical classic 80s drug episode ending full of narm, its way more darker and emotionally charged than what you expect and was one of the rare times a mainstream network TV series from this era hits all the right beats and emotional notes when it comes to tackling a serious subject like this.
This is one of those rare very special episodes that portray drug abuse as the horrific thing it really is and not so corny, it morphs into nostalgic cheese fodder later down the line.
I Love Lucy: Lucy Does a TV Commercial (1952)
The Definitive I Love Lucy episode
It's one of the most legendary scenes ever to have been spawned from a TV series and one of pop culture's most iconic images - you've likely seen it before, being featured in hundreds of merchandise tichokes and countless classic TV retrospectives and homages produced over the years. It's been heralded and held as a standard for all television comedy so long, few have managed to surpassed it, even as I Love Lucy begins to slide into the 80+ year mark.
Of course, I'm talking about the classic bit of Lucy, desperate for a her bit break in showbiz, wanting the success and fame her husband Ricky's had for so long.
Despite his initial refusals, Lucy goes behind his back, and lands the role of a spokeswoman for a tonic, only for the shoot to go haywire as she slowly grows more incoherent and drunk by the second, sloshing down the Vitameatavegamin, unaware that it's loaded with alcohol and that's she's getting hammered hard by the stuff by the minute.
For many, this is the definitive I Love Lucy episode, it's impact is bigger than the other gems in the series that have produced those iconic images that have seen seered into the TV lexicon for years from the series, such as "Job Switching", "Lucy Meets Superman", "Lucy Goes to the Hospital", and "Lucy's Italian Movie", and it's not hard to see why.
The episode's not perfect as many herald it to be - the plot drags in some places, but it does have some of Lucille Ball's best pieces of physical comedy ever recorded on film, - such as the gag, where Lucy shows how desperate for the showbiz life she really is, by literally shoving herself inside a TV, considering it in her eyes as rational housewife behavior, only to drop the cigarette box, trying to crawl out of the set.
Then - of course, the highlight of the entire half-hour, Lucy deciding to go behind Ricky's back, getting the job, and becoming the Vitameatavegamin spokeswoman. For the first few takes, things go well. Then minutes in, the shoot goes downhill, and the comedy begins. Within minutes, Lucy, as the takes continue, goes from following the script beat for beat, to getting a little woozy, to becoming a complete stammering, hiccuping mess who's turned the set of the commercial into a pub counter. It's the perfect example of a slow buildup being used for a perfect payoff.
But alas, don't expect a hilarious bit of Ricky becoming flustered at his wife's scatterbrain antics back at the apartment, or any sense of narrative eloquentcy. This is one of those Lucy episodes, where instead of the writers wrapping their weekly antics with an often surprising or satisfying ending, the episode ends abruptly, with no real punch or resolution.
Overall, it deserves definitely its rightful place in the television pantheon, and is a prime example of slapstick physical comedy done right.
The Simpsons: Krusty Gets Kancelled (1993)
The pointless origin Zombie Simpsons spinoff before the actual Zombie Simpsons
This episode does have it's gems. The Krusty vs. Gabbo feud is an excellent parody of 90s-era cross-media phenomenas, and bits such as the citizens of Springfield turning to Gabbo for the sole reason that they can't think for themselves ("Let's listen to Gabbo, he'll tell us what to do!") or the fact that Krusty's show started out as a Dick Cavett-esque late night talkshow before peddling into kiddie fodder somewhere down the line, but this episode starts a widely mocked tradition Simpsonphiles like to rip into to this day, something that would be inevitable after Bartmania died down and the series went from early 90s flash in the pan kid fad to bonafide, consistently profitable television juggernaut, the tradition of guest stars showing up for the sole fact that they're celebrities.
Remember that one of the targets The Simpsons fired on oh so well in it's early years was the mass market media machine, from jokes about Paramount wheeling out the original Star Trek cast well into senior citizenhood even as The Next Generation crew solidified themselves into a generation of viewers, to Krusty's shameless preference of quantity over quality, slapping his name haphazardly, even if the product in question was a tad questionable and demographically inappropriate to tie in into a after-school kids' show, and of course, my personal favorite, poking fun at the guest star filled special episode by loading the list up with a load of popular MLB players at the time, and inflicting the most horrific circumstances on the guest starees, such as either being thrown off Burns' softball team, becoming hooked on and eventually overdosing on nerve tonic, thrown to the abyss, jailed for life by Wiggum's incompetence, or outright dying from radiation poisoning by the end of the episode.
Here, however, it can all be boiled down into this:
"Hey, Lis, look, it's Bette Midler. Hi, Bette Midler."
"Hey, is that Luke Perry?"
"Oh, you're Johnny Carson!"
It ends how you expect, the celebrities are all ganged up together and rescue Krusty's career, and Gabbo is thrown into the same abyss as countless other one note one time supporting characters. A weak ending to a solid season overall.