This Is Us: “The 20’s”

Season 2, Episode 6
Original Air Date: October 31, 2017

Unlike most of the shows I’ve watched this Shocktober, I actually do have some familiarity with This Is Us, albeit for dumb reasons. Earlier this year, my YouTube algorithm started recommending I watch clips of the most emotional scenes from this series that ended in 2022 and I obliged the machine, as I am wont to do. Watched out of order and context, I saw enough to pick up the gist of the show and it’s characters. It’s a show about three siblings and their parents. My understanding is that every week, This Is Us would employ a technique now popularized by our diabolical criminal ex-president, “the weave,” to juxtapose pivotal moments in the lives of this family across decades. So, for example, you’ll see the siblings fight over something as kids and then support each other in the modern day, having learned some lesson from their great dad or whatever. Basically it is a well-oiled machine designed to make you cry. But does that actually make for good TV?

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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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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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Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: “When Irish Eyes Are Killing”

Season 3, Episode 4
Original Air Date: October 15, 1995

When John suggested we do another year of TV specials for Shocktober in honor of I Saw the TV Glow, I went straight to Wikipedia’s incredibly thorough list and started looking for any shows that were on my radar. The one that stood out the most was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, probably the most significant piece of Superman media left that I still know nothing about. Aside from this show’s modern reboot, Superman & Lois, I’ve never been that interested in the Man of Steel’s live action TV dramas, his super powers just did not ever seem conducive to television’s low budgets. But I did have some knowledge of Smallville and the Arrowverse content and I even read up on George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman back when Hollywoodland came out. It’s just this Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher thing that I remained totally ignorant of.

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