Main cast: David McIlwraith (Eddie Black), Jill Hennessy (Elisabeth), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Leon Marr

Eddie Black has been blacklisted from playing at many clubs, due to his mounting pile of unpaid debts to the owners of these clubs as well as his inability to show up for his gigs and other forms of erratic behavior.

His girlfriend, tired of his lack of direction, his lies, his mockery of her actually having a job, and his constant hitting up on her for money, has had enough. His manager, tired of his inability to make any gig work, fires him.

Backed up against the wall with no one else to mooch off, our washed-up rocker is forced to pawn his guitar, but he encounters a staff in the pawn shop, Elisabeth, that suggests he should just go rob the shop instead.

David McIlwraith looks like a hot Mr Hitchhiker—they wear very similar garbs here—and he has a nice basket. Most importantly, he has better hair than Page Fletcher. Can we have him as the Hitchhiker in the next season? Sure, his cake may not look as tasty as Mr Fletcher’s, but maybe we can superimpose his head over Mr Fletcher’s body or something.

As for Pawns, this one is actually not bad at all. It’s old school The Twilight Zone-ish in that it presents the main character with a supernatural-tinged moral dilemma, in which the right choice could mean redemption. Of course, whether or not Eddie will realize which choice is the better one for him is the point of the whole story.

I especially like how the nature of the pawn shop is not elaborated on. This lack doesn’t render the episode incomplete or incoherent, which I am pleasantly surprised by considering that pretty much every episode that came from Jeremy Lipp tended to be below average to horrid so far on this season. Instead, it leaves me intrigued by the possibilities presented by the pawn shop.

Come to think of it, this episode could have been a pilot for a spin-off anthology, featuring people that come in to pawn their things.

Anyway, the acting is fine, the pacing is fine, and the main cast members are easy on the eyes, so it’s easy to like this one.

Oh, this is the last episode of the fifth season so yes, I made it with my sanity intact. This calls for a drink.

You see, I think the season is finally coming together in the last few episodes, but by then it’s too late. That bizarre detour to France sees the show defecating and then vomiting on all the goodwill it has built up in the previous two seasons, and I still wonder what happened to trigger that dark phase of this show.

No matter, this season is over. I know, there’s still the final season, and it has—oh god—another 20-plus episodes. Still, I’ll get to that one when I get to it, but for now, I’m going to catch up with all the cape and space capers I’ve put on the back burner for this season.

Now, about that drink…