Penultimate episode of one of my favorite TV shows. I've been doing some work on QUEEN OF SWORDS for Wikipedia, and my research told me about an upcoming flashback episode, so this afternoon, while I was confirming my suspicion that today's DVD session would be mostly a repeat, I also got an inadvertent spoiler, something that led me to believe Grisham was going to unmask the Queen. Tore my eyes away, but thought Wikipedia's List of Episodes had given the game away entirely. Settled in for the story, cursing my luck for the spoiler, and was perturbed by the low quality.
Yes, it was shot in a studio in London. It has a completely different feel to it, with bad lighting, supposedly because the inside of the old mine is lit by torches only. Well, if it was an abandoned mine it would not have been lit at all, d-uh!
Apparently, 22 is a magical number in SyndicationTVLand, and if you only really have enough in the budget for 21 episodes, you gotta make a shrewd plan, huh? So this episode has very little new material and was clearly shot on a low budget using only three cast members and one very inept walk-on who, as Sgt. Perez, gave a truly lackluster 'performance'. The whole set-up of Grisham and the Queen being trapped in an old mineshaft reeks of a desperate attempt to bring home the bacon at a bargain basement price.
And, no, Wikipedia did not spoil anything. I only thought I had seen more than I should have.
But the episode is weak, with the new material of shoddy quality, looking even weaker next to those excerpts from great episodes like the pilot and "Running Wild".
I complain so bitterly because this is such a beloved show, and I feel the fans were robbed.