Chris: So “House of Soul” opens with a flashback to the docks of turn of the century San Francisco and some unsavory characters (white guys with Irish accents) smuggling in some Chinese antiquities. Then it gets real foggy and a Chinese ghost causes the infamous 1906 Earthquake. The show then snaps back to the present and the gang of the House of Soul negotiating with a couple of producers from The Jerry Springer Show who want to shoot an episode at the club because it apparently was built over an old Chinese temple that was destroyed in that same quake. This is the temple where those antiquities were being stored and Jerry wants to uncover it all on television much in the same fashion as Geraldo and Al Capone’s vault. Except, you know, not an embarrassing national fiasco. But when Jessica (remember the club owner who is credited in literally every episode and has spoken probably less than a dozen lines? Her) and Raleigh get wind of the plans they team up with Frank to get to the treasure before Jerry and his people. It’s actually more accurate to say that Frank muscles in on Jessica and Raleigh’s action because business had been slow and he could use the money. Also the descendants of the Irish guy who swiped the treasure back in 06 and some Chinese secret agents are sniffing around too. It’s a lot.

And a lot is usually better for Night Man because the plot bounces around so frequently that the inept stupidity comes off as charming instead of grating. There’s something like a dozen different characters and they all have their own agendas and information and one of them is Jerry Springer and another is a Chinese ghost warrior. Also, and this is crucial for a really successful episode, there’s so much going on that Johnny is barely in it. The spine of the plot is a Treasure of the Sierra Madre riff where all these characters are so desperate to find the loot that they risk losing their humanity. The show literally stops so that Johnny and Raleigh can talk about the movie just to make sure that we know that they know what’s going on. My favorite part is when Frank forces Raleigh and Jessica to cut him into their caper by offering protection from all the people who are bound to be overcome with “Treasure Fever” at the thought of all old timey doubloons and scepters and jewels lying around.  But this is Night Man, so no major character goes crazy or really tries to hurt anyone or anything like that. It’s more just an excuse for the cast to mug and rub their hands together in the ways that greedy people do. I’m surprised they didn’t insert freeze frames where characters have little gold dollar signs over their eyes so we knew they were going crazy thinking about all the money.

This might be cool if the show had a higher budget than high school play in an underfunded school district.

I think “House of Soul” works better than a lot of other more Toontownish Night Mans because it’s focused. There’s a lot of characters but they all want the same thing for different reasons. Some of them want the money, some want revenge, or ratings, some want to restore cultural dignity, etc. Everyone has something to do, and no one has too much, and it’s all over before you know it. Which, again, I can think of no higher compliment to give an episode of Night Man than to say it didn’t feel three hours long. And I gotta say… Jerry Springer was a lot of fun. Like, he’s in the episode a lot, does a lot of things and seems like a good sport. There’s a whole thing in the big climax at the dock where Jerry is hiding behind a bunch of stuff and watching slash narrating all the action unfold that’s pretty entertaining. What did you think, Ronnie? Do you rate this episode as highly as I do? You have to be happy that it ends with Night Man executing a man without any kind of due process, right? Sound off below!

Ronnie: Tubi description of this episode: “The House of Soul is haunted by ghosts. No surprise, given its name.” It’s House of Soul, Tubi, not House of Ghost! Stupid streaming platform. Anyway, in 1906 a shipment of Chinese Nonsense is interrupted by the famous San Francisco/Bay City/whatever earthquake. Christopher Cousins is involved. Remember him? “I fucked Ted” on Breaking Bad? He’s been a television regular for decades. This takes us to present day where Jessica and Raleigh are making a deal for Jerry Springer to do a show about the House of Soul, because it’s built over a 19th century temple. “Place doesn’t look Jewish to me,” Raleigh cracks. No, silly, it’s a CHINESE temple! That’s a whole other barrel of stereotypes that we’ll be dealing with in this episode. Just imagine how anti-Semitic this would get if it were a Jewish temple, though. Night Man lasering golems writes itself. Springer is pretty hyped up in the episode, as though he weren’t just Phil Donahue for idiots. Of Springer, his producer says “he just loves Johnny Domino’s music”. This is followed up with a pretty good punchline where Springer says “who’s Johnny Domino? They couldn’t get Kenny G?”. Points to Night Man.

Night Man doesn’t seem to know what Jerry Springer actually does (profiting off human freakshows), and I’m inclined to think that he’s in the episode because Geraldo Rivera (who is namechecked) said no. Investigating a jazz club built over a Chinese temple seems way more in his wheelhouse than Jerry’s. When it becomes apparent there may be treasure underneath the House of Soul, all sorts of interested parties come out of the woodwork. Our heroes want it, the Springer people want it (there’s a “treasure clause” in the contract), Christopher Cousins’ descendant wants it, the Chinese want it. Unfortunately there’s an armored ghost guarding the treasure that Raleigh mistakes for Night Man initially. Long story short, the villain is some of the Chinese but not all of the Chinese, which is practically progressive for Glen A. Larson.

Being mayor of Cincinnati is still more demeaning than being in Night Man. 

I think Jessica may be starting to develop as a character? We know from “You Are Too Beautiful” that she hops on bandwagons and in this episode she seems intent on monetizing the House of Soul beyond Big Time Operator shows and overpriced drinks. That’s two points of characterization, which is grand considering she didn’t appear in most episodes and did nothing when she did appear. A scheming businesswoman trying to wring profit out of everything wouldn’t solve most or any of the problems with the show, but it would give Felecia M. Bell something to do. You’re paying her, so might as well.

Chris: Here’s my push back vis-a-vis your They Really Wanted Geraldo theory: Jerry Springer is fun, Geraldo is a prick. Like, I understand why it would seem like Geraldo would be a better fit for the episode, he’s the guy who might actually do something like this. But people hated Geraldo. They tuned into his show because a Klansman might bust him across the chops with a chair and break his fucking nose. They want to laugh at him when he excavates an empty room while dressed like Indiana Jones. Jerry was gross, sure, but he had a weird avuncular quality that people dug. The guy was the mayor of a majorish American city for heaven’s sake. He was married to Connie Chung. Remember the Jerry Springer movie Ringleader? It positioned him as a merry prankster who presided over a carnival of fools with a benevolent smile and a twinkle in his eye. If they made a movie about Geraldo it would have been called Shit Monger and he’d have been as a loathsome feces smeared ghoul who slept in his own filth and talked like Gollum.

The Night Man Team are far from the best in the business, but even they could see that Jerry would have been a better fit for their lighthearted treasure hunt. I refuse to believe that the Night Man Gang would have been excited to hang out with Geraldo, and the cast being starstruck and greedy was 80% of the fun of the episode.

More of the show should be disconnected scenes of Johnny blowing that sweet saxomophone.

I don’t actually remember old episodes of Night Man particularly well–it’s a trauma response I think–but I feel like there’s been a promising trend developing where the supporting cast get to be exciting and enthusiastic about whatever bullshit framing device is being used for the particular episode. Like the wrestling one where it turned out Raleigh and Frank were big fans and Jessica gets super into it too. I like that. Night Man is a bad show for idiots but THIS idiot is gonna have a better time watching it if it seems like the people involved in the production appear to be having a good time making it.

Ronnie: This is shockingly progressive for a Night Man episode because it’s of the opinion that the “treasure” belongs with the Chinese and nobody in America bears any claim to it. Repatriation may be accepted now, but maybe not as much in the 1990s. Nighty could’ve let sleeping dogs lie, but he purposefully hauled ass to the ship to tell the Chinese woman (not Donna Chang) that one of her cohort (Chinese people) was going to sell the treasure at a markup in Hong Kong. Again, he didn’t have to do that. This episode is not particularly respectful but I would say it’s not particularly disrespectful either. You know? For a Chinese ghost story you could do a lot worse. Dare I say tying everything in to the 1906 earthquake suggests a level of thoughtfulness I didn’t think possible with Night Man. I’m not saying it’s good; it’s stupid and mostly consists of dipshits scheming about a Macguffin. The final confrontation’s emotional weight is blunted by constant cutbacks to Jerry Springer going “I can’t believe I’m seeing this!” bullshit. But I am surprised “House of Soul” isn’t as bad as it is. I expected egregious Orientalism and didn’t get it.

They have definitely used this ship in a previous episode.

Odds & Ends
-“You survived the death battle with the ghost warrior” this was probably the episode they submitted to Emmys in the writing category.
-”What does a saxophone player have to do with a fortune and buried treasure?” would be the runner up.
-I don’t want nor do I need Jerry Springer audio commentary on a Night Man fight scene, but “House of Soul” provides it anyway.
-Lt. Dann is absent this episode because no one needed to hear the name “Frank” approximately 70 times.

1X16 “NIGHTWOMAN”

Chris: Well folks, Night Man enters monkey’s paw territory with “Nightwoman” as my theory of “the less Johnny/Night Man in a given episode the better” is put to the test when Johnny is zapped into a laser beam induced coma halfway through the first act and center stage is taken by Lorie Swift, aka Night Woman, a former undercover cop turned vigilante super hero after suffering a near fatal accident at the hands of local mobster Johnny Gelato. It seems that at one point Officer Swift and her partner slash kinda-boyfriend Lt Charlie Dann were working together to bring the sinister Gelato down, her on the inside as gangster’s moll and him on the outside as the cop she called on the phone and told things to. But when Gelato got wise he cleverly lured Swift onto the balcony of his high rise apartment by revealing that he knew who she actually was and then pushing her over the edge and sending her plunging however many stories up they were to the ground below. Except instead of hitting asphalt, Swift landed in a swimming pool and was merely paralyzed from the neck down. It was very sad for Lt. Dann because he wanted to marry Lorie and it’s sad for Lorie because her life was ruined. But fortunately, Swift’s father was some kind of government scientist and he whipped her up a magic suit that both unparalyzed her and gave her electricity powers. But you don’t just throw something like that together on the fly so a couple of years and 15 episodes of Night Man pass between the prologue and her first appearance as Nightwoman at a bank in Bay City where Johnny and his dad Frank happen to be taking out a loan to buy a boat.

There’s not a shot in the episode that makes the costume look any less shitty. Believe me, I looked. 

Frank, by the way, is significantly more emotionally invested in the whole boat scheme, Johnny just kind of seems like he’s humoring the old man and is positively giddy when his evil senses pick up on Lori’s plans and he can spring into action. Okay, Lori is robbing the bank, yes, but only kind of because what she’s actually doing is robbing a safe deposit box where Gilardi was storing his bosses’ money. So, while she’s technically committing a crime, it’s in the service of seeing justice done on a larger scale because what she’s really trying to do is to get Gilardi in trouble with the higher ups so they’ll kill him. I don’t know if that really qualifies as evil in the way Night Man defines the word. Here’s my theory: Johnny was so desperate to get away from Frank that his super power kinda cheated in order to give him an excuse to drive away from his dad as fast as he can. Which he does, and when he catches up with Lori, she shoots him in the brain with her electricity powers and puts him in a coma that lasts for most of the rest of the episode.

I don’t know if this was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a Bionic Woman style spin-off or if Matt McColm was exhausted, injured or holding a sick-out, but “Nightwoman” has less Night Man than any episode up to this point and it suuuuuuucks. I don’t know if Jennifer Campbell (the model Jerry met in the plane who later thought she caught him picking his nose!) is actually worse at acting than Matt McColm but Lori is a worse character than Johnny. Johnny is ridiculous in a fun way, a kickboxer slash white jazz guy slash lighting psychic slash Iron Man style superhero, whereas Lori is an ex-cop turned bitter cripple who’s on a very specific mission of revenge. Her history with Lt Dann is supposed to be tragic or bittersweet I suppose, but he’s a damp sock of an actor and they don’t have an ounce of chemistry. Seriously. It’s even bad for Night Man. Whatever charm Frank has is rooted in him being a perpetual fuck-up and concussion enthusiast, him wide eyed and hysterical with worry over his injured son is fucking intolerable. So yeah, instead of an insane show we mostly just get a boring one. They’re both bad, but I’ll take insane bad over boring bad seven days a week and twice on Sunday.

Ronnie: Is it not a bit early in the show’s run to be introducing spinoff characters? I suppose next will be Nightboy, Nightchild, Nightdog. Nightdog could be pretty good actually. Dogs already bark at people for no apparent reason. What if the reason was they were evil? All they’d need to do is find a dog that wouldn’t outshine Matt McColm, which may prove difficult. “Nightwoman” is indeed a step down because there’s no clear focus. There’s Nightwoman, who’s a fucking terrible actress, and there’s the supporting characters, who are supporting because they’re not interesting enough to be main characters. I’m looking at you, Lt. Dann! I know it’s impossible to “act well” in these circumstances, but Michael Woods is one-note in his performance. I like the performance, but that’s only because it’s novel to have a Dragnet ripoff character in the cast. It’s an ironic “like”, that’s what I’m saying.

Lt. Down To Fuck

So let’s talk about Nightwoman the character, shall we? She’s not very good, as a character and as an actress and as a concept. “The Pick” lady was clearly not cast for her skills on the screen. Maybe she was hired because she’s from Bay City, Michigan. According to IMDB anyway; other sources say Honolulu, Hawaii. As Barack Obama has proven, though, no one is actually born in Hawaii. Nightwoman is a confusing character because it’s well before the point that Night Man could conceivably have a female counterpart. Like, Night Man is not Superman, he’s not some public champion of the city. I don’t think anyone on the show even calls him Night Man, and the characters are only peripherally aware there’s some laser eyed dude occasionally helping them out. Moreover, the events of the episode place Lorrie’s crippling before Johnny gets his powers, so her shit was in the works well before Night Man even existed. It’s like if She-Hulk predated the Hulk. If anything, Johnny should be inspired by her and call himself Nightwoman Man. It’s Bay City San Francisco, they’re all tolerant people.

I don’t think this disguise would fool anyone for any reason ever.

The only way this episode makes sense is if it’s intending to spin off this character to her own series. That doesn’t work because Jennifer Campbell makes Matt McColm look like Matt McConaughey and no one in their right mind would decide a middling syndicated show needs a worse spinoff to it. Then again, no one in their right mind would make Night Man, so here we are. But let’s run with the idea that this was a spinoff in the works. What would Nightwoman look like? You’d have Jennifer Campbell as Lorrie Swift, obviously. Then there’d be her dad. Who else? Would Charlie Dann slot over as her on again off again love interest? Imagine the love scenes. I guess she’d fight some motley crew of mobsters and whatever the hell Night Man fights. You’d just end up with another Night Man. Nobody wants that!

Chris: I think what you’re saying, Ronnie, if I can sum up your last few paragraphs, is that there really isn’t any reason for this character to be called Nightwoman on account of she has absolutely nothing to do with Night Man outside of possessing a truly awful costume: it’s black but it glows blue and sparkles like it was animated by the Tron guys. You know how in the 2011 Green Lantern movie they put Ryan Reynolds into a mocap suit and CGed the actual costume on in post? It’s kind of like that but on a 1997 Z-Grade syndicated TV show budget. There’s no thematic or narrative connection between the two other than the fact that they both appear on the same TV show. It’s not like she came from the same planet or got a dose of his blood, their powers are completely different, she doesn’t sense evil or nothing, she isn’t inspired by him to jump into action because of him like how Kate Bishop Hawkeye is inspired by Clint Barton Hawkeye (in the TV show anyway, I forget why she’s called Hawkeye in the comics). And like you said, her whole accident/motivation is from before Night Man was even a thing! If anything, she should be called Lt. Dann Woman, because that would at least tie her to character that she has a history with.

It’s the Full Moon approximately 207% of the time in San Francisco Bay City. 

Ronnie: Nightwoman actually returns in a Season 2 episode, of course played by a different actress because Season 2 is aggressively Canadian and thus needed to recast or discard most American actors on the show. As a result she escapes punishment for her actions and is a free woman by the end. This is a clunky episode, no doubt, that tries to eat its cake and have it too with its discussion (i.e., a couple lines of dialogue) of the efficacy of vigilantism. Like, also, you’re Night Man so you are going to be pro-vigilante. You can’t criticize Nightwoman for going outside the system when the show’s hero does that every week. I suppose you could carve out a jazzman exclusion, but that seems questionable. The difference between the two characters boils down to active vs. reactive. Nightwoman is actively trying to end organized crime whereas Night Man lets problems fall in his lap, be they extradimensional beast or Chinese ghost. The suggestion is this is just shit he’d experience in his day to day. Eventually Nightwoman realizes she’s over her head (the bad guys kidnapped their dads) and resuscitates Johnny, after having stolen his gravity belt and going on a flying spree. Team-up time! It ends with the implication that the other mobsters are going to kill Joey, with full sanction by our heroes. Sure, why not.

That’s it for this installment of Night Man Nights. Tune in to the next one because both episodes deal with villains from the past. We didn’t anticipate Night Man building a mythos but I’m in favor of it because the more it starts to resemble a superhero TV show the better. The mythos won’t “make sense” but it’ll be there.

Odds & Ends
-“You’re like a bald cold, you just don’t go away, do you?” – Lt. Dann’s cop talk is on point.
-This episode was written by Mark Jones, better known for writing and creating the original Leprechaun. He actually died less than a month ago. None of his obits mentioned he wrote one episode of Night Man, which I think is a shame. You could argue Nightwoman is as enduring a character as Leprechaun. You’d lose that argument, but you could make it.
-Director Rob Spera directed a Leprechaun movie, 5: In Da Hood, which did not involve Mark Jones. He also directed twelve episodes of Criminal Minds and one of the spinoff, Suspect Behavior. Spera is no stranger to junk.
-Dann’s nickname for Nightwoman is “Ace”. Why not “Old Iron Balls”?