Episode Title: A Turn of Events
Season 08, Episode 11
Episode 171 of 344
Directed by Kate Tilley
Original Airdate: Thursday, November 20th,
1986
The Plot
(Courtesy of TV.Com): Abby
suggests Sylvia have an attorney draw up a letter with the truth about Peter,
to be released to the public if anything happens to her. The attorney then
gives the letter to Abby. Sylvia gives another copy to Olivia. Karen walks
in on Sexy Michael and Paige cuddled up asleep, and tells Mack that they're sleeping
together. Ben and Mack try to figure out the link between Peter, Jill, Abby,
and Sylvia. After Jill falls off the cliff, Peter calls 911. At the hospital,
Gary apologizes to Jill for his ultimatum. Peter tells Mack and Ben he used to
date Jill, but now they're good friends. Gary tells Abby that he loves Jill.
Something goes wrong, and a code blue is called for Jill. Abby and Gary
overhear a Doctor saying that Jill is pregnant. Jean tells Ben to report that
Peter was seen with Jill before the accident. Another man tells Ben he saw Jill
fall off the cliff and that Peter was with her.
Welcome
to A Turn of Events and prepare to be
bored as basically nothing happens for the majority of the ep’s 48 minutes. Sorry to blow my wad so fast, but Jesus, what
the heck happened with today’s ep up for discussion? I’ll just go ahead and dive right in and say
that we pick up immediately where we last left off in Over the Edge. J.B. has
taken a nasty fall over the cliff and, as we pick up now, we start with Peter
speeding off and leaving her all alone like a pathetic little coward. As he speeds around, we start flashbacking to
stuff, a lot of stuff, and these
flashbacks really seem to go on forever and become almost comical the more they
happen. Seriously, how many times are
they gonna re-show the shot of J.B. clutching onto that branch and it snapping? Why do
they keep re-showing it? Is it just to
further remind us that Peter had a moment of opportunity to help her and he
chose to let her fall? Okay, cool, but I got that; I already saw it in our
previous ep and I don’t need to see it seventeen more times in this ep. Also, the shot of J.B. falling off the cliff
wasn’t even that cool; it was rather cheap looking and should really be the
kind of shot they allow to pass us by and then quickly bury and hope we forget
about. Every time they show her going,
“Peter, listen to me,” and then suddenly taking that plunge off the cliff, it
just further emphasizes how cheap this all looks.
But
that’s just some of the flashing back.
Really, Peter kinda flashes back through everything these two characters
have done with eachother since they were first brought into the fabric of the
series. I suppose this stuff is helpful
for those new viewers or for people who have missed a few weeks, but it still
stuck out as odd to me and felt like an attempt to pad the running time. At first, I theorized that perhaps this was
the first ep to air after a long break, but I took a peek at airdates and nope,
this is only airing one short week after our last one. It honestly feels more like the start of a
new season, in which they need to remind us of everything that went down last
season in a five minute recap. The fact
that it’s all happening here, in a random ep in the middle of the season, just
feels vexing. Oh yeah, and one last
complaint while I’m bitching about this; it would be one thing if they started
the ep with Peter driving around and the flashbacks and then got them all
nicely finished up and put away for the remainder of the ep, but instead we
keep cutting to other characters and then returning to Peter, and whenever we
return to Peter, you guessed it, he’s speeding around the road and suffering
from flashbacks. I
guess the drama of this scene (I should maybe put “drama” in quotations) comes
in seeing how Peter is going to behave now that his sister has taken this big
plunge off this cheap cliff. Will he turn
around and go back to rescue her? Will
he find a phone and call an ambulance?
Well, for awhile it looks like he’ll do nothing, but then he speeds in a
circle and starts to go back the way he came, and a little later we see him
making an anonymous phone call to 911 telling them about J.B. and the cliff,
which is a good thing, because before he does this, we see some rather jolly
hikers come right within a few feet of where J.B. is lying, but failing to
notice her. If Peter didn’t call
someone, J.B. could still be lying there up to the present day!
Oooh,
I just thought of another thing to complain about after taking a glance at my
notes! Looks like I wrote, “Really bad
obvious stock news footage of helicopter rescuing J.B.” I’m glad I looked at my notes and was
reminded of this, because it’s awful.
When a helicopter arrives to rescue J.B., we see Peter hiding in a bush
and watching it take her away. When
the camera is on Peter, it looks fine, it looks the way the show generally
looks, right? But when we cut to the
helicopter, it goes into like, video, and it’s obviously some stock shit that
they got from the CBS news vaults or whatever, looking totally different from
the other footage, and it’s way obvious.
I know I shouldn’t bitch that much about this because it’s standard
practice for television to borrow recycled footage and it often sticks out even
worse than it does here, but damn it, I don’t think of KL as standard television and I don’t like them resorting to
standard television techniques, and if they simply must resort to those
techniques, couldn’t they at least do a better job of hiding it?
Anyway,
J.B. goes to the hospital and then, like, slips into a Plot Contrivance Coma or something. Honestly, not a lot to talk about in this
department, as I find this a monumentally underwhelming story. At this point I’m seeing the creative team
really stretching to fill all 30 eps of the season, and I’m yearning for the
days of the 30-episode season six, in which every single ep still had weight
and story and plenty of juicy material for the entire cast, all while building
to a greater overall story that was compelling and clearly super well thought
out. Well, that was then and this is
now, and now it’s becoming very clear to me that the powers that be could have
easily sliced five or even ten eps out of this season order and it would have improved
things exponentially. Everything about
this J.B. story feels like a desperate attempt to kill time, to take something
that could be wrapped up very quickly and try as hard as possible to draw it
out over the course of four or five eps.
Now, perhaps I’m confusing my beloved readers, since I believe I
mentioned being excited to see J.B. take that plunge because it meant we would
be entering my favorite era of J.B. very shortly, and yes, that is true, but
that era is still not quite here. I’m thinking of the glory that will be J.B.
when we hit the season nine finale and one of my favorite cliffhangers of the
whole show, and yes, I think her taking the fall off the cliff is the start of her journey to that season nine
finale, but it’s just the start. Here,
at this exact moment in time at this precise juncture within the series, all we
are seeing is J.B. slip into a Plot Contrivance Coma for an ep or two and then
quickly come back out of it.
Oh
yeah, and we also find out she’s pregnant.
Why is this important? Perhaps I
shouldn’t be so critical because maybe, just maybe, this will wind up paying
off in the future and I just can’t remember right now. However, it sure seems odd to me to introduce
a J.B. pregnancy at the precise same time that you’re killing the pregnancy
off. What happens in this ep is that we
are told for the first time that she’s pregnant and she might lose the baby,
and then, you guessed it, she loses the baby.
So why bring it up in the first place?
It’s not like it’s gonna lead to some sort of “Who’s the real baby
daddy?” storyline or anything like that; it’s just brought up and then
forgotten just as quickly, an example of some rather lazy writing that I find
very unbecoming for KL.
Honestly,
that’s about it for J.B. and, in truth, is about it for the whole ep, since we
really don’t get much else going on with the other characters, although I
suppose the majority of the non-J.B. stuff relates to Karen and Mack. The cat is finally out of the bag
this ep when Karen decides to sneak into Sexy Michael’s bedroom at night to,
like, gather his laundry or something.
Honestly, I do kinda question this, but I am sure Karen had no ulterior
motive; she probably just felt like doing the laundry and decided to go and
grab it right now. Still, Sexy Michael
is a young man now with raging hormones; how does she know she won’t open the
door to find him violently masturbating?
That’s not what she finds, of course, but she is about to make her way
out the door when she decides to stop and properly tuck Sexy Michael in, at
which point she realizes that Sexy Michael is not alone, that Paige lies
sleeping in the bed alongside him. The
two look very cozy, by the way,
spooning as they sleep and I note with approval that Sexy Michael is the big
spoon. I can tell you that if I had just
been given the divine pleasure of sex with Sexy Michael and we were drifting to
sleep, I would really hope for him to be the big spoon for me so that I could
rest comfortably all night with his arms around me, breathing that sweet smell
of Sexy Michael in the air, dripping with testosterone and raw masculine sexual
energy. Mmmmmm, yeah baby, Sexy Michael,
oh yeah.
Oh
wait, I got distracted again. What was I
talking about? Oh yeah, Karen discovers
Paige and Sexy Michael together. This
leads to her telling Mack what’s going on over a lovely lunch together. I liked this scene because of my love for
both characters, but Karen is wearing a very unfortunate hat and it provides me
with the perfect opportunity to talk about another thing I don’t like about
this season: The wardrobe. Seriously,
the show lost Travilla at the end of the seventh season and, right now, I’m
really missing him. For this entire disk,
scene after scene, My Beloved Grammy and I would talk about how hideous the
outfit that some character or other was wearing was and it was nonstop. This season is an explosion of bad sweaters
and truly awful colors that have no business being together somehow being
forced to co-exist on top of clothing that’s already ugly enough to begin
with. My Beloved Grammy says she misses
the costuming of the last few seasons, and I agree with her and question why
everyone is dressed so badly this year.
Is it just the loss of Travilla?
Was this just an ugly time in history?
I’m trying to think really hard about 1986-1987 and what kinds of
fashions were in style then and I’m sorta coming up blank. I think my vision of what 1980s fashion is
kinda lies frozen around 1984-1985 and I just sorta take that look as the
all-encompassing “80s look.” However, we
are now closer to the end of the ‘80s than we are to the start of it, as we are
about to cross into 1987 and enter that awful era of clothes where it’s not quite
the ‘80s and not quite the ‘90s yet, but rather this weird blending of grey and
ugliness (picture the wardrobe of A Very Brady Christmas if you’re having a hard time visualizing this). In any case, I’m not sure who to blame, but
the wardrobe sucks pretty consistently this year, with even the divine goddess
Abs being forced to wear many a butt ugly sweater.
So
that’s about it for Karen and Mack and all of that this ep; I’d say the only
other important thing to talk about is Sylvia and this little letter she
decides to write. See, now that she’s
afraid of Peter poisoning her with pills (Peter’s poisoned pills persistently produced
problems), she’s decided to live with Abs at Westfork for a little while, and
this ep she hands Abs a letter and says, “If anything strange should happen to
me, I’d like that letter opened by my attorney,” or, you know, something like
that. Abs assures her that the letter
will be given to the proper authorities, but then she leaves the room and
immediately hands it over to some lackey to dispose of. However, a little later in the ep, we see
that Sylvia is a pretty clever girl, because she takes Olivia aside and also
gives her a copy of the letter. Sylvia
may be old and get a little silly when she has too much to drink, but she’s
sharp enough to know not to trust Abs outright.
Will this letter ever lead anywhere?
I can’t remember, but I’ll pay attention as we move forward to see.
Real
fast on the Sylvia character; I’d like to take this moment to say that I have
absolutely no memory of what happens to her or where she goes. I know that season eight is the end of her
time on the show, that she shan’t be following us into season nine, but I have
no idea how her time on the series winds up concluding. Does she die?
Does she move away? Does her
storyline just sorta get finished up with and she goes away? I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever,
and I’m kinda curious to see how this winds up playing out, since it’s playing
as brand new for me upon this viewing. I
will say that I still like the character and the performance, even if I’m maybe
a bit underwhelmed by the story developments at this point.
And
you know what? “Underwhelmed” is pretty much how I felt about this entire
ep. It really didn’t do much for me and
I really don’t have anything else to say about it. For me, this is the very definition of a
“filler” episode, as nothing much happened, with the only vital story stuff
being the further developments in the Paige/Sexy Michael camp and the fact that
Karen and Mack are now aware of the constant shagging between the two
characters. Sylvia’s little letter might
wind up being important, as well, but I’m not sure yet. Aside from that, this ep had a lot of Peter
driving around in a car and having flashbacks, and then it had an absolute
snooze of a story for J.B., and this snooze is only gonna draw out longer, over
the course of the entire disk, if I’m remembering correctly. So yeah, that’s about all I got for A Turn of Events, which I’d say is
easily the worst episode we’ve seen so far this season, and probably one of the
worst in a couple of years. While I didn’t
hate this episode, I also didn’t love it and I didn’t really particularly like
it, either. Considering this was penned
by Lawrence Kasha and Michael Filerman, I’d expect a little more from them,
something more than boring filler and a ton of flashbacks.
Okay,
enough about that. Let’s go ahead and
move right along to Touch and Go.
"Peter’s poisoned pills persistently produced problems". LOL. Bravo!! This is a perfect example of why I look forward to Thursdays and am happy that we still have 3+ years to look forward to your weekly take on an awesome show. Oh...and I think we can all agree that this episode was boring :)
ReplyDeleteI think this was the episode where the show moved back to 10pm after it had spent the season thus far at 9pm, opposite Cheers. Perhaps that's why they felt the need to bang us over the head with flashbacks. The reason I think this is because I'd stopped watching this season after the first few episodes and stuck with Cheers, and I have a vivid memory of watching this episode, and needing that flashback to tell me what I'd missed.
ReplyDeleteAnd I laughed out loud at "Karen is wearing a very unfortunate hat." I always treasure the suggestion that some article of clothing was the result of the character living a wardrobe philosophy that requires them to wear whatever is hanging up next in the closet. Karen didn't want to wear that hat, but she had to, and wasn't any happier about it that we were.
The clothes HAVE been bad this season. Some of the color combos Abs has had to wear have been downright baffling. And let's not even go into Jean Hackney's weird 40s film noir wardrobe!
ReplyDeleteStill, it must be said, this is 1986/87 and styles were changing... heading toward the '90s, everything is oversized/ ill-fitting and tacky/ cheap... Much like the new opening music sounds! Perhaps that calypso version of the KL theme was also a nod to Miami Vice island vibes ... just like Ben's "spy outfits." Who knows? Maybe the show's costume budget had gotten cut as well as Travila??
Jill holding the branch!!! Haha, I can't. Um, I watched this ep and also felt it was a waste, though since I was a bit stoned, I viewed it through different eyes. I tried imagining what it must look like for those in France watching "Cote O'uest," and could see how it really would work, especially with Paige on the scene. She feels very Euro. And Mack. He always is dressed like a metrosexual Euro behind all that machismo. 😉
ReplyDeleteSylvia... spoiler alert. Pretty sure she is murdered. Surprise she's lasted this long. 😕