Because of a feature article on him in the Advocate, Albany based Donald Strachey has gained some notoriety as a gay private detective. His latest client, Paul Hale, a scared young man, provides Donald with a $5,000 retainer to find "someone", that person unspecified before Paul is scared off. Soon thereafter, Paul is found dead. The official cause of death is deemed suicide by the coroner's office, but Donald wants to do right by Paul by finding who killed him as the police ... (Full plot summary below)
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Because of a feature article on him in the Advocate, Albany based Donald Strachey has gained some notoriety as a gay private detective. His latest client, Paul Hale, a scared young man, provides Donald with a $5,000 retainer to find "someone", that person unspecified before Paul is scared off. Soon thereafter, Paul is found dead. The official cause of death is deemed suicide by the coroner's office, but Donald wants to do right by Paul by finding who killed him as the police unofficially believe he was murdered. Another person who believes Paul was murdered is his mother, Phyllis Hale. Donald learns that homophobic Mrs. Hale sent Paul to the Phoenix Foundation, run by Dr. Trevor Cornell and his wife Lynn Cornell and for which Paul was the poster child. The Foundation's raison d'etre is repairative therapy i.e. to help people turn from gay to straight. Donald believes Paul's death has something to do with the Foundation, whether it be a connection to one of the Cornells or one of the other patients. As such, Donald goes undercover as a patient at the Foundation to find the killer. This case ends up hitting home for him as he opens up for the first time to his partner Tim Callaghan about his own less than happy gay past.
Leave your thoughts about Shock to the System: A Donald Strachey Mystery.
| VarietyRobert KoehlerEnough action, a tiny pinch of sex and some campy moments from Morgan Fairchild. |
| TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghThe story delivers enough twists and turns to be engaging without feeling like work, and the overall vibe is dangerous and flirty rather than brutal or excessively graphic. |
| The New York TimesNathan LeeA sly, refreshingly grown-up gay entertainment, though rather less satisfying as a thriller. |
| Village VoiceJim RidleyDirector Ron Oliver applies a thin veneer of straight-to-cable pseudo-gloss without finding a workable tone, and the cast lacks the charisma and chemistry to make the genre and gender-bending register as more than novelty. |
| Los Angeles TimesMichael OrdoñaSo grimly determined to be even-handed that it never generates tension. |
| The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckShock to the System demonstrates that merely subverting genre conventions doesn't quite make for compelling entertainment. |
