Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 26 (Bottle of Dreams)

So, I actually made it all the way through the first season of Friday the 13th: the Series.  And how do they thank me?  With a clip episode.  I hate clip episodes.  I see it as an easy way to knock out an episode.  This entry into the history of clip episodes is no different.  Usually, it’s to save money, as clip episodes don’t often involve new sets.  Any new footage is filmed on existing, permanent sets and relies on segments of previous episodes for filler.

In this case, a mysterious man brings an urn by the shop while Jack, Ryan and Micki are celebrating.  Jack swears that the urn wasn’t in the registry of cursed items before, but it‘s there now.  Jack realizes that it’s a trick too late; Micki and Ryan are trapped in the vault, condemned to relive clips from six previous episodes.  These aren’t ordinary clips, though.  They‘re overly long and most of them appear towards the end of the episode, when the team got a cursed item back.

Jack calls Rashid, an old friend that might be able to help.  Fortunately, Rashid is in town.  He comes right over and tells Jack that the situation is dire.  Given information about the urn, Rashid informs Jack that Micki and Ryan are in a dream world .  The urn will use memories to scare Micki and Ryan to death if Jack and Rashid don’t intervene.  After a few failed attempts, Jack makes it through only to have roadblocks thrown up.  He makes it through to Ryan and Micki, saving them both.  With the threat over, they can go back to retrieving cursed items.

So, did I mention that I hate clip episodes?  I mean, it’s bad enough when you have a decent series.  Stargate SG-1 would do one every season, it would seem, and they were at least passable.  Most of the episodes feature in this clip episode weren’t that memorable.  That brings me to my next point:  There’s only one season to choose from.  It’s kind of early to do a clip episode.  One might be forgiven for pretending the first season had only 25 episodes.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 25 (What a Mother Wouldn't Do)

Friday the 13th: The Series had an interesting premise.  There are hundreds of cursed items out in the world, due to Lewis Vendredi making a deal with the devil.  When Lewis realized his mistake, his soul was claimed and the antique shop passed to his niece and nephew, Micki and Ryan, who are now trying to retrieve as many of the items as possible, with the help of Lewis‘s former business partner, Jack.   Many episodes were cheesy, but a few were fairly decent.

Take, for instance, What a Mother Wouldn’t Do.  Martin and Leslie Kent find out that their baby probably won’t survive and poses a significant risk to Leslie, should she decide to carry the baby to term.  The doctor’s advice is to abort the pregnancy, but she won’t hear any of that kind of talk.

While wandering around town, she pops into an antique store.  She’s greeted by none other than Mr. Vendredi, who notices her looking at a cradle.  She can’t afford it, but Lewis assures her that things have a way of working out.  Sure enough, some of Leslie’s friends buy the cradle and give it to her as a present.  At some point, Leslie finds out that the cradle has a very specific curse.

It was brought over on the Titanic.  While the ship was sinking, a mother tried to bring her child and the cradle onto a life boat.  When the other seven occupants refused, they all died, leaving the baby unharmed.  Thus, if the mother or a sick child were to kill seven people, a baby left in the cradle would be given perfect health.  The catch is that all seven victims have to die in a manner that involves water, such as drowning.

This puts a sick twist on the trolley problem.  Instead of killing one stranger to save three strangers, Leslie and Martin have to kill seven strangers to save a loved one.  Martin is distraught about it, but Leslie seems rather eager.  Given the opportunity to save a sick child, how could any mother just ignore it?

Many episodes end with the people using the cursed objects dying by the cursed objects, and this episode is no different.  Leslie kills Martin by knocking him into a fish tank before throwing herself into a fountain down below.  The baby is saved, but Micki, Ryan and Jack notice that  the baby is now missing.  They can only hope that the baby is safe.  After all, how would you report something like that?  Both of the parents are dead and a sick child is missing, although there’s no rush, as the baby is no well if she’s even alive at all.  (The child is shown to be safe and well, by the way.)

Overall, it’s a relatively good entry into the series.  It is a little bit fast and loose with the rules sometimes.  (It would seem that the death has to involve water, even if peripherally.)  We also have a few people who would seem to have died, only to come back.  I mean, if someone’s on to you, make sure they’re dead.  Don’t just dump them in a lake and assume they’re not coming back.  It’s your baby’s life at stake, after all.

I’m almost through the first season.  Given the varying quality of the episodes, I’m not sure about season two.  I may have to take a break before continuing.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 24 (Pipe Dream)

It’s been pointed out that Law & Order was unusual in that many of the characters didn’t have much of a backstory.  You might get details, like a character being married or having kids, but it didn’t make for a lot of continuity in the show.  The advantage of that was that you could easily pick up the show anywhere during the show’s 20-season run and easily follow it.

Friday the 13th: The Series was similar in that regard.  There was very little history given for the regular characters.  Jack Marshak, for instance, seemed to have exactly the right skills necessary for certain episodes.  Similarly, friends and ex-lovers were introduced as necessary and were seldom heard from again.

In Pipe Dream, we meet a man who has a pipe.  It’s a cursed pipe that kills people when used.  The resulting smoke surrounds the victim and causes them to disintegrate.  We soon come to find out that the man with the pipe is Ray Dallion, father of Ryan Dallion.  Ray has just used the pipe to kill someone and steal his idea for a new weapon.

Ryan is estranged from his father, but gets a wedding invitation, ostensibly from Ray.  It turns out that the invitation is actually from his soon-to-be-stepmother, Connie.  So, Ryan and Micki go up to visit dear old dad to find that he’s finally had a run of good luck.

After a while, the truth is discovered and Ryan has a choice to make.  He can either reclaim the cursed item or he can continue to mend his relationship with Ray.  Unfortunately, things aren’t that easy.  Ray has a secret to keep and the pipe helps him do that.  This eventually causes Ray to make a difficult choice.

This is the second episode in a row that features an item that simply kills.  Usually, someone gets something like money in return for killing.  Here, it’s more that the body disappears, leaving little evidence.  (I’ve always wondered what would happen if a case involving a cursed item went to trial.  It would be difficult to convince a jury what happened.)

There’s not much in the way of family history here except to learn that Lewis was apparently Ray‘s uncle, making Lewis a great-uncle to Ryan.  It’s also exactly what you’d expect between two family members who haven’t spoken in years.  It takes a trick to get them together.  They make some progress and have a setback or two.  In the end, it either doesn’t work out or there’s a little grudging progress.  There are usually indications that, at best, it will be years before the two speak to each other again.

There are only two more episodes left in this season.  I’m kind of wondering if maybe the writers and producers weren’t trying to maybe stretch it a little.  The first season had an order of 26 episode.  It looks like they just made it.  I’d say skip the episode, but if you’ve made it this far, you’d have to have a fair amount of stamina.  Part of the reason I’ve made it this far is that I’m borrowing the series on DVD from the library, which gives me time to space it out.

In all honesty, I had to go through three automatic renewals before I started watching this DVD, which started with the previous episode.  I’d like to watch and review the episodes before my current due date, as I  really don’t want to pay any overdue fines on the DVD.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 23 (Badge of Honor)

Russ Sarko is a decent enough police officer.  He’s fairly close to retirement.  That’s why it’s so difficult when he botches an raid.  He’s fired and told to clear out his desk.  Before he leaves, though, he finds a sheriff’s badge.

Now, if this weren’t Friday the 13th:  The Series, you would be forgiven for thinking that this was an ordinary badge.  No.  This is not an ordinary badge.  Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed items, all of which involve killing people.  This is one such item.  When the badge is touched to a person’s body, the person is killed.  The death almost looks like electrocution, but played at varying speeds.  When it’s over, the badge returns to the user’s hand.  Russ uses the badge to go after the people that killed his wife.

What makes this item unusual is that it’s the first item featured that is used solely to kill.  Many of the other items so far had some benefit, such as spitting out money or making a person younger.  In other cases, the item created a surrogate to carry out the murder, thus creating an alibi.  Here, the only benefit Russ gets is killing someone he wanted to kill anyway.  Plus, he has to touch the person directly, anyway.  I mean, it’s cleaner than shooting someone, but that’s about it.

This episode made me wonder if maybe they were running short on ideas.  An item that just kills isn’t very creative.  I think maybe they just wanted to do a cop-themed episode and came up with this.  The acting is about what you’d expect of the era, including an overacting captain.

The episode was a little strange.  First off, the effect for the deaths was kind of weird.  It looked like maybe they were experimenting with effects or something.  It didn’t really work.  Also, spoiler alert:  Russ keeps his dead wife in a separate room in his house.  All I can say is: Creepy!

I don’t think I’d include this in a best-of list for the series.  I can see where they’re trying some new stuff, but it doesn’t quite work out.  In a lot of ways, the series is all over the place.  Many episodes feature some new location or theme and this was one of them.  It’s almost like an anthology show with  regular characters.  One of the advantages of DVD sets is that you get all of the episodes.  If not for that, I’d say that the episode was worth skipping.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 22 (The Pirate's Promise)

The premise of Friday the 13th: The Series was pretty simple.  Two cousins inherit an antique shop from an uncle only to find out that some of the items are cursed.  They rename the shop Curious Goods and run it as a front so that they might track down those cursed items that Uncle Lewis unleashed on the world.  They then store the items in a vault so that no more harm can come as a result of those items.

This week, it’s a cursed foghorn.  Cousins Micki and Ryan travel to a coastal town only to find that it was sold to someone who was traveling and can’t be reached.  Well, maybe not.  The guy who sold it, Joe, lures a young lady back to his cool lighthouse only to show her the nifty foghorn that he supposedly sold to some unnamed person.  He then kills the woman, drags her down the stairs and hands her over to a cloaked figure in a rowboat.

The town was founded by the crew of a ship.  They mutinied, setting their captain adrift.  It turns out that the cloaked figure is the ghost of said captain.  He’s using Joe to kill the descendants of the crew, who all miraculously still live in the town.  Oh, and each crewmember has exactly one descendant, each of which is really easy to find and subdue.  (No one has left town nor have they received any martial-arts training.)  Micki and Ryan retrieve the foghorn only after Joe has killed all of the descendants and subsequently died as the final victim of the curse.

My first obvious complaint is that each crewmember had exactly one descendant.  The town was founded in 1720, meaning that something like 12-15 generations have passed.  How is it that each generation had only one child?  Assuming two children per generation, you should be talking 4,000 descendants.  Plus, given that no one seems to move out of town, there might be people descended from several people on the ship.

Another thing I noticed is that Micki and Ryan dropped the ball on this one.  If the curse is that descendants have to die and that Joe seemingly completed his mission, the artifact would be useless.  Even if the curse would allow someone else to use the foghorn, there are no more descendants left.

This curse also seems awfully specific to me.  Most of the cursed items are generic.  Cursed items could be used by anyone and applied to anyone.  I’m assuming that the nature of the curse wasn’t determined until Uncle Lewis’s deal with the devil, but I could be wrong.  It is an interesting curse, at least.

Overall, the episode is fairly decent.  The show at least put some effort into the history of the item.  I just think a few points could have been done better.  At the very least, Joe was lucky that none of the family lines had died out.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 21 (Double Exposure)

If you caught a marathon of Friday the 13th episodes without watching the first few, you might wonder why all of them have to be so evil.  The truth is that many of the items were cursed by Satan.  He’s not going to make a cursed item that shoots out puppies and rainbows.  It’s a fair point, though.  Most episodes involve death.  In fact, many end with a cursed object taking the life of the person that was trying to gain from it.  Even if there was a rainbow-spewing item, it would be better to go after the dangerous ones first.

Double Exposure is no exception to this.  It involves a TV news anchor named Winston Knight who comes across a camera that allows him to make a duplicate of someone.  All he has to do is photograph them with the camera and develop the negative.  The duplicate would then seem to be pliable enough that Winston is able to have his duplicate commit murder.  This is advantageous, as his news program isn’t doing too well in the ratings.  It might be helpful to have a serial killer call in.

As it would so happen, Ryan happens to be on a hot date.  He and the lovely lady happen upon an attempted murder with the killer looking exactly like Winston.  The police don’t by it.  Yes, Ryan is a main character and we know he saw it, but Winston was on air at the time.  Ryan, Micki and Jack are persistent enough to get the camera back.  Unfortunately, Ryan’s girlfriend won’t be seen in any subsequent episodes.  As you might expect, the item is recovered and both Winston and his duplicate are killed as a result.

The stories in the series are getting a little better.  I do have issues, though.  It does seem odd that murder is usually involved in these stories.  With a duplicating camera, one could get creative.  Maybe have the duplicate rob a bank or something.  It would be a great way to set up someone you don’t like.  Love interest turning you down?  Go out with her duplicate.

Also, when Winston develops the negative to create the duplicate, he’s standing awfully close to the fluids.  This is concerning mostly because the chemical is bubbling.  I would take a few steps back.  I might even consider better ventilation.  (Actually, ventilation would be a good idea for any darkroom.)  It’s amazing that Winston didn’t keel over from fume inhalation.

The big thing, though, was that Ryan had a new girlfriend.  We just had a two-part episode where Ryan met the love of his life.  It seems odd that he moved on so quickly.  I know that he’s a popular guy and all, but still…

Overall, it’s a decent episode.  I’d hope that maybe the rest of the season could be as good.  I’m not sure I’ll be renting the second season.  If I do, I may take a rest for a while.  Even with the better quality of this episode, I’m not holding out hope.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 20 (The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening)

Friday the 13th: The Series wasn’t known for a lot of things.  Production values were about average for TV.  The acting was on par, as well.  In fact, the only things I can think of were the high levels of cheesiness and adult themes.  A lot of people died, and usually in a pretty cheesy way.  (One episode had people beaten up by a boxer‘s shadow.)

The previous episode was called The Quilt of Hathor.  This is part two of that episode.  So, do you call it The Quilt of Hathor II?  No.  It’s The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening.  I have absolutely no idea what that means.  I think it just sounded cool to whoever named the episodes.

So, The Quilt of Hathor: The Sleepening ended with Micki and Jack realizing that they had brought back a fake cursed quilt.  The quilt has the ability to kill people and Plain Old Effie is using it to kill her love interest’s would-be brides.  To boot, Ryan stayed behind to be with Laura, the daughter of Reverend Josiah Grange.  Since Ryan knows about the quilt, he’s a potential target.

For some reason, it takes two weeks for Jack and Micki to go back to Fake Amish City, but Ryan seems to be doing well.  He’s building houses and stuff.  Laura’s former betrothed, Matthew, doesn’t seem as intent on killing Ryan.  So, all is good.

Except that several of the women Grange was going to marry have died.  (It’s tradition for the leader of the town to be married, so there’s some pressure.)   Inquisitor Holmes is sent to investigate.  Grange honestly doesn’t know what’s going on at first, but doesn’t want people poking around.

Them Ryan tells Grange about the quilt and that Effie is most likely trying to marry him because if the leader dies while married, the power shifts to the wife.  So, Grange takes the most reasonable course of action.  He marries Effie that night in a secret ceremony.

True to Ryan’s prediction, Effie tries to kill Grange with the quilt, only to die by the quilt, herself.  Grange hides the body and tells Ryan that she snuck off in the night.  Not only does that make no sense, but Ryan is left without the cursed quilt.

Things become clear when the inquisitor dies and Ryan is set up for the murder.  Somehow, Grange has figured out how to use the quilt.  (How anyone figures out how to use the cursed items is beyond me, but that’s another story.)  Thus, Ryan, Jack and Micki know where the quilt is and are able to retrieve it.  The episode ends with Ryan back at Curious Goods and all is right in the world.

Ok, so what is the deal with calling this episode The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening, anyway?  What is The Awakening?  Also, little is mentioned of the quilt’s history.  So, why call it the Quilt of Hathor?  I think in both cases, someone wanted something that sounded cool.  Satan’s Quilt was kind of plain, even for an episode about plain people.  Plus, if you use Satan or Devil too much, it becomes repetitive.  So, let’s go with Hathor.

As for The Awakening, it can mean the moment when someone becomes suddenly aware of something, which is ironic.  I’m not aware of any moment standing out in that regard.  Does it refer to Grange becoming aware of Effie’s intents?  Is it Ryan becoming aware that the quilt is still out there?  It’s not like Micki or Jack dropped him a letter.  I think someone had a list of words that could be appended to a title for a sequel and picked Awakening.

If you’ve seen any episode so far, you’ll know that the series isn’t spectacular.  You could easily skip all the episodes so far and not really miss anything.  I honestly wonder how the show lasted three seasons.  For that matter, I wonder if I’m going to last all three seasons.  There are six more episodes in this season, which doesn‘t seem too bad.  I may be reviewing season two as a season rather than by episode, if at all.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 19 (The Quilt of Hathor)

Effie is a very plain woman.  This is impressive, given that she lives in a village with plenty of plain women.  She’s seeking the attention of the village’s leader, Reverend Josiah Grange.  Unfortunately for Effie, Grange keeps marrying other women.  You might wonder, at this point, if this is a polygamist cult.  It’s not.  They’re more of pseudo-Amish cult.

Actually, Ellie has a quilt that allows her to kill people.  Whenever she goes to bed with the quilt covering her, all she has to do is concentrate on the person she wants to kill.  Effie then dreams of killing that person and the other person dies in real life.  Thus, Effie can kill whoever is betrothed to Grange.

Wouldn’t you know it, but it catches the attention of the good people at Curious Goods.  Micki and Ryan go out to Fake Amish Village to retrieve the quilt. The reason I say Fake Amish is that the group is called the Penitites.  I don’t think that this group exists.  I haven’t been able to find anything on Google.  (It’s possible that the Amish would object to the portrayal, but I doubt it.  It’s more probable that the writers didn’t want to be constrained by accuracy.)

Anyway, Ryan falls in love with Grange’s daughter, Laura.  Too bad for Ryan that she’s engaged to Matthew.  Even worse is that Matthew is the overly jealous type.  Every time Ryan gets near Laura, Matthew attacks Ryan.  Custom would seem to be on Matthew’s side, as women and men aren’t supposed to congregate if they‘re single, so Ryan is advised to stay away from Laura.  Of course, he doesn’t, which leads to a fight around a big fire.  But, still…

The episode ends with Ryan engaged to Laura and Micki returning to the shop with what she thinks is the quilt only to have Jack discover that it’s a fake.  The real quilt is still in Effie’s possession.  They have to get back to warn Ryan!

This episode is so cheesy that they had to split it up over two hours.  That’s how bad it is.  There’s stuff you might expect, like an overabundance of plane dress and words like Ye, Thee and Thou.  There are also a lot of fake beards.  It was as if Ye Olde Fake Beard Emporium had a sale on them.  (“Thou won’t believe our prices!”)

This episode and the next would have made for a nice b-movie.  Maybe it was a made-for-TV movie that got rejected.  Either way, they’d better get that quilt next week.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 18 (Brain Drain)

They say that the devil is in the details.  Part of having a good story is giving the right amount of the right kind of information.  Unfortunately, Friday the 13th: The Series didn’t do that.  Some episodes were better than others, but all we really know is that Uncle Lewis left an antiques shop to Micki and Ryan.  When they discover that many of the items are cursed, they enlist the help of Jack Marshak to retrieve them.

In Brain Drain, Harry goes from having an IQ of 58 to being a genius.  His secret is something called the Trephanator.  It pokes a hole in the back of the neck of both the user and a victim.  The camera shows a neat shot of some liquids flowing and suddenly the user has the intelligence of the victim.  Harry magically becomes Dr. Stewart Pangborn, who continues the work of his victim, Dr. Robeson.

It’s not really clear why he does this.  He could easily skip town.  Granted, the trephinator isn’t the kind of thing you throw in your trunk.  It’s this big contraption and we wouldn’t have much of a plot if Harry didn’t use it again.  Enter Dr. Viola Rhodes, former love interest of Jack Marshak.  Has any former love interest ever made it to the end of an episode?  Even if she lives, there’s no chance that she’s going to stick around.

As with many of the previous episodes, the trio of antique hunters is able to get the cursed item back to their shop where they can store it safely.  Intelligence for the user comes at a price.  The victim is reduced in intelligence greatly and eventually dies.  (Harry becomes the item’s final victim, as is tradition in this series.)

As I mentioned, not many details are given.  It’s an interesting premise, all right.  Who wouldn’t want to be smarter?  However, Dr. Robeson is working on perfecting AI by teaching a gorilla’s brain to speak.  He’ll then transfer the intelligence onto a chip or something.  It’s not really explained how this works.  I’d imagine that this is one of those things were an expert on AI was sitting at home watching the episode, sarcastically wondering why they didn’t think of that.   (“Oh, yeah.  Just hook a primate brain up to a chip.  Why not?”)

It’s kind of a shame that all of these gifts come at a high cost.  I understand that they’re cursed, but every victim seems to have to die.  It’s not enough that the victim winds up with the mental capacity of a two-year-old.  It’s also an all-or-nothing proposition.  Someone can’t transfer just a little.  It might have made for a better story if Harry took a little at a time and worked his way up.

I’d say that the series so far has had as many marginal episodes as it has had horrible ones.  I’m kind of hoping that it picks up.  I really don’t remember a lot of these episodes.  I’m not sure if my memory is bad or if I didn’t watch it that much while it was first on.  Either one should tell me something.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 17 (The Electrocutioner)

I sometimes wonder how some older movies and TV shows ever made it to market.  Were audiences less demanding?  Did studios and networks not actually watch what they were letting through?  Friday the 13th:  The Series had some good episodes, but there were a few that required you to suspend disbelief.   I think The Electrocutioner has to be the least plausible yet.

The episode starts in 1978.  Eli Pittman is being electrocuted for a crime he maintains he didn’t commit.  They throw the switch, but the chair doesn’t work.  Since they can’t electrocute the same man twice for the same crime, they let him go.  It eventually turns out that he really was innocent.

In 1988, Ryan Jack and Micki are hunting down cursed antiques that Lewis Vendredi sold to people.  Next up is, lo and behold, the electric chair.  It turns out that a doctor has come into possession of it.  That doctor happens to be Pittman, who has changed his name and now become a dentist.  Ten years have passed and Eli is just now getting around to exacting revenge on those that wronged him.

The chair is now cursed.  It can be used to vaporize a victim, who is then turned into electricity.  When Pittman sits in the chair, he can absorb that energy and go out to electrocute someone, such as the warden of the prison he was held at.   Where does he get the victims?  He happens to be the in-house dentist at a reform school.  Many of the students are runaways to begin with, so it’s likely no one will go looking for them.

This seems to me the oddest way of getting revenge.  It might be more difficult to trick someone into the chair, but I would think it’s better than killing some innocent teenager.  One of the teens even admits to liking the dentist, which gives Pittman a reason to pause momentarily.

It also means having to kill twice the people, half of whom had nothing to do with Pittman’s imprisonment and electrocution.  Yes, a man who didn’t kill anyone now kills twice as much as he needs to.  I would think it would have been more efficient to buy a gun.  For that matter, you’d think Pittman would sue the pants off the state and everyone involved.  He probably could have gotten a nice pile of cash.

I also had to wonder why a reform school would have an in-house dentist in the first place.  I don’t know how many children they could have there that it would be worth the effort.  Even if we assume a relatively high turnover rate, it would probably have been simpler to use a nearby dentist.  If they’re going to have a medical staff, I would think psychiatrists.  This seems mostly like lazy writing.  I think they just needed a way to have a large supply of victims that no one would report missing.

Interestingly, they did seem to do some research.  When Pittman tries to electrocute two of the trio in their car, the current doesn’t affect them.  I was under the impression that the rubber tires would prevent something like this, but that’s not necessarily true.  If you’re trapped in a car during a lightening storm, the correct behavior is similar to what is shown in the episode.

This is an episode that I think was supposed to be serious, yet ended up being more laughable.  If you’re watching it, you could probably skip this one.  If it was airing on TV, I wouldn’t feel bad if you were doing something else when it came on.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 16 (Tattoo)

Gambling seems to be a mixed bag, morally.  It’s seen by many to be a victimless crime.  As long as you stay within your limit, what’s the problem?  Those that oppose it might point out that those that don’t stay within their limit might steal or physically hurt someone.

Take Tommy Chen.  As they say, he doesn’t have a gambling problem; he has a losing problem.  He’s borrowed from the wrong people and they want their money back.  Tommy has turned to gambling as a way of getting the money, but he’s up against someone with a cursed artifact.  One of the other players has a tattoo needle that can make the user lucky.  The catch is that they have to draw something deadly, like a venomous spider or snake.  When the tattooed person dies, the person who made the tattoo gets perfect luck.

One of my complaints with the previous episode, Vanity’s Mirror, was the lack of any direct moral lesson.  That holds true here, but the episode does seem to hit the marks with gambling.  The guy who Tommy owes money to isn’t a nice guy.  Tommy is also desperate enough to hurt and steal.  This is how he comes into possession of the cursed needle in the first place.

In hitting the marks, the episode is fairly cliché.  Both of the people that use the needle seem to know how to ink someone perfectly.  There’s also no shortage of available victims.  Several are tied up and another is so high on drugs that she can’t offer any resistance to danger.

Tommy is also shown to be a very unsympathetic character.   Most of the items require some sort of down side.  Usually, it’s death.  Tommy seems to have no problem using the needle knowing full well that it will result in someone’s death.  (I find it odd that so few of the people who use cursed items are either monsters to begin with or so easily persuaded to turn to evil.)

The entire series has been marginal episodes so far.  I’ve been getting DVDs from either the library or Netflix.  If you’re into light horror, this may be a good series for you, but I’d check it out of the library first.  This is one of the better episodes so far, but that’s not saying much.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 15 (Vanity's Mirror)

Some shows have internal consistency.  Shows like 24 have a single narrative.  Others, like the X-Files, may be more episodic, but at least have a mythology going.  I’ve come to realize that Friday the 13th: The Series is more of anthology that uses the same characters.

Micki and Ryan inherited an antiques shop that sold cursed stuff.  Along with the uncle’s former business partner, Jack, they’ve taken it upon themselves to retrieve as many of the cursed items as possible.  This serves as a backdrop for the episodes, which seem to follow an item-of-the-week format.  Each week, an item comes to their attention.  With some effort, the trio manages to get the item.

This week, it’s a compact that makes someone fall madly in love with the person using it.  All a lady has to do is use the mirror to reflect light onto an unlucky guy.  Suddenly, she’s his entire world.   The episode starts with a flower vendor using it on a customer that has never really noticed her.  She uses his newly found obsession to lead him into a back alley so that she can kill him.  Her success is short lived, as she’s soon hit by a bus.

A girl by the name of Helen Mackie finds the compact and picks it up.  She accidentally figures out what it does when she uses it on a boy at her school.  The boy is now enamored with Helen, who makes him go into a trash compactor to retrieve something.

Why would she do this?  Helen isn’t that popular.  Her sister, Joanne, has a good-looking boyfriend, Scott.  It’s cruel that two sisters would be so different in terms of appearance and popularity, but life can be cruel like that some times.  Helen decides to use the compact to repay that cruelty to the other boys who tease her.  Thus, several of them meat a similar end.

This is the first episode where the team doesn’t actually retrieve an item.  As far as they know, someone walked off with it.  They just have no idea who.  (This isn’t far from the truth.  In the final scene, we see a hand reaching for it.)  This leads to some major overacting by Louise Robey, who plays Micki.  She’s all torn up over the fact that such a dangerous item is out there.  As Jack points out, they’ve had a pretty good run.  There are also a lot more items out there.  At 23, they’ve almost gotten 10% of the items in the manifest.  That means that there are more than 200 items still floating around.

My big problem is that the episode is more about the item than the issue.  There’s no talk of Helen being beautiful on the inside or using her inner light or anything.  She’s just a homely, awkward teenager that takes revenge when given the opportunity.  She only has a change of heart when she snares someone she actually likes.

Another thing that I noticed was an obvious lack of parents, or any adults for that matter.  All of these students go to a school that doesn’t seem to have many teachers.  Even at the dance, there’s an obvious lack of adult supervision.  Am I to believe that Helen and Joanna don’t have parents?  You’d think that a proud mother and/or father would want to see them off.  There’s no mention of parents working late or Joanna taking care of them.  Having some sort of adult present, other than Jack, Micki and Ryan, would have been a great way to have some commentary, even if it’s along the lines of, “kids these days.”

The show did manage to last three seasons, so I am hopeful that the episodes will get better.  I think there’s a reason why I don’t really remember the show, though.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 14 (Bedazzled)

Friday the 13th: The Series followed a certain format, at least so far in the series.  Micki, Ryan and Jack would be sitting around Curious Goods when they would randomly come across a cursed antique that Lewis Vendredi had sold to an unsuspecting customer.  They’d then spend the rest of the episode trying to get it back.

In Bedazzled, the episode starts with Jack and Ryan retrieving the cursed lantern and bringing it back to the vault for safekeeping.  The problem is that Jonah isn’t done using it.  He manages to get the license plate of the car that Jack and Ryan drive off in, allowing him to track them down.

Cut to Jack and Ryan going to an astrologers’ convention, leaving Micki all alone in the shop.  This wouldn’t be so bad, except that its raining.  She gets a call from a friend asking her to baby-sit the friend’s kid, which is good.  At least Micki will have some company.  However, Richie is old enough to not want to be there.  Plus, he’s going to be someone for Micki to worry about when Jonah finally shows up.

Micki manages to deal with Jonah effectively enough to keep the lantern in the vault.  Richie makes it safely to the end of the episode, too.  He even seems to have a little respect for Micki, who didn’t seem to see fit to tell Ryan or Jack what happened.

It’s actually pretty surprising that none of the main characters saw this coming.  Yes, it’s a little sudden.  (How did Jonah get the information for Curious Goods that quickly?  It was nighttime, so I doubt the DMV was open that late.)  Still, no one mentions anything about preparing for Jonah’s eventual arrival.  Many of the antiques’ previous owners wind up dead before the antique makes it back to the vault, so I guess no one really expected it.

I also found it a bit odd that Micki made no attempt to restrain Jonah.  She’s able to incapacitate him several times, but never thinks to get some rope?  During the episode, a police officer enters the store and is shot, meaning that she should have access to handcuffs.  I get that it’s a stressful situation, but still…

At the very least, it’s a twist on the usual format.  It’s definitely nice to see the show mix it up a little.  This was the last episode on the third disc of the first-season set.  I got the fourth disc when I returned the third, so I’ll be seeing if they keep up the trend.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 13 (The Baron's Bride)

Frank Edwards is looking for a room to rent.  He approaches a house, newspaper in hand, apparently responding to an ad.  We get a good view of the for-rent sign as he walks in and knocks on the door.  He’s greeted by Mrs. Marie Simmons.  She has a room to let since her Mr. Simmons passed away.  She leaves him to examine the room, where he finds a cloak and brooch.  When he tries it on, he finds that he’s irresistible to Marie.  Of course, that was her plan all along.

Jack, Ryan and Micki show up just in time to see Marie biting Frank.  Yes, she’s a vampire and she just turned Frank into one.  Ryan manages to run out and get the for-sale sign, which is conveniently mounted on a handy wooden stake.  Unfortunately, Frank activates the brooch while holding Micki.  Ryan grabs them just in time to be transported back to London, 1875.

Frank escapes, leaving Ryan and Micki to meet two passersby, husband Abraham and his wife Caitlin.  Upon hearing that Ryan and Micki have no money and nowhere to stay, Abraham and Caitlin offer to put them up.  Oh, and you can just call him Bram.

Well, there’s a vampire on the loose in London and Ryan has to use all the conventional means to stop him.  By conventional, of course, I mean a wooden stake, lots of garlic and whatever sunlight happens to be available.  Micki, on the other hand, is pretty much useless.  She’s been entranced by Frank and spends most of the episode pining over him.

It seems that we actually have two cursed items this week.  The brooch is used for time travel, but the cloak can make a man irresistible to women.  (It’s not stated what effect it has if a woman wears it.)  It’s not clear if the brooch does all the work, though.  It’s been stated that cursed items can’t be destroyed, but Frank meets his end when he gets stabbed in the back, quite literally.  The angle isn’t that clear, so I’m not sure if the cloak was pierced or if it had slipped to the side or something.  No one mentions it being damaged.

Many aspects of the episode are either meet or fall below a low standard.  1988 wasn’t necessarily a great year for special effects when compared to modern-day stuff, but the end scene was obviously some sort of split screen.  Also, the accents were exactly what you’d expect.  We have several British and Irish accents delivered by actors who were apparently aiming for what an audience might expect.

The one thing that strikes me is that neither Ryan nor Micki asks that much about Bram, like his last name or anything.  “Hmm…  Your name is Bram, you happen to be a writer and you just found out that vampires exist.  Would your last name happen to be Stoker?”  This isn’t pointed out until the end of the episode, when Jack pulls out a copy of Dracula and opens it to the dedication, which happens to be to Caitlin.

There are two problems with this.  First, Bram Stoker was married to Florence.  There doesn’t seem to be any reference to him being married to a Caitlin.  The second problem is that the dedication actually reads:  TO MY DEAR FRIEND HOMMY-BEG.  The text of the book is available on Project Gutenberg, as the book has since fallen into the public domain.  You can check it out for yourself.  I’m assuming this was done for the story’s sake.  I don’t know that most people would bother looking this sort of stuff up.

I think this may be the first wasted opportunity of the series.  It’s usually been the case that cursed items have a downside, but this one doesn’t.  I would imagine that the cloak wouldn’t be used due to it interfering with consent and all, but the brooch doesn’t require much to activate it.  Most items need someone to be killed to operate properly.  Not this one.  A drop of blood each from  two different people activates the time travel.  You don’t even have to be a vampire to use it.

You may be asking about interfering with time travel.  Apparently, that’s never brought up.  There’s no case of Frank attacking an important person.  No one worries that he’s changed history by killing anyone at all.  There’s no mention of any sort of consequences at all.

Overall, it’s one of the more average offerings.  I’m wondering if this was made to pad the episode count.  It’s almost like they were just barely trying to get the episode made.  It’s enjoyable if you don’t think about it too much, but I don’t think it’s going to make my list for memorable episodes.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 12 (Faith Healer)

One of the complaints I’ve had so far about Friday the 13th: The Series is how characters will accidentally figure out how a cursed item works.  Sometimes, this is explained by having the cursed item call to or possess someone.  This doesn’t appear to be the case with Faith Healer.

The episode starts with Stewart Fishoff, the aforementioned charlatan, plying his trade on a man who appears to be blind.  You may be saying that I should give Stewart the benefit of a doubt.  Well, cue Jerry Scott.  Jerry has gotten good at debunking such things.  Jerry approaches the blind man to reveal that his cataracts are nothing more than contact lenses.  Stewart leaves the building in a hurry, as the crowd quickly turns on him.

Stewart eventually finds himself down a back alley in a pile of trash.  From that pile of trash, he picks up a pristine glove.  He tries it on.  Just then, he finds himself cornered by one of his would-be victims.  She’s covered in some sort of growth, which she came to Stewart to get rid of.  He instinctively puts his hand on her head, revealing how the glove works.  She’s now cured.

The problem is that Stewart now has the affliction.  Or rather, the glove does.  Stewart runs away only to be stopped by a police officer.  Again, Stewart reaches out and touches the other person.  This time, the police officer becomes covered in the woman’s growth, only to die from it.  So, yeah.  The glove transfers a medical problem from one person to another, thereby killing the second person.

This gives Stewart the chance to go legit.  Does he?  Well, basically.  He continues to be the scumbag that he is.  The only difference is that he doesn’t need an accomplice.  He actually can do what he claims.  It just so happens that the folks at Curious goods happen to be watching the TV when Stewart comes on.

Being that Jack is the one to have procured most of the cursed antiques, he recognizes the glove.  Jack tries to get the glove from Stewart directly, but finds himself thrown out by Stewart’s security.  Fortunately, Jack has a friend.  That friend happens to be Jerry, who only needs moderate convincing to help retrieve the glove.

It turns out that Jerry has ulterior motives for doing so; he’s dying and figures it couldn’t hurt to try.  We get to see a very gross growth on his chest, which I think we’re to assume is cancer.  This may also explain why he debunks.  Jerry tells Jack that in all the years of debunking, he’s never found anyone who shows a glimmer of promise.  If Jerry’s not healed, at least he’ll be able to stick it to Stewart one last time.

Just as one running theme on the series is accidental discovery of a cursed item, there’s another, more prominent theme.  Those that live by a cursed item often die by the same cursed item.  Stewart dies when he can’t transfer gunshot wounds to another person.  Jerry then comes into possession of the glove and subsequently dies when he can’t pass his own affliction on to someone else.

One of the things that I’m noticing about Friday the 13th is that a lot of the episodes are focusing on the horror aspect rather than any sort of moral issue.  Here, we have the guest antagonist as a scammer.  Stewart just wants the money.  Very little dialogue is spent explaining exactly what he does.  It’s really more a coincidence that a faith healer actually gets the powers he claims to have.  Could you imagine if it was just some random person?  It seems like it’s more to explain key plot points, like making it easier to have Stewart figure out how it works.

Speaking of which, David Cronenberg directed this episode.  Yes, that David Cronenberg.  The same guy who directed The Dead Zone.  It seems a little odd.  By the time this episode was produced, Cronenberg had already directed a few big movies.  I’m not sure if he just wanted to direct a TV episode or if he liked the series.

There is one unanswered question that I’d like some information on:  Why only one glove?  Don’t gloves come in pairs?  It’s stated that the glove was created to heal people, but there’s no mention of whether or not it was created as a pair.  I would think that if there was a second one out there, someone would have said something.  Still, who makes just one glove?

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 11 (Scarecrow)

Sometimes, when reviewing a TV series, I have the choice of reviewing by the episode or reviewing by the season.  Some series, like 24, don’t lend themselves to an episode-by-episode breakdown, as the story is stretched over the entire season.  Other series have more of an episodic nature.  While Star Trek did have some continuity, each installment tended to deal with a particular issue.

Friday the 13th: The Series tends more towards the episodic format.  Cousins Ryan and Micki inherited an antiques store from their uncle.  With the help of Jack Marshak, they retrieve cursed items so that they can’t harm anyone else.  As you might infer from the episode’s title, this one is about a cursed scarecrow.

Several mailers were sent out by the antiques store asking about cursed items.  Someone in the country responded asking to take back the titular item.  So, Micki and Ryan head out to retrieve it, without help form Jack.  As in the previous episode, he’s out on important business. (It’s established that he’s retrieving another item this time.)

When they get to the house, they find a married couple, the Cobeans.  Tudy appears to want to tell them something, although Nick is quick to be rid of them.  Micki and Ryan eventually leave when the developmentally disabled son is set free from the closet.  It’s a shame, because Micki was about to try that may-I-use-the-ladies‘-room trick to look around.

Micki and Ryan know something’s up because the husband tells them that the scarecrow was destroyed in a fire.  (Cursed items can’t be destroyed.)  So, they do their best to snoop around anyway only to run in to Marge Longacre.  There’s no more snooping around, but Marge tells the cousins that she runs the local bed & breakfast.  At least they have a place to stay.

As luck would have it, Marge is also the one controlling the scarecrow.  The way the curse works is that the scarecrow has to kill three people, but the person selecting the people gets a bountiful harvest in return.  A boy’s father was the first victim, shown at the beginning of the episode.  Tudy becomes the second victim.  When Ryan and Micki get too close, Marge steals Micki’s driver’s license so that Micki can become the third victim.

Several things bothered me about this.  First, you know that she’s going to survive.  So, it’s just a matter of getting the picture off the scarecrow.  Second, the scene where Marge comes across Micki’s license is a bit contrived.  Micki conveniently leaves her purse out where anyone would have access to it.  When Micki returns, she checks her wallet only to notice her license is missing.  Third, the license is the most generic-looking license I’ve ever seen.  There’s no mention of an address or a state or anything else that would identify where the show takes place.  The entire thing is just a way for Marge to set the scarecrow after Micki.

The series so far has been fairly decent.  It seems to have found itself rather quickly.  This is the twelfth episode and it’s a pretty solid one, relatively speaking.  Sure, it’s cliché.  (It’s funny how law enforcement shows up just in time to save Micki.)  The episode is at least entertaining.

The scarecrow looked a little odd to me.  This, to me, is where commentary on each episode would be helpful.  It didn’t look like what I think a scarecrow looks like, but this may be because TV shows tend towards one type of scarecrow.  It’s also possible that the costume was designed to have an actor inside rather than be a puppet.  These are the kinds of things I’d like to know.  Did they at least try for a more traditional look?  Is this just the way Canadian scarecrows look?  I may never know.

Speaking of how things are in Canada, you can tell the series is filmed in Canada if you look closely enough.  For instance, this episode had bridge-clearance signs with the distance in meters rather than feet.  The series does a decent job of obscuring or hiding these details, but they are occasionally visible if you’re looking for them.

One of the good things about the series being episodic is that you can pretty much watch them out of order without much loss.  I don’t think that there’s anything a casual viewer would be confused by.  The only thing someone might ask is why two people are looking for the antiques in the first place.  As long as you’re familiar with the general premise of the show, you could skip around at will.  This is definitely one of the more interesting episodes so far.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 10 (Tales of the Undead)

Right now seems to be the golden age of movies and television inspired by comic books.  You have all sorts of DC and Marvel movies coming out.  Netflix has a few series available for streaming.  It used to be that the motion-picture offerings for fans of the medium weren’t that good.  Friday the 13th: The Series made such an attempt.

The series was about two cousins who inherited a store that sold cursed items.  One of those items turns out to be a cursed comic book, which their uncle had listed as a magazine.  Of the two cousins, Ryan is the one interesting in comics.  Micki?  Not so much.

Ryan is getting his weekly fix of comic books when he notices a first edition Tales of the Undead that happens to be signed.  The shop owner is planning on selling it at auction.  That is, until Cal steals it.  Cal, like Ryan, is a huge fan of comics and of Tales of the Undead in particular.  It was comics like that which inspired Ryan to draw.

What’s really interesting is how Cal manages to get away.  While holding the comic, he becomes angered and turns into Ferus the Invincible.  (This is portrayed using comic-like panels drawn to represent the transition.)  As Ferus, Cal is able to kill the shop owner and plow his way out of the store.

Ryan pays a visit to the guy who wrote the comic book, one Jay Star.  Jay is what you might call bitter regarding how the publisher came by the rights to Tales of the Undead.  Ryan hopes that Jay might know how to kill Ferus.  Since most heroes have a weakness, it couldn’t hurt to ask the guy who would have come up with the idea.

Jay isn’t too forthcoming with information, but he does track down Cal and subsequently kill him.  Jay then uses the magazine to get even with those who wronged him.  It’s up to Ryan and Micki to stop Ferus and get the magazine back.

This is the first time that Uncle Lewis’s business partner Jack Marshak doesn’t make an appearance.  He’s supposed to be off in a more-exotic location doing who knows what.  He’ll be absent from the next episode, too.  I was happy to see Ray Walston as Jay Star.   He plays Jay as a crotchety, bitter old man and quite well, I might add.  It’s almost the exact opposite of Boothby from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Ferus costume was a little weak.  I don’t know how much of it was costume design and how much of it was video transfer, but it came across as very dark and somewhat undefined.  It was supposed to be some sort of robot, but came across looking like a knight in armor.

One of the things I’ve always wondered is how much nostalgia affects how I remember video quality.  I seem to recall TV shows of the era being of decent quality, but that may be because that was what state of the art was back then.  Now, we have HD and low-definition video just doesn’t translate.  Many of the Friday the 13th episodes, this on included, seem to be of a lower quality.  I’m not really complaining, as I don’t really expect much.  It’s just that the costumes or other details can seem laughable at times.

The entire series seems a little less than serious at times.  It’s along the lines of The X-Files and Warehouse 13.  I’m not really sure how serious the show was supposed to be.  It’s always been a little on the cheesy side, but that may have been intentional.  (It may have also been limited by the standards used for broadcast TV.)

This was not one of the better episodes.  It’s not horrible, either.  This is one of the episodes you might watch if it came on cable one afternoon.  I wouldn’t pay to stream it or buy it.  However, if you can get it from the library, like I did, it might be entertaining to watch.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 9 (Root of All Evil)

One of the things about Friday the 13th: The Series is a lack of explanation as to how the cursed items work.  In the pilot, it’s said that Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil and that, as a way for fortune and immorality, he sold those cursed items to unsuspecting customers in his antiques shop. After his death, his niece and nephew were left to clean up the mess with the help of an old business partner of his.

This episode starts with a mother and son doing some yard work.  The son becomes possessed with rage and shoves his mother into a mulcher/wood chipper.  The next scene is in curious goods some time later.  Jack, the old business partner, finds a letter addressed to Lewis.  In it, he finds references to knowledge from below, indicating that the writer knew about the cursed items.  Also enclosed is a $100 bill.

This leads Jack, Micki and Ryan to track down the sender.  They find a vacant house, but they know that the item is the aforementioned mulcher, as the return address matched an entry in their ledger of items that Lewis sold.  They are able to track down the mulcher to the maintenance crew at n estate that’s about to become a park.

Smitty is the new owner of the mulcher.  He has no idea what it is.  However, Smitty has an employee named Adrian.  Adrian becomes possessed much like the son did in the opening scene.  When someone tries to hit Adrian up for some hush money, Adrian feeds the guy to the mulcher and receives a few bills, all dated 1937.

For those wondering, there is no Series 1937 American currency in any denomination.   There is Series 1937 Canadian money.  Given that the currency shown is American and the show is filmed in Canada, I think the person checking facts for the show might have gotten the countries mixed up.

At any rate, Adrian soon realizes that the richer the person is, the more money he gets.  Adrian is in luck, as the estate he works on has lots of rich people walking around.  He tries to mulch people as quickly as he can, resulting in a bag full of cash.

During all of this, Micki’s fiancé, Lloyd, pays a visit to the antique store.  At the beginning of the series, Lloyd and Micki were engaged to be married.  Inheriting the store put that marriage on hold.  It’s somewhat surprising that it took this long to deal with it, but it was bound to happen.  Micki tries showing Lloyd around, as he has a right to know what she’s doing.  He doesn’t buy any of it, even when he sees her help get the mulcher back.  In the end, she decides to stay with Jack and Ryan; Lloyd goes home without Micki.

Overall, the episode is still a little thin.  The episodes seem to be relatively self-contained so far, with this one being a notable exception.  If not for the engagement aspect, you could have watched a lot of the episodes out of order.  There’s very little continuity so far between each episode.  In fact, if this was the first episode you watched, it would probably be easy to figure out what’s going on.  (There wouldn’t be many revelations going back and watching the pilot episode.)

Also, it seems like much of the episode is spent trying to contain the artifact.  Jack, Ryan and Micki seem to find the mulcher rather quickly, meaning there has to be a good deal of chasing people around.  (I suspect that this is why this episode was chosen to deal with Micki’s engagement.  They held off until they needed the filler.)

This episode, like many of the others, probably could have been shortened to a half-hour format.  Either that, or find something else to fill the time.  Some of the items have a historical connection, but little is said about it.  Here, we just have a garden tool that seems to spit out money.  There’s no debate on what determines a person’s worth.  The resulting cash is simply a function of their net worth.

I’ve decided that I’m going to finish out this season.  I’m really hoping that the episodes get better.  This one at least shows some promise.  I hope that it’s not misplaced.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 8 (Shadow Boxer)

Shadowboxing is the practice of hitting the air to train for actual boxing.  It would seem to be the only form of boxing anyone will let Tommy Dunn do.  He’s the janitor at Manny King’s gym, but he wants to be more.  When Tommy asks to borrow a pair of gloves that Manny has laying around, Manny gets mad.  What does Tommy do?  He sneaks the gloves into the locker room and tries them on.  His shadow comes to life and kills Manny, who wants nothing more than to go home.  Being that there were no reports of anyone else in the area, Tommy isn’t questioned.

Meanwhile, at Curious Goods, the team of intrepid cursed-item hunters finds out about the death and make the connection to an item that Lewis Vendredi sold.  Micki happens to have a camera to document what she does at Curious Goods, which she takes with her to the gym.  She takes pictures of the boxers wearing their gloves to examine later, since the gloves have “killer” on them.  (Why they just can’t look at the gloves there is beyond me.)

Tommy takes a liking to Micki; Micki is instantly repulsed by him.  Just her luck, someone figures out that he has the gloves.  Ryan tries getting them from his locker, but another boxer chases him out of the locker room.  They follow Tommy back to his apartment.  Poor Micki has to lure Tommy out of his apartment on a ‘date’ so that Jack and Ryan can search his apartment.  Not that the gloves are anywhere that they’d look

Tommy makes it back to the apartment before Jack and Ryan can leave.  Micki tries to call them from a payphone with no luck.  Tommy tries to fight Jack and Ryan with the gloves, leaving Mr. Shadow to fight Micki.  That’s when we find out why she has the camera.  The shadow has a weakness for light, of course.  Now, it’s just a matter of time before the good guys beat the bad guys.

This is the eighth episode, which features the seventh artifact to be retrieved.  I think this is the first one where it’s obvious how someone figured out how to get the cursed item to work.  You put the gloves on and your shadow takes on a life of its own.  It’s fairly straightforward.  In fact, I’m surprised that it took something like a camera flash to make anyone realize that light was the weakness.  I would think that the writers could have thought of something less contrived than having one of the main characters suddenly own a camera.

This is also the first episode where Ryan gets to use one of the cursed items.  He subsequently realizes why it’s a bad idea.  He has to beat up Jack, even though it’s to save Micki.  This was a little more understandable. Jack and Ryan are friends, but it was a snap decision, as Micki was in danger.  It’s not clear if he could have use a wall to beat up, as there were no other obvious targets that presented themselves.

We also get the sense that there is an evil inherent to the items.  These are not things that could be used for good or easily studied.  The only option here is to lock them up so that no one can use them to harm someone.  I kind of feel spoiled, mostly because I’m used to shows like Warehouse 13, where there’s more flexibility.  The characters do occasionally get to use items for their own benefit, at least in retrieving other items.  Here, there’s no flexibility.  There’s no real room to explore the nature of the items.

This does make for an unusually dark show.  I only remember it in syndication, as I was 11 when the show first aired.  It’s the kind of show that might have given me nightmares, or at least make me afraid of the dark.  I mean, think about what it would mean to be chased by something that can beat the crap out of you, yet not take any hits in return.  It’s also something that would give someone the perfect alibi.  The show, and particularly this episode, isn’t for everyone.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 7 (Doctor Jack)

Usually, a deal with the devil has a very limited upside, and that upside is generally reserved for the person selling their soul.  In the case of Friday the 13th: The Series, you had Lewis Vendredi, who wanted immortality and wealth.  Going back on that deal cost him his life.  He left his niece and nephew, Micki and Ryan, to deal with the cursed items that he sold to unsuspecting customers.

At some point, the writers of the series probably realized that they couldn’t have these cursed items wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting populous.   Some of these items had to have some value to someone other than their owner.  Enter a scalpel that can save someone’s life.  It comes at a cost, of course.  Someone has to die so that the scalpel can be recharged. 

Dr. Vincent Howlett has come into possession of the scalpel and is using it to save lives.  He has a perfect surgical record.  It would seem that the scalpel has a 1:1 kill ratio, meaning that every time Howlett has a surgery scheduled, he has to go out and kill someone.  (For those that are squeamish, the killings are pretty graphic.)  Ryan and Micki have to get the scalpel with the help of Jack before Howlett kills someone else.

I have to say that this is a fairly evenly-paced episode.  It doesn’t go too much into the mechanics of the cursed item, although I would like to know more about it in this case.  It’s never been mentioned how anyone figures out how to use the cursed items.  Some are intuitive or easy to discover by accident, but most aren’t.  How did Howlett come to make the connection between killing someone and saving a life?  Randomly stabbing someone isn’t something a doctor would do.

Anyway, not a lot of time is spent looking for the item.  Jack, Ryan and Micki have a good idea where it would be.  When they do find it, Jack is injured and, of course, requires surgery.  Given Howlett’s reputation, he’s the one called on putting Howlett in the position of having to save someone that would want to hurt him.  Similarly, Ryan and Micki have to let a man save their friend knowing that the only thing motivating him to save Jack’s life is ego.

There are a few things that are probably done for the sake of the story and would skirt common sense.  For instance, the mother of one of Howlett’s victims finds him.  She’s thwarted by hospital staff before she can do any harm to him and is promptly admitted to the psych unit.  Can they legally do this?  I would think that they would have to call the police first.  Even if they don’t, she attempted to hurt a doctor.  There’s no mention of contacting the police at all.

Also, the knife can cut through metal items like bars and doors.  This is convenient in letting Howlett escape after killing someone or getting through an obstacle to get to Micki and Ryan.  It’s not too outlandish, but it does seem somewhat contrived that the scalpel can do so much.  It’s also not mentioned if this drains the scalpel at all.

I’ve seen stories similar to this one, in that life force can be transferred from one person to another.  The method here makes it so that it can only be used for evil.  It would be cruel to use it on someone to save a life, even if that person was sentenced to death.  There’s no way someone would deserve to die like that.  This would remove the possibility of exploring that moral avenue.  It’s simply a matter of stopping someone from killing again.

IMDb page