Dog Star Omnibus: Robey

I had a mind to blog up a few Friday the 13th: The Series episodes for this Halloween season, and specifically for Friday, October 13th. I missed that one, though, and as the month moves inexorably towards Samhain and the Great Pumpkin, I figured I'd better have a look at the few episodes I screencapped.

I've gone on at some length about my love of the show (here, here, here, and here for any new readers, and welcome to the madness), but this time around I have a copy of Alyse Wax's Curious Goods: Behind the Scenes of Friday the 13th - the Series. And while there is no shortage of quotable and pertinent material in this book, part of my procrastination in getting to this post was due to my not having found the time to transcribe any of the pages I dog-eared. (New job, sick kids, yadda yadda.) I'm fairly confident I'll be wasting everyone's time with more Friday the 13th in the future, though, and when I do, I'm equally sure Ms. Wax's work will be well represented. I'm still smiling that this book even exists, never mind that it's a treasure trove of Robey-and-Ryan mayhem and more.

Of the four of ten episodes I'd planned to do - and fingers crossed there'll be six more posts before Halloween! - the one I was looking forward to the most was:

because:

And while it's a perfectly interesting story to watch, it felt more Cronenberg than Friday the 13th. You'll never hear me complain about any Cronenberg to watch, but apparently he was somewhat aloof on the set (according to Robey in Curious Goods) and indifferent to the show itself. It shows. So let's skip it.

Like I say, it's a fine little story and all, but it feels like the cast got the week off.

Always nice to see (Cronenberg vet) Robert A. Silverman, though.

Next up:

I've been reading lots of Civil War stuff lately and figured this would be especially fun. But I struggle to come up with anything to say about it. Which isn't to say it's bad, just that it wasn't quite the episode I normally like to take apart and put back together here in the blog.

Some nice visuals and fun fx, though.

Atticus Rook - not a bad baddie name (Tom McCamus).

So sheesh, two episodes down and I wasn't feeling like blogging anything about them. Then I looked at:

And while I don't have too much to say about it, either - it's a compilation episode, where Ryan and Micki are trapped in the vault thanks to the hell-beyond machinations of Uncle Lewis, reliving selected scenes from the first season while Jack and Rashid (fellow traveler of the mystic and arcane) frantically work to free them - it's one abundant collection of unintentional Curious Goods meme-ry. Have a look!

Feeling fancy!

...

Micki and Ryan's acting mostly consists of freakout shots.

Mostly.

This raised eyebrow is fantastic. Elias Zarou is old-school-B-movie fun as Rashid.

I adore the crap out of this screencap.

"Bottle of Dreams" was the last episode of season one. Although it wasn't a cliffhanger, season two picked up exactly where it left off with:

I neglected to grab a screencap of the title. Sorry for the discontinuity.

Although the plot is a bit more in-depth it could essentially be summed up as a haunted house episode with a splash of show mythology, i.e. Uncle Lewis still meddling from Hell. Alyse Wax mentions in her book that she loved this one back in the day but it doesn't hold up too well. I agree. Even with the considerable latitude I give all things Friday the 13th, it's not the most compelling of episodes.