IGNORE all the nitpickers who love to make more out of simple 30 min entertainment than needed... This season 8 episode is alot of FUN... Elizabeth plays Serena who has lost her power due to a powerful witch (niece of the Queen of the Witches called Countess Piranha) who drained her of her power for having an affair with one of her lovers... Serena now is stuck at Samanthas house powerless, and is thinking that if she doesn't have powers, at least she can catch herself a RICH MAN. So she flirts with one of Darrins rich clients and hooks him... Samantha now is pressured by Darrin to find a way to end the relationship between Serena and Rich Client (played by Peter Lawford)... As usual Montgomery does a great job playing kooky Serena and Lawford seems to be enjoying his little comic romp... One of the much better episodes presented during the not always successful final Bewitched season.
2 Reviews
*Sad Sad Sad ..."
kensirhan-861986 August 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This less than thrilling installment shows just how far down the quality scale Bewitched had gone, reduced to throwing in not only 1 warmed-over leftover - unfortunately not rare - but 2, which adding no spice to the unique dishonor, this is the 3rd episode to feature the latter, with 1 character (besides Samantha) common to all of them. "And it wails like this!" as Serena herself said:
This was 1 month shy of exactly 3 years since the 2nd occurrence (themselves only a month apart!) of the "faulty matches" bit, with different characters experiencing the oopsy. In "Marriage Witch's Style" (2/20/69) Serena's dating service (mis)match warlock Franklyn Blodgett (Lloyd Bochner) falls victim to the complexity of the red-tipped devils: "close cover before striking match," he avows to remember. But despite the passage of a mere month ("Samantha's Power Failure," 3/20/69), when Uncle Arthur is vexed by the calculus-level difficulty of the things Serena has forgotten about that 1st experience, saying "there must be instructions on the matchbook!" instead of advising him to CCBS, which Arthur himself reads - "so simple!" - before beating the matchbook near flat on the coffee table & dismissing them as "must be faulty." So whoever wrote this particular take on an old fish shtick had Serena herself losing the battle for match supremacy, now a 2-time memory loss. And someone of Harrison Woolcott's wealth would more likely have Dunhill lighters around than mere unsophisticated matches (which in the 1st & 3rd cases it was never revealed what they were for). Just this one exhumed dead snake was bad enough, but it had to have been a conspiratorial effort to hurl in the next, larger carcass after a little Frankensteinian tinkering:
For a (not) big finish, Harrison Woolcott practically stumbles into the Stephenses' house, relating that his wobbly appearance is due to an unexpectedly adventurous night with Contessa. This consisted of a word-for-word recounting of George Dinsdale's (Jack Cassidy, "A Chance On Love," 3/19/70) outing with Serena! A curious difference between the 2 is how the last 2 lines of this terrifying ordeal were spoken, with Cassidy rendering "I was on my way!" in a very showy style, then after Darrin asks "Where?" replies "To the Moon," in practically a casual fashion. This contrasts with Lawford's wearied version of Line 1 & reply (to this time Samantha's question) in an irritated exclamation, "To the MOON!" This witchery had become seriously played out at this point; at first viewing a few years afterward I gave with a "Not again!" at the match shtick but was more than G-rated in my response to "the Moon." Despite a couple nuther funnies before The End 2 months later, it was clear with this loaf of stale tricks that Bewitched had worn itself out. I gave this 1 of my most favorite shows in aggregate a 9, which I still (if now a little grimly) hold to; but even so longtime retrospective viewing has revealed a plethora of weak spots, & this pathetic pastiche of (long) past laughs - there were also a few other, more minor reruns in the mix - gets my so far lowest single-episode rating, because this tattered tale deserves no more.
This was 1 month shy of exactly 3 years since the 2nd occurrence (themselves only a month apart!) of the "faulty matches" bit, with different characters experiencing the oopsy. In "Marriage Witch's Style" (2/20/69) Serena's dating service (mis)match warlock Franklyn Blodgett (Lloyd Bochner) falls victim to the complexity of the red-tipped devils: "close cover before striking match," he avows to remember. But despite the passage of a mere month ("Samantha's Power Failure," 3/20/69), when Uncle Arthur is vexed by the calculus-level difficulty of the things Serena has forgotten about that 1st experience, saying "there must be instructions on the matchbook!" instead of advising him to CCBS, which Arthur himself reads - "so simple!" - before beating the matchbook near flat on the coffee table & dismissing them as "must be faulty." So whoever wrote this particular take on an old fish shtick had Serena herself losing the battle for match supremacy, now a 2-time memory loss. And someone of Harrison Woolcott's wealth would more likely have Dunhill lighters around than mere unsophisticated matches (which in the 1st & 3rd cases it was never revealed what they were for). Just this one exhumed dead snake was bad enough, but it had to have been a conspiratorial effort to hurl in the next, larger carcass after a little Frankensteinian tinkering:
For a (not) big finish, Harrison Woolcott practically stumbles into the Stephenses' house, relating that his wobbly appearance is due to an unexpectedly adventurous night with Contessa. This consisted of a word-for-word recounting of George Dinsdale's (Jack Cassidy, "A Chance On Love," 3/19/70) outing with Serena! A curious difference between the 2 is how the last 2 lines of this terrifying ordeal were spoken, with Cassidy rendering "I was on my way!" in a very showy style, then after Darrin asks "Where?" replies "To the Moon," in practically a casual fashion. This contrasts with Lawford's wearied version of Line 1 & reply (to this time Samantha's question) in an irritated exclamation, "To the MOON!" This witchery had become seriously played out at this point; at first viewing a few years afterward I gave with a "Not again!" at the match shtick but was more than G-rated in my response to "the Moon." Despite a couple nuther funnies before The End 2 months later, it was clear with this loaf of stale tricks that Bewitched had worn itself out. I gave this 1 of my most favorite shows in aggregate a 9, which I still (if now a little grimly) hold to; but even so longtime retrospective viewing has revealed a plethora of weak spots, & this pathetic pastiche of (long) past laughs - there were also a few other, more minor reruns in the mix - gets my so far lowest single-episode rating, because this tattered tale deserves no more.
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