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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