Main cast: Robert Carradine (Frank), Catriona MacColl (Catherine), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Roger Andrieux
No, no, it’s the other Carradine fellow. Robert Carradine has a better career than Sylvester Stallone‘s brother, sure, but many of his roles are the see-if-you-can-spot-him kind, and let’s be honest here, the only people playing that game are the three people that care enough to call themselves his fan. Don’t feel so bad for him, though, for he will always have Garter Belt to put on his CV as something he’d headlined in.
He plays Frank, an officer of the US embassy in Paris. Ah yes, The Hitchhiker: doing away with American scums in France, one episode at a time. He’s up and coming, being picked to toast the ambassador himself at a gala. Sure, he has some skeletons in his closet, like his hiring of prostitutes for fun times in spite of being a married man, but hey, nobody’s perfect.
Well, he is definitely not perfect, because he’s soon being blackmailed by someone that is clearly toying with him. Poor Frank has to jump through hoops and make a fool of himself. What is going on here?
Okay, this episode at the surface seems like an alright, if predictable, episode. Same story with every other episode of this show, no? However, on closer inspection, many things about this episode don’t hold up to scrutiny.
For one, sure, Frank is a douchebag, but he never does anything heinous enough to warrant his so-called comeuppance here. This is one episode that could have used a more tawdry and sleazy lead character, because as it is, Frank’s bewilderment and eventual downfall makes him a somewhat pitiful asshole. Feeling sorry for the asshole is not what the episode should be aiming for!
Then there is the motivation to take Frank out of the picture. It’s all so unnecessarily convoluted when a trip to the courtroom would have done the trick, surely.
Because of all this, this episode feels more like something set up in a contrived manner for the big twist, like the work of a novice mystery author that focuses too hard on throwing the people off guard to the point that it just tries too hard in all the wrong ways.
