Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

Serling presents King Nine Will Not Return  Just working in some episodes here and there this Labor Day weekend. Going backwards starting with just the absolute worst, The Bewitchin' Pool , I am just reminded of how atrocious the acting and direction is. Emblematic of the downward trajectory of the show, to this very day I wish there had been a better episode to close such an iconic classic. That horrendous dubbing of Sport, the insufferable parents, and the general creepiness of Aunt T in her backwoods Never Neverland putting kids to chores explaining how labor makes good kids better just leaves a bad taste I cannot wait to get rid of by watching a much more worthwhile episode of the show. And repeating the same divorce talk scene at the beginning and end is the icing on Aunt T's big ass cake. The theme does tap into an unfortunate situation that plagues children to this day, a wish to escape domestic strife and dysfunctional family challenges that leave them wanting to retrea...

 One of my favorite first season episodes remains Deep Throat. Not just because Hardin's insider who knows a lot and seems capable of guiding Mulder towards truth...but in a certain way, done in a calculated approach. Sometimes Mulder can be too stubborn to listen to advice. Like when he's told not to go to a secret airport base in Idaho, not located on any reputable map. Could Roswell alien aircraft wreckage have been shipped to this base and years later that technology lead to experimental stealth planes capable of incredible feats? Mulder is willing to take a chance, using the disappearance of a pilot who might just have been in the cockpit of such stealth aircraft as a means to get to the precious truth he always pursued.

 The second season creature that is the very definition of Monster of the Week. The hermaphroditic, parasitic, radioactive flukeworm with certain humanoid traits, given great detailed elaboration through Scully's scientific biological gobbledygook. The jargon is there, a Russian cargo ship with a sewage tank holding a possible radioactive manmade byproduct of nuclear fallout right out of Chernobyl finding new digs in Newark, NJ! We learn that someone in the FBI is a friend to Mulder and Scully, telling Mulder he must be successful in taking care of the episode's threat. Neutralizing the fluke creature is imperative. Obviously, this is paramount to the eventual reopened X files. Scully even challenges Mulder on his question of a very big flukeworm realizing old feelings of when they were working the X files still. Mulder getting fed up with Skinner, just going from generic assignment to generic assignment, is further established as the two butt heads on the work; whether or not ...

 "And I still have you." - Mulder to Scully after realizing he still has no evidence of extraterrestrial life while investigating a tape recording at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The Watergate scandal on television when Samantha was taken and a young Fox Mulder cannot stop it, that bright light and just this bodily form that might be alien in the same episode as Fox later seeing that same potential form within a bright light at the Observatory in "Little Green Men", the 30th anniversary coming up, I was happy to once again revisit the second season opener as I always do from time to time. It's got Senator Richard Matheson coordinating with Mulder, giving him bread crumbs towards evidence thanks to contact through the Voyager probe. I love seeing Skinner tell Cigarette Smoking Man to get out of his office when the cretin gloats about Mulder losing the X Files and having nothing. Even while leaving his post after wire tap surveillance work, Mulder is no...

 It was back on today at noon, but this Miami Vice episode just feels like it belongs on your tube at midnight. It has that seedy feel and the subject matter -- a foster home repeater (and clearly abuse victim) who is 18 years old named Jackie is on the streets of Miami and big star of a Sex World club stage act with a disturbed lover so devoted to her he is willing to look the other way and clean up serial killings of guys she picks up (or offers to pay for sexual services -- is perfectly skeevy, the kind of episode that Miami Vice was born to portray. Tubbs is different than other men who see Jackie as just a sexual object, a body to fuck. Tubbs wants her to get help, offering rehab services, unaware she's the "Miami ripper". The ending has that gulp-in-the-throat punch-in-the-gut  feel we all grew up expecting on Miami Vice.