Episode Title: Pressure Points
Season 08, Episode 08
Episode 168 of 344
Written by Diane Messina Stanley &
Lou Messina
Directed by Nick Havinga
Original Airdate: Thursday, October 30th,
1986
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Police go to Phil's motel, but he's across the street, and
people yell to the police where he is. Phil runs into the street, and is hit by
a car. At the hospital, Phil tells Mack that Greg was behind the
kidnapping, but Mack knows he's lying. Phil dies. Peter is upset with Sylvia's
drinking, because she talks too much. Sylvia says she wants Peter to get money
from Abby for her, or she will tell a tabloid the truth, because she doesn't
care who pays her as long as she gets money. Lotus Point has a grand
re-opening. Paige spots Peter, and is definitely interested in him. Sylvia
makes a drunken spectacle of herself. She has a "spell" and asks
Peter to pick up a refill of her prescription. The pharmacist tells Peter that
if Sylvia takes too many pills, it will cause cardiac arrest, so Peter
purposely gives her too many. Both Greg and Abby pressure Peter to join certain
committees, but he stands up to each of them and refuses.
Welcome
to Pressure Points, which actually
begins be showing us the last two or three minutes of All Over but the Shouting one more time. After the scrolling squares set to the sounds
of the very worst version of the theme song ever recorded, we start right away
with that pizza boy arriving at Phil’s motel room and catching a glimpse of his
face in the mirror, and then we again see him calling the police to inform them
of Phil’s location. Oh wait, did I say
“call the police?” I must be drunk
again, because that’s actually not what happens. Instead, he calls Mack directly and says,
“I’m not gonna call the police; I’m not gonna get involved.” Actually, this pizza boy seems hellbent on
remaining anonymous and I’m not entirely clear on why. It’s not like he did anything bad; all he did
was deliver a pizza to a fat guy in a shitty motel room, so why all the
secrecy? Oh well, who gives a fuck, it
doesn’t matter; what matters is that Mack calls the police and they say they’re
going to check it out and that he’d better stay put, which Mack translates to
mean he had better immediately drive over to the hotel, as well.
All this is playing out
concurrently with Greg getting materials ready for Phil to leave the
country. He see him packing a little
suitcase with Vista and BankMaster cards and then calling up Phil to inform him of where they should meet.
Greg confirms that he will pick Phil up personally and orders him to go
wait in the phonebooth and not come out, which seems like a kinda crappy
plan. After all, this is 1986 and people
still use pay phones regularly (although I was just on Whidbey Island in the
year 2018 and they still have pay phones everywhere, so there you go), so I
imagine a creepy guy hanging out in a phonebooth and not moving at all would
call attention to himself, which he does.
See, everything sorta happens at once, with Mack arriving at the same
time as the police and using one of those big loudspeakers to tell Phil to come
out, only Phil is lurking in the phonebooth across the street. However, the phonebooth is already the place
to be, the social scene of 1986, because there are a bunch of people hanging
out outside the phonebooth (well, three), wondering what the deal is with the
guy in there. Then Greg comes rolling up
in his car, but when Phil decides to exit the phonebooth and make the voyage to
Greg’s vehicle, the really angry guy outside the phonebooth pulls Phil’s
sunglasses off and screams, “That’s the guy who kidnapped that woman!” Then he just keeps shouting it over and over again,
so Greg decides to take off before anyone sees him, Phil runs frantically into
the street, and he is immediately mowed down by a screaming woman in a very
unintentionally funny scene. Why is this
moment so funny? I think it has
something to do with the woman’s scream and then the abrupt cut to an obvious
dummy being smacked by the car and thrown aside onto the street. It’s all done
rather quick, but it still looks like a dummy and it still makes me laugh. Again, this is in stark contrast to my response
upon watching this for the first time, back in college, because I remember
reaching this scene and actually gasping aloud when Phil got hit by the car and
thinking how amazing it was. Now it
seems rather silly to me, but I am grateful that our time with Phil is about to
come to an end.
Phil’s final scene on the show
takes place as he lies on his deathbed at the hospital. Horrible music is playing on the soundtrack
(typical at this juncture, I know), while the one cop friend of Mack’s holds a
gigantic tape recorder over Phil’s face and Mack leans in all close to hear
every word Phil has to say. Phil asks if
Karen is okay and says, “I never meant to hurt her, Mack.” This is a nice thing to say, but it’s a
little hard to believe after we saw him lock her in a room and light the
building on fire. I guess he could argue
that he was just trying to make a nice warm fire to keep her cozy and it got
out of hand, but I doubt that would stand up in court. Then Phil gets his last words in when he
declares, “I know what you want to ask me, and the answer is yes, Sumner put me
up to it, Sumner made me kidnap Karen,” and then he dies. Anyway, if you’re thinking this little twist
will lead to some big, epic storyline in which Mack and Greg become sworn
enemies because Mack thinks he tried to have his wife kidnapped and killed,
well, it doesn’t. Instead, Mack is
almost immediately shown to not believe what Phil has said, which I guess is
also fine. I’m of two minds on
this. On one hand, I like that Mack is
smart and doesn’t believe the lies of this silly man that he used to be
friends with way back in the ‘60s. On
the other hand, I’m left kinda wondering what the point was, then. Why have Phil make this big declaration right
as he’s dying only to have Mack dismiss it out of hand?
Anyway, that’s the last we’ll
see of Phil, so perhaps I’ll take this moment to reflect back on this character
who’s been with us since the season premiere. Suffice it to say I was rather
underwhelmed by this character, and I continue to struggle to figure out
why. While I kinda liked the fact that
he was inauspicious and not a moustache twirling villain stereotype, the
character also never quite took off for me; he was just sorta there. I’m sure Louis Giambalvo is a fine actor, but I think
something just never quite clicked with this guy. Honestly, I think what I really wanted was
for him to be creepier; I was never scared by this character or frightened of
what he might do to Karen, because he just never seemed that threatening. After Karen managed to escape from his
clutches at the end of Slow Burn, I
also wouldn’t have minded the character being retired right away, perhaps
arrested or perhaps killed somehow in that ep, but instead he hung around for
another three eps (well, more like two, since he dies almost right away at the
start of this one) and continued to underwhelm me. Now he’s dead and I’m glad, because I was
ready to move on. I stress one more time
that I didn’t hate this character or even dislike him, necessarily; he simply
never managed to take off or do much for me.
Okay, that’s it for Phil; what
else is going down this week in Pressure
Points? Well, this is another one of
those eps in which there’s some sort of big political function running through
the center of the story as a way to keep the cast gathered and linked
together. In this case, it’s, um, some
sort of political function, or maybe it’s the reopening of Lotus Point, or
something involving Peter and the whole senate race thing. Anyway, who cares, it’s a function, and I’m
gonna say it’s probably the Lotus Point reopening because we are told early in
the ep that the resort is coming back from the dead. I’m looking at my notes and immediately
realize I must note Cigar #19 on the Sumner Cigar Counter, this one smoked at
the political event, but we’ve also got Cigar #20 in this ep, as well, and this
one is smoked later in the ep when he’s in his office late at night with Peter. Anyway, aside from Sumner’s cigar(s), we’ve
also got another brilliant meta line that I’m quite convinced Devane improvised
on the spot. See, Paige comes walking by
and Laura informs Greg that this is Mack’s daughter. Greg says, “I didn’t even know Mack had a daughter,”
to which Laura says, “Neither did he,” to which Greg says, “Spare me the
details; I already have this weird sensation that all of your friends live soap
opera lives.” Oh God, it’s so brilliant,
right up there with Eric’s immortal, “Living on this cul-de-sac is like being
in a soap opera” from season seven.
We’ve
also got Gary and Val at this function, leading us to an absolutely sizzling
scene between the two in which he pays a compliment to her fantastic hat. The scene begins beautifully when he comes up
to say hi to her and she positively beams with delight and a smile lights up
her entire face and she says, “Gary!”
Ugh, can you feel the love tonight?
Then Gary says, “Nice day, nice party, nice hat,” and Val thinks he’s
teasing her about the hat but he assures her that he really likes it. Then they talk a bit about the election and
Val says how Gary always hated going to cocktail parties and mingling with
strangers, so perhaps it’s better this way.
It’s another one of those Gary and Val scenes that might seem small when
I describe it, but is just dripping with so much feeling and love. I’m trying to put myself into the mindset of
a person watching this week to week in the ‘80s and I’m sure these scenes would
be even more stunning back then, because you would just watch them and think,
“Will this couple ever accept their
love of each other and get back together?”
Also occurring at the political
function: Olivia’s wanting to get stoned.
Now, I’m not entirely sure what drugs she’s hoping to enjoy today,
whether it be the grass or the nose candy or perhaps both. See, she is introduced to Paige for the first
time via Sexy Michael, who then runs off to get Paige a cold drink. Then Olivia says how boring this party is,
she and Paige discuss Peter for a minute and how he’s slime (“cute slime, state
senator elect slime,” as Paige says) and then Olivia says, “I’ve got some stuff
here that would make this party really interesting; want some?” Paige dismisses this with a simple, “I don’t
do drugs; I think they’re stupid.” I
kinda love the way she just blows off Olivia’s offer with such a simple
declaration, and I also note a second later when Abs offers Paige a drink,
Paige tells her that she doesn’t drink, either.
Hmmm, I wonder if this tracks? I
feel like we’re going to see Paige drinking on the show somewhere in the next
seven years, but perhaps at this point in time, she is not a drinker.
The most noteworthy thing to
occur at this function is that Sylvia indulges a bit too much in the alcohol
and starts to act a little goofy. For
those who have forgotten, Sylvia is Peter’s “mother” who is played by Ruth Roman. Again, I like watching this
actress and I like this character, even though I’m not entirely sure why. There’s just something about her that I find
watchable and real and she brings that certain old Hollywood style to
proceedings. Anyway, she gets a bit
sloshed here and starts to act rather silly, dancing around with other men and
so forth. She also starts to slur out a
speech about, “I can remember when Peter was just six years old and Bob
Loblaw,” at which point Peter gently takes her champagne glass out of her hand
and sits her down. Sylvia complains of
feeling faint and asks Peter to get her one of her pills, which are for her blood
pressure. There’s only one pill left, so
she asks Peter to go to the pharmacy and pick up her refill, which he agrees to
do. From here, we cut to the pharmacy
where Peter meets the nice pharmacist behind the counter who provides lots of
helpful exposition, saying how blood pressure medicine can make her feel dizzy,
how if she takes too few, she might as well not take any at all, but if she
takes too many, blocking agents can build up and cause cardiac arrest. He’s giving Peter this information as a bit
of a warning, but we all see the lightbulb go on over Peter’s head as he hears
this “cardiac arrest” business. This
leads us nicely to our final scene of the ep, in which Peter and Sylvia are
hanging out at her little apartment and she’s again feeling faint. Oh yeah, earlier in the ep we saw her little
pill dish and she told Peter how she puts the pills into the dish at the start
of the day and takes them throughout the day.
Well, when Peter goes into the kitchen, he has a little moment of
wrestling with his morals and then he decides to put an extra pill in the dish
and then declares to her, “You did not take
your blood pressure medicine this morning; there’s still an extra pill in the
dish.” He says how from now on, he’ll
call her in the morning and come by every night to make sure she’s taken her
pills, but we all know he’s tricking her and he’s going to start slowly
poisoning her with too many pills.
Sylvia gets the final line of the ep, which is, “Now you’re acting like
a real son,” a nice little bit of irony to close out our ep for the week.
Hmmm, did I forget
anything? I’m looking through my notes
and it looks like I covered just about everything that needed covering. The best thing about this ep is that it
killed Phil off and allowed us to move on to new business. Phil was testing my patience at five eps
but stretching him into eight was way too many.
Anyway, I liked the reopening of Lotus Point and how it gathered the
cast together, I liked Gary and Val’s sizzling chemistry, and I adored Devane’s
“soap opera” line. Even so, I’d say I’m
still feeling a little underwhelmed about this season as a whole. There’s just something a tad off about
proceedings as we are making our way through the season, although I feel it
will improve and I already know there are some truly magnificent storylines on
the horizon. With that said, let us now
move on to Brothers and Mothers.
I believe it was the first time this season that the whole cast was together in a few scenes. I always enjoyed those moments, even if the season is underwhelming.
ReplyDeleteThe writing this season is just abysmal. But if I remember correctly, this is the episode where Sylvia talks about how Peter used to do a sailor routine when he was a boy, then proceeds to drunkenly march around while doing a little play salute.
ReplyDelete