Main cast: Ray Sharkey (Eric Coleman), Denise Virieux (Madeleine), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: John Laing
Welcome to the more exotic, more European fifth season of The Hitchhiker, for it is as if someone from the new management had taken a look at this show and gone, “Why aren’t you featuring more European ladies? Men love those ladies, right? What? Americans are terrified of accents? We’ll just hire one main American cast member then, problem solved!”
So here’s In Living Color. This is another “psychotic man on a egotistical rampage” episode, because we can’t have too many of them.
This time around, we have photographer Eric Coleman, who has given up taking pictures of war for the more lucrative “lifestyle” photos around France. He has zero regard for the people whose photos he want to take, as demonstrated in the opening scene when he gives chase to a scared and shouting stranger on a street, snapping away at his camera like a demented rag doll all the while.
Hence, when he later sees a woman about to jump off and kill herself, he doesn’t care either and quickly gets his camera ready. When he later learns that she was a popular singer in the 1920s, he wants to be part of a feature to expose why this woman would commit suicide. Pulitzer Prize, here he comes!
His new assistant, Madeleine, however, may have other ideas, ooh.
So yes, this episode is once again predictable as can be—are these people even trying anymore?—and it’s a no brainer to deduce whom Madeleine really is.
However, the twist at the end is pure ass pull, suggesting that the people behind the script have no more ideas and just thrown in an absurd development just to end the whole thing. So there goes the fun part.
Worse, the acting is wooden, in an “Italian horror movie dubbed by uncaring Americans” manner. Ray Sharkey gives a cringe-inducing performance that sees him screaming manically for “effect”, and the whole thing rates high on the “Please god, no!” meter.
To conclude, crap plot, predictable denouement, horrible acting, and zero entertainment value. This one has so much awfulness to go around, but I’d suggest skipping the whole thing altogether.
