Post by Yuri Petrovitch on Nov 27, 2013 7:34:54 GMT -5
In today's episode, Scandal Jackson sings the cowboy songs of his youth!
SYNOPSIS
We begin with the far beyond zaftig Bobbie Gutman (which . . .man, really, Cobra?!) kissing her beefy Zap Rowsdower-ish husband, who goes off for some ice or whatever, runs into a guy with a big knife, as "How'd you find me?" and then is promptly murdered. This will not be a mystery by any means, and the local sheriff will not help because this would be Cobra if The System Hadn't Failed and the sherif in general being a "dried-up biscuit in earth shoes" (her words, not mine) and despite her husband being dead and all, has some strained, bickery flirting with Dallas and everyone packs up and goes off to Honeymoon Hideaway to get to the bottom of all this and pad out the runtime as Scandal and Danielle do that strained, snipe-y "My side of the bedroom, YOUR side of the bedroom" stuff that passed for "romance" in serial dramas of the day.
A lot of padding is inevitable, because our murderer, Max Miller (actually Leo Frye), is really lousy at hiding. Upon seeing Scandal and the gang, he whips out the LARGEST CAMERA EVER and starts snapping pics in the most conspicuous way conceivable. Also, he has a blue topaz ring which is a really gaudy thing for a serial murderer to be wearing, but so we know who he is before we know who he is, he holds it up to the camera so we can get a good long look. Apparently he had a grudge against Bobbi's husband for testifying in a case that got him put away in a mental institution for awhile and now that he's served his time (apparently, the criminally insane can just be let right the hell out of mental hospitals, which I guess means he did time in Arkham Asylum or something) but since Bobbi's only a guest star, he decides to go after Danielle first, because he saw the opening credits and is going by order of importance.
Danielle, being a liberated 90's woman, immediately starts screaming for Scandal, who kicks him a few times and he runs off. This allows Danielle to have something of a bit of character development, in that she has issues with being attacked dating back to the kind of plot-convenient "I never mention this before or acted like it bothered me, but this reminds me of the time when . . ." stuff that scriptwriters do when they need to pull an easy coincidence out of their hat. Also, confesses to Scandal that she likes him (enough to use his razor to shave her legs) and Scandal gets all white knight and tells Danielle she'll always be here for her during the alarming amounts of time she will get taken hostage in this series.
Once they ID Leo, they take him to the sheriff but The System Fails AGAIN, because even in TV land, a guy waving around a knife and committing assault in full view of several witnesses is not enough to lock him up or detain him even for an hour or so, so it's down to plan B--Scandal acts all tough to get him all focused and Leo gets all spooky and serial killery and confesses to two or three murders RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE POLiCE STATION. As things rapidly approach endgame, Dallas and Scandal send Bobbie and Danielle back to Cobra HQ and wait for Leo to come after them. Unfortunately, Leo has gone after them, broke into a security organization's headquarters, knocked out the lights, tied everyone up, and held them at gunpoint in what could only have been . . .an hour or so? I can only assume that Leo is the Kwisatz Haderach and can fold space or something.
This leads to the final showdown at Leo's cabin, which is just down the road from both Cobra HQ and where Scandal and Dallas are. As you'd expect from the progressive politics of this show, Bobbie and Danielle are tied up next to a load of dynamite with a timer, because when in the third act, always go for the Penelope Pitstop level of jeopardy. Naturally, everyone gets free because Leo's Plot Omniscience has finally run out and Danielle throws a stick of dynamite at him, which despite landing right in front of Leo, only knocks him unconscious. Bobbie gets his gun and says the line of the episode:
"Don't move scumbag or I'll be forced to smoke your dismal carcass."
I love this show.
Everything wraps up sweetly--Dallas and Bobbie seem to hit it off (man, SHE sure bounced back from her husband being murdered, huh?) and Danielle and Scandal get a bit closer and bond over how great it is to throw dynamite at psychopaths and how they're here for one another and then the show kinda wraps up without even bothering to button the episode up.
ANALYSIS
Well, while Cobra's MO up to now has been taking stock action plots and making them a bit too baroque for their own good and running through them so fast the episode's over before you go "Hey, WAIT a minute . . ." "Honeymoon Hideaway" doesn't do this so much, but in simplifying everything down and when the various plot elements DON'T line up, jams them in to fit anyway and one can only marvel at the almost willful insanity that is required for things to work. The sherif is the least motivated law enforcement officer since the cops from Manos: The Hands of Fate and his refusal to do anything except show up and bluster about how he can't do anything is comical. Leo is from Murderer Central Casting and has all the subtlety of The Master at a pantomime.
Scandal demonstrates his qualifications and gift for investigating by antagonizing Leo at every turn because he's The Very Best. That this doesn't backfire on him at all is proof this show is taking place in a mirror universe where the normal laws of cause and effect don't work like they do on Earth-Prime.
Danielle's convenient "Oh, hey this reminds me of the time I was taken hostage as a kid and my PTSD was so bad, but now that we've solved this week's problem I'm a aaallllllll better now, and never need to speak of this again" is the kind of plot convenience people don't use so much anymore (mainly because even genre programming tries to rise above this "with one bound Jack was free" nowadays) and is only the first step along a meandering path of confusing character development that will carry us through the rest of the seres.
Bobbie is actually one of my favorite one-shot characters in the whole show, and her overbearing personality actually mixes in well with the rest of the trio and helps to paper over the plot holes because they're just so darn entertaining together. I'd like to think in another, different, parallel universe, someone had a Tumblr blog and was shipping Bobbie and Dallas so hard.
Victim #2 who accompanies Bobbie to recruit Cobra is played by Venus Terzo, who you may remember from Da Vinci's Inquest, or if you're me, you remember her doing the voice for Blackarachnia from Beast Wars. As with all women of a certain age on this show, her perm is astonishing.
It's not a great episode by any means, even by the standards of this show, but there are enough qualities that it passes the time like a polite if somewhat awkward houseguest
NEXT WEEK
Once again The System Has Failed, and a woman is running scared from her abusive husband. Somehow this involves Scandal staring into holes and being bitten by groundhogs, Dallas making dangerous eggs, and Danielle's inability to properly repair rocking chairs. It sounds like a joke, but it actually all happens in our next episode. It's "Nowhere To Run," in seven!
