Main cast: Jennifer Beals (Jane), Ben Bass (Dave), Jane Wheeler (Paula), and David Bowie (The Host)
Director: Jean Beauchemin
Ever since Flashdance, Jennifer Beals has been hustling around for gigs, and sometimes she lands a pretty decent role, and sometimes she gets bit roles in things that I doubt will be brought up by her during her auditions. I’m pretty sure her role in And She Laughed is one of those let’s not mention it ever ones that she’s had in her long career.
Based loosely on Liz Holiday’s short story of the same name, this one is about this lady, Jane, who moves into a new apartment and is convinced that the man next door is the same one that had the starring role in her disturbing dreams. She now thinks that he is constantly peeping at her through the mail slot of her door.
Given the fact that she acts like she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown, staring weirdly at each man that she walks past like she suspects that they will pounce on her and do unspeakable things to her body if she didn’t glower at them first, Jane is clearly someone that is not entire put together upstairs.
Then again, she also takes a man she has just met to bed, so I suppose while she’s mentally unstable and super paranoid about men in general being out to murder her, her horny horn trumps everything else?
The rest of the episode sees Jane staring at things, looking sneakily around the corners of her apartment like she’s being hunted by Jason Voorhees, and screaming while the episode makes all these annoying quick cuts that will send people with epilepsy into seizures. I don’t have epilepsy and even I feel like a seizure is coming over me at times, mind you, and that loud screeching sound this show loves so much being used over and over only makes my headache worse.
So yes, this is another pointless waste of time with a dud of a story, a lead character that has no personality and is utterly forgettable, and utter butchery by pointless quick cuts that appear to be some desperate effort to hide that this episode has nothing much going for it.
Worst of all, there is no T&A to make up for its lack of pretty much everything else!
