AMY LINDSAY

This episode, written by Anthony L. Greene and directed by Julie Jordan, takes a surprising supernatural tone. But I’ll get to that later. Needless to say, there are SPOILERS ahead.

First, we get a callback to a previous episode, as Cooper (Tiffany Hendra) reveals to Oliva (Amy Lindsay) that she’s gotten a postcard from Allison and Frank, their very first clients whom they matched together in episode one, announcing that they’ve gotten married and are on their honeymoon. Their new client is Carol. She’s an interior designer who hosts a cable reality show where she helps redecorate the homes of wealthy bachelors who live alone.

The credits of this episode say she’s played by Amber France, but IMDB says she’s played by Belinda Gavin, using the name Amber France. This is odd because the actress is clearly not Belinda Gavin, and Amber France is not a name that Gavin is credited with using in any other role (although she has used other names, most commonly “Kylie Wyote”). So I don’t know what’s up with that.

Anyway, Carol says that while she has great taste in interior design, her taste in men is not as good, and she doesn’t have much luck finding them. Most of the men she meets are clients on her TV show, whom she says tend to either be “gay or geographically undesirable.” She confesses to Olivia that she did once sleep with one of her clients, a man named Brad (played by Allen Nabors), and we see a flashback scene of her and Jeff having sex in his house, in a room that’s in the middle of being painted and they both get covered in paint during the act. It’s a hot scene, but she says he never called her afterward.

Olivia sets Carol up with an architect named Jeff (Stephen Kent), who buys and flips houses. Just as he sits down to join her for lunch, he gets a call from his real estate agents about a new house she thinks he’d be interested in, and Carol offers to go with him, saying this is the kind of thing that she loves doing and can give him advice about whether she thinks it’s a good house for him or not. They get to the house; it is big but looks old and in need of a lot of work. They’re greeted at the door by a woman named Liz (Rochelle Vallese), the caretaker of the house, who brings them inside. Liz tells them that decades ago, the house was owned by a wealthy family, but one day, tragedy struck. The daughter of the house was a woman named Elizabeth, who was in love with a young man named Peter, who was from a poor family. We get a flashback scene of Elizabeth and Peter having sex in her room when the rest of her family was away.

The first plot twist is that Elizabeth is also played by Rochelle Vallese, while Peter is played by Frank Mercuri. After the scene, Liz reveals that another man, who was obsessed with Elizabeth and felt that if he couldn’t have her, no one could, snuck in and shot them both to death right there in the bed (thankfully, that happens off-screen). Elizabeth’s family moved on, and no one has bought the house since then because it’s believed that it’s haunted by the ghosts of Elizabeth and Peter.

Just then, an unnamed handyman shows up, and he’s played by Frank Mercuri, too. He and Elizabeth go upstairs to check out something the handyman says needs fixing, leaving Carol and Jeff to explore the house themselves. They go into the attic and find an old photo album that belonged to the original family, which includes a picture of Elizabeth, and Carol is shocked at the resemblance to Liz. She also thinks she hears some giggling sounds in the walls. Jeff and her keep looking around the house and come upon a bedroom where they peek in and see Liz and the handyman having sex. They watch for a while and then quickly exit to another room, where they’re both so turned on by why they saw that they have sex.

The next plot twist comes when, just as they finish banging, Jeff gets another call from his real estate agents, who ask him how it went. When he tells her about Liz, who let them in, the agent says the house doesn’t have a caretaker; it’s just been abandoned, so it should have been empty. Then they hear the sounds of giggling again. Back up in the room, Liz and the handyman brag about scaring away another buyer, keeping the house just for themselves, and they disappear. SPOOKY!

Another subplot involves Oliva’s planning of a singles party at the house and Ryan’s (Glen Meadows) continued interest in Cooper, who continues to dismiss and demean him at every opportunity. Cooper helps him out by setting him up with a woman (Leslie Renee) who pretends to flirt with Ryan at the party, in full view of Cooper, and they leave together, with her returning the next day to drop him off, making it look they spent the night together, although they didn’t really happen. Cooper pretends not to be jealous, but it’s obvious that she is.

In addition to the three full sex scenes, we get a brief scene where Oliva is naked in the bathtub and fantasizes about her late husband Vince (Hoyt Richards) being in the tub with her, and there’s a science where Cooper is walking around the house topless.

The ghost story was an interesting little change, other softcore TV series like THRILLS and PASSION COVE have had occasional forays into the supernatural, it can work if it’s done well, and it’s done well here.

CHACEBOOK RATING: FOUR STARS

Jason Majercik is selling this UNRATED 3-disc DVD set of Black Tie Nights season 1 for $29.99. Email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com for his softcore inventory list.