Date of airing: September 27, 1997 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 15.52 million viewers, 9.6/18 in Households
An orphaned kid named Annie, a rich old man trying to take her home away, but coming around to save it by the end... This was close to becoming an EARLY EDITION adaptation of the story of LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE, which started as a comic strip in 1924, became a radio show in 1930, a feature film in 1932 and 1938, and a Broadway musical in 1977, which was itself adapted for the screen four different times. And all you needed was to make Barney not the villain and have him adopt Annie at the end of the episode, although that would certainly have damaged the moral of the story in this episode and possibly have given the producers of this series, as well as CBS, a bit of a headache, as they probably would have been sued for copyright infringements.
The morale of the episode that would have gotten lost if Mr. Kadison had decided to adopt Annie was that even the most money-hungry person in the world can be convinced to leave capitalism behind and instead just help humankind, as boring as that may sound. I probably would have liked a more straight-up version of the musical in this episode (minus the singing), but I’m sure even the writers didn’t know how to properly handle it, so all they took was the name of the girl and the idea of a rich old man in her life somehow. Even if “somehow” in this case means that Mr. Kadison’s wife and daughter died during the same plane crash Annie’s parents perished. And to make it more dramatic, Annie’s mother was pregnant with her when she crashed and died three days later, which was enough life to give birth to Annie. Talk about dropping the lede here... Annie’s mother stayed alive for three days to give birth to her daughter, then succumbed. That’s first-class emotional drama right here that was pushed into the story during the final minutes for the sake of resolution, although the delivery of that backstory enriched the final minutes of the episode and almost made me push a little tear out of my eye.
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| Is Gary being lured into a children's trap? |
But there was a more intriguing question about this episode: Did
Boswell come with the paper and the cat or something, or why was his
appearance at the end of the episode so mysterious? Considering the
nature of the paper, it’s sort of logical that it would come with more
than just the cat and some extra responsibilities, and maybe Boswell was
an effort by the writers to get into some more of the mystery and
supernatural surrounding the paper and give it something of a mystique for viewers to think about. At the end of the day, Boswell could
have just been a joke delivered by the writers, to make sure that the
Lucius Snow backstory stays with the show,
even now that Gary has moved on from staying in a hotel to staying above
a bar he owns (since Snow also stayed at the Blackstone Hotel). Or maybe Boswell was an entirely separated mystery
character, bent on helping lost souls, and it was him whom McGinty was
talking about when he bought the bar off in a card game. Maybe Boswell
was a real guardian angel or something? Was he the "guide" for Gary in his mission after he started getting tomorrow's paper, which is why he was never weirded out by anything that happened around Gary?
Anyway, it was a solid season premiere. Consider me hooked when the story turned out to be about the home of a group of kids that are threatened to land on the streets if Gary wasn’t able to do something about it. There is always great drama in that regard, and while some of the kids were pretty mindless (thinking they could easily rob a bank, being constantly annoying, like they haven’t had any lessons about life in general), they at least served well in what would turn out to be a dramatic story at the end, as the kids (especially Annie) were needed to save Mr. Kadison’s soul and put his heart back into a beating and caring rhythm. It was obvious that the death of Annie’s parents, and the quickly mentioned “plane crash, I did a bit of research” quote from Gary (when did he have time to do the research between saving the kids and the final moment in the foster home?) were connected, but it didn’t take away from the emotional impact Annie’s words had for Mr. Kadison. Annie's story is a miraculous one, and having her turn an evil businessman into a human being was quite touching, and so far the most emotional moment of the entire series. I’m kind of hoping the writers figured out what they could do with the show and started to be more personal with the stories – going away from the “guest star of the week” type show and moving towards emotional stories. It’s, after all, my favorite kind of show.
Meanwhile, the writers did forget to add something to Mr. Kadison’s story. The guy was robbed in his own office by his two bodyguard-looking goons – I would have loved to know why, because it couldn’t have been just about the money, and maybe it was all about how much of a dick the businessman was, and how much he deserved to get robbed. But maybe it was just hush money of sorts, or maybe Mr. Kadison was in too deep with the Chicago mafia? I guess the writers needed Annie to be in danger somehow, strike a connection between her and Mr. Kadison, and what is better than creating a quick connection when in distress? I can accept that part of the story, but with Mr. Kadison being in-between a family man eight years ago and a Donald Trump-type figure today, there was a story the writers clearly thought about, but neglected to put into the script.
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| The evil businessman still has the heart to protect a little child. |
But oh well, Gary is the manager of a Chicago bar now, which kind of seemed more than coincidental. Almost like fate, when you take the story of how McGinty got the bar the first time around, and how the cat led Gary to the bar, into the upstairs apartment, and into ownership of this establishment. Now, Gary has his own place, an actual job (being the owner and manager of a bar means you can work on your own time, which means he has all the time in the world to save Chicago from drowning in catastrophic headlines), and he can focus on getting his social life back on track. It’s almost like the paper tried to test Gary if he was able to give up parts of his life, and now that the paper got the answer (yes, he will give up parts of his life for the paper), it decided to gift Gary with some normalcy and continuity. It can only get better from here on, right? Although I’m not so sure about that if Chuck was serious about running McGinty’s.
