GaryPeterson67

What struck me in this Patrick Duffy-directed episode was how so many characters appeared in isolation from one another. Mandy is only seen on the phone. Eddie and Betty conspire against Lucy who doesn't appear alongside her subplot castmates but only in a single scene with Ray, who reported earlier eating his breakfast alone.

Alone on another level would include most of the cast. In very nicely played parallelism, both JR and Cliff are rejected by the same two women in their lives. Mandy hangs up on JR's pathetically pleading call. Cliff, sensing trouble at home, seizes the opportunity to try and rekindle the flame with Sue Ellen, but she turns him down flat. Adding insult to injury, after that stinging rebuke to his ego, he calls Mandy but only gets her machine.

Jenna has Bobby but is facing alone the prospect of prison for Naldo's murder. And as a single mother she's alone in feeling the pain she's unavoidably causing her daughter to suffer. Moving Charlie to a different school to escape bullying, however, struck me as not only a privileged move but a short-term solution to a long-term problem. And as someone who changed schools in the middle of a school year, I know Jenna will only be inflicting greater suffering and loneliness upon her child. Charlie was oft spoken of but never seen this week.

Fools rush in, and there was Clayton leading the charge when he ripped and kicked the boys when they were down. His hotheaded harangue of the brothers left him hanging out to dry, at least until Miss Ellie went all Patsy Cline in the end. (Finally! Donna Reed got something more dramatic to do than simply sit in a chair looking pinched and pained!)

Lucy doesn't yet know just how alone she really is. Never my favorite character (I can't forget how loathsome she was in the first couple seasons), I nonetheless felt awful for her being set up for such an undeserved fall.

Is Donna alone? She may end up that way, skipping out and not providing Ray his requisite OJ, coffee, and kiss. A pretty harsh punishment for Ray's meeting fire with fire in the contretemps with Clayton. Me, I think Donna has always been alone to a degree. This sophisticated lady and her cowpoke husband have always been a city mouse and country mouse mismatch.

Jamie was left warming the bench this week, getting only that single scene playing the wet blanket over Cliff's celebration of Al Brindle's batting a homerun for the opposing team. Cliff getting his mercenary mitts on Digger's copy of the three-way-split agreement was indeed cause for a champagne celebration. But what's this? Jamie's less interested in owning a third of Ewing Oil and more worried about her father's reputation being sullied in court.

My first thought, besides how sentimentally short-sighted and just plain stupid Jamie is, was who today would know or care the slightest about Jason Ewing? Heck, even JR forgot all about this long-lost uncle. Seriously, Jamie, your forgotten father has no reputation. He's ancient history, so the papers won't report what a drunken lout he and Digger were, and the people wouldn't read it if they did. And you need to own the fact Jason was a "blackhearted" SOB, as Brindle bluntly told it to your face. Don't let your Daddy issues destine you to leaving big money on the table.

Yeah, I'm annoyed with Jamie (and Pam) for being a pair of party-poopers and raining on Cliff's parade. But I'm a big fan of Jenilee Harrison, so her relative absence was disappointing, especially with Mandy's literally phoning it in only compounding this episode's glamour deficit.

I'm curious how this Ewing Wives on the Road to Hong Kong subplot will play out. I'm hoping they inject a little lighthearted Laverne and Shirley-style humor and hijinks, but that won't happen. Pam's been screaming a lot lately and Sue Ellen is sardonic when not seething. I felt Bobby's frustration with Pam's quixotic tilting at every Mark sighting, real or imagined. I hope their Oriental escapade brings closure and pulls Pam back from the brink of a very real relapse into insanity.

You know, I thought with Peter off her mid-life-crisis-addled mind, Sue Ellen would redirect her energies into being a good Mom. Nope. Here she is hounding John Ross to finish his orange juice because they're late leaving for school. Mom's failure to plan shouldn't be the kid's emergency. I noticed he left a full plate of breakfast and over half his OJ behind. Do you know how many starving kids in... oh, never mind. John Ross lives a very different life than many of us did. And I definitely don't envy the kid.

When this show's end credits rolled to the rousing theme music, two thirds of this 30-episode eighth season were behind us. What developments and disasters are looming and threatening to befall our beloved cast of characters over the remaining ten shows? I mean, Ewing Oil is hovering between life and death, Jenna looking at life in the lock-up, Lucy is going to learn of Eddie's treachery, and other events even more tragic events promise to unfold before they call it a wrap. In real life, a couple cast members were getting pink slipped while a third was tendering a rapidly regretted resignation.

And speaking of disasters, seeing John Ross playing on the bed with that space shuttle toy brought to mind how the January 1986 Challenger disaster was less than a year away from when this episode was broadcast in February 1985. That tragedy and this series spotlighting sad people in troubled relationships are sobering reminders that the '80s weren't totally awesome for everybody.

Hey, didn't we just have a kid-centered show two episodes ago? Pump the brakes on these pipsqueaks, already. Well, at least this bird-brained SHANE retake was much better than that madcap Mo Willem wannabe "Don't Let the Monster Drive the Train." But both made about as much sense when the smoke cleared.

Maybe it's my fault for looking for a coherent narrative. I remembered how, after suffering through some impenetrable modern poem, my old lit prof said this poem is not to be understood but experienced. I thought back to that as I watched Kuro flap into the sunset while a screaming Saburu went all Brandon deWilde.

Okay, so just what in ding-dong Sam Hill happened here? Is Kuro gonna come back like the swallows to Capistrano? Where's Professor Naramaru to assure us with a Zen Koan that the threat is over and that Kuro like Balloonga will become one with the sun or at least disappear back through the Guardian of Forever or whatever it was that brought it into 1966?

Another unresolved headscratcher was how and why Kuro transformed from a friendly finger-riding finch into the poor man's Rodan. "Why ask why?" as the old Bud Dry slogan put it. Why were the zoo cages burst from the inside out? Did other animals grow too? Why ask why? Just enjoy the grinning kid and his bird and watch the wanton destruction it wreaks.

I had to wonder if Terry Gilliam caught this show as the scene with Kuro's foot coming through the ceiling and flattening a hapless soldier sprang to mind Monty Python's iconic opening titles.

We're only a dozen shows in and already some recurring themes are emerging. The kid-centered shows all feature lonely and outcast boys. Saburu is closest to the snot-nosed shoeshine boy in having no parents to speak of. His Robinson Crusoe life on an island makes him the third protagonist who wants only to be far from the madding crowd, countercultural characters in the notoriously conformist Japan of the 1960s. And Saburu is a lot like the gorillaphile Goro and the forest-dwelling Takeru in "SOS Mount Fuji" when he fearlessly runs towards the monster while our civilized city dwellers cower under their matching caps.

And then there's the pattern of downbeat endings of loss. Goro and Saburu each lose their friends, and Takeru loses his Tarzan life in the forest as his sister appears intent on civilizing him.

Yeah, I'm stabbing in the dark here, trying to make sense of a story that made no sense but which I nonetheless enjoyed. Dr. Ichinotani elevates any episode he's in, and Saburu was an appealing child protagonist (unlike that filthy-faced urchin Itachi in "Super Express"). Jun, Ippei, and Yuriko gave earnest performances even if a little over-emotive. You'd think after so many close encounters of the kaiju kind they'd be jaded by now. But then again I'm a fellow traveler who's far from jaded and am looking forward to all the wild n' woolly wonders still awaiting in the world of... ULTRA Q!

"It was a dark and stormy night," typed Snoopy, writing the final scene of this murder mystery movie of the week.

"Death Sentence" was quite an enjoyable picture with many moments of tension and suspense. And it's always fun to see familiar television actors picking up a few extra bucks between seasons. I did wonder what audiences in 1974 thought of flighty and flaky Phyllis Lindstrom playing it straight as a tightly wound mousy housewife with undiagnosed OCD, meticulously recording her car's mileage after each jaunt. The producers did take pains to disguise her usual effervescent appearance, but nothing could hide Leachman's signature halting stop-start speech pattern. I thought she did a fine job in this subtle and unglamourous role.

Also cast against type were sitcom vets Alan Oppenheimer and William Schallert playing the poor man's Perry Mason and Hamilton Burger. Their comedic default settings were on display, however, with Oppenheimer's mischievous grins as he made outrageous speculations he knew would be stricken from the record (even if not the minds of the jury). And Schallert's apoplectic objections were akin to those Mr. Pomfritt once made to Dobie and Maynard's monkeyshines.

Special mention must be made of Laurence Luckinbill toggling between calm reserve and wild-eyed wacko and whose manic facial expressions brought to mind his over-the-top performance as Sybok in STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER. He was well cast and it was his unpredictability that lent the story much of its suspense. I loved him looming from the balcony and idly plucking a leaf as a metaphor for... murder.

I wondered if Woody Allen of all people caught this movie on an idle evening. The crazy mistress scene has striking parallels to the similar confrontation between Anjelica Huston and Martin Landau in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. One almost sympathizes with the adulterous man who ends the affair with dignity and grace and suddenly faces an unhinged hell-hath-no-fury spurned woman shrieking threats of exposing him to his wife and community. I mean, did Marilyn really think screaming about ruining his life would win his heart and woo him away from his wife and children?

Vicki Lawrence taught me not to trust my soul to no backwoods southern lawyer. I would add sitcom stars playing lawyers in TV movies. Two glaring oversights by the attorneys in this case: (1) the scarf was left wrapped around the neck of the victim. Since it had been for two winters wrapped around the neck of the murderer, it likely had tell-tale hairs, cologne or aftershave traces or other incriminating evidence embedded within it. No mention was made of a forensic test ever being conducted, just the banal fact it was a common scarf available in a lot of local stores.

And (2) was what should have been the defense's trump card: The coroner declared the victim was killed at 10pm with a window of an hour each way. The bartender and the policeman should have been subpoenaed to testify that Nick Nolte's character was languishing in the bar long before 10 o'clock, long enough to drink himself into a stupor. And if Nolte had murdered his wife, would he (a) have left the body on the floor, and (b) have allowed a policeman to take him all the way inside his home?

I think these incontrovertible facts would have punctured even Mr. Bracken's premature and impenetrable conviction that Nolte was guilty. But they were inexplicably never raised.

A quibble that could have quashed the testimony of Mayberry's own Hope Summers: She testified to watching her game show from 8:30 to 9. She later adds she went to bed at 10, "right after my movie." Huh? What movie runs one hour? And besides, we clearly hear a game show ending when she turns off the set and announces "show's over." There never was a movie.

Another quibble: What was with Murray MacLeod hemming and hawing and keeping it fair until provoked, then suddenly vividly recalling the car was a cream-colored station wagon? His cheeky testimony should have been impeached not chuckled along with.

A credits quibble: Herb Voland played the harrumphing jury foreman Mr. Bracken, not Lew Brown as the credits read. Brown played the man holding out on a verdict, while the woman going all Henry Fonda was played by Meg Wylie. Of course, Cloris was holding out too but wasn't questioned. She had her reasons... very compelling ones too, as it turned out.

But it was Cloris' cake in the rain moment racing about and imagining things through windows where the movie kinda lost me (and lost a star). It also lost momentum as the conversation between Leachman and Luckinbill dragged on when we all knew what happened and what was going to happen. Cloris had to know if her husband murdered Marilyn he would kill her too.

A sequestered juror escaping would probably result in a mistrial, but of course startling new evidence was uncovered. I'm glad the movie ended where it did, leaving me confident that Nolte would be acquitted and free to murder his mother-in-law Doreen Lang, who knew all along he was innocent and her daughter pregnant by a paramour. But that's just fiction. Pity poor Luckinbill, whose real-life mother-in-law was Lucille Ball o' Fire, the original henna-rinse ginger.