Main cast: Virginia Madsen (Christina), Steve Inwood (Simon Hopper), James Shigeta (Nishi), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Daniel Vigne

I know I’m way behind in catching up on the latest cape crap shows, but I’m burned out from all that formulaic stuff anyway. I’m far more curious about how the fourth season of The Hitchhiker will turn out to be, as the third season was a pleasant surprise—it had some actually pretty good episodes for once. Is this show going to continue its momentum? Well, I’m far more interested to finding out, instead of watching whatever Disney+ and its ilk are throwing at me at least for now.

Interestingly, as the opening credits of Perfect Order roll, I notice that Gilbert Adler of Tales from the Crypt is a producer on this show now. I don’t believe he was involved in previous seasons, so hmm, will things change in any noteworthy way in this season?

Actually, no. The first episode of the fourth season is a throwback to the earlier seasons, with absurd plot but minus the gratuitous trash.

Virginia Madsen plays Christina, who wants to be a famous model and is convinced that having the infamous photographer Simon Hopper capture her on camera is the way to go. Simon is an abusive jerk, as he pays no regards to his models’ well-being and subjects them to all kinds of painful treatments and even deadly situations. You see, he’s convinced that perfection can only be attained when one is as close to death as possible.

So, imagine my shock when Christina finally realizes by the later parts of this episode that the psycho she’s signed up to work for, whom she’d seen open fire in front of everyone in a gallery just because, is really a psycho and he doesn’t give a damn about her safety like he doesn’t give a damn about his other models. Oh dear, she realizes that she’s not that special after all.

Perhaps this episode is an allegory about silly women that keep gravitating towards assholes, convinced that they are somehow going to be treated differently by these assholes because they think they are not like other girls. Who knows, really.

I do know, though, that this episode is a snooze as I’m just seated here waiting for that idiot Christina to stop being such a pathetic enabler of psychotic men.

I get some amusement from how ridiculous the denouement is, but in the end, this episode is a very obvious, suspense-free morality tale about staying away from people that behave in a mentally unbalanced manner, because shocker, they may really be crazy after all. Surely there is a more interesting story to fill up an episode with.