Bermuda Love Triangle

Above:  The Atlantean Fiancée

All images in this post are screen captures.

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Canadian Television Rating = PG

Hyperlink to Episode

Aired August 11, 2001

Production Number = 5009-01-110

Starring

Chad Willett as Tucker Burns

Jon Polito as Donald Stern

Reno Wilson as Wes Freewald

Rena Sofer as Grace Hall

Sharon Sachs as Vera

Main Guest Cast

Lori Rom as Shawna Fuchs

Yvonna Kopacz as Atlantean Woman

Salvator Xuereb as Roger Noland

Behind the Camera

Consulting Producer = Naren Shankar

Writer = Henry A. Myers

Director = Krishna Rao

Above:  Roger Noland, After and Before

Brief Summary

As Vera the receptionist berates elevator repairmen confused by elevators that more side-to-side, Grace opens the seventh anonymous love letter (left at the front desk) she has received in as many days.  Grace finds these annoying, but Vera would like to receive such attention, even anonymously.  Grace speculates about who might be sending her these letters.  She never guesses correctly.

Meanwhile, off-camera, Wes has been lucky at love and/or lust.  His new girlfriend, Alicia (never seen) is a yoga instructor.  Unfortunately for Tucker, Wes is an inconsiderate roommate when Alicia spends the night, and Tucker cannot sleep properly.  He does, however, get a reminder that he is unattached.  Tucker, sleep-deprived, nods off at the office.

Tucker and Grace compare notes.  His assigned story is about a sea monster that has attacked two fishermen on the Jersey Shore.  Grace’s assigned story is about Roger Noland, a U.S. Navy pilot recently rescued after disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle seven years prior.  Grace’s frustration is that Noland is difficult to locate; he keeps disappearing.  Fortunately, Sal the Pig-Boy is an expert hacker, so he tracks the credit card the Navy recently issued the pilot.

Tucker meets Wes at a park, where one of the fishermen the “sea monster” (actually Noland) attacked is waiting after getting out of the hospital.  (The other victim, Stu, is still in the Intensive Care Unit.)  Prior to the interview, Tucker speaks with Shawna, his former girlfriend (from the first episode).  She apologizes for dumping him.  They agree to go out to dinner soon.  Then the witness tells the reporter and the photographer that a gill-man attacked.

Shortly thereafter, at the Jersey Shore, Wes and Tucker see a man emerge from the water.  The man has gills.  Wes takes a photograph before the man returns to the water.  Back at the office, Grace sees the photograph and identifies the gill-man as Roger Noland, who had told his rescuer that he had spent seven years on a desert island.

Grace and Sal conduct research in the archives while Wes goes to spent time with Alicia and Tucker goes to have dinner with Shawna.  On-screen, Grace calls Tucker, who has to leave dinner and go to fish hatchery on the Jersey Shore.  Off-screen, Grace calls Wes, who also goes there.  On-screen, Tucker and Wes wait for more than an hour for Grace to show up before they decide to investigate.  Grace never shows up because Sal traps her in the elevator with him.

Sal is Grace’s secret admirer.  She is flattered and surprised.  She is initially angry that he trapped her in the elevator, though.  Nevertheless, they spend the night in the elevator.  They converse and play Yahtzee.

Wes and Tucker find Noland’s breathing machine and him at the fish hatchery.  So does an Atlantean woman.  Wes and Tucker take Noland to the offices of the World Chronicle.   Roger tells Wes and Tucker that the Atlantean, his owner, wants to kill him, to keep the secret of Atlantis.  The reporter and the photographer return to the fish hatchery and retrieve the breathing machine when they realize that Noland needs it to survive long outside of ocean water.

The Atlantean woman walks into the offices of the World Chronicle.  She kisses Noland, who says, “I can’t,” then flees.  Down in the archives, the Rosetta Stone translates the Atlantean woman’s speech.  She is the one who saved Noland seven years ago and implanted him with gills.  She is his fiancée. She cannot bear to be apart from him.  She also needs to get to the short immediately.  Wes takes her to the shore while Tucker and Grace retrieve Noland from a bus station.  Noland explains that he ran away from his fiancée because he wanted his normal life back.  Tucker rebuts that this is impossible, for Noland cannot breathe on land for long without a device on his shoulders.  A lovelorn Atlantean has the option of transforming into a siren.  Roger gets to the shore too late to prevent his fiancée from becoming a siren.

A few days later, at supper again, Shawna and Tucker realize they are no longer in love with each other.  They part amicably.  Then Tucker joins Grace, Wes, and Sal at the shore where the Atlantean woman became a siren.  She is still singing.

Above: Grace Hall

Character Beats

Sal understands who Grace is. He loves for who she is, an awkward person with whom he is compatible.

Sal carries a Yahtzee game around with him.

Roger Noland is a liar.

Shawna, in contrast to how she was in the first episode, is diplomatic about the World Chronicle.  She does not dismiss it, at least.

Above:  Sal the Pig-Boy

Great Lines

Tucker, to Grace:  “I’m not sure Dwain [an intern] can handle the higher motor functions required to use a pen.”

Fisherman, to Tucker and Wes:  “Poor Stu.  If it hadn’t been for him, I might not be here right now.  I could have died.  Lost my best net, too.”

Grace, to Sal:  “I’m not in a Yahtzee place right now, Sal.  Okay?”

Sal, to Grace:  “Why can’t anyone love me for the man-pig that I am?”

Sal, to Grace, defending himself for breaking the elevator:  “I can’t help it; I’m a pig.  It’s in my porcine nature.”

Grace (angry that Sal broke the elevator):  “Squeal like a pig, you slimy piece of bacon!”

Above:  Shawna Fuchs and Tucker Burns

In-Universe

Atlantis is real.  Its civilization is more advanced that the civilizations on the surface of the planet.

Atlantean voices are screeches that break glass.

The Atlantean race has evolved into a human-fish hybrid.

Vera the receptionist has met women who look “freakier” than the Atlantean woman.

Sirens sank the Titanic and the Lusitania.

The computer in the basement of the World Chronicle contains a record of Atlantean folklore and culture.

This is the last we see of Shawna Fuchs.

Comments

This episode ranks high on the rewatchability scale.  Bermuda Love Triangle balances whimsy and pathos well.  Furthermore, nothing is creepy.

The Atlantean woman was too good for Roger Noland anyway.

Vera must have seen some “freaky-looking” people, for she barely noticed the Atlantean woman at first.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MAY 22, 2020 COMMON ERA

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The Chronicle: News from the Edge

Above:  Angry Siamese Triplets

All images in this post are screen captures.

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Series Creator = Silvio Horta

Executive Producers = Robert Greenblatt, David Janollari, Gina Matthews, and Silvio Horta

Composers = Tom Harriman and Donny Markowitz

Starring

Chad Willett as Tucker Burns

Jon Polito as Donald Stern

Reno Wilson as Wes Freewald

Rena Sofer as Grace Hall

Curtis Armstrong as Sal the Pig-Boy

Sharon Sachs as Vera

Octavia L. Spencer as Ruby Rydell

Above:  Wes Freewald Photographs the Brooklyn Bloodsucker

This Episode

Canadian Television Rating = PG

Hyperlink to Episode

Aired July 14, 2001

Production Number = 5009-01-179

Main Guest Actress

Lori Rom as Shawna Fuchs

Behind the Camera

Writer = Silvio Horta

Director = Marc Buckland

Above:  Chad Willett as Tucker Burns

Brief Summary

A creature known as the Brooklyn Bloodsucker comes out only after dark.  It claims a victim, Chuck, a reporter for the World Chronicle, a tabloid, before the opening credits.

Tucker Burns, who graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism five months prior, applies for and gets the job to replace the departed Chuck almost immediately.  This is the only job he can get in his field.  He as received 47 rejection notices.  There is a good reason for this.  The previous year, Tucker temporarily became a hero and won a Student Pulitzer Prize for a story about a professor who allegedly harassed female students sexually.  The university, bowing to protests, fired the professor.  The allegations, however, were false; the students making the allegations wanted to ruin the professor.  Tucker lost the Student Pulitzer Prize and sabotaged his career.

Tucker’s girlfriend, Shawna Fuchs, expresses concern that he is making a terrible mistake.  His new job ends their relationship.

Tucker learns quickly that the stories in the World Chronicle are true.  He also learns that, in the archives in the basement, Sal the Pig-Boy conducts research and uses the “Rosetta Stone,” an alien computer, to translate extraterrestrial languages.  Furthermore, Tucker works with photographer Wes Freewald on the story of the Brooklyn Bloodsucker, who kills a cat and a boy off-screen, but is actually a galactic spiritual leader.  The creature’s “people,” thinking humans have kidnapped him, nearly destroy Manhattan, Tucker, Wes, and reporter Grace Hall take the alien to Central Park in time for the galactic spiritual leader to catch a ride home instead.

As the episode ends, Wes and Tucker head out to an Arby’s, to report on an angry ghost.  This scene sets up the beginning of the next episode, What Gobbles Beneath.

Above:  Rena Sofer as Grace Hall

Character Beats

Grace Hall, a reporter for the World Chronicle, objects when anyone questions her accounts of at least six alien abductions.

Sal the Pig-Boy justifies his inappropriate behavior with, “What do you expect?  I’m a pig!”

Donald Stern, publisher and editor of the World Chronicle, hires only reporters with bad reputations.  This is the only way he prevents the loss of journalists to other publications.  He also considers his work a high calling.

Donald Stern is a kind, patient, and understanding employer.

Sal the Pig-Boy, who is short, resents the “height-centered establishment.”

Great Lines

Vera:  “I’m sorry.  The alien autopsy contest has ended.”

Vera:  “Reincarnation of Mother Teresa, Line One.”

Above:  Curtis Armstrong as Sal the Pig-Boy

In-Universe

Somewhere in New Jersey, a girlie poster of Madonna Ciccone in a boy’s bedroom has been bleeding since Britney Spears entered the top-ten charts.

The Polka Massacre of 1978 happened.

Space aliens invented the internet.

Donald Stern prefers that Ruby the psychic predict only events that will happen after the next issue goes to newsstands.  Sal, Tucker, Wes, and Grace prevent Ruby’s prediction of alien devastation of Manhattan from coming true, so Ruby’s powers of prediction are not infallible.

The elevator moves both horizontally and vertically.

Above:  Jon Polito as Donald Stern

Comments

The cast is excellent.  For example, the way Jon Polito, portraying Donald Stern, refers nonchalantly to Britney Spears as a sign of the end times is hilarious.

The Chronicle:  News from the Edge plays like a mish-mash of Kolchak:  The Night Stalker, The X Files, and Northern Exposure.  The series’s mixed tone plays better in some episodes than in others.  I know, for I watched all 22 episodes before writing one note.  I write this post about the pilot episode with all episodes in mind.  In this episode, I notice the abrupt tonal shift with regard to the Brooklyn Bloodsucker, who, despite being a stranded galactic spiritual leader, has still killed at least two humans and one cat.  I do not accept the episode’s explanation that the Bloodsucker is mainly misunderstood.

The cover stories at the beginning of the episode are funny.  “THERE’S A DEMON IN MY TOILET AND HE WON’T LET ME FLUSH!” is hilarious.

Perhaps I am overthinking the reference to 47 rejection letters, but I cannot help but think about the many instances of that number in Star Trek:  The Next Generation (1987-1994).  Given that some of the behind-the-camera talent had worked on TNG, the occurrence of 47 may not be accidental.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MAY 16, 2020 COMMON ERA

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