Night Courtin’ – Episodes 5-7

Episode 5 : This episode was centered around the village idiot (aka the “Screech”) of the series, Bull. It was serviceable. But the subplot involving porn was what brought most of the laughs. Larroquette spends a good portion of the episode just watching a porn tape. And what do you know? It’s easily the funniest thing of the entire episode. And I figure porn being used in the plot must’ve been pretty taboo in 1984? Am I right?

That brings me to another thing. There’s a The Elephant Man reference when Bull says “I am not an animal, I am a human being!”. Now, it’s kind of cute. Seeing as how that movie is 30 years old somehwhat forgotten by the mainstream. But back then, it would basically be like using “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Brokeback Mountain now.

Episode 6 : This was kind of a meh episode. It concerned Harry getting a death threat…yadda yadda yadda. Basically I kind of zoned out a bit. This came after a part where a bomb difusal guy came in to take care of a threat. It made me create a backstory in my head where he was basically Jeremy Renner’s character from the best picture of the year (tied with Inglourious Basterds) The Hurt Locker. But instead of Iraq he did all that stuff in World War II. Of course I would zone back in whenever Larroquette was on screen. So yeah, that says all you need to know.

Episode 7 : This had a Larroquette-centric subplot where it’s election night for the position of district attorney. This got me thinking about an alternate universe where Larroquette played Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s Batman instead of Billy Dee Williams. Nicholson would’ve tried to steal the show, but Larroquette would’ve had it locked up in a vault.

For a few episodes it seemed like the show was going in a zanier direction. But this harkened back a bit with the main story being about a prostitute who’s in love with Harry. It also brings back the joke of Bull using big words to make up for his lack of education. This seemed to be a joke set up in the pilot episode that they never really continued on. But here they did it!