Every four years for the last several decades, Americans have to endure listening to soccer fans remind us that "futbol is the most popular game in the world," implying that our apathy toward it is somehow wrong. (I understand the previous sentence implies "Americans" and "soccer fans" are separate entities and that no person can fall into both categories. I understand it and still didn't rewrite it, so you know where I stand.) Bear in mind that pederasty was hugely popular in Greece for centuries and Jerry Lewis is considered a comedic genius in France. One of those things is so disturbing the very mention will make stomachs turn and kill any conversation and the other is having sex with kids. So let's just agree the rest of the world is stupid for liking soccer.

However, because soccer fans are a vocal minority and Hollywood loves to cater to those, the 21st episode of the fifth season of "Quincy, M.E." tried to grab a slice of that hot World Cup excitement. One might expect to see some recognizable soccer stars like Pele or... well, I'm pretty sure there were some other ones. Perhaps a plot where a soccer player dies on the pitch and Quincy has to figure out why? Maybe we'll get a murder at halftime. Can't you just picture the hijinks as Quincy tries to interview some players at practice and they give him a hard time, juggling the ball around him or making him play goalie?

Well, "Deadly Arena" offered none of that. Instead we got botulism, a kid whose hair composed half of her body weight, meandering back story filler, and a romantic subplot between Dr. Pulaski and Oscar Madison.

Let me reiterate. Someone looked at

and
and said, "Dear me, is the air conditioner broken? My goodness, it's getting hot in here." Then, they peppered their flirty dialogue with discussion of the ideal environment for botulism to spawn. Also, at no time is anyone shown playing soccer. There is a girl who kicks around a soccer ball in the parking lot--where she hangs out literally every day and night for a week without her parents noticing--but at no point do we see any on field action.This episode was particularly high in filler. As I was breaking it down, I started to realize how much pointless character backstory is used that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Arthur wants to start his own chili brand and retire to a tropical island. The truck driver loves baseball. And a woman who serves no purpose other than to be a third victim of botulism so Quincy can connect some dots gets roughly 45 seconds to jabber on about her husband, her anniversary, her ignorance of soccer, and how many times she's been to this empty stadium instead of the zero her character warranted.

Worst in all this was the fact the Cousin It-haired soccer fan who spends day and night hanging around the stadium parking lot without any adult supervision spends no time explaining that away. Instead, when she winds up in the hospital, the actor playing her father clumsily says, "We thought she was at her aunt's!" completely out of context and gets cut off while delivering the line. No one asks and no one responds, almost as if the character is dead and hasn't caught on yet that no one else can see or hear him because he's a ghost.

How much pointless backstory do the characters yammer on about without contributing anything to the story or the plot? To find out, I edited it all together and found it takes up roughly two minutes less than the above compilation of every pertinent moment of the episode.

It only took five seasons and five episodes, but I finally enjoyed a "Quincy" episode unironically. In "Hot Ice," Quincy stumbles into a diamond smuggling scheme, but refuses to take part in an FBI/Customs Department joint sting operation targeting a mob boss because he'd rather judge the Miss Coroner Pageant. Instead, the Customs agent rope him into the sting against his will and--again, I say this unironically--Agent Nevin is my favorite Quincy supporting character ever. Sorry, Old Window Leaping Ninja, Creepy Ape-Faced Mom Who Yelled At Dr. Asten's Alcoholic Goddaughter For Murdering Her Son, and Badly Dubbed Kung Fu Master. You all just got bumped down a notch. Obviously, I wasn't the only one because he comes back for another episode the next season, which is mind-blowing. Not to get ahead of myself, but it involves jewel smuggling Nazis and mummies.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned that. "Hot Ice" really pales in comparison what without the Nazis or mummies.

Interesting Note: The guy who steals the briefcase/stabs Quincy in the leg/gets judo flipped by Dr. Asten is described in his IMDB bio as being best known for Rover Dangerfield. But stranger than that is if you read his list of credits, the majority are for "Baby V.O." Was he really hired that many times to provide the sound effect of a crying baby from off stage? Can you make a career of that? Or is this a case where he made a crying noise for an episode of "Alice" in 1981, and studios have been using the same recording for three decades the way some laugh tracks today are a recording of an "I Love Lucy" audience from the 1950's.

The next time you hear canned laughter on an episode of "Dog With a Blog," realize almost all those people laughing are probably dead. And turn off "Dog With a Blog." Have some dignity.

I tried to cut together the thirteenth episode of the third season of Quincy, but the final third of it all takes place in a courtroom as Quincy tries to prove a guy's regular beatings of his wife contributed to her later death.

Instead, I decided to focus on how much empty silence there is in this episode.

Three years after addressing the topic of parents beating their kids, Quincy flipped the script for the twelveth episode of the fifth season and addressed kids beating their parents. The topic of elder abuse, however, gets muddied as the writers send Quincy on a quest to learn more about the subject and introduce a second plot about two spinsters who are being starved to death and robbed by a nephew who is so transparently evil that calling his character one-dimensional is attributing it too much depth.

But thing really go off the rails when they lose focus and attempt to tackle the subject of growing old and feeling unwanted and unneeded in general by shoehorning in a tertiary plot based no doubt on some human interest article one of them read about a program that brings together elderly people and abused children and the benefits to both. It is dense with statistics and specific details and introduces new characters, one of whom makes it into more than one scene. It goes like this:

The woman who serves as Quincy's expert on elderly abuse and aging runs a home where elderly people come hang out during the day and do arts and crafts and teach some of their skills in guitar making to abused kids. She wants the county to hire elderly people to staff at least some of its new community center for abused children, but they aren't going to do so because the county has an "old people are worthless and feeble" policy. Also, a guy brings his daughter to the house because her mom smacks her around while he's a work and the girl meets an old lady who helps mend her doll and the old lady gives the mom some motherly advice and agrees to come stay with the girl and her sister while the mom and dad go on vacation because that will stop the mom from being abusive and the county guy witnesses this and decides to hire elderly people for 20% of the staff.

That is longer than the description of most full episodes and yet I was able to remove all traces of it from the edit below and not affect the story arc.

You may recognize Mr. Coogan as "Blue" from Old School or the rich husband of Jennifer Coolidge who likes soup in Best of Show or from any number of the more than 100 roles he's played in movies and TV shows, all of which were old men. Patrick Crenshaw first played a character called "Grandpa" in a 1970 episode of "Green Acres" titled "The Picnic." Through his death in 2005 (and the release of his final movie Air Buddies in 2006), he played such varied roles as:
Old Man
The Old Man
Grandpa
Gramps
Old Man
Grandpa
Ancient Sorter
Old Man
Elderly Man
Old Man
Old Man
Pappy
Old Man
Man Dying in Elevator
Old Man
Codger
Old Gentleman
Old Man
Pop
Old Bail Boy
Old Man
Old Man
Miles Hollings in the "Monk" episode "Mr. Monk and the Very, Very Old Man"

Mock if you wish, but how many actors can work steadily for 35 years (and he worked for years before that, just not in roles where the character's name is a clear indicator that he's extremely old), much less consistently playing "probably won't be alive much longer?"

Also, what's the deal with the birthday party at the end? That seems to be the Quincy writers' room go to denouement scene. "How do we wrap this up? We need an excuse to get people together in a room where they can all discuss the outcome of the subplot endeavors and get a happy ending."
"Birthday party!"
"We've given no indication that anyone's birthday is coming up. And why would the family of a man who committed suicide because his son beat him attend the birthday party of a woman they've never met whose nephew was stealing from her. And why would the detectives and Quincy's co-workers be there?"
"Birthday party!"

As I was editing this one, I realized it wasn't living up to my memory of it. "A Good Smack in the Mouth" is from the second season. Watching in order, it stands out because of its over-the-top melodrama and Quincy's righteous crusade to save a kid from child abuse even if it means kidnapping the kid and having the police cover for him. When I first watched it, I tweeted that it would have been more subtle to have Jack Klugman stare directly into the camera and scream, "CHILD ABUSE IS BAD!" for 50 minutes straight.

However, after seeing some of the later episodes from the fourth and fifth seasons, "A Good Smack in the Mouth" is rather discreet.

Most off-putting about this episode is the creepy vibe to Quincy's compassion for the abused Joey. Jack Klugman's interaction with child actors always come off like borderline pedophile. Go watch his interaction with Timmy's sister after her birthday party is ruined. It's even more disturbing when you watch multiple episodes and realize how many women Quincy dates, but never touches or kisses or hugs. I don't know if this was Jack Klugman being overly friendly with child actors or if it was a character trait chosen to illustrate how ill-suited Quincy is to human interaction thus explaining his decision to become a doctor for dead people.

As I watched this episode, I began to wonder how much editing one would need to do to manipulate the scenes of this episode into a disturbing story about a pedophile who becomes obsessed with a boy named Joey but then finds himself competing with the boy's pedophile father for the kid. And in the end, once he wins the boy, he gets bored and sells him to a couple that wants to have sex with a kid.

Answer: Surprisingly little. Many of these scenes are unaltered.Also, they say Joey's name a lot in this episode. Unfortunately, this isn't all of them because I didn't download all 50 minutes of raw footage. This is from about 60% of the episode.

In the third episode of the fourth season, Quincy dedicated an hour to explaining autism to viewers. Eight years later, Dustin Hoffman would win a much-deserved Academy Award for his portrayal of Tom Cruise's autistic brother in Rain Man. Unfortunately, Hoffman must have been too busy shooting Kramer vs. Kramer in 1978 so the casting agents for "Quincy" had to go with a kid who was told to continually wave his hand in front of his own face. He also has an over the top freak out scene that makes the entire episode worth watching. You've certainly heard the comment that an actor was "chewing the scenery." In this case, he chews his co-stars.

On one hand, the show's producers' hearts were in the right place. Autism is still widely misunderstood today and they worked with experts in the field to help educate viewers, but so often the show misses the mark. The premise is based on the idea that an autistic kid died because he was sent to a home for retarded kids and was able to slip away because the caretakers didn't bother to stop him from seeing the combination to a lock on the back gate since they assumed he'd never be able to memorize it.

Quincy and his expert-on-autism friend become convinced that the exact same fate is preordained for another possibly autistic boy who is going to be sent to a home for mentally retarded kids. Because the show is about autism, it gets a pass because people are too concerned about being labeled "insensitive" to criticize. But if the episode was about a guy being hit by a meteor or struck by lightning and Quincy spent 45 minutes shaming the browbeaten bureaucrats who are in charge of an overwhelmed, underfunded observatory or weather station for not being able to take precautions specific to one other person he has convinced himself could someday get hit by a meteor, it would be laughable.

Furthermore, the fact that the "happy" conclusion of Timmy's story arc is "Good news! Your child will never be able to interact with society! He still poses a threat to your friends, neighbors, and yourselves! But there is a 30% chance he might be able to dress himself someday if he gets very specialized training, which he won't be able to start for a year so you'll still be caring for him, the doing of which has essentially destroyed your marriage and driven you to the brink of insanity." And the parents are fucking thrilled! Their prayers have been answered and they're ready to consummate their "not getting a divorce" right there in front of their puzzle-putting-together son and a room full of middle aged men behind a one-way mirror.

Perhaps the epitome of how much the show's good intentions miss their marks comes in the denouement when Quincy tries to make up for Timmy's sister's ruined birthday party. It's supposed to be touching and sweet, but what is creepier than the notion of a 50-something-year-old "friend of the family" getting an eight-year-old girl all dolled up in a fancy dress and taking her to a bar down by the harbor where four other men she's never met are eagerly awaiting her arrival with a birthday cake and her parents are nowhere to be seen?

Bonus Content
You may be thinking, "Hey, that actor playing the autistic kid looks familiar. And so does the girl who arrives at the birthday party a minute and a half in. Where have I seen both of them in another scene together?" That's because two years after this episode aired, they did this:

If the words "Quincy versus a ninja" aren't enough to convince you to spend eight minutes watching this, I'm afraid we can't be friends.

But, just in case, here's a bunch of other reasons:
1. Quincy solves the murder of Not Bruce Lee
2. Quincy bows to all the Japanese people he meets. I could watch Jack Klugman bow to Asians for an hour straight
3. Mako
4. Harold Sakata is clearly reading cue cards and in some cases sounding out the words phonetically
5. Despite that, they still had to bring someone in to dub over Harold Sakata's lines
6. Pretend the date Joanna Kearns mentions is with Alan Thicke as Jason Seaver
7. The most unexpected "murderer reveal" scene outcome of any Quincy episode

Those who follow me on Twitter are all keenly aware that I have spent a significant portion of this summer plowing through Netflix's catalog of "Quincy, M.E." There's no good reason except that I must not like myself very much.

Some episodes are more cringeworthy and cliche-laden than others. It's hard to make a case that you should take 52 minutes to sit down and watch a truly terrible episode. That's why I will periodically be presenting the highlights of especially bad episodes condensed down to 5-10 minutes for the budding Quincy-phile on the go.

I will begin with 1980's "Unhappy Hour," a very special episode about teen alcoholism. While in the first four seasons, "very special" episodes were rare, in the fifth season, the producers dedicated approximately two out of every three episodes to some public service announcement-worthy cause of the day. This might have been to garner more Emmy buzz or it may have been because writing those episodes was so simple since 60% of the dialog sounds like it came straight from pamphlets a showrunner grabbed from some non-profit's office.

"Unhappy Hour" shifts the focus from Quincy to Quincy's boss, Dr. Astin, and his alcoholic teenage niece. It features cutting edge computers, a story of redemption and failure, a mystery, and almost every line you've ever heard from every other after school special, made for TV movie, and junior high health class filmstrip about alcoholism.

Also, one can assume that most of the scenery used in this episode had to be replaced after shooting because of all the teethmarks the actors left.

BONUS CONTENT: Full "It felt like someone was hugging me" monologue: