Post by Yuri Petrovitch on Feb 12, 2014 17:55:12 GMT -5
In this week's episode, Scandal tries to get some action by dangling "Gilligan's Island" in front of a sexy lady. It goes about how you'd imagine it would.
SYNOPSIS
Right after the opening credits we have about a half-minute of a couple of nubile ladies "working out" (if the impact level depicted therein could being considered "working out" at all. You'd have to be really charitable.) They have nothing to do with the plot but they're around for SO LONG one can't help but notice and wonder if someone forgot to edit out all the 1-900 commercials from this copy of the episode.
Our story this week begins with someone breaking into a museum and getting caught by tripping a pressure switch under the case for a valuable necklace. It's Scandal, who's testing out some security improvements that Cobra has advised to be made to a museum they're providing security for. This may or may not seem like an overly dramatic way for Cobra to make it's point, but it's really just a flimsy pretext to get the episode moving, and for Scandal to make goo-goo eyes at the museum director's lovely assistant, one Beverly Steele (no one has plain names on this show, do they?) and for Danielle to rib Scandal about not getting to do all the cool cat-burgular stuff and suggest that maybe he should go to a museum more often if he wants to meet a higher class of woman. I'm guessing this means he moved on from the taxidermist from last week.
Meanwhile, two British guys act all arch and snotty and chat about how "the thief" better get the rest of the diamonds in a way that tries to dress up people blatantly explaining the plot to the viewer and trying to disguise it with some exotic accents.
Scandal then decides to chat up the director's lovely assistant, Beverly, who takes him on a tour of the museum. He follows this up by asking Beverly to the museum of TV's salute to Gilligan's Island, and in perhaps the most decisive exercises of taste ever captured on television, Beverly gives it a miss. Danielle listens in on the whole thing and tries to get Scandal to go to that rather than breaking in again, but Scandal blows her off and once again, tries to break in. Only this time someone's there and actually breaking in to the museum. It's Beverly, who knees Scandal in the groin and leaves him to trigger the alarm and catch all the heat.
Danielle is her usual gracious self about all this and discovers that Beverly is actually Tanis Archer, who, probably not being related to Sterling and Mallory Archer, is the daughter of Reynold Archer, the last of the gentleman thieves (think Robin Hood) who was never caught and retired undefeated years ago. Tanis, unfortunately was caught, but Reynold broke her out of prison, and she retired soon after. Tanis, it seems, is on the hook to one of the weedy British guys, Van Alden, who is holding Reynold's father as hostage to get her to steal stuff. Scandal intercepts her mid-robbery and she barfs up all this exposition and Scandal decides to get Cobra to help her free her father and thwart the sinister plans of Van Alden. It turns out that Van Alden lent a lot of jewels to the museum--actually fakes, which Tanis then steals, and Van Alden can use the insurance money to pay off his sinking S & L business (because the early 1990s, that's why)
While all this happens, Reynold is trying to escape on his own by untying the ropes and getting the guards to fight each other. Since it's not quite a half-hour in, that doesn't go well, but it does tighten the screws a little.
Scandal and Tanis decide to steal the real jewels from Van Alden as a means of getting some leverage. It doesn't go well--Tanis gets her Catwoman outfit caught on the fence on the way out and Scandal gets captured in her place. He gets dumped in with Reynold, who Scandal fill in with rapid-fire exposition that doesn't even try to hide being expository. Meanwhile, Danielle sets up an exchange--the Diamonds for Scandal and Reynold, but Van Alden plans to machine-gun everyone because he's just a little less subtle a villain than say, Lord Zedd.
To make this a perfect episode, Van Alden breaks into Cobra HQ (REMEMBER: COBRA IS A SECURITY ORGANISATION) and attempts to leverage them into doing what he wants by shooting up the windows and then leaving the flunkies to shoot everyone else. Fortunately, Scandal and Reynold broke out and make it to the office in the proverbial nick and kick the crap out of everyone, the bad guys get caught and Reynold and Tanis are reunited and it feels so good and while the whole thing feels sorta heartwarming, I'm pretty sure there's a lotta criminal charges for our heroes and they've really gotta do something about their "open door" policy. Scandal and Tanis get all flirty and end-of-Bond-movie with champagne (though Bond would roll his eyes at Scandal's t-shirt and sports jacket combo) and pay off the running gag about the book Danielle kept quoting from.
ANALYSIS
By way of ticking off milestones, I guess I should say here that as of now, technically, we're on episode 13 (the first episode was a two-parter) which means we are at the halfway mark with these reviews. I'm just as amazed I've stuck with these as you are.
Danni's loud red jacket with shoulderpads large enough to land helicopters on is really something to see, as is her red leather jacket she wears later when she's doing hard-nosed negotiating with Van Alden. Also, the museum has the most spacious air ducts I've ever seen. I could park my car in one.
According to the movies, every cat burglar with her salt suits up in sexy black leather before doing crimes. This seems like it would cause certain problems with being a visible target to me, but as I have never stolen anything, nor worn very much leather in my life, I am perhaps not qualified to make assumptions. Just seems like you'd literally sweat your ass off, or get caught on a fence, like Tanis did.
For reasons which are surprisingly NOT prurient, I do love that weird post-credits bit with all the girls "working out," partly because it is an utterly bizarre non-sequitur (even for this show) and because it just goes on so long for no real benefit to the plot or anything. It's just kinda dropped in and lingers so long. I mean at least all the cheesecake in episodes like "Push It" seemed to be happening within the mise en scene of the show. This lasts for nearly half a minute and then they flip over the shots and oh yeah, there's Scandal on the weight machine. It's really . . .odd.
Van Alden's not much of a villain, and it's very hard to take a bad guy seriously when they're wearing an ascot and it's 1994 for Christ sake. It's kind award to be witty, rakish, and urbane and also be a brutal thug with a failing S & L business and the actor's really not up to selling the menace of the episode at all. The slip-sliding accent doesn't help much either. I should give them a bit of credit in that they didn't over-egg the plot pudding with a lot of nonsense about him being an arms dealer or being into drugs or smuggling plutonium or any of the other things that have been laid onto the various baddies on this show in the name of keeping the episode rolling.
Tanis is . . .well, I think the intuition is that she's like an equal for Scandal or something, but given she's pretty much got no agency beyond her being real good a stealing stuff. Otherwise, she's on the hook to Van Alden, Reynold, and Scandal, and everything she does throughout the episode is pretty much for one or more of them, and she really doesn't exist much beyond that, so she's really not.
On the plus side, the guy who plays Reynold strikes just the right balance here to keep things lively, and his ironic wit treats the episode as seriously as it deserves (which is not very)
The episode is OK, I guess. I'm a sucker for caper stories, which this episode isn't exactly, but it's got enough good points and weird points to where it hits the right sorta balance, I suppose. There are other, better episodes in the run but this one is serviceable Saturday afternoon entertainment, I'd say.
DAD WISDOM/THE QUOTABLE COBRA
"Breaking into a museum is murder on the lower back."
"'A Salute To Gilligan's Island?" You are a TRUE aficionado of fine art!"
"Then maybe I should start flushing your diamonds down the toilet just to teach you how to talk to a lady. I'm running out of time on my parking meter: do you want the diamonds or don't you?"
"With all due respect, I'm a trained operative, skilled at infiltration, escaping detection, and--"
"And getting caught. With all due respect."
"You all had freckles?"
"No, we all wore glasses. But the 'Bespectacled Mob' didn't really roll of the tongue."
"A simple rock, forged by the cauldron of geologic evolution into this small jewel."
"Yeah, there's nothing funny about a Turkish prison."
"You're an expensive first date."
"How do you figure that?"
"We just started dating and I'm already getting you diamonds."
"The danger gives you an edge you don't have when you're exercising"
"Ok. You win. I'll have dinner with you."
"That's like a fish who could breathe air."
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to get blood and brains off the upholstery? Especially when it's a loved one?"
"I said she was bright, ambitious, and charming."
"You left out she was a burglar"
"I don't want you to miss a SECOND of the Skipper's wisdom. YOU go to the salute and I'LL steal the diamonds."
"Fix the laser scanners. Adjust the pressure plates. You forgot the one essential fix: FIRE COBRA!"
"So Mr. Niles. Who's you hire to run your payroll department--D.B. Cooper?"
NEXT WEEK
A hacker who looks astonishingly like Neil Young breaks into Cobra's security system (I know, I KNOW) to get Cobra to rescue his Internet girlfriend. Yes, it's an episode about cybersex (though it never calls it that) and the Internet. From 1994. And it's just as wrong-headed and hilarious as it sounds. And it's one of the episodes that set me on this path. In seven, "Lost in Cyberspace." Join us then, won't you?