unspiek Reviews

Primal: Shadow of Fate (2022) Season 2, Episode 2

Gripping story

[10/10 · 24 July 2022]

Fine artwork, gripping story, total anachronisms all over the place which the purist must either endure or watch something else.

Humans and dinosaurs. A stone age human traveling with a mini-tyrannosaur by raft to someplace where modern Scots Gaelic (at least in the subtitles) is spoken. It's all a bit much.

But I like it.

Mannix: Enter Tami Okada (1974) Season 8, Episode 8

Great guest star outing!

[9/10 · 22 July 2022]

I just now saw this episode, which was new to me, on a rerun cable channel. It was terrific, easily the best episode of 'Mannix' I've ever seen, due to the splendid performance of guest star Mako. And Connors seemed to be enjoying himself a bit more than usual.

This did indeed look like a pilot. It's always hard to guess why such things didn't get picked up. Maybe the people who needed to be impressed thought the writing was weak, which would have been a little cruel, but fair. That was the weakest link here. But the performances were grade A, and the show was really enjoyable. I wish I'd recorded it.

Lupin the 3rd Part 6: Darwin's Bird (2021) Season 1, Episode 11

Beautiful art, but...

[5/10 · 26 June 2022]

Beautiful art, as one expects from the great Lupin 3 franchise, but it's a filler episode, ruined by a stupid religious backstory; three stars down for that.

Elementary: Tremors (2013) Season 2, Episode 10

This is substandard drivel.

[2/10 · 4 April 2022]

Generally I am a fan of Elementary. I own a boxed set of the series run. But this episode is stupid clear through, and not even internally consistent.

Another reviewer called it 'moronic', but that's not accurate. This travesty was crafted by serious professionals; one has to wonder what was in their marching orders to produce such lamentable output. Even worse is that this episode starts an arc that ground on and on interminably.

It was running on a cable channel just now, and I had to change over to Looney Toon reruns, which impressed as a lot more logical.

Space: 1999: Dragon's Domain (1975) Season 1, Episode 8

Martin Landau must have thought about this episode...

[8/10 · 20 February 2022]

...Many years later, when working on 'Ed Wood,' in the scene with the rubber octopus!

This episode's plot made 'more sense' than was usual for this show, but making sense wasn't really what that the series was about. It was a Gerry Anderson show, which might have been even better if there had been more Supermarionation in it!

This episode just finished running on an off-brand cable channel, and I enjoyed it probably more than I did when it was new!

Perry Mason: The Case of the Surplus Suitor (1963) Season 6, Episode 19

Pidgeon was the best guest lawyer

[8/10 · 12 December 2021]

There's no point in giving another synopsis of the script; that's already been done.

The four episodes with guest stars subbing for the absent Burr are always run roughly together, on my cable rerun channels, so it's easy to compare them with each other.

I think Walter Pidgeon was the only one of the four guests who showed the ability to carry a show like this himself. He did a splendid job, without seeming to copy Raymond Burr's Mason. He was helped by the best script any of the four had.