Lee Majors, the former Six Million Dollar Man, delivers a six cent performance in the mind-achingly awful “Eight Ball” episode of The Fall Guy. This 1983 episode from the second season offers a 45-minute checklist of everything that is wrong with the typical use and portrayal of billiards in the majority of television shows.

For those who missed this action/adventures series when it aired for five seasons on ABC from 1981 to 1986, The Fall Guy starred Majors as Colt Seavers, a Las Vegas stuntman who moonlights as a bounty hunter. He is regularly joined by his cousin and stuntman-in-training Howie Munson (Douglas Barr) and, for some ‘80s eye candy, stunt performer Jody Banks (Heather Thomas). In “Eight Ball,” Colt must protect his long-time friend, “Joltin” Joe O’Hara (Tony Curtis), a world-class pool player and recovering alcoholic, so that he can enter a tournament in Reno, Nevada. A local kingpin, who has a lot of money riding on the tournament, wants to make sure Joltin’ Joe does not compete. The full episode is available to watch here.

Now for the checklist. Here’s five things this episode gets so embarrassingly wrong it makes you want to scratch on the eight:

1. 

   A wasted use of “Machine Gun Lou” Butera

   “Machine Gun Lou” Butera, the great straight pool player known for his rocket-fast billiards skills, stars at “Machine Gun” Louie Kramer, the chief rival to Joltin’ Joe. But, rather than let Butera show off his pool chops , his one significantl scene features him making a distressed phone call to Joltin’ Joe’s wife. Butera should be there to shoot, not act. After all, he was inducted into the Billiards Congress of America three years later. (Fortunately, Butera was able to leverage his role by acting as a technical advisor and making brief appearances as a pool player in future movies, such as Racing with the Moon and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege.)

2. Tony Curtis, ever a gifted actor (Some Like It Hot; The Defiant Ones; Spartacus), is woefully unconvincing as a denim-clad pool shark who curiously keeps a pair of plumber gloves in his back pocket. Trying to show he’s a speedster, his actions, from chalking to shooting, come across as rushed and fake, with Curtis acting far too giddy, considering the relative simplicity of the shots he’s taking. It’s an unfortunate irony that Butera, once referred to as the “fastest pool player the game has ever known,”[1] gets little camera time to show his speed, while Curtis must fumble his way through fast-action billiards sequences.
3. Every billiards shot is a two ball, two pocket carom. These shots are so orchestrated that any verisimilitude a real pool game is completely abandoned. Even worse, there is no imagination behind these shots. They are the trick shots of Billiards 101, notwithstanding an onlooker’s comment that “This guy [Joe] makes the ball do everything but folk dance.” (In contrast, for a show that nails the billiards sequences, check out my post from last week on Murphy’s Law – “Manic Munday.”)
4. To earn some cash, Joltin’ Joe and Colt hustle some pool (of course!) in one of the least convincing scenes to occur in billiards television. The inert set-up is that Colt compliments a local pool-player, who says he is the “second-best in town.” Colt responds, “You’re the third best now. My pal [Joe] thinks he is the greatest.” When the local pool-player scoffs and insults Joe, Colt adds, “I wouldn’t let him hear you…he’ll want to play you. That’s how he got down to his last $20.” Cue the cash register.
5. Finally, there is the clichéd Minnesota Fats reference. In this case, a local sees Joltin’ Joe and says, “You played Minnesota Fats, you played all the greats. My father watched you win the world championship in Baltimore.” Yes, Fats was great and remains the sport’s most famous personality, but he was hardly the best. Now, if the line had been, “You played Willie Mosconi” or “You played “Wimpy” Lassiter,” then some real billiards history would have been documented.

[1]       The Snap Magazine, May/June 1991.