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You want to know how freaky the ending of this episode was? When it was over, I turned to the missus and said, "Why don't we watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia just to take the edge off?"
But before we can get to the big, freaky-deaky ending, I suppose we need to deal with what otherwise would have been a fairly pedestrian episode. The best and brightest of the 125th Precinct are trying to solve a kidnapping by staking out the ransom drop. The detectives manage to apprehend the dumb schmoe who shows up to pick up the ransom, and it turns out to be Vic Tyler, Sam's no-goodnik father.
Vic claims he's just doing the bidding of the horrible Pignato Brothers, the crime kingpins of legend and song, in order to pay off some ill-advised gambling debts. Sam, for one, is willing to believe him because, quite frankly, Vic plays his emotions like a Stradivarius. After all, this entire deal is going down just before what would have been 1973 Sam's fourth birthday party -- for those of you keeping score at home, that's when Sam's dad took a permanent powder.
So after some father/time-traveling-son bonding, Vic agrees to confront the Pignato Brothers wearing a wire and with the police lying in wait. But the sting operation goes south when many, many hoodlums get shot, the police-supplied ransom money disappears, and, soon enough, Vic does, too. It becomes readily apparent that Vic is not the humble cleaning supplies salesman he purports to be.
Just how crooked Vic is becomes readily apparent at the aforementioned fourth birthday party when the father-of-the-year candidate slips off into the woods. This is the point that we learn the woman in the red dress who has been the focal point of so many Sam flashbacks is not, in fact, Sam's red dress-clad mother, but rather Annie, also sporting the red dress. As it turns out, grown-up Sam suppressed the memory of what his father did back in 1973 -- beat a policewoman to death and then flee from justice. Fortunately, he's there this time to spare Annie, but not before his own father shoots him in the gut. Twice. That's going to lead to some therapy bills.
Oh, but that's not the disturbing part. You see, thanks to a clue Vic drops, a recovering Sam goes back through his old cases and comes up with an address to a seemingly abandoned cabin. Once there, the phone rings, and the voice on the other end of the line -- think something out of Saw VI: The '70s Edition -- congratulates Sam for being so clever and suggests that he go check out the basement. And that's where we'll leave things until 2009, apparently.
So anyhow, I can't recommend that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode enough to chase the night terrors away.
Dscuss this episode in our forums, then see what vlogger Sean Crespo thinks about Mars when he has No Prior Knowledge! And check back week for the full weecap!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Moonage Daydream: Cop goes back in time. Gets to solve some crimes, some of which involve mobsters. Meets his mom, which turns out to be awkward. And there are many, many flashbacks to women in red dresses. There. You're all up to date.
Speaking of women in red dresses, Li'l Sam -- that's the 1973 toddler version of Our Hero -- is watching one flee to the woods on a TV screen, when a gentlemen in a hat presents the boy with a new toy spaceship. The hat-wearing chap is, very obviously, Sam's father, who is played, even more very obviously, by Dean Winters. You may recognize him from such TV shows as Oz or, more recently, on 30 Rock as Liz Lemon's meathead ex-boyfriend. This latter role has robbed Dean Winters of some of his air of menace, for me, anyhow, as I now expect him to try and sell people pagers or deliver heartfelt monologues about how Liz Lemon has "chosen to abort me." I am almost certain that this is not the effect the producers of Life on Mars are aiming for. Nevertheless, our takeaway from this scene -- besides that shot of the lady in red on the TV, I suppose -- is that Li'l Sam has a birthday coming up and his deadbeat dad doesn't plan to miss it. "Maybe one day you can go to the moon," Ol' Man Tyler murmurs at his son. Or perhaps... he could go to Mars! Bwah ha ha ha ha!
And by "Mars," we, of course mean, "elsewhere in New York City," where Sam is on a stakeout with Hunt, Skelton and Carling. It is nice that they decided to carpool to the stakeout -- very earth-conscious of them. The boys are working a kidnapping case, in which the father of the purloined infant will drop off the ransom at Astroland Park -- fans of leitmotifs will enjoy the rocket ship in the foreground of the park -- and when the kidnapper shows up to collect the ransom, the detectives will nab him. And that's exactly how the plan plays out -- a shadowy figure picks up the ransom from a trash can, and after a fairly by-the-numbers foot chase, the cops pick up him. After a flying tackle from Carling, the cops slap some cuffs on the kidnapper, who turns out to be... Dean Winters. Poor Sam -- I bet he hasn't been this uncomfortable since learning that his mom was palling around with loan sharks. If this series continues much longer, he's gonna learn that his grandmother ran a profitable bookmaking operation and his beloved uncle was one of the Watergate burglars.
Opening credits. "I was in an accident and I woke up in 1973." Yeah, you say that a lot, you know.
When we returning, Pa Tyler is protesting his innocence to anyone who will listen -- presently, that includes Sam, Hunt, Carling and Skelton. Hunt is not exactly sympathetic to the Elder Tyler's "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time" defense, pushing him and his chair backward and onto the floor when Pa Tyler has the temerity to claim his innocence. "Get off your rusty dusty, and tell us where that baby is," Hunt instructs Sam's poppa. Sam asks his father if he's okay after all this roughing up; Pa Tyler allows that he is and then observes that he's got a boy at home named Sam. Carling is apparently not impressed by life's cowinky-dinks. "I got a French bulldog at home named Ali," Carling screams. "He drools just like your grandfather. Where are we going with all the noise?" Pa Tyler shrugs that it's probably just a coincidence that he now knows two Sam Tylers and requests to speak to his lawyer. Before the cops opt to let Pa Tyler exercise his Constitutionally-protected rights, Skelton decides to try an appeal to the better angels of his nature. "You love your son a lot, right," Skelton begins while Sam looks around nervously with a "Well, do you?" look on his face. Pa Tyler allows that he does love his son, but fails to see the relevance to his current predicament. Nice to see that Sam comes from a long line of thickheads. Skelton points out that not too many loving fathers wind up collecting ransom in the early morning hours, so maybe it's time to come clean.
A chastened Pa Tyler decides to fess up: he thought he was collecting a debt on behalf of a bookie. You see, the elder Tyler is into this bookie for quite a lot of bread, and they've been threatening both him and his family, so he thought he'd do an errand or two as a make-good on his debt. And who is this "they?" That'd be the Pignato Brothers. Everyone but Sam looks at each other pointedly. "Who the hell are the Pignato Brothers?" Sam demands. Oh, Sam -- don't tell me you don't remember how, when you were arresting minor mob boss Elliot Casso, he prattled on and on about reprisals and consequences and Pignato Brotherses? You don't remember any of this? Do I have to do all the recapping around here?
In the very scene, Lee Crocker arrives to pick up the slack: "The Pignato Brothers are an up-and-coming crew of the Lower East Side's criminal underworld. They were penny-ante hoodlums until last year." And what made the Pignatos No. 1 with a bullet? Depositing a small time bookie into a dumpster, but not before relieving him of his eyes, nose, tongue, and several extremities. So, unpleasant fellows, these Pignatos. And Hunt declares that Vic Tyler -- Sam's dad, if you're following along at home -- will be cops' entree into the Pignatos insanely violent world. "This cretin's every shade of shady," Hunt observes of Vic. "He keeps jerking us around, we'll have a dead baby on our hands." Annie knocks and enters Hunt's office -- the parents of the kidnapped baby, the Kreshpanes, have arrived. Maybe Hunt can repeat his dead-baby prediction for their benefit.
Sam has a better, slightly less traumatizing suggestion: maybe have Vic Tyler meet the Kreshpanes so that the big softie's hard exterior is chipped away and he agrees to cooperate. Sort of like Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi, though presumably with less Emperor-killing and Ewoks. Anyhow, Vic remains unhelpful in the face of the Kreshpanes' wails for help, so Sam pulls his pops aside. "What if your son were kidnapped?" Sam asks, perhaps a trifle too pointedly. "Can you imagine being separated from him?" Because you will be, he does not continue, for, like, the 35 years, you worthless jerk. Vic would love to help -- really, he would -- but it seems like this is the Pignatos' problem, not his. Sam tries a different tack: what if Vic ends up going to jail for something he didn't do? What happens to his wife and kid, then? Pretty much the same thing that wound up happening anyhow, I'd imagine, only with a lot more visits to Rikers for Li'l Sam. Eventually, Vic crumbles: he's expecting a phone call this afternoon from agents of the Pignatos in which they will exchange a transfer of the ransom loot. It is unclear whether he was moved by the poignancy of Sam's words or simply wanted to shut the guy up. At any rate, mission accomplished there, Sam.
Ah, but there's one last bit of father-son psychodrama to play out. Vic notes that his son turns four on Saturday, and he'd ever so much like to be able to attend the party. Then you probably shouldn't have gotten mixed up with bookies and kidnappers and crazy money-making schemes is what a cynic might say. Sam is not that cynic: "You will be," he says, after Vic tells him how much he wants to be at that party. Hey, thanks for the spoiler alert, jerk.
Back from the commercial break, and Sam is accompanying Vic home. While it may seem odd that no one else in the 125th Precinct has found Sam's profound interest in this particular sleazeball the least peculiar, there is method in Sam's daddy-never-loved-me madness. He's hanging out with Vic so that he can be there when the Pignatos call with information about the money exchange. Also, he's got three decades worth of bonding to squeeze into a single afternoon. And while that may seem like a challenge, the biggest one facing Sam right now is acting like he hasn't previously visited Chez Tyler.
After Ma Tyler excuses herself, Sam gets up and longingly sniffs his father's jacket (Mmmmm -- smells like... abandonment) before noticing a basketball. A quick cut outside and Sam is busy shooting hoops. "Frazier brings up the ball," Sam says, looking around to make sure that nobody is hearing his sotto voce play-by-play. "Passes to DeBusschere. DeBusschere looks for Willis Reed, but Reed's being double-teamed, so Dave finds Phil Jackson. Jackson finds Sammy Tyler at the top of the key. Tyler shoots..." And fires a brick. "Nothing but net," an in-denial Sam declares. An interesting thing about Sam's little role-playing exercise here -- fans of the '73 Knicks will know that he's supplanted either Earl Monroe or Bill Bradley in the lineup, which is just wrong. Also, his scenario falls apart because Phil Jackson would have been back in the locker room trying to fashion a bong out of one of his sneakers. While this little passion play has been going on, Vic walks outside and notes that his son is also a big Knicks fan. Hmmm, your son seems to have a lot in common with this strange gentlemen who also shares his name along with many of his genetic characteristics.
"Sammy's in danger, isn't he?" Vic asks Sam. "Rose, also?" Sam vows to do what he can to protect them; Vic is understandably dubious. There's a lot of small talk about whether or not Sam has kids of his own -- he does not, as time-travel/comas cut into your parenting opportunities -- which gives Sam the opportunity to quiz his old man on just what he thinks of Li'l Sam. "He's busy up in the head," Vic says. "All that make-believe. Takes after his father." That... does not bode well for you, Sam. Anyhow, Vic talks a little about his hard life as a salesman, and when things are going bad he reminds himself that he's Sam's father. "And everything, every little thing, it's okay," Vic says. Awwwww... It's getting mighty dusty on that basketball court, based on Sam's expression. Father and son decide to deal with the shame of showing human emotion the way men have throughout the centuries -- by playing sports until all those pesky feelings go away. And so the Steely Dan-scored game of one-on-one commences, with Sam finally getting to bond with his father and showing him how to execute a high five four years before Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker invented the celebratory maneuver. All this belated father-son bonding is interrupted by the ringing of a telephone. The ominous music suggests that the Pignato Brothers have come a-calling.
To 35 Stewart Drive, of course, which is apparently, located in the woodsy, rustic portion of New York City. The house itself is a cabin, and after a knock at the door offers no answer, Sam lets himself in. The room itself is modestly appointed, with a table at the center of the room holding both a chessboard and a telephone. You know what they say in filmmaking school -- if you're going to put a telephone and a chessboard on the screen, one of them had better ring before the scene ends. In this case, it's the phone. Sam decides to pick up, while the deer antler chandelier flickers creepily above him. "Hello, Sam," the not-in-the-least-bit-unsettling voice on the other end of the line says. "You're doing a good job, Sam. But I need you to do something for me... I need you to go to the basement." "Why?" Sam asks, but the Voice doesn't think Sam needs any reason. "The basement, Sam," the Voice repeats. "Across the room behind you. I need you to go down to the basement, Sam." And that's where we leave things. Well, you can just rock my ass to sleep until January 2009.
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