Life on Mars – Summer DVD Review – Coffee, Tea, or Annie

Life On Mars

Life on Mars
Coffee, Tea, or Annie

Original Air Date: Mar 11, 2009

Sara M. – TwoCents Reviewer
sara@thetwocentscorp.com

Air travel in the 1970s was completely different. It was an experience! People dressed nicely, drinks were served in real glasses, and the flight attendants were known as stewardesses. To be an airhostess was glamorous. Young girls joined to travel across the globe and to party with pilots from city to city. But this can’t last forever.

One stewardess has just been found dead. Murder in a dodgy part of town is far from unusual. But this young woman, Valerie Palmer, is a dead ringer for the 125’s own ‘No-nuts’ Annie. Now to find the murderer an undercover job is necessary.

Valerie is the second flight attendant to turn up dead in the last couple of weeks. The brunette double for Annie was found outside of an abandoned warehouse, where the only other person around was a crazy homeless man. Understandably Annie is rather frazzled by seeing a carbon copy of herself, dead on a New York sidewalk. While trying to deal with this, Sam makes the situation worse by apologizing and telling her to blame the situation on him. That weird things happen to him and the trait is starting to rub off on her. The assertion is not met with gratitude but rather irritation that he can still think that her life just part of some “puppet show” going on in his head.

Done up as Valerie, Annie returns to an apartment building in Chelsea to find out if she’ll be convincing enough to fool stewardess roommates Leslie and Carol. They buy it and Annie returns to Valerie’s room, searching for anything that might’ve lead to her death. Hidden in the ceiling she finds a $2,000 in cash and an appointment book. The next date is for a flight tomorrow. Before Annie goes to bed she has a brief walkie-talkie conversation with Sam, confessing that she’s never been on an airplane before. They share a sweet moment, provoking yet another “just get on with it already” moment between the two.

The next day at one of the large New York airports, Annie arrives with her roommates. They stop by a bar for a pre-flight drink with the pilots. One in particular, Ronald Harris, who is especially surprised to see who he believes to be Valerie. A new pilot enters the scene as well, Sam undercover as Pilot Tom Cruise. He, along with Ray, is going to be on the flight with Annie as back up. Which is a good thing. The man she’s supposed to meet with, Lincoln Hart, is a suspected drug dealer. Yet another man surprised to see Valerie alive. Shortly after take off Hart leaves his seat and corners Annie in the kitchenette. A surprisingly concerned Ray is quick to pull the man away as he tries to force his hand up Annie’s leg. Tackling him to the floor with Sam’s help, he orders the captain to turn the plane around.

At the station however, they discover that Hart isn’t actually a drug dealer but just a collector of flight attendant’s underwear. He would pay the girls $500 per pair and had a sizable stash at his apartment, where Ray and Chris find them. Back undercover, with Ray, Gene, Chris and Sam listening, Annie as Valerie dirty talks Ronald into inviting her back to the swinger parties he and his wife Rita throw. There’s one rule for these parties, you have to bring a date. Annie knows just the pilot to bring!

She and Sam arrive at the party; he’s made it very clear that he doesn’t support this idea. And continues to remind Annie that she should go for the trachea or the groin if anyone tries something with her. A few minutes into the party Annie’s mic goes out forcing Gene to go in, calling a hooker friend of his at the last minute. They fix the problem and the women begin to fish keys out of the bowl. As everyone is paired off the only two couples left are Rita and Ronald, Annie and Sam. They switch and go on their way. Ronald as it turns out is into being hit; responding to Annie’s screams Sam and Gene both run into the room, the latter in a shorty robe and covered with lipstick. When they discovered that Ronald likes to get rough, Gene gives him a hammer to the stomach as they send Annie out of the room.

Seconds later Ray and Chris come running in, answering Annie’s screams for help. Someone has taken her and left the house. Trying to get in range of her mic, they hear the familiar ramblings of the crazy homeless man at the warehouses. The four rush in just as Annie manages to get a hold of Rita’s gun. It had been Rita the first time a stewardess turned up dead and she was the one responsible for Valerie’s death as well. She knew that her husband was falling in love with these women and couldn’t take it.

Rita is arrested. And while at the station Ronald calls Sam on his attraction to Annie. Telling him that he might not understand women, but he knows men. And he knows what he sees when Sam looks at her. Annie meanwhile is pondering why the universe had her walk in Valerie’s shoes. She knows that Val wasn’t a bad person; she was just a girl with a dream who ended up with the wrong people. With a boost of confidence, Annie goes to Gene and tells him that she deserves to be a detective. She’s made a break in numerous cases and has proved that she can handle herself.

I love this episode for many reasons. There’s a great smaller story line with Chris trying to get dating advice from the men in the office. And after Home is Where You Hang Your Holster it’s interesting to see Ray showing so much concern for Annie’s well being. More like he would for a co-worker in trouble than just the standard male predisposition to protect a woman. There are a lot of great comedic moments in the episode as well. In particular while Sam is undercover as Tom Cruise and begins to use movie titles to describe what he’s all about. A really fun episode and worth checking out. Any thoughts? Share your TwoCents below and thanks for flying with Life on Mars.