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 16 (Tattoo)

Gambling seems to be a mixed bag, morally.  It’s seen by many to be a victimless crime.  As long as you stay within your limit, what’s the problem?  Those that oppose it might point out that those that don’t stay within their limit might steal or physically hurt someone.

Take Tommy Chen.  As they say, he doesn’t have a gambling problem; he has a losing problem.  He’s borrowed from the wrong people and they want their money back.  Tommy has turned to gambling as a way of getting the money, but he’s up against someone with a cursed artifact.  One of the other players has a tattoo needle that can make the user lucky.  The catch is that they have to draw something deadly, like a venomous spider or snake.  When the tattooed person dies, the person who made the tattoo gets perfect luck.

One of my complaints with the previous episode, Vanity’s Mirror, was the lack of any direct moral lesson.  That holds true here, but the episode does seem to hit the marks with gambling.  The guy who Tommy owes money to isn’t a nice guy.  Tommy is also desperate enough to hurt and steal.  This is how he comes into possession of the cursed needle in the first place.

In hitting the marks, the episode is fairly cliché.  Both of the people that use the needle seem to know how to ink someone perfectly.  There’s also no shortage of available victims.  Several are tied up and another is so high on drugs that she can’t offer any resistance to danger.

Tommy is also shown to be a very unsympathetic character.   Most of the items require some sort of down side.  Usually, it’s death.  Tommy seems to have no problem using the needle knowing full well that it will result in someone’s death.  (I find it odd that so few of the people who use cursed items are either monsters to begin with or so easily persuaded to turn to evil.)

The entire series has been marginal episodes so far.  I’ve been getting DVDs from either the library or Netflix.  If you’re into light horror, this may be a good series for you, but I’d check it out of the library first.  This is one of the better episodes so far, but that’s not saying much.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 10 (Tales of the Undead)

Right now seems to be the golden age of movies and television inspired by comic books.  You have all sorts of DC and Marvel movies coming out.  Netflix has a few series available for streaming.  It used to be that the motion-picture offerings for fans of the medium weren’t that good.  Friday the 13th: The Series made such an attempt.

The series was about two cousins who inherited a store that sold cursed items.  One of those items turns out to be a cursed comic book, which their uncle had listed as a magazine.  Of the two cousins, Ryan is the one interesting in comics.  Micki?  Not so much.

Ryan is getting his weekly fix of comic books when he notices a first edition Tales of the Undead that happens to be signed.  The shop owner is planning on selling it at auction.  That is, until Cal steals it.  Cal, like Ryan, is a huge fan of comics and of Tales of the Undead in particular.  It was comics like that which inspired Ryan to draw.

What’s really interesting is how Cal manages to get away.  While holding the comic, he becomes angered and turns into Ferus the Invincible.  (This is portrayed using comic-like panels drawn to represent the transition.)  As Ferus, Cal is able to kill the shop owner and plow his way out of the store.

Ryan pays a visit to the guy who wrote the comic book, one Jay Star.  Jay is what you might call bitter regarding how the publisher came by the rights to Tales of the Undead.  Ryan hopes that Jay might know how to kill Ferus.  Since most heroes have a weakness, it couldn’t hurt to ask the guy who would have come up with the idea.

Jay isn’t too forthcoming with information, but he does track down Cal and subsequently kill him.  Jay then uses the magazine to get even with those who wronged him.  It’s up to Ryan and Micki to stop Ferus and get the magazine back.

This is the first time that Uncle Lewis’s business partner Jack Marshak doesn’t make an appearance.  He’s supposed to be off in a more-exotic location doing who knows what.  He’ll be absent from the next episode, too.  I was happy to see Ray Walston as Jay Star.   He plays Jay as a crotchety, bitter old man and quite well, I might add.  It’s almost the exact opposite of Boothby from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Ferus costume was a little weak.  I don’t know how much of it was costume design and how much of it was video transfer, but it came across as very dark and somewhat undefined.  It was supposed to be some sort of robot, but came across looking like a knight in armor.

One of the things I’ve always wondered is how much nostalgia affects how I remember video quality.  I seem to recall TV shows of the era being of decent quality, but that may be because that was what state of the art was back then.  Now, we have HD and low-definition video just doesn’t translate.  Many of the Friday the 13th episodes, this on included, seem to be of a lower quality.  I’m not really complaining, as I don’t really expect much.  It’s just that the costumes or other details can seem laughable at times.

The entire series seems a little less than serious at times.  It’s along the lines of The X-Files and Warehouse 13.  I’m not really sure how serious the show was supposed to be.  It’s always been a little on the cheesy side, but that may have been intentional.  (It may have also been limited by the standards used for broadcast TV.)

This was not one of the better episodes.  It’s not horrible, either.  This is one of the episodes you might watch if it came on cable one afternoon.  I wouldn’t pay to stream it or buy it.  However, if you can get it from the library, like I did, it might be entertaining to watch.

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