Shocktober: “Search and Seizure”

The Practice: “Search and Seizure”

Season 2, Episode 7
Original Air Date:
October 25, 1997

And now for a little more from the twisted mind of David E. Kelley. Kelley created The Practice as a rebuttal to his Doogie Howser buddy Steven Bochco’s L.A. Law, which Kelley felt overly romanticized the American legal system. If Halloween special “Search and Seizure” is anything to go by, Kelley massively succeeded in making an unglamorous legal drama. In this episode alone the lawyers are sexually assaulted, witness an illegal arrest, bribed by drug dealers, fail at subverting Roe v, Wade, and forced a moral dilemma where they have to choose between faith, ethics, and the law. It’s quite a lot and hard to imagine how this evolves into the borderline comedy of Boston Legal by the end.

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Shocktober: “Revenge of the Teenage Dead

Doogie Howser M.D. – Revenge of the Teenage Dead

Season 2, Episode 8
Original Air Date:
October 31, 1990

I should have known better than to doubt the powerhouse producing duo of Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley. It’s crazy that two of the biggest TV giants of all time—Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue) and Kelley (Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal)—created a show together. It’s even crazier that the show they created was about a 16-year-old doctor.

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Shocktober: “Laugh of the Party”

Beetlejuice – “Laugh of the Party”

Considering this year saw the reemergence of Mr. Betelegeuse in movie form, it felt appropriate to talk about the late ’80s/early ’90s cartoon show that bore the ghost with the most’s rarely repeated name. This is one of those Halloween episodes (like say, The Addams Family) that feels a bit redundant, since Beetlejuice’s vibe has always been particularly geared toward this season, hence the release of the recent sequel in September. So I’m not sure that this was a standout episode of the TV show, but I’m also not sure that this was a standout show in general, since the fact that the first episode aired barely a year and a half after the film was released makes it feel a bit like a cash-in. Still, it does capture how fun of a guy The Juice is to hang out with, especially when you take away a bit of the scummy menace he exudes in the movies. Continue reading

Shocktober: “Some Enchanted Evening”

ALF – Some Enchanted Evening

Season 2, Episode 6
Original Air Date:
October 26, 1987

Do kids these days know about ALF? Actually, why do I know about ALF? The show ended before I was even a year old. I’ve never seen a rerun. My only memory of actually seeing ALF in the flesh (or would that be felt?) was in high school German class when we watched the 1996 made-for-TV movie Project: ALF (dubbed in German), which served as a sequel to the show’s final episode. Except I had no idea what was going on because I was a bad student.

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Shocktober: “Fright Night”

The Brady Bunch – “Fright Night”

Season 4, Episode 6
Original Air Date:
October 27, 1972

Here’s the story… of how I watched an episode of The Brady Bunch for the first time in 25 years.

This a show that I’m sure people of a certain age probably have a fair amount of nostalgia for, but I’m not quite of that certain age. That said, I do have memories of The Brady Bunch reruns airing on Nickelodeon in the late ’90s for reasons that aren’t terribly clear to me. At the time, I thought the show was passible entertainment, but even then felt of a different time, despite the most topical thing about the show being its garishly groovy fashion. I was a bit surprised to read that The Brady Bunch wasn’t one of the more popular shows on television when it was airing, but instead earned its cultural ubiquity in syndication. I’ll get into my theories as to why this show became so popular later, but let’s get into this spooky episode that much like the episode of Dick Van Dyke I reviewed, aired early in the fourth season of a five-season run. Continue reading

Shocktober: “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

Xena: Warrior Princess: “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

Season 2, Episode 4
Original Air Date:
October 21, 1996

Xena always seemed like a logical next step for me after I finished Buffy and Angel all those years ago, but I never made the leap. In fact, all I really knew about Xena was she uses a metal frisbee as a weapon, she yells in a distinct way when she does finisher moves, and the opening credits are edited like a movie trailer. Oh and it’s as gay as a show on… WB? USA Network? Whatever this was on was allowed to be in the mid-Nineties. Which, if “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is anything to go off of, is pretty gay.

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Shocktober: “The Ghost of A. Chantz”

The Dick Van Dyke Show – “The Ghost of A. Chantz”

Season 4, Episode 2
Airdate: September 30, 1964

As was my strategy the last time we did a month of reviewing Halloween episodes of TV shows, I’m inclined to watch shows that I have at least some familiarity with. After all, a Halloween episode isn’t going to be that great of an introduction to a show you’ve never seen an episode of, since it usually leans into a horror-esque tone that the show isn’t necessarily known for. That’s the case with this season 4 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which has plenty of the witty banter and wacky situations that I associate with this show, but places these characters in a haunted house setting. Continue reading