This Guy Is Full of Green Light: Bryant's Review of "Golden Years" Episode 3


This is the THIRD PART of an article by Bryant Burnette summarizing the Golden Years television show.  

This was originally posted at Burnette's blog, thetruthinsidethelie.blogspot.com

Episode 3 (airdate 07/25/1991)




In this episode:

Terry is awoken in the middle of the night by an informant, who calls her to let her know that Dr. Akins has been murdered. She visits the scene of the crime, and puts two and two together: Jude Andrews is eliminating people who know about Harlan Williams' curious age problem. She calls Crewes and lets him know about her suspicions, and tells him her plan: she wants to grab Harlan and Gina and go on the run with them. Why? Because she likes Gina, and doesn't want her to end up in a ditch with her throat cut.

She pays the Williamses a call, and convinces them to trust her and go with her. She gets them out not long before Andrews arrives, but she's left him a message: "Just like old times," signed with the initial "T" inside a heart. Andrews recalls the "old times" she is referring to: her blackmailing him to keep him from killing someone. Jude brings in an associate, Fredericks, and the two of them begin liasing with local and state law enforcement, trying to locate the fugitives.

The fugitives, in the meantime, have set a course: they are, at Gina's urging, heading for Chiacgo. Their daughter, Francie, lives there; she, apparently, has been involved with nearly every unpopular anti-government movement imaginable since the late sixties, so she ought to be able to help. Terry agrees, and then decides they need to ditch their car (since it's presumably being looked for) for another. Her solution: she steals them a hearse.

Fredericks has gotten a list of all vehicles reported stolen anywhere near where Terry's car was found, though, and the episode ends on Andrews intuiting that she's is responsible for the hearse that was reported stolen at the same mall.

As a production, this isn't a bad episode; all of the acting is good (with the exception of a weird and pointless crime-scene photographer character), and things move at a good pace. There are a lot of logical problems in the screenplay, though. Like the first two, this episode was scripted by King himself, and he wants us to believe that Andrews would be coming to kill Gina and kidnap Harlan, but that killing a crime-scene photographer would take precedence over that. So Andrews kills Akins, then -- in the same night -- kills the crime-scene photographer, then goes back to his motel and chills out until the next morning. Then, he gets back to it and heads for the Williams house.

Why would Andrews not immediately go for Harlan and Gina? Wouldn't it make more sense to conduct that operation under cover of night, rather than wait to do it on a nice, clear morning?

Even more senseless: Terry's plan to steal a hearse. She rationalizes it by saying that nobody would think to look for them in something as gaudy and noticeable as a hearse. That's good logic, except for the fact that the hearse's owner is likely to report it missing, and it's going to be very easy to be on the lookout for a stolen hearse.

That's just sloppy writing on King's part. I say "sloppy"; really, though, it's downright awful writing, as is Andrews' erratic approach to cleaning up this problem for The Shop.

Otherwise, though, this is a fairly good episode. It was directed by Michael Gornick, who had previously directed Creepshow 2.

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