My favorite hokey episode of In Search of… was the one about the Comte St-Germain, who supposedly kept popping up at key points in European history. Of all the whackos they interviewed in that series, the woman with the shawl and glasses was the one most spaced out.
The few of the episodes I remember the most were the Mary Celeste episode -which actually constructed the most plausible scenario that led to the screw abandoning the ship.
The one about the Romanovs had that woman who claimed to be Anastasia on with her tycoon husband. The woman was practically comatose (she was old). He did all the talking. I remember feeling betrayed later one becasue ISO left out all the details such as the woman claiming to be Anastasia had zero actual evidence and had been in and out of institutions. (later we found the real Anastasia’s bones)
I can’t remember if they had a Search for Dr. Mengele episode or if that was some other show but it was stunning how many times he was almost captured by Nazi hunters.
They did a Bigfoot episode and mentioned, yet glossed over the fact that for a Bigfoot at the sized described by believers he would either have to be a hunter/gatherer (which leaves a lot of evidence) or eat forest forage vegetables almost every waking minute in order to get enough calories to keep living.
In their Loch Ness episode they stated flatly that sketics rejected the Surgeon’s photo without explaining why they did so. Classic make the skeptics look bad. Of course it was later revealed as a hoax.