Channel offering featuring gay private eye Donald Strachey, "Shock to the System" demonstrates that merely subverting genre conventions doesn't quite make for compelling entertainment. Investigating the suspicious suicide at the behest of the victim's mother (a well-preserved Morgan Fairchild), Strachey goes undercover to pose as a patient at the Phoenix Foundation, a gay conversion clinic led by a charismatic but shady doctor (Michael Woods). Clearly reluctant to invest the character with any possibly stereotypical attributes, the actor instead delivers a performance that is as bland as the film's outdoor locations.

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