kolchak: the night stalker -- episode 7: the devil's platform
i sit writing this on a particularly windy los angeles evening. fitting perhaps since i'm writing about a show set in the windy city. of course, this is where #WellActually twitter comes in handy. this is also a hackneyed device to fabricate an intro to get me into the rest of this post. but you read it. so thank you.
chicago wasn't dubbed the windy city because of the stiff breezes that blow through. instead, it refers to the hot air being spewed by the city's politicians. or maybe it's the wind thing. it seems like it's still up for debate. but let's go with the politics thing since it's relevant to the story.
a race is underway for the illinois state senate. and there are deaths. boy, let me tell you there are deaths. spectacular, godfather-like deaths. first, harry beringer, a man of deep pockets and a deeper philanthropic spirit has his car roll off the road in a literal inferno. it wasn't enough for beringer and his wife to roll several hundred feet down a cliff but it has to burst into flames as well. ouch.
then there's dennis de silva, speechwriter for the Incumbent Senator Talbot, who was trying to enjoy a little quality time on his yacht until things got a little explodey. de silva's boat was detonated with a fury that wouldn't be seen again on screen until three years later when luke skywalker unloaded into the death star's exhaust port.
meanwhile, all eyes -- or at least the eyes of our reporter friend carl kolchak -- are on the latest working class hope to rise with aspirations of political power in the halls of springfield. his name is robert palmer. the voters find him simply irresistible. well most of them do. currently he's not getting along so well with his campaign manager, steven wald. steven is not-so-politely tendering his resignation, screaming that he won't work with a candidate as scandalous as palmer.
- why would you go yelling these things in the hallway of an office building? you wanna just shout out your social security number and mother's maiden name while you're at it?
- are we not supposed to know that chicago and illinois politics have a well-known reputation for being corrupt? are we supposed to be shocked that robert palmer is dirty? some like it hot. palmer is unfazed by the accusations.
- i don't really have a three. i just remember learning in school that you can't have a 1 or a 2 without a 3. so ... 3.
smugness must have been at an all-time high in the mid-1970s. and i say that as someone who spends large portions of his day monitoring twitter. the well-groomed and heavily mustachioed tom skerritt portrays palmer as a man who mainlines a combination of xanax and red wine. he combines a solid dose of dgaf with a healthy dollop of condescension. you will not root for this man.
palmer and wald continue their conversation onto a crowded elevator (for real, can you just stfu about this around people?!) when suddenly things hit the skids. or rather, they don't. which is bad news for the people on board. what i'm saying is that the elevator freefalls to the bottom.
waiting at the bottom is kolchak, who's in the building to snag an interview with palmer. turns out a bigger story would drop in his lap. figuratively, not literally.
when the elevator doors are finally pried open, it's not a big surprise to see people dead and/or severely inconvenienced inside. except for one passenger ... who happens to be a dog. a black and brown dog. a big black and brown dog. wearing a chain with a medallion around its neck. a big dog that apparently doesn't take kindly to kolchak taking its picture. the canine attacks but kolchak snatches its chain. which makes it run away(?)
having missed the chance for an interview and learning from palmer's staff that the candidate was heading to a news station for a debate, kolchak hits a local watering hole to watch said debate. but a funny thing happened on the way to the debate. palmer never made it there. he no-shows at the station and his campaign has no word on his whereabouts. i've never run a political campaign but this seems like a bad thing.
with palmer awol, kolchak goes back to the office to work on developing his photos. one of which, not surprisingly, shows an angry black dog in the corner of the elevator.
side note: learning how to develop photos in a darkroom seems like something i'd like to have as a hobby. i have no idea what i'd do with that skill. but i think collecting outdated skills will also be a hobby of mine. so i can kill two birds with one stone.
by the way ... miss emily is back. well, back according to the characters on the show. not to us. you might remember miss emily from things like Being On Vacation Leaving Kolchak To Write Pragmatic But Mean-Spirited Responses For Her Weekly Advice Column. after six weeks (in our world), miss emily is back from italy and she comes bearing gifts. miss emily is bad at giving gifts. unless you like artichoke pasta or weird looking italian fedora-cowboy hat hybrids. maybe you do. i'm not judging.
oh, and miss emily brought back a bottle of holy water for herself. you can probably guess that will come in handy later.
after being hounded (pun maybe intended?) about not following up on the interview with palmer, kolchak decides to drive to the candidate's house at night and maybe pull some sort of guerilla interview. the bad news is that bob ain't home. however his wife is. although she's not in a mood to chat with a nosy reporter.
count this as a rare occasion that kolchak takes no for an answer (though a door slammed in his face might have had something to do with it) but he won't leave without a little action. as he walks back to his car, he's ambushed by a dog. THE dog. the black and brown dog. it knocks him to the ground and roots around in kolchak's pocket for the necklace and medallion that was so rudely taken from him back at palmer's campaign office.
all the dog ever wanted ... was his chain back. it really tied the room together.
alas, bobby palmer has resurfaced. he shows up in lincoln park to meet secretly with the secretary of the late steven wald. it's quickly apparent that palmer and miss secretary (who we later learn is named susan) have biblical knowledge of each other. susan tries to be friendly. palmer wants none of it.
susan: *sigh* 'member when we had fun? robert palmer: i didn't mean to turn you on.
okay, it didn't happen exactly like that. but it kinda happened like that. (i actually imagined most of the scene with soft rock hits of the '70s playing in the background.) while you might be able to catch more flies with honey than vinegar (why you'd catch flies is a mystery to me), you apparently have to use threats to catch slimy politicos. which is what susan does. it doesn't work out for her.
she tells palmer that on the day steven wald died in an elevator accident, he had forgotten his briefcase. she tried to run it out to him, but just missed wald and palmer getting into the elevator. but now she's read all the documents and knows all the dirt on palmer ... unless he's got hush money.
time out! susan says she saw palmer get on the elevator but is only mildly curious about how he survived the incident with nary a scratch. i feel like that's something you should explore. i'm sure whatever papers you read were pretty salacious. but we're talking about a man who either cheated death or rigged a murder scene. either one of those feels like kind of a big deal.
she turns away for a brief moment and when her gaze returns, palmer is gone and replaced by a snarling, angry black and brown dog. he does not greet susan warmly. but while the dog is in the midst of a good mauling, the cops show up and start taking shots at him. one of these cops might serve one weekend out of every month in the imperial army reserve as a stormtrooper because he somehow emptied the clip and didn't affect the dog, who shrugged and ran off.
kolchak catches wind of the incident via his police scanner and rushes off to the hospital to see if he can talk to the victim. he, of course, is barred by the police so instead, kolchak chats up the cop. the cop claims he unloaded at point blank range and that the dog basically ate the bullets. the cop could be trying to cover up for the fact that it looked like he stormtrooper'd the hell out of that situation. all kolchak really needed to hear was that a black and brown dog was involved.
while kolchak couldn't get into susan's hospital room, palmer could. he just magically appears. which makes you wonder why he'd bother with all of this changing into a dog business. just poof into someone's bedroom while they slept, do your killing and poof out. this other plan seems like a humblebrag. "look at me! i can turn into a dog!"
jerk.
anyway, palmer snuffs susan by futzing with her iv. then he poofs out. (see how efficient that was? and no fleas.) the doctors won't admit to foul play, instead diagnosing it as a stroke. can't both things be true? kolchak settles on "mysterious circumstances."
since we're doing deaths in bunches this week, it's time for someone else to go. that someone is Incumbent Senator Talbot. the good senator announced a day off from the campaign to spend some time at the lake with his family. a funny thing happened on the way to the lake. senator talbot died in a head-on collision. wait. that wasn't funny at all. actually, it was pretty brutal. unless you're a black and brown dog. then you walk away unscathed.
this begs the question: was palmer driving the car as himself and then turn into a dog to flee the scene? or was he driving as the dog in a toonces-like display of misplaced bravado? because that latter hypothesis would totally explain how a head-on collision happened.
kolchak has deduced that palmer is the one benefiting from all of these deaths, though he can't quite figure out how. but with the help of a darkroom and developing fluid, he finds a clue. kolchak blows up a photo of a swarthy bob palmer wearing a necklace with a medallion. which looks suspiciously like the one around the dog's neck.
that starts kolchak looking into satanism and witchcraft. though you'd think he'd have some idea about it after his run-in with vampires in los angeles. after rifling through several books, he has his "a-ha!" moment when he closes one book and sees the design on the cover. it's a pentagram! which matches the medallion worn by palmer! and by the black and brown dog! by jove, i think he's got it!
let's pause here to reflect on what just happened for the past half-hour of tv watching. carl kolchak -- who for seven weeks now has recounted to us his tales of investigating fantastical stories only to have multiple run-ins with the undead and supernatural -- doesn't know what a pentagram looks like without looking it up in a book? or that there's not a picture of it one other time in the mountain of books on the subject he had miss emily schlep from a library across town? okay. cool. carry on.
no one's buying kolchak's theory that bob palmer has sold his soul to the devil and has gained the power to turn himself into a vicious dog. (because they are sane!) so the reporter takes it upon himself to sneak into palmer's home with miss emily's holy water in his pocket. inside the house, bob and wife are arguing. she's starting to think that maybe selling your soul to the devil wasn't the best idea and maybe could bob see if there's some sort of out clause. good luck with that. in the meantime, kolchak is hiding in the basement. thus begins the chase portion of this week's program.
except it wasn't really a chase. kolchak skulks around the basement and stumbles into the satan room where palmer is doing satan stuff. mostly making some speech in praise to satan. it sorta rhymed but really didn't. it was like listening to a 1980s dad try to rap. and i'm betting that the stuff in the chalice was probably less blood and more beaujolais.
bob and carl (not to be confused with woodward and bernstein) come face to face and bob offers carl a devil's bargain. sign over his soul and have his journalistic dreams come true.
can bob do this? is he deputized to make deals? or is he going to need to have his supervisor sign off on this? or is this like some sort of satanic pyramid scheme where bob has to recruit three friends and get them to recruit three friends?
bob: you wanna sell your soul? carl: nah. bob: form of ... angry black and brown dog! grrr! ***carl uses HOLY WATER. it's super effective!***
kolchak smashes the bottle of holy water, then grabs the chain from around the dog's neck and throws it into the puddle. the medallion melts and the pupper gets 1000% nicer.
so what happened to mr. palmer? the official story is that he was kidnapped and possibly killed by radicals. hopefully those close to robert palmer are looking for clues. mrs. palmer fled. her car was found she never was. couldn't've happened to two more smug people.
almost heartwarming.
reporter's notebook
when palmer no-shows for the debate, the news station instead throws up an old movie -- "musical holiday" starring alice faye and john payne. of course i checked to see if it was a real movie. as far as i can tell, it's not. but alice faye and john payne were real actors who starred in a number of musicals together. imdb rocks.
kolchak's suit(s?) are becoming a weekly target for ridicule. when the dog ripped his coat, i felt like we'd finally get an answer to the eternal question: kolchak's suits -- just one or many identical? considering the desperation with which he was pleading to get the paper to repair it, i'm going with that's his only suit. maybe he has more. he just happens to be wearing the same one on the days we happen to see him. maybe it's all a crazy coincidence.
with each passing week, i become a bigger fan of tony vincenzo. the longer this goes on, the less he suffers kolchak's foolishness. he's even started to push back and stand up to kolchak, firing off a few solid blasts in the process. i fear i may have prematurely judged you, antonio vincenzo. i apologize.
ron updyke. still smug.
chicago. still dark.
kolchak comments that palmer's house looks a little like the house from gone with the wind. i actually think it's the house from the 'burbs again. same one they used in episode 1. if so, i applaud them. recycle! i always loved when the flintstones walked past a repeating background.
quote of the week
"the people's candidate -- fearless, independent and energetic! why can't the people's candidate be like the rest of us? timid, insecure and lazy." - kolchak
we get the government we deserve.
next week on kolchak: the night stalker: the apparent suicides of wealthy women are linked to a creature who has been killing them for their jewelry.