Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 23 (Badge of Honor)

Russ Sarko is a decent enough police officer.  He’s fairly close to retirement.  That’s why it’s so difficult when he botches an raid.  He’s fired and told to clear out his desk.  Before he leaves, though, he finds a sheriff’s badge.

Now, if this weren’t Friday the 13th:  The Series, you would be forgiven for thinking that this was an ordinary badge.  No.  This is not an ordinary badge.  Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed items, all of which involve killing people.  This is one such item.  When the badge is touched to a person’s body, the person is killed.  The death almost looks like electrocution, but played at varying speeds.  When it’s over, the badge returns to the user’s hand.  Russ uses the badge to go after the people that killed his wife.

What makes this item unusual is that it’s the first item featured that is used solely to kill.  Many of the other items so far had some benefit, such as spitting out money or making a person younger.  In other cases, the item created a surrogate to carry out the murder, thus creating an alibi.  Here, the only benefit Russ gets is killing someone he wanted to kill anyway.  Plus, he has to touch the person directly, anyway.  I mean, it’s cleaner than shooting someone, but that’s about it.

This episode made me wonder if maybe they were running short on ideas.  An item that just kills isn’t very creative.  I think maybe they just wanted to do a cop-themed episode and came up with this.  The acting is about what you’d expect of the era, including an overacting captain.

The episode was a little strange.  First off, the effect for the deaths was kind of weird.  It looked like maybe they were experimenting with effects or something.  It didn’t really work.  Also, spoiler alert:  Russ keeps his dead wife in a separate room in his house.  All I can say is: Creepy!

I don’t think I’d include this in a best-of list for the series.  I can see where they’re trying some new stuff, but it doesn’t quite work out.  In a lot of ways, the series is all over the place.  Many episodes feature some new location or theme and this was one of them.  It’s almost like an anthology show with  regular characters.  One of the advantages of DVD sets is that you get all of the episodes.  If not for that, I’d say that the episode was worth skipping.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 2 (The Poison Pen)

You’d think that using a cursed item to predict someone’s death would attract attention.  You’d be right, especially if a group of people were looking for such an item.  When Ryan and Micki inherited an antique shop, they found that many of the items sold through the shop were cursed, so they began looking to retrieve the items with the help of their uncle’s former business partner, Jack.

One such item is a quill pen that allows the user to ‘predict’ someone’s death by writing out the details of their demise.  When a brother at a monastery is able to predict several deaths in short order, Jack sends Micky and Ryan in, disguised as monks, so that they can find and retrieve the pen.

What they find is that two of the monks aren’t really monks, at all.  Brother Le Croix and Brother Currie have come to the monastery to hide after some shady dealings, only found that someone’s offered a lot of money for the property.  If they can kill the right people, Le Croix will be in a position to accept the offer and run off with the money.

This was a somewhat decent offering, considering how early it was in the series.  I do have a few questions, though.  First, it seems odd that Micki and Ryan are able to get into the Monastery so easily.  All Jack has to do is forge some papers saying that they’re from another monastery.  Granted, this is before the Internet, but you’d think it would be a little harder to get in.  If two people transferred into a retail store and the manager hadn’t heard anything about it, you can bet the district manager would get a call within a few minutes.

What I want to know is how Micki, a woman, able to pass herself off as a monk so easily?  Apparently, it doesn’t take much beyond a loose-fitting robe to fool monks.  All Ryan had to do was say that she’s taken a vow of silence.  In their defense, maybe the monks don’t get out much.  For that matter, why was it necessary for both Micki and Ryan to go?  Couldn’t Ryan have gone alone, especially considering that Jack was going to join them later?

In the end, they get the pen.  Jack states that the pen can only do evil things; apparently, no one has attempted to use the pen to win the lottery or heal the sick.  The only apparent use is killing people.  It seems kind of simple to not even mention an attempt being made to use the pen for other uses.  It would be so easy to simply say that the cursed items have a corrupting influence.

That’s really where these early episodes fail.  The stories could do well with a little more complexity.  There’s only the basic premise that Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil.  We don’t even know to what end.  Simply that there’s something about that deal that led to the items being cursed and subsequently sold to an unsuspecting populace.

Normally, I might say to watch the series if you can get it streaming.  If you do that, I wouldn’t recommend making plans past the first few episodes.  This is the kind of series you might catch while changing channels and maybe watch it until the end, just for a few laughs.  Consider that the original air date is October 5, 1987.

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