Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 18 (Brain Drain)

They say that the devil is in the details.  Part of having a good story is giving the right amount of the right kind of information.  Unfortunately, Friday the 13th: The Series didn’t do that.  Some episodes were better than others, but all we really know is that Uncle Lewis left an antiques shop to Micki and Ryan.  When they discover that many of the items are cursed, they enlist the help of Jack Marshak to retrieve them.

In Brain Drain, Harry goes from having an IQ of 58 to being a genius.  His secret is something called the Trephanator.  It pokes a hole in the back of the neck of both the user and a victim.  The camera shows a neat shot of some liquids flowing and suddenly the user has the intelligence of the victim.  Harry magically becomes Dr. Stewart Pangborn, who continues the work of his victim, Dr. Robeson.

It’s not really clear why he does this.  He could easily skip town.  Granted, the trephinator isn’t the kind of thing you throw in your trunk.  It’s this big contraption and we wouldn’t have much of a plot if Harry didn’t use it again.  Enter Dr. Viola Rhodes, former love interest of Jack Marshak.  Has any former love interest ever made it to the end of an episode?  Even if she lives, there’s no chance that she’s going to stick around.

As with many of the previous episodes, the trio of antique hunters is able to get the cursed item back to their shop where they can store it safely.  Intelligence for the user comes at a price.  The victim is reduced in intelligence greatly and eventually dies.  (Harry becomes the item’s final victim, as is tradition in this series.)

As I mentioned, not many details are given.  It’s an interesting premise, all right.  Who wouldn’t want to be smarter?  However, Dr. Robeson is working on perfecting AI by teaching a gorilla’s brain to speak.  He’ll then transfer the intelligence onto a chip or something.  It’s not really explained how this works.  I’d imagine that this is one of those things were an expert on AI was sitting at home watching the episode, sarcastically wondering why they didn’t think of that.   (“Oh, yeah.  Just hook a primate brain up to a chip.  Why not?”)

It’s kind of a shame that all of these gifts come at a high cost.  I understand that they’re cursed, but every victim seems to have to die.  It’s not enough that the victim winds up with the mental capacity of a two-year-old.  It’s also an all-or-nothing proposition.  Someone can’t transfer just a little.  It might have made for a better story if Harry took a little at a time and worked his way up.

I’d say that the series so far has had as many marginal episodes as it has had horrible ones.  I’m kind of hoping that it picks up.  I really don’t remember a lot of these episodes.  I’m not sure if my memory is bad or if I didn’t watch it that much while it was first on.  Either one should tell me something.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 3 (Cupid's Quiver)

Lots of great things happened in the 1980s.  Back to the Future was released.  Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered.  Rubik’s Cube started the decade.  It was a pretty awesome decade.

There were a few not-so-great things that happened, too.  We had Friday the 13th: The Series to end the decade with.  It premiered in 1987 and started with some less-than-stellar episodes, such as Cupid’s Quiver.

This is the third episode of a series about Micki and Ryan, two cousins who inherit an antiques store and its cursed items.  With the help of their dead uncle’s former business partner, Jack, they’ve been retrieving those cursed items, like an ugly statue of Cupid.  How is this item cursed?  It allows the owner to make the target of his affection desire nothing else than to be with them.  Then, the owner kills the target.

The episode opens at a bar.  We have a guy being rejected by a woman, who happens to be on a date with another guy.  After she repeatedly tells him to get lost, he positions the statue and allows it to fire a small energy bolt at her.  After the pain subsides, she suddenly desires him.  It’s a shame, because her date seemed like a nice guy.

Well, the guy with the statue takes the woman to a hotel room upstairs, where they start making out.  That is, until he starts to kill her.  Just then, a group of fraternity brothers break into the room and take the statue.  It’s not clear what happens to the man or the woman.

Back at the frat house, the statue is noticed by Eddie Monroe, fellow member of the fraternity.  And by member, Eddie really means that he’s the janitor.  Anyway, that’s not going to stop him from stalking Laurie.  He gets the idea to steal the statue and use it on a random woman.  I don’t know how he knows what to do with the statue.  Then again, it is a cursed item.

He uses the statue on the random woman and takes her out in his beat-up car so they can make out.  He then leaves to relieve himself, only to return with a beehive.  At least, I assume it’s a beehive.  It might be a hornets’ net.  Either way, they sting her to death.  It’s kind of impressive that Eddie managed to walk all the way back to the car without getting stung.

It’s time for Eddie to use it on Laurie.  When Micki and Ryan try to intervene, Micki is shot with a bolt from Cupid, making her desire Eddie.  They eventually get the statue and put it in the vault beneath the store.  That doesn’t stop Ryan, the eternal horndog, from wanting to use it.  Seriously?  Like he doesn’t know how the statue works.

The only reason I watched the first four episodes is that the first DVD of the season-one set had the first four episodes.  I’m going to have to take a closer look at the second DVD before checking it out.  This one was a very confusing and poorly written episode.  It’s almost like they wrote a rough draft and just used that.  Consider the bar with the hotel above it.  What’s it called?  It’s called the Hotel Bar.  They couldn’t even come up with something lame to call it.

As I said, it’s not clear how anyone knows how to use the statue.  It’s not like it was activated accidentally.  Every time we see it used, it’s intentional.  This brings up the issue of consent, which is never mentioned.  Even if the woman suddenly wants the man, she’s under the influence of a cursed item.  It’s not really consensual.  Eddie is basically raping the women before killing them.

Also not clear is how Jack was able to get himself hired at the fraternity party as a bartender.  I don’t think it was explicitly stated whether or not he was serving alcohol, but he does appear to know how to make sodium pentothal from common household items.  That’s a pretty neat trick.

Overall, it’s a vaguely confusing story that’s not particularly good.  I’d say that it has potential, but it would take a lot of work to make this into a decent episode.  It’s one of those story ideas that was probably best left unused.


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