Season two starts, and I had said that the series had a lot of high profile guest stars, but season one didn’t have any huge names so much as recognizable faces.
Season two changes all that.
Yup, season two opens with a guest shot from…Jeffrey Tambor!
OK, he wasn’t that big at the time. This episode came out before he got that Larry Sanders Show gig that led to his familiar presence as a television actor until he was revealed to be a creep. The real big name here is Demi Moore, and she’s still working even if my general squeamishness means I haven’t seen The Substance yet.
Anyway, here Moore is one Cathy Finch, a somewhat ruthless woman who wants to marry a rich man. She stops by to see a fortune teller who tells her she’s going to lose her job but immediately get a new one. There’s a neat transition where Moore walks out the fortune teller’s door and then immediately into her office job, but she’s fired for being nearly a half hour late getting back from lunch, something she didn’t realize because time moved differently in the fortune teller’s shop. She’s then immediately hired to work as a waitress at a go-go type of bar where the topless women dancers wear tassels. You know where they wear ’em, but that takes care of HBO’s need to female nudity for the time being.
That’s where Cathy meets disgusting fat patron Charlie (Tambor in a fat suit), and Madame Voma insists Cathy will marry him, and even though he’s poor now, a close relative will die, and then he will die a violent death, so Cathy can be a wealthy widow…or so she thinks. Charlie has an uncle who owns a factory, and she finds that out early, but that uncle has a family Charlie neglected to mention.
Man, did all the fat jokes in this episode go to waste?
Will Charlie inherit a lot of money?
Yes!
From Cathy when she wins a million dollars and decides to leave him. He stabs her to death because if he can’t have her, no one can. And the electric chair is a very violent way to die. As for Madame Voma, well, she has other customers, and her predictions always come true. Just, you know, not the way you might want them to.
What about the Cryptkeeper? He’s more the character I recognize, but he’s mostly dressed as a fortune teller here. and that’s about it.
Notable Names: Moore. Tambor, character actor Earl Boen
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