Mark Harris heads into off-screen adventure-land
Mark’s final adventure sees him infiltrating a traveling carnival when a worker there dies from drowning. The government suspects two workers there of planning a heist that somehow requires a swimmer.
The short lived series ends on a high note. The action takes place entirely on land this time around and no mention is made of Dr. Merrill. C.W. shows true signs of admiration towards Mark; a real friendship is in the making here. Mark discovers the thrill of sexual attraction and feels all tingly when he has his first kiss. And the villains here are the most sinister in the series and are actually very mean spirited and well played by Billy Barty (so memorable in 1978’s “Foul Play”) and Anthony James (probably best remembered in “The Naked Gun 2 1/2”).
The episode is fast paced, quite funny on occasion and, as said, features real villains who are quite menacing. Duffy is once again terrific here as he starts to develop some feelings for the Carnival’s manager (a very likable Sharon Farrell) and they’re interplay is funny and well played out. The only miss here is a rather uninspired climax when Mark overpowers Barty and James; somewhat of a let down after an OK set up.
This last episode has no form of closure, obviously, but it’s still an OK spot to bookend this series. It was all over the place, had a huge identity crisis and I’m not surprised it was axed. It’s good to see that Mark has discovered the ladies and I sincerely hope that he found out where come from; off screen.
So I bid farewell to the “Man From Atlantis”; it was short, head scratching at times but quite charming in it’s silly kind of way. There was a bona-fide classic episode (“Shoot-Out At Land’s End”) that will definitely get future spins in my player and a few others that might get revisited as well (the TV movies were all quite decent as well).
