Main cast: Robert Foxworth (Lee Greavy), Heidi von Palleske (Louella Stone), Charmion King (Margaret Cabot), Silvio Oliviero (Jesse), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Leon Marr
The final season of The Hitchhiker chugs on with Hard Rhyme, like a geriatric old coot on life support whom you’d like to see die ASAP, so that you can get your hands on their money, but damn it, that thing just won’t kick the bucket.
In this one, Lee Greavy teaches creative writing to prisoners, and he’s also a poet with a bad case of writer’s block. His submissions were panned for having no passion, no life, and he’s under pressure to deliver.
Meanwhile, his idea of a class is to encourage these prisoners to write down the things they want to forget. Well, this will sure lead to a happy ending…
Manny, who is rather awkward when it comes to expressing himself and in jail for some really brutal murder, quietly hands him his work after the class. It’s about some woman named Louella.
Lee, taken aback by how great the poem is, decides to pass it off as his own. Who will know, right?
The disturbing, graphic poem, Louella, is hailed as a work of genius, so Lee decides to encourage Manny to write more about this lady. He even promises to help Manny see her again. Yes, really, what can go wrong here?
While the synopsis suggests that Lee would soon square off against Manny, or get framed for whatever heinous crime Manny does to Louella later, what it turns out to be is another dumb episode about some guy that ends up going against thugs on the street, because of a woman, and pays dearly for it. In this case, Louella turns out to be a prostitute whose services Lee comes to enjoy tad too much for his own good. Let’s just say that her pimp and lover boy Jesse doesn’t approve.
Goodness, how many episodes have there been already with this theme? It’s like the people behind this show have a fetish for thugs beating them up or something. Don’t they have someone in LA that can be hired for sexy role plays if they were into that kind of thing?
Perhaps ironically, had this been an episode of the earlier seasons, the folks behind this show would have thrown in plenty of nudity and sleaze to mask how much of a nothing burger it is. Without the fun stuff, its inadequacies are now laid bare.
As it is, Robert Foxworth is pretty cute for a guy that mumbles far more than he talks, but on the whole, the cast is a snooze, the plot is a snooze, and the whole thing is a snooze.
