We have Cozi TV! I’m not sure when our affiliate
came to be, but I’m guessing it was probably just a couple of days ago, perhaps
on Monday. I found it last night and they happened to be right in the middle of
The Six Million Dollar Man. So much Richard! The episode I found was
really rather weird, as I’ve heard seasons 4 and 5 are, but it still had the
basic goodness of the characters intact. I look forward to watching several of
the shows on there. They even have The Name of the Game, which I’ve been
trying to get hold of for ages.
The only thing I’m not terribly crazy about
regarding the station is that it seems that sometimes it’s just a bit crude.
Like, I saw some weird ad where somebody apparently decided to strip off his
clothes (thankfully off-screen) each time he read a new praiseworthy comment
for the station. I don’t think MeTV would ever have an ad like that!
A couple of weeks ago I discovered something that’s
at least somewhat a Perry parallel, as I see it. It’s not as strong a
parallel as some others I’ve found, but the contents are so unusual that I have
a hard time believing there couldn’t have been some influence from Perry on
the script.
The items in question are the Perry
episode The Cowardly Lion and the Cannon episode Death of a
Hunter. In both episodes, incidents involving dead men in lion’s cages
happen. That in itself isn’t so much a parallel, granted, but once Death of
a Hunter got to the second, more striking parallel, that was when I couldn’t
help but think it wasn’t a coincidence.
Regarding the lion’s cage parallel, in both
episodes the idea is to blame the lion for the person’s death. The key
difference is that in The Cowardly Lion, the body was scratched by a
lion pelt and placed already dead in the cage. The living lion did nothing to
the guy except to investigate his condition. In Death of a Hunter, the
lion really does kill the guy—but it happened because he was trying to
tranquilize it and somebody put an energizing drug in the dart as well as the
tranquilizer. Hence, the lion started to relax, but suddenly snapped to and
attacked, likely because of being furious over being hit with the dart as well
as because of the energizer.
The more direct parallel is the reason for the
murders. In both, bad guys are smuggling drugs on certain animals’ cages. The
cages in question then disappear. The murdered people are aware of the problem,
albeit in The Cowardly Lion the guy is one of the crooks, and in Death
of a Hunter he’s an innocent learning of the criminal operation and trying
to stop it.
For the most part, the episodes differ other than
these two points, although I suppose there’s a more minor parallel in the fact
that both murdered men were having extramarital affairs. But while the guy in The
Cowardly Lion was just an absolute slimeball through and through, the guy
in Death of a Hunter was depressed and discouraged and only ended up with
the other woman when he was having problems with his wife. At least, that’s how
it started. They seemed to have continued their affair even after he tried to
patch things with his wife, which is definitely not cool.
I
don’t recall hearing of drug smuggling via animals’ cages in any other episode
plots, which is why I can’t help thinking the Cannon writer must have
been familiar with the Perry episode and liked the weird twist. The
writers are not the same; if they were I would say for a surety that the
parallel must have been deliberate. As it is, I can only guess. But it seems a
pretty good guess, all things considered.
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