K Hale wrote:Jodykmg365 wrote:This is one of my favorite episodes. I thought R.J. was just adorable. He sure knew how to get into trouble. However, if he was 20 years old, what was he still doing in boarding school?
I enjoyed the episode but thought RJ was a psycho. Borderline creepy stalkerism. Made trouble for Magnum, disrespected Higgins, hit Rick over the head and knocked him out... easily one of my most disliked guest characters. Tate Donovan did a fine job tho.
Oh, and the car looks dark green to me...
KHale,
I think you said it just right.
I too thought Tate Donovan did such a good acting job that I wanted to reach thru the screen and give him a power wedgie.
However I think the writers let everyone down, this would have been far better with RJ an obnoxious but benign Magnum clone.
He is written, as you say, as a "psycho" and "borderline...stalker". The light tone doesn't match all the dangerous
actions of RJ, he could have gotten people killed. To smash a bottle on Rick's head, that is vicious and could have left him a vegetable.
Classic Hollywood BS of not respecting violence and unworthy of this great series, it's something you'd see in the current remake with
Mini Magnum.
After RJ did that to Magnum's blood brother Rick, and given what happened to people in the past who attacked either Magnum or
people he cared about, it doesn't make any sense that Magnum didn't retaliate. Chicago boy Rick couldn't have let it pass either.
As the writers wrote it, it was a cowardly attack by a punk that would have been the last straw for Higgins as well.
It ruined the episode for me.
However the babe Meredith MacRae from Petticoat Junction who along with the other two "Bradley" sisters helped me start noticing girls back when
makes this episode worth viewing. Her Dad was the star of the movie Oklahoma, and her Mom portrayed Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners
segment of the Jackie Gleason Show in the 1960's.