Get Smart (1965) – Mr. Big, Diplomat’s Daughter, and School Days

In the 1960s, spies were everywhere! They were in novels, comics, on the big screen, and had spread to television. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, Get Smart debuted on 18 September, 1965 and introduced us to CONTROL’s agent 86, Maxwell Smart (Don Adams). Filled with goofy gadgets, like the shoe phone, Smart is…

Stargate SG-1 (2000) – Small Victories, and The Other Side

Season four got underway on 30 June, 2000 with Small Victories, which continues the story started in the season three finale with the Replicators! Written by Robert C. Cooper, the episode picks up shortly after the end of the finale, with a Replicator. It boards a Soviet sub, and begins to wreck havoc. The only…

Magnum P.I. (2023) – Out of Sight, Out of Mind, and Charlie Foxtrot

Magnum (Jay Hernandez) and Higgins (Perdita Weeks) have their first real tiff, which is something that both regret when Higgins ends up in serious trouble. Out of Sight, Out of Mind was written by David Slack and debuted on 16 April, 2023. Magnum has to have a chat with Childs (Micheal Rady) about the events…

Navy Seals (1990) – Lewis Teague

Navy Seals features a very recognizable cast, Micheal Biehn, Charlie Sheen, Dennis Haysbert, Rick Rossovich, Bill Paxton, Joanna Whalley. Unfortunately, the script is less than stellar, and Teague, while a capable director, has never been given a budget or script that has served him as well as they should. It’s a b-movie, with a solid…

12 Angry Men (1957) – Sidney Lumet

Reginald Rose wrote the absolutely engaging and captivating script for Lumet’s 12 Angry Men from his own source material and received an Oscar nomination for it as well as a Best Picture nomination with his fellow producer Henry Fonda, both of whom deferred their salary to get the film made. The film was also nominated…

Hill Street Blues (1985) – Washington Deceased, and Passage to Libya

It’s Belker’s (Bruce Weitz) thirty-seventh birthday (and gets a nice surprise by episode’s end), the police bowling league is playing, and some new directives from headquarters about officers being responsible for reimbursing phonecalls and vehicle conditions stir up a hornets’ nest in Washington Deceased. Written by Frank South, this episode was first broadcast on 7…

Rush Hour (1998) – Brett Ratner

I wasn’t a big fan of Rush Hour when it first came out. I didn’t see it in theatres or take it home on video (despite the countless free rentals we got working in a video store) and I was a little bothered to hear that Chris Tucker got paid more than Jackie Chan did…

Hill Street Blues (1984) – Watt a Way to Go, and Rookie Nookie

Joyce’s (Veronica Hamel) client is about to face the electric chair unless she can find another witness to come forward and Goldblume (Joe Spano) gets violent when his ex-wife is assaulted and raped in her own apartment. Watt a Way to Go was written by David Milch and Robert Director from a story by Steven…