Timeless (2006)

The penultimate episode of "Night Stalker" was one of a handful dumped onto iTunes in 2006. In this episode we get the return of Titus Berry (played by Stephen Tobolowsky here and Wally Cox in The Night Strangler) as Carl and the Scooby gang chase down a "vampire" who eats three pituitary glands every 35 years in order to extend her life.

Episode Transcript

(00:48):
In nature, predators cut off theirprey from the pack, leaving them vulnerable,
easy to attack. Modern society valuesindependence, the strength to stand on

(01:08):
our own, to make our ownway forfeiting not only the comfort of home,
but the bonds of family and community. But in our isolation we become
weak, perfect victims. That wasthe voice of reporter Carl Colchak in the

(01:38):
case that we call timeless. Can'tsay it aired, but it was dropped
on iTunes, dumped unceremoniously on Februaryseventh, two thousand and six. I'm
your host, Mike White, joiningme as always as mister Chris Tashu.
I would say, you copped myphrase there. Dumped unceremoniously is what I
have come to believe the Nightstock fromtwo thousand and five that should have been

(02:01):
That should have been the subtitle ofthe show night Stalker. In a world
where your show never airs, Thisis really I mean, this is the
penultimate episode and it never aired.So great, Hey, at least there's
no tattoos on the wrist or anythingin this one. Oh dear god,
I'm so happy about that. It'sdefinitely an episode that doesn't have any of

(02:22):
the quote unquote mythology tied into it, which by this point I don't know
why there's any mythology anymore, becausesupposedly it was all tied up this episode.
Let's just cut to the chase.It felt really familiar to me.
Oh, it almost felt like,oh, what's that show. There's like
a woman with red hair and thenthere's a guy who's named after an animal.
Oh yeah, the X Files.It felt a lot like The X

(02:46):
Files. Didn't it feel a littlebit like The Night Strangler? Yeah?
Well, I mean it felt likea mishmash of things. My point is
like it felt like a bunch ofother things that were coppying from the original
show. So we start off thisepisode in a park. We've got a
dog playing fetch, and then weare cross cutting with a woman who is

(03:08):
maybe being tortured or something. Eventuallywe find out that she is having her
vital life essence strained from her orshe's going to have her face bitten into
and have her pituitary gland stolen.And if that sounds familiar, listen back
to some of our previous episodes,because we have talked about this exact same

(03:29):
thing before. Just like in theepisode toombs the same thing. He's stealing
some sort of gland to make himlive longer, and it's at the same
thing where there's like thirty five yearsjust like Night Strangler. It's like,
oh my god, like there's originalideas I guess are at a premium for
this show, which it could havebeen a good episode. It's again another

(03:51):
lackluster outing for a show that everyonehas been telling us is a lackluster show.
At least in this episode, weget a lot of Eugene Bird as
alex Nybee because he's really at thecenter of this thing because there's this dead
body that gets found. That's howwe were cutting back and forth between the
park and this woman was because thecorpse is found at the park and she's

(04:14):
got this big hole in her faceand Nibee is like, no, something's
hinky here. But the corner,the other corner, because I guess he's
the assistant corner, is just like, yeah, no, everything's fine here,
everything's fine. We're all fine.How are you? This guy,
Aaron Shields is his character's name,played by Kevin rom And I don't think

(04:38):
we've ever seen him before, buthe's just kind of wedged into this as
is his mother, Marlene Shields,played by Nia Ferlin, who is looking
really good for the most part.Yeah, the character of doctor Shields definitely
felt like a CSI character of theWeek. He's totally not the bad guy

(04:58):
thing. It would have been coolif this had been a character that had
been in the show for a coupleepisodes, because that would have been like
an interesting way to introduce a characterwho's already been in the show as like
an integral part into the episode,right, and then that twist of him
being something fiendish would have been like, Oh, okay, It's kind of
like there was a one of theassistants on Bones who ended up being basically

(05:24):
a pawn for a serial killer andI was like, oh, well,
that's kind of a shock. Ididn't see that coming. It would have
been interesting if that had been theway the episode had done it. However,
we just get a clearly shoehorned incharacter who we've never seen before,
who totally doesn't have anything to dowith the main villain. Feels pretty ham
fisted, as always with this show, Well, what is his relationship with

(05:47):
this woman that he's calling his mother? Because there's also another I can't say,
a character, but it's a corpsethat seems like that was the mother,
old assistant or something like he saysmy brother, I think at one
point. So it's like, ishe actually blood kin with her, because

(06:10):
it seems like he's been with herfor a long time as well. So
they show a picture at the endof the episode that would lead me to
believe that it is his mom whereit's like her holding a young boy and
she has lived for hundreds, ifnot thousands of years, right, eating
people's pituitary glands, which, bythe way, a tumor or a problem

(06:32):
with the pituitary gland is what causeslike acromegaly, which is like you know
what you know, like the BigShow or sun Ming Ming or any like
the big like very tall people andrethe Giant. That's what they had a
problem with was their protuitary gland,which I don't know how that equates into
living forever. It's a thing.It's a gland. So we're just gonna

(06:55):
they're not eating the brain, they'reeating something else. Yeah, I've seen
that's before three times now. Itkind of reminded me a little bit of
like let the right one in whereI thought that maybe she would recruit somebody
and then use them for a longtime and then dispose of them. But
it seems like the Sun is alsogetting some sort of long lasting life benefit

(07:17):
out of this too, I guess, or he's like covering up for her.
Again, it's not made entirely clearwhat's going on in a lot of
the episode, which is fine,I mean, a little bit left to
audience interpretation is normally okay, butwith an episode like this one where they're
trying to actually craft an interesting villain, you got to explain it just a

(07:39):
little bit more. I'm not sayingcompletely basil exposition it where it's like this,
this, this, this and this, but like, don't leave it
completely up to just, oh whatever, you'll figure it out audience. It
feels a little sloppy. So,Mulder, do you expect me to believe
that there's a woman who every thirtyfive years eats the pituitary gland of three
women who happened be born on mybirthday and blah blah blah blah blah.

(08:03):
Yeah, that's kind of what itsounded like. So the reason why I
say this one really feels like theKnight Strangler is that There is a character
coming back in from The Knights Strangler, which is Titus Berry, who was
known as Mister Berry and the KnightsStrangler played by Wally Cox in that version
and played by Stephen Tobolowski. HereBig Tobo, El Tobo love the Tobo.

(08:24):
Yeah, he is a fantastic characteractor. Yeah, he's just fantastic
and everything. Like you know,everybody knows him as Ned Ryerson from Groundhog
Day, but he's done a lotmore than that, like writing one of
my favorite movies, True Stories,which if you've never seen it, go
check it out. It's probably notgoing to be your thing, but if
it is your thing, cool.But he's great in this episode. I

(08:45):
would say he's the best part ofthis episode. I'm sure you would agree,
probably with a second place going toEugene Bird, who's always fantastic as
Alex Nibi. Tobo is such thatI wish that he had been a regular
character in this entire series, kindof like oh have given the would have
given the show some character as opposedto a bunch of flat, one dimensional
exactly, and it would have beensomething I guess like going all the way

(09:07):
back to the night Stalker rather thanhim going rather than Colchack going to outside
sources. Sometimes he could go downto the Morgue, talk to mister Barry
and get some information. That way, he would be like another source.
And you know, it does feellike there is something missing from the show.
And now seeing Tobolowski in the show, it's like, well, now

(09:28):
we know what was missing was likethat kind of fourth wheel fifth wheel,
you know, technically sixth wheel ifyou count n ibe. I mean,
I don't think, okay, soyou still don't need Jane in this I'm
sorry. I like the actor.I disagree. Really, I feel like
the problem with this show because look, were one episode away from the end

(09:50):
of the show. I mean,we could have this discussion now or on
the next episode that we talk aboutthis show. We could do a post
mortem on Colchack two thousand and five. But this show has good characters that
are poorly written, that are onedimensional. I think they all serve a
purpose. I just don't think they'reexecuted very well. You know. I

(10:11):
mean, you really don't think thecharacter of Jane has a purpose in the
show. Not really. He seemslike he's kind of a weird amalgam of
Cole Chack and Perry in this likehe doesn't necessarily do much. And then
I mean, he was the womantied to the railroad tracks for at least
one episode, and it's like,okay, well that would normally be the

(10:33):
Perry role. I mean, really, in the original we just had Cole
Chack, you know, and you'vegot some other people that work at the
office. But when Colchack goes out, he goes out alone, and I
think that that might be also theissue with the two thousand and five show
is that it becomes more of abuddy show as opposed to a solo outing
show, which obviously the buddy showaspect does kind of draw inspiration from another

(10:56):
show that Frank Spott and It's workedon, which was The X Files.
So they changed I think they changedthe I mean, I know, I
know they changed the dynamic of theshow right from the get go. Right
As opposed to just Colchack going out, it's Colchack and Perry Reid and then
Jane going out as well, Andso you automatically changed the dynamic of this

(11:16):
show that was a solo man showwho would check in with kind of his
other side characters, you know.Once or twice throughout the episode. But
this has become a very different show, which necessitates in my mind, different
needs for the character and those whosurround him. And I think Jane is

(11:37):
a good character if he's written better, if he's given more to do other
than kind of be I mean,he's kind of exposition in a lot of
these episodes. He reminds me alot of Zander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I've never seen a single episode ofthat show. Well there's our next
podcast, Oh god, Josh weedonHater of Women. Nobody's ever talked about

(12:00):
that show on the internet before.Another to me better show than Nightstalker two
thousand and five was Special Unit twofrom the early two thousands, and the
guy who wrote for this episode alsowrote an episode of Special Unit two where
it was very X Files as faras the you know, the creepy molder

(12:20):
and the disbelieving Skully type of character. But it was really played a lot
more for laughs, which I appreciated. Yeah. Again, it's just he's
not given much of a characterization,right, And like similarly with Vincenzo,
I mean, Jesus, you're notgiving anything to do. Even Perry Reid's
not given much to Vincenzo doesn't evenshow up in this episode. Well he's

(12:41):
credited, but he's not in it. At Tobolowski has actually given something to
do. He brings a level ofinterest to the character. And fuck,
we're one episode away from the showbeing done and we're finally meeting a character
who's worth anything it. Come on, are you serious? Show like this
is this is the worst way forthis show to go out, actually giving

(13:05):
us a character who we give ashit about them, being like he's in
one episode and oh, by theway, the show's about to be over,
and oh, by the way,this episode never even aired, so
the people who are watching the shownever even got to see his performance.
When we get to meet Perry's parents, which I don't think that we've ever
met her folks before, and Iguess her dad as a doctor because he
latches right in on that whole pituitarygland thing. But he's just another exposition

(13:28):
dump character. Now. I mean, it's one of these things where a
lot of the characters aren't given characters. They're just a way to move the
plot along. And I think thatthat's the problem with this show, is
that it's just flat, one dimensionalcharacters, and Colchak is the only one
who's given any sort of characterization,but even then and feels like he's just
sleepwalking through every episode. And Idon't know if that's Stuart Townsend's fault,

(13:52):
if all the other characters are prettyone dimensional and flat. I don't think
everybody was not committed to their rolesin this show, because I'm pretty sure
as an actor, your dream isto be on a show that runs for
thirteen fucking seasons, like Jensen Acclesand Jared Padilecki. You've got a constant
paycheck that you will never have toworry about not making money. And I'm
sure everyone who is involved with thisshow, I would hope maybe not.

(14:16):
We're interested and excited in making thisshow a success, and it's a little
disappointing to me that we have gottenthis far into the show and nothing has
really changed. I can say unequivocallythat from the first episode we watched to
the penultimate one, it's still thatsame sleepwalking nonsense that Stewart Townsend has done.
Gabriel Union has given nothing to do, and the episodes are ultimately not

(14:39):
that exciting or interesting, right,I mean it is so by the numbers.
I mean, here we go,we've got the one corpse. We
know that there's got to be twomore before we have another thirty five years
go by. We have to catchVictor Tombs before he goes back into his
hide whole kind of thing. Weget a little bit of a bump because

(15:00):
as there was another corpse who actuallydied before the first corpse, so oh
my god, there's going to beone more murder. Right from the get
go, Perry is like, oh, this woman reminds me of me.
Oh, we were born on thesame day. I was just like,
oh, my gosh. I mean, just to say she reminds me of
me. She's a very career centricwoman who's driven by this and that and

(15:20):
the other thing. Just go aheadand say that, but that they were
both born on the same day.Oh, that's a little much. It's
all again a lot of conveniences aswell. And so we've got the ticking
clock and then it's kicked up anotch and then we have to have the
cross cutting between what's happening with Perryand then Colchak figuring out what's going on,

(15:43):
and then the big race to getthose two together and have her life
saved. Wow. We've seen thisa few times now and again it's not
particularly compelling now, and it wasn'tparticularly compelling the first two or three times
we saw it. And it alsois not a great characterization for the Peri
Reed character that she's always the onein distress. Not that I'm saying,

(16:04):
look, look, let's be realhere, there's nothing wrong with characters in
distress. I don't know how youget around that. I know that it's
twenty nineteen and there are going tobe people that say, well, women
should never be in distress because that'syou know, not helping the female role
casting in films and TV. Butlike men or women, I mean,

(16:25):
if a man's always being cast thatway, it's just it's you're gonna have
to do it for a character oneway or another, so maybe figure out
a way to balance it out.I mean, they did have Jane in
trouble at one point in this series. But there's an unreal expectation in this
day and age with the way thatshows portray characters in distress should never be
women. It's you know, it'soffensive for a woman to be in distress.

(16:48):
Find whatever my issue with this showis that they never strayed very far
away from a very reliable in quotationsformula. The formula for this show has
always been the same, very muchlike the original show, but the standards
in two thousand and five were alot different than when the original show came
out, At least I would havethought they would be. But I mean

(17:10):
again, maybe that's not the wayit was interpreted when the show came out
in two thousand and five. Theyhave so many people that could be in
distress other than just Perry, thoughyou talked about Jane being there, Vincenzo
maybe once in a while, maybeeven Eugene Bird every once in a while.
Come on, but yeah, it'strade off. Every once in a
while. Have Perry save Colechack halfthe time or a quarter of the time,

(17:34):
that'd be nice. It's very onenote. It's just it's a formula
that works. But just because it'sa formula that works, doesn't mean you
don't have to or want to orshouldn't stray away from the formula and maybe
do something interesting. Maybe have aTony Vincenzo centric episode where Carl and Perry

(17:55):
and Jane are all in trouble andhe has to figure it out. Do
something. Flex your creative muscles alittle bit, because it feels like the
show has been treading water since episodeone and we're at the second last episode.
Nothing has changed. Do you knowwhat Perry Reid's father's name is.
Perry Reid's father is his name inthe show. He's not even given a
character name. Awesome, kind oflazy. It is lazy. Again,

(18:18):
the show is lazy. It's disappointing. We're part of a couple of Facebook
groups and I mean I've gone andlooked and read at what people say about
this show, and I was hoping. I was like, maybe they're just
looking at the original show through nostalgicglasses, rose tinted glasses, Right,
maybe this show's actually not that bad. No, I think this show is
living up to what other people feelabout it. It didn't do enough to

(18:41):
differentiate itself from shows that were onat the time. Hell, shows that
are still on. I mean,I think Supernatural came out around the time
that this show came out. Yeah, I think it was like two weeks
before or something like that. Ithink we talked about that and the pilot
episode. I mean Supernatural has takenup the mantle of X Files and by

(19:03):
proxy Coal Check, which is greatbecause Supernatural, you know, it's gone
on for a lot longer than Ithink anyone thought it would watching the first
episode live, which I know Idid. But you know, for all
of the problems that it has asa show, which it has a fair
amount, it has at least doneinteresting stuff with the narrative and the formula.

(19:25):
There's not saying that this show wouldn'thave, but getting into a rhythm
and settling into a very basic formularight out of the gate and not doing
anything interesting or new or innovative,it's not going to get you a second
season. It's not even going toget all of your episodes aired out of
the gate because this episode was neveraired. I believe somebody said dumped unceremoniously,

(19:49):
and it's unfortunate because when we talkedto Frank Spott, and it's oh,
so many years ago, it wasclear to me, and I don't
know how you felt about it,that his heart was in the placed with
this show and through no fault ofhis own, some of his fault,
I mean, I err on theside of there's some fault in all camps.
The show ended up not going anywhere, and it's an episode like this

(20:11):
that is kind of an indicator asto why that's the case. It's derivative
of shit we've seen before from bettershows, from the original show, and
even then, I wasn't a hugefan of The Knights Strangler because I felt
it was derivative of the original TVmovie Nightstalker to begin with. I feel
like I'm railing against his show,but like, this is worse, so

(20:32):
close to the end here and nothinghas changed, and that to me is
a huge disappointment. So we haveone more episode left of this will We
then also talk about the m wordepisode of the reboot X File, since
it was picking up a cole Chackscript, I mean, I would assume,

(20:52):
so yeah, I'm just kind ofdreading it. Which one is it?
Someone with Murray from Flight of theConcords. So here's the thing.
I watched some of The X Fileswhen it came back, but I ultimately
stayed away from it because it endedup doing more harm to the mythology than
helping it. Which, by theway, if you're a fan of the

(21:14):
X Files, you know that thoselast couple of seasons of the show,
you know, were essentially the samething. The show got kicked in the
pants once David Kovny left, butit was actually having problems before then.
So I didn't watch the I didn'twatch the entire new run of the show,
did you No, But I didhappen upon that episode, and then
I just noticed how Murray was dressedas coal Chack. And then when we

(21:37):
talked with Frank, he was like, oh, yeah, that was an
unused script. So I think we'regoing to have to read both the script
and then watch that as Probably we'lldo what's the frequency coal check and a
couple of months, and then we'lldo the M word in a couple of
months, and then hopefully we'll kindof be done with cole Chack two thousand
and five. We'll definitely put itin the rearview mirror. I'm disappointed.

(22:02):
I'm not upset. I'm just disappointed. I don't know if a year from
now I'm going to remember this show, you know what I mean. Well,
let's just hope we go out ona high note with it. Let's
make a prediction for the next episodeof the show. Do you think the
next episode of the show is goingto walk us out on a high note.
I will tell you that it's theonly episode of the show that I
actually remember and that I remember likingthe episode. So that's what I'm hoping

(22:26):
for, Okay, because I've lookedat not that you know, we should
put any credence in them, butI've looked at the ratings on IMDb,
and there's only three episodes that goabove seven seven point one for the pilot
with sixty ratings, seven point threefrom Mallam with forty ratings, which,

(22:48):
by the way, I don't evenknow if I trust the ratings then because
Mallem is just okay, and thenseven for what's the frequency cold Check with
forty one reviews. So my hopeis we kind of go out on a
high note. My hope was thatwe were going to kind of reassess this
show from a different angle and cometo the realization that, oh, it's
maybe not as bad as everyone says, but I'm going to have to you

(23:11):
know, you know, I don'tthink there's anything we can do or the
show can do at this point tochange my opinion. I think when we're
said and done with this, it'sgoing to be you know what a disappointment,
not a surprise, considering how everyoneon every cold check anything has said,
yeah, it's not good. Well, next month we will be back
with an episode of the original series, which is Demon and Lace from nineteen

(23:32):
seventy five. So until then,Chris, what has been happening at the
Culture Cast? Well, right nowon the Culture Cast, we are actually
in the middle of Mike White March, named for the gentleman who is currently
currently sitting to my left. Iwish you was sitting to my left on
this podcast with me. Mister MikeWhite, programmed the entire month of the

(23:53):
Culture Cast. We're talking osploitation films, Australian exploitation films if you couldn't pick
it up from the Pretty on theNose Moniker, So if you want to
check those out, And we're watchingsome interesting film stuff that I don't think
either one of us have seen.So it's pretty exciting to kind of get
a fresh take on these movies thatwe hadn't seen either one of us.

(24:14):
Head an over to culturecast dot com. Mike, what are you up to
when you're not on the col Jacktapes? Well, I co host a
podcast with you called Dreams for Salewhere we talk about Twilight Zone from the
mid eighties, so starting in nineteeneighty five, and we are just in
our nascent days. With that,I think we've got what five episodes under

(24:37):
our belt, six maybe by thetime this comes out, so I can
check that out over at twilight Zoneeighty five. And then yeah, I
do a little thing called the ProjectionBooth every week where we talk about all
kinds of crazy movies and yeah,it's no exception. Pretty soon you and
I will be recording an episode aboutthe taking of Tiger Mountain starting a very

(24:57):
young Bill Paxton Rest in peacebo Pacson. So as always, I want to
thank John Walker for a theme music. I want to thank everybody for listening
to the show. Please hud outover to iTunes were can rate and review
the show and you can make usa lot happier if you leave a nice
rating. Please do. The pasthas endless stories about tragedies that have struck

(25:21):
those who have come before us,a history of tears. The nature remains
indifferent to our suffering, offering onlya cold, hard truth, one that
becomes harder to bear the more welearn to love living that at the very
moment life first pumps through our veins. The clock is set to stop.

(26:00):
Had H Jappa m h m hmhm