The world lost some of its magic with the passing of Harry Anderson. He looms large in the lives of the Sestras. When it comes to the original incarnation of "Must-See TV," the well both of us go back to time and again isn't The Cosby Show or Family Ties or Cheers. It's Night Court. And Harry Anderson is smack dab in the middle of that universe as the magical, big-hearted, Mel Tormé-loving magistrate Harry T. Stone. We're both Sestra Pros when it comes to that show, and we'd like to pay tribute to Anderson by scatting our way through our 20 favorite Harry-centric episodes.
All You Need is Love (Season 1, Episode 1): Harry Anderson’s appearances on Cheers made enough of an impression that NBC trusted him (and Night Court creator Reinhold Weege) with a spot in that coveted "Must-See TV" lineup. (Thank you, Brandon Tartikoff!) I’ll be the first to admit the first few episodes felt a little awkward. The blue jeans-and-denim-jacket look never worked on Harry and I definitely preferred the vintage suits and hats and neckties that became Harry Stone staples. Harry’s love for Mel Tormé was introduced in the premiere episode, much meaty material was generated from that connection and it never felt forced. On Harry T. Stone’s first night on the bench, he really came across as an immature, unprofessional, unstable judge. After all, he was deciding the fates of defendants before him with the flip of a coin! What we didn't know until the end of the episode was that he wasn’t relying on luck, he made each verdict utilizing a double-headed coin. Charming and disarming, that was Harry Stone. (~Leah)
Harry on Trial (Season 2, Episode 7): There were a few senior judges who never liked Harry’s unorthodox way of handling his courtroom. Judge Willard (Jason Bernard) was a particular thorn in Judge Stone’s side who refused to see Harry’s point of view that “a little levity never hurt.” (Wise words: I’ve used that line numerous times in my own career.) Judge Willard complained to the Judicial Review Board and Harry had to defend himself against accusations of unprofessional behavior. We got to see his court officers rally around him to try and protect his judgeship, although despite their good intentions, they almost sealed his fate. We also learned Harry goes above and beyond for defendants who need his help. Lucky for him judicial review board Judge Martin Landis – played with unlimited whimsy by Ray Walston – was on the same page as Harry and a happy ending was had by all … except Judge Willard and his dickie. (~L)
Nuts About Harry (Season 2, Episode 14): Harry Stone was the kind of guy who ordered sea monkeys out of comic books. He was described in this episode as an '80s kind of guy. That came in handy when four lovable psychiatric patients (James Cromwell and his talking hand, taller-than-Bull Kevin Peter Hall, silent Kate Zentall and the other one, Charles Bouvier) appeared before him in court. In a nutshell, the judge served as the straight man for rib ticklers like John Larroquette's "Can you say Dan?" exchange with Hall, but Harry really hit his stride when making an impassioned speech about P.T. Barnum's great egress to the gun-toting mute Ann. Anderson delivered his first jokes of the episode in a storage closet, but what really made it special was how he got through to her by picking up on her non-verbal cues. He got justice for all the loonies before we all got a reminder that we no longer hear "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" enough anymore. (~Paige)
Halloween, Too (Season 3, Episode 5): I suppose we were meant to consider Lana Wagner (Karen Austin), Billie Young (Ellen Foley) and Christine Sullivan (Markie Post) to be Harry's main love interests until Season 8, so the women guest stars spending time with the magistrate never posed much of a threat. Free-spirited Kimberley Daniels (Mary-Margaret Humes) was a horse of a different color, though. From the minute she ran into Harry sorting plastic snakes for a party in his office, Kimberley seemed like she possibly could be his soulmate, matching him quip for quip with the same wacky sense of humor that usually made his bailiffs roll their eyes. Well, at least she was until she was brought in front of him with Edna Sneer (Anne Ramsey in her trademark sandpaper style) for lewd behavior in Central Park. That might have garnered Kimberley a pass if she hadn't been crafting spells as a witch at the time. Harry wound up with a trick instead of the treat. (~P)
Wheels of Justice (Season 3, Episodes 9-10): It was only a matter of time before Harry would get a case that made him rethink his career in the first place. And we couldn't really blame the judge for getting upset when he had to rule in favor of a nasty landlord over a down-on-their-luck mother and son (Susan Ruttan and Harold P. Pruett). Having a teenage boy rail at him in court and call him "Pig" can really bring a guy down. Bumpkins Bob and June Wheeler (Brent Spiner and Annie O'Donnell with perfect delivery in their first appearance on the show) and their little pig-tailed daughter (Keri Houlihan) made things worse. But what made it all better was Dan Fielding's unexpected and strident speech to the former judge ... and Harry's hands-off payback when he rebounded enough to take the assistant DA's advice and get back to work and the public who needed him. (~P)
Leon, We Hardly Knew Ye (Season 3, Episode 16): Since the writers wouldn’t give Harry a steady girlfriend -- and don’t read into that too much, they didn’t give him a steady boyfriend either -- Stone decided to become a parent instead. He became a foster father to Leon, the shoe-shining orphan played by Bumper Robinson. Harry got to play Daddy for three episodes until a social worker arranged for Leon to be adopted by a professional but not-so-cool couple (“A bat and a puck??”) Leon went on to do what any self-suspecting at-risk youth probably would do in that type of situation: He put himself first and bolted, breaking Harry’s heart in the process. We really saw that Anderson could deliver the goods in a more dramatic way between quips. (~L)
Could This Be Magic? (Season 3, Episode 18): Harry always got excited when he saw a familiar face or famous person in his courtroom. Beyond running across his beloved Mel, remember his reaction to old friend Hacksaw (Andrew Bloch) in the pilot or the the international beauty contestants in the first season? So when his childhood hero, magician Philip Falcone (Carl Ballantine) wound up a defendant, Harry just had to help. He invited Philip to stay with him in his apartment. Falcone took advantage and utterly cleaned out Harry. I don’t know if the writers intended to use residual anger because this episode aired soon after Leon abandoned Harry. But you could count on one hand the times when Stone truly got pissed at someone. His ire was very apparent after Falcone gets arrested and hauled back into court, adding insult to injury by wearing one of Harry’s trademark suits (“It’s my fault ... for believing in you.”) I would curl up in the fetal position if he said that to me with so much contempt. Of course, Falcone saw the error of his ways and tried to make amends because Harry had that kind of positive effect on the people around him. (~L)
Hurricane (Season 3, Episodes 21-22): When Hurricane Mel threatened the New York metropolitan area, Stone was pretty excited. After all, he considered the storm to be named after his idol. But when Mel caused four women from a Lamaze class to go into labor, things got pretty hairy for Harry. It was all hands on deck as Dan dickered with an angry single mom (Pam Grier), Bull and Flo (Richard Moll and Florence Halop) tried to deal with an unnerved father (Dick Butkus) and Christine and the returned Wheelers kept pace with a human vending machine popping out triplets (Marcia Del Mar). Harry and Mac (Charles Robinson) got the worst of it, yuppies Babs and Chad (Rebecca York and James Widdoes). But after uniting the Ulins in matrimony by delivering their child while simultaneously signing the marriage certificate with a pen in his mouth as "Howie Stallone," Anderson wrapped up the two-parter in style, talking to God about the amazing miracles that happened on his watch. (~P)
The Next Voice You Hear (Season 4, Episode 1): Night Court suffered some horrible losses off screen that became integral parts of character development. Selma Diamond passed away after two years on the show and her replacement Halop died following her season. They were addressed perfectly by show creator Weege and Anderson in the first episode of the fourth season. After receiving a long-lost letter from his absent mother and finding out she too had passed away, Stone explained his non-reaction with poignant words about how he had lost the two bailiffs -- women who had been there for him and were more like family than just co-workers. How could he miss a mother he never knew the way he knew them? He learned to when stepfather Buddy Ryan (affable John Astin) told Harry about his mom, but what really got to me was the seamless way in which the show addressed losses of characters we loved almost as much as Stone did. (~P)
Dan's Operation (Season 4, Episodes 5-6): Let's not kid ourselves, the greatest love story on Night Court was between Harry and Dan (Come on, Leah already said not that way!) The characters were so diametrically opposed that they never got boring over the nine-season run and Anderson and Larroquette were so perfectly acclimated to their roles and in sync with one another that their reactions to each another livened up even the most mundane scenes. Credit the show for not turning the womanizing Fielding into a saint overnight, just bit by bit and season by season, he became a tad less offensive. When Dan needed an operation for his ulcer, it took Harry the bulk of a couple episodes to discover why he was so scared of the procedure. The duo followed the first parter's verbal tussle with the second parter's wordless reconciliation. Stone knew under all Fielding's crap was a decent human, and since he believed it, the rest of us could too. (~P)
Her Honor (Season 4, Episodes 21-22/Season 5, Episodes 1-2): The real gem of this four-parter (?!?) was the fifth-season opener. Stone lost his judgeship at the same time Christine was appointed to the bench. It's a plot twist you probably would expect. The way Harry reacted is what made Night Court one of a kind. After Anderson masterfully rode jet-powered skates through the cafeteria to so much audience applause Spiner's Bob Wheeler had to restart his next line -- "Don't worry, he's all right, the Girl Scouts broke his fall" -- Harry planned a big stunt. Sky rockets, a radar tracking system, rendered suet, AstroTurf, yak hair and three cases of ladies' dress shields get delivered to his apartment. Eventually Stone emerged in some kind of silver spandex superhero suit carrying a sack bigger than Santa's. The conclusion found Harry talking an inventor (Kenneth Tigar) out of suicide only to have the guy steal his stunt and hang glide to the Statue of Liberty, but what I still want to know was what the suet and dress shields were meant to be used for. (~P)
Safe (Season 5, Episode 5): Five-plus seasons of Harry’s death-defying stunts and he almost got done in by Harry Houdini’s safe on his favorite holiday, Halloween. I'm not sure what the impetus was for series writer Tom Reeder deciding to shove Harry Anderson in a box for almost an entire episode and have the oxygen-deprived judge engage in a conversation with Jiminy Cricket "Let your conscience be your guide" Harry, but it worked. “Harry up and get me out of here!” he quipped early on in his stay. The kicker was that none of the show's regulars realized he was in danger -- except Art (Mike Finneran), who didn't count -- they just thought it was another one of Stone's pranks, obviously shades of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." But it did curb Harry’s practical jokes, at least for a few weeks. ~L
Constitution (Season 5, Episodes 9-10): This was definitely an ensemble episode. In fact, the strongest scene didn't even involve Harry. But by this point in the series, Stone had perfected his role as leader of the chaos. There were more chaos than usual when diabetic Roz Russel (Marsha Warfield) quit her job, suffered from an insulin overdose and disappeared in the courthouse while the “founding fathers” served as defendants in a court case and an expensive special celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Constitution spiraled out of control. In the latter case, a TV director employed idiot dancers ("I get to carry the Constipitution!" ) and enabled a man who stole an original draft of the historic document threaten to burn it. Harry literally ran all over the courthouse – with the elevators out of service, of course, and "Skinny Butt" out of shape -- but still kept his wits enough to address everyone’s concerns and give Dan decent fashion advice. ~L
Heart of Stone (Season 5, Episode 17): Harry started the episode by forcing Dan, Christine, Mac, Bull and Roz to become members of "The Bowling Stones" and showing off a ball that looked like a bloodshot eyeball on crack. But when Leslie (Jude Mussetter) showed up, he dumped his teammates in favor of getting it on with his college girlfriend back in his chambers. Harry covered Jean Harlow's eyes with a Post-It and gave a thumbs-up to his favorite picture of Mel Tormé before revealing what he wore ... or didn't wear ... under his robe. Problem was that Dan had a similar idea for nookie. To make a long story short, Stone and Fielding wound up standing on the ledge outside his office. It's another of those dynamic and hysterical episodes in which Anderson and Larroquette played off each other to perfection. And rest assured, even in just a codpiece Harry could make the peace between a wife (she was married??) and her husband. ~P
Top Judge (Season 5, Episode 20): Harry started the episode by accidentally killing a senior judge, a double whammy because this judge understood Harry’s sense of humor, so he lost an ally too. To make matters worse, young judge Jimmy Cleaver (Gary Kroeger) -- even his name was annoying -- tried to steal Harry’s unofficial prankster title while he was in mourning. We learned Stone became a judge in the first episode because he was the only one home on a Sunday to take the call on the mayor's last day in office. But what mayor intentionally made the even-younger Cleaver a judge? I’ll admit I was suckered when Jimmy got the better of Stone in court -- how did he manage to make the whole bench disintegrate? – and Harry’s concession speech to Christine had me thinking he was OK with losing gracefully. But I should have had more faith in series writer Dennis Koenig. The Harry we know and love came through and easily put Judge Cleaver back in his place. And we never had to see Jimmy Cleaver again. ~L
Strange Bedfellows (Season 6, Episode 17): This one's primarily Dan Fielding's story, but it also featured the biggest and best of Mel Tormé's annual appearances. While Dan partook in a two-person "debate" in a hotel room with his opponent for political office, Harry tried to make amends to Mel after infecting him with a particularly nasty strain of the flu -- "the germs mated inside of me," Tormé moaned. Stone tried everything to make his hero comfortable, but the "Velvet Fog" wasn't having any of it. Nevertheless, we knew by now how persuasive Harry could be. He ended up posing for an accidental paparazzi photo with Tormé that every diehard fan could only dream of taking with his/her idol, although Harry probably wasn't quite as happy about the fact that the jazz singer threatened to hurt the judge with his own armadillo. I always think about what great fun this one must have been to film. ~P
From Snoop to Nuts (Season 6, Episodes 18-19): The sixth season was my favorite. The characters worked so well together and the writers truly hit the right notes for every one of them. To paraphrase Goldilocks and the Three Bears, this season felt “just right.” I’ve definitely quoted more episodes from this season than any other. Anderson double-dipped on this arc, he wrote and starred in the eps in which poor Stone suffered personal and professional crises of faith. I’ve always been curious to know whether the twist that Buddy was Harry’s real father was his idea or if the producers told him to incorporate it into the script. It took a bit of tap dancing to explain how that was possible, but I suspended my disbelief since Astin was so darn entertaining. When Buddy got serious, you couldn't help but listen to him. And drunk/hungover Christine was quite amusing, even if she almost got Harry killed (“Oh, I’ll bet Eddie gave her a Long Island iced tea.”) ~L
A Closer Look (Season 7, Episode 23): Anderson successfully completed the show trifecta -- acting, writing, directing -- when he took the reins for a whimsical look at the proceedings of the night court through the lens of a tabloid news program. Viewing the same sets we've been watching for seven years from different angles alone makes the episode feel completely fresh. M*A*S*H featured several episodes of journalist interviews with members of the cast as their characters to great effect and eventually our X-Files rewatch will get us to a successful Cops integration, but it truly takes a deft touch from all involved. This one does a great job of melding the idiosyncrasies of the characters with a unique look at the process of conducting their court after dark. As the television reporter Ed Druthers (Bob Sarlatte) perfectly summed up, Stone handled 134 arraignments, 15 trials, four jail sentences and sawed two defendants in half within the confines of this show. ~P
Alone Again, Naturally (Season 8, Episode 17): It only took eight seasons, but the writers finally gave Harry a girlfriend who lasted more than one episode. Unfortunately, Margaret Turner was played by Mary Cadorette, best known for starring with John Ritter in the extremely disappointing Three’s Company spinoff, Three’s a Crowd. Although she was introduced in a His Girl Friday-like manner that surely would have appealed to retro-loving Harry, Margaret didn't seem particularly likable and the writers really didn’t give her much of a chance to win over audiences with only four episodes. But, like in real life, when your friends are with someone they love you just want them to be happy. So I couldn't help but feel badly for Harry when he was about to propose marriage to Margaret and ended up losing her forever to the Witness Protection Program. I’ll never listen to Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston’s "It Takes Two" the same way again. ~L
Opportunity Knock Knocks (Season 9: Episodes 20-21): Even though "The 1992 Boat Show" aired out of order after this one, this was the series finale. Christine was elected to office and Dan decided to follow her to Washington, D.C. Even Harry was looking at potential career choices, one of which involved touring with Mel! But during his last case with Christine and Dan, Harry met two elderly musicians whose songs provided him with rare, touching memories of his mother and childhood. The young and inexperienced Judge Stone who once yelled “Hacksaw?!” across a crowded courtroom had been replaced with the older and wiser Judge Stone who presided with respectful awe over the feuding defendants before him. For this last case, Harry worked his magic and the partnership was saved. And in turn, Stone realized the magic in his own life was in night court. ~L
We kind of wish we could have stayed in Night Court too, but thankfully we have the nine seasons to look back at and laugh and cry over. Watching Harry Stone talk about death right now hits a little too close to home, but listening to the words he was saying with all the emotion he put into them with does help. Thanks for the chuckles, Harry, this way to the "great egress."
Sestra Amateur:
Paramedics are racing to a Pittsburgh hospital with a man who suffered cardiac arrest. Paramedic Leonard Betts, played by the always-entertaining Paul McCrane -- now there’s a man who should be working the convention circuit -- briefly saves the patient’s life. Unfortunately, their ambulance gets T-boned and Leonard loses his head over it. I’m not talking figuratively; it’s completely severed from his body. His lucky partner, Michele Wilkes, walks away with just a few scratches. Looks like Betts isn’t OK with being dead. His headless body gets up, clocks a morgue attendant upside the head then wanders away. How can he see where he’s going?
Sculder are called to the scene. Maybe they can wrap up this one quickly and catch a Penguins game. Nope, looks like they played the Sabres in Buffalo when this first aired on Jan. 29. 1997. Dana thinks Leonard’s body was stolen for profit. Fox disagrees. Security footage conveniently obscures the head area with visual snow. Our heroes root around in a drawer of medical waste and find Betts' head. Scully autopsies it and clearly he’s a miracle of modern medicine -- he looks normal and healthy, especially when he opens his eyes and tries to talk. Go ahead and explain that one away, Dana. No matter what you say, it will sound like you’re in denial.
Meanwhile Fox goes to Leonard’s apartment, where the bathroom looks like a crime scene. I don’t even want to guess what that tub full of brownish-red water is supposed to be. I’m surprised Mulder didn’t drain it to see if anything was hiding in there. Think about it, Fox, if there was a body in there, it wouldn’t need to come up for air without a head, right? Scully calls Mulder to let him know her PET scans have been unsuccessful due to some type of radiation affecting the images. She partially explains away Betts' movements but doesn’t give Fox the whole story. By the way, care to guess where Leonard was hiding? Looks like he’s growing a new head too.
Paramedic Wilkes tells Mulder about Betts' gift for diagnosing people with cancer. Prior to the accident, he was never sick or injured. He’s David Dunn from Unbreakable until he, you know, broke. Dana continues testing Leonard’s original head and allows a pathologist to view a slice of the brain. They learn poor Betts was riddled with cancer. Wilkes goes back to work, but she zones out during a medical call when she thinks she hears Leonard on the radio diagnosing a patient. Wonder what that’s about. Maybe there’s a third head in the mix, but I guess he would need another hand to work the radio.
Sculder go all the way to the University of Maryland to have scientist Charles Burks analyze another slice of Betts' head, this time via the use of aura photography. The image shows a shadow of the body, similar to Dr. Burks’ description of a lizard showing the aura of its severed tail. Luckily, Dana doesn’t try to explain away this result. Fox tells her he found iodine in Leonard’s apartment that has been used for limb regeneration in salamanders. Mulder suggests the cancer-ridden form is Leonard’s normal stasis.
Leonard Betts’ fingerprints come back to a man named Albert Tanner. The agents meet with Albert’s mother, Elaine, and see a picture of Leonard on her table. Apparently, Albert died in a car accident six years earlier. Guess we know what Leonard’s kryptonite is. Wilkes goes looking for the man who sounded like Betts and learns he’s the new paramedic on the block. Isn’t it weird how you can regrow your head at least twice and still suffer from male-pattern hair loss?
Leonard kills Michele to keep his secret. He tries to run from a security guard, who tackles Leonard and handcuffs him to a car door handle. Looks like Betts can also grow a new thumb. After learning Wilkes was killed with an injection of potassium chloride, Sculder find cancerous medical waste in the trunk of Betts' car. Mulder thinks it's sustenance for Leonard. After all, a regrowing boy has to eat. As it turns out, it’s Elaine Turner’s car.
Back at Elaine’s house with a search warrant, Mom Tanner doesn't buy Scully’s claim Leonard committed cold-blooded murder, since God has a purpose for him. Betts goes to a bar to kill time while his thumb continues to regenerate. He follows a man outside who presumably has lung cancer and takes what he needs. Afterward, Betts regrows another head which comes up from inside his body and out his mouth. The extraordinarily cheesy special effects don’t help that scene at all. At the same time, Sculder find Leonard’s storage unit, the now-dead lung-cancer man (not to be confused with Cancer Man) and Betts, who tries to run them over with his car. Fox shoots and Leonard’s car bursts into flames.
Sculder argue while standing over Leonard’s charred corpse. Mulder still thinks Betts and Tanner are the same person. Scully doubts it, so they exhume Albert’s body, which is still in the casket. Mulder thinks there is still a live version of Leonard Betts out there somewhere. And he’s right, Elaine Tanner is bathing Leonard in iodine. Makes you wonder about Betts' father, doesn’t it? Fox and Dana stake out the Tanner home until paramedics show up. Thinking it’s Leonard in the ambulance, they hold the medics at gunpoint until they learn the call came for Elaine. Guess she had cancer because Leonard removed something from his mother’s chest.
Scully rides with Elaine and the paramedics to the hospital, then realizes Betts hitched a ride too. Leonard claims Scully has something he needs – does Dana have cancer?? – then attacks her. She manages to fight him off with some decent kicks inside a closed ambulance. He punches her but Scully charges the paddles and kills him with a zap to the head. Mulder drives them home, but Scully wakes up in the middle of the night with a nosebleed ... at least we know Gillian Anderson is going to get some meaty material in future eps.
Now let’s discuss suspension of disbelief. I think I’ve been pretty liberal with it considering this is a show about unexplained phenomena. But the timeline of this particular episode can’t be more than a few days because Michele Wilkes has visible injuries from the ambulance crash at the beginning of the episode. So, over the course of a couple of days, Leonard establishes yet another alter ego – also a paramedic – gets credentials and falsified EMT certifications, completes an employment application and interviews, gets hired and immediately goes back to work at another Pittsburgh hospital without a trainer for his observation/probation period? Can you imagine any reputable medical transport company taking on those liability issues? I’ll believe Leonard coughed up yet another head before I’ll believe that.
Sestra Professional:
Sestra's Am's problems with suspension of disbelief aside, this episode had everything -- back story, a monster of the week, plenty of scares, cool quips courtesy of a trio of regular writers and the dramatic twist at the end. But that's not why "Leonard Betts" was the highest-rated show of all time. It aired right after the Super Bowl in 1997 and picked up an estimated 29.1 million viewers.
"We knew we'd get a huge audience," co-writer Vince Gilligan said in The Complete X-Files. "Chris really wanted to grab viewers who had never seen us before, and we knew the best way to do that would be with a really creepy stand-alone monster story."
But just remember -- to mash Rudyard Kipying with Jeff Foxworthy -- if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you may be an X-Files fan. Of course, back during the original run, social media was basically message boards and mailing lists, so there wasn't quite the same reaction to each and every episode that we've seen in the two revival seasons.
I don't even know how to respond to that: Nevertheless, actually "Leonard Betts" probably would be considered under the radar of most X-Philes. It's a real wheelhouse episode, but it moves next week's Scully-centric "Never Again" behind this one. Gillian Anderson has long held that she would have made different acting choices during filming for that one had she known what was coming at the denouement of this one.
It's a phenomenal and another underrated guest performance by Paul McCrane (who I knew best from Fame, but later became well known for roles on 24 and E.R.) He really gets to do it all as the many incarnations of Turner/Betts. And we thought Cigarette-Smoking Man had a lot of lives. This might have been around the time we stopped calling Smokey "Cancer Man" and started sticking with CSM.
I'm sorry, but you've got something I need: We're heading into a key run of Scully episodes, and it winds up starting here with one filmed after a couple of others we haven't seen yet. It wasn't just the Super Bowl opportunity that changed the landscape. Darin Morgan bowed out of his expected script so Gilligan, Frank Spotnitz and John Shiban reportedly whipped this one up based on a few old ideas and a couple of new ones. Spotnitz had broached the idea of Dana having cancer the previous season, according to the official fourth-season episode guide. It was tabled then, but fit pretty seamlessly into the tableau at this point.
Scully seems pretty unconvinced about what she's actually seeing throughout the episode, but she still works hard to make or break the case with science. And then she gets to save herself for a change, finally killing Betts in a way Mulder probably wouldn't have thought of in the same situation.
I think I got the toy surprise: Fox, who looked more uncomfortable handling the surgical remains than he has been since getting bile on his hands way back in Season 1's "Squeeze," is left to hazard the guesses that all of us were making while watching the show. His theory about evolutionary advances being more cataclysmic and less gradual is a little over my pay grade, though. Dana seems beside herself more than usual and she draws the best reaction shots, but at least Mulder gets the best banter (i.e., telling the pathologist examining the brain that they wanted "a slice to go.")
Meta with Frank Shigan: A character named John Gilnitz becomes a hallmark of episodes written by Gilligan, Spotnitz and Shiban. The hapless soul in this one is one of Betts' victims. ... According to the episode guide, the faculty of the prestigious Berklee School of Music was so knocked out by Mark Snow's score for this episode that they asked him to focus his guest lecture on the seamless changes of mood and tempo from the opening teaser. ... And it doesn't play so well now, but the shot of Leonard's new head emerging from the old one actually netted Emmy nominations for the show's special effect supervisor Toby Lindala and key makeup artist Laverne Basham.
Guest star of the week: All Betts are off, McCrane, by a head! Actually by a whole body. The veteran TV-movie actor gets to play both hero and villain and really pulls it off. On top of that, I particularly marvel at scenes like the autopsy when Scully is coming at him with a scalpel or the heavily made-up Betts emerges from the tub with iodine liquid in his nose and mouth. We can see via the gag reel that it wasn't so easy.
Safe (Season 5, Episode 5): Five-plus seasons of Harry’s death-defying stunts and he almost got done in by Harry Houdini’s safe on his favorite holiday, Halloween. I'm not sure what the impetus was for series writer Tom Reeder deciding to shove Harry Anderson in a box for almost an entire episode and have the oxygen-deprived judge engage in a conversation with Jiminy Cricket "Let your conscience be your guide" Harry, but it worked. “Harry up and get me out of here!” he quipped early on in his stay. The kicker was that none of the show's regulars realized he was in danger -- except Art (Mike Finneran), who didn't count -- they just thought it was another one of Stone's pranks, obviously shades of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." But it did curb Harry’s practical jokes, at least for a few weeks. ~L
Top Judge (Season 5, Episode 20): Harry started the episode by accidentally killing a senior judge, a double whammy because this judge understood Harry’s sense of humor, so he lost an ally too. To make matters worse, young judge Jimmy Cleaver (Gary Kroeger) -- even his name was annoying -- tried to steal Harry’s unofficial prankster title while he was in mourning. We learned Stone became a judge in the first episode because he was the only one home on a Sunday to take the call on the mayor's last day in office. But what mayor intentionally made the even-younger Cleaver a judge? I’ll admit I was suckered when Jimmy got the better of Stone in court -- how did he manage to make the whole bench disintegrate? – and Harry’s concession speech to Christine had me thinking he was OK with losing gracefully. But I should have had more faith in series writer Dennis Koenig. The Harry we know and love came through and easily put Judge Cleaver back in his place. And we never had to see Jimmy Cleaver again. ~L
