Thursday, August 14, 2008
Disenchanted fan wants to bring back the old books and TV shows
OOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Reading books and watching TV should provide a therapeutical escape, a facility in pitifully short supply in this age of mass bombings, killings and routinely accepted genocidal slaughter impacting people who are already suffering from the blows of a bad economy. That is why I walk away from books and TV shows that will make me feel down at the end (operas and Broadway productions that cost a lot of money to attend duly excepted). This includes humor that trades on sarcasm and makes one seriously doubt the ultimate goodness of human nature.
This is one reason for my doing a lot of spare tine reading of the early Spencer crime novels by Robert B. Parker and Travis McGee Florida adventures by the late John D. MacDonald, where the villains are dark and unredeemable bad, the damsels in distress have long tanned legs and the detectives, although often using unorthodox methods, are unexceptionally on the side of justice. No ambivalence here, we win, no evil ones are ever walking away smiling.
It was therefore with a sense of concern that I read a review by Heather Havrilesky, TV reviewer of Salon, the original Internet journal of opinion, that dissed the entire line of cable police procedure dramas, the Law and Order family,created by the Dick Wolf, Jerry Bruckheimer’s CSI group of shows , the NCIS, Criminal Intent, Without a Trace and Cold Case series, shows that track missing people and criminals past and present. She did not excuse even the wildly fantasy-based Monk and Psych series . She finds that too much police procedural routine, the lab work details, intermingling of the police and FBI agents’ personal lives, their spouses’ and children’s’ histories intertwining with the agents’ search for criminals, the purported perpetrators’ past lives and experiences as abused children give her a too much af a " what else is new" experience. Plainly, she is bored.
Fortunately, there’s relief for her in some new series. The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick as Southern-speaking police chief Brenda Johnson from Atlanta, making her way in the California big-city police system, struggling to have her brilliance recognized in the male-dominated department, brings the intriguing themes of feminism into police drama. Brenda is not all hard cop; she uses tricky interrogation methods to break hardened criminals, but also has a hidden desire for sweets, with a desk drawer full of Moon Pies, and a personal life with her fiancée, an FBI agent. A nice mix.
Another good one is Burnt Case, a visually upbeat crime series full of lightness and Florida sunshine starring Jeff Donovan as Michael Weston, an American secret agent who has been dumped by his agency and lives on his wits in Miami, taking detective/strong arm jobs, meanwhile trying to find the reason for his dismissal and the individuals conspiring behind it. He has the help of a skilled ex-agent ex-wife, Fiona (Gabrielle Anvar), and another former agent with FBI connections. Gadgets and humor abound, and little inserted footnotes explaining techniques and characters add a fresh touch. An unwelcome incident was the capture of a killer from the Russian Mafia, kidnapper of young women, He was confined in a room, with a bag over his head, to confuse him about passage of time, and tortured with piped in loud rock music. A reminder of Panama and Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Prison, it seemed to validate lite torture , too close to current events and reminiscent of our government’s twisted logic. Not again!
The Burnt Case threesome reminds one of The A-Team, of the 1980s, of Charlie’s Angels, and of the Jason Bourne movie series with Matt Damon, Digging further into the past, a predecessor is also The Man From U.N.C.L.E, if memory carries that far back. For the aficionados of antique television, it was a 1964-68 series inspired by Ian Fleming, starring Robert Waughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Ilya Kuriyakin, charming agents of a United Nations organization led by Alexander Whittaker (Leo G. Carroll), fighting with wit and intriguing gadgets an international crime syndicate, THRUSH, whose last initials denote subjugation of humanity. Lastly, Burnt Case has traces of Mission Impossible, another worthy 1966-73 series with intriguing theme music and the suave Peter Grimes as CIA chief Jim Phelps, fighting the Cold War. With that kind of heritage, how can you go wrong? Some place between the three sources we should find the origins of the phrase about "your mission, should you choose to accept it." I honestly cannot trace it, feel free to jump in , if you can..
Ms. Havrilesky also likes In Plain Sight US marshal working on the witness protection program. Not attractive, the episode seen was bloody, full of dysfunctional family and warped justice, and lacked humor. I watched it to the end, anything to avoid the overabundance of serious political shows, where currently the nation’s and world’s future is balanced on McCain’s and Obama’s choices of a vice-presidential running mate.
Reading books and watching TV should provide a therapeutical escape, a facility in pitifully short supply in this age of mass bombings, killings and routinely accepted genocidal slaughter impacting people who are already suffering from the blows of a bad economy. That is why I walk away from books and TV shows that will make me feel down at the end (operas and Broadway productions that cost a lot of money to attend duly excepted). This includes humor that trades on sarcasm and makes one seriously doubt the ultimate goodness of human nature.
This is one reason for my doing a lot of spare tine reading of the early Spencer crime novels by Robert B. Parker and Travis McGee Florida adventures by the late John D. MacDonald, where the villains are dark and unredeemable bad, the damsels in distress have long tanned legs and the detectives, although often using unorthodox methods, are unexceptionally on the side of justice. No ambivalence here, we win, no evil ones are ever walking away smiling.
It was therefore with a sense of concern that I read a review by Heather Havrilesky, TV reviewer of Salon, the original Internet journal of opinion, that dissed the entire line of cable police procedure dramas, the Law and Order family,created by the Dick Wolf, Jerry Bruckheimer’s CSI group of shows , the NCIS, Criminal Intent, Without a Trace and Cold Case series, shows that track missing people and criminals past and present. She did not excuse even the wildly fantasy-based Monk and Psych series . She finds that too much police procedural routine, the lab work details, intermingling of the police and FBI agents’ personal lives, their spouses’ and children’s’ histories intertwining with the agents’ search for criminals, the purported perpetrators’ past lives and experiences as abused children give her a too much af a " what else is new" experience. Plainly, she is bored.
Fortunately, there’s relief for her in some new series. The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick as Southern-speaking police chief Brenda Johnson from Atlanta, making her way in the California big-city police system, struggling to have her brilliance recognized in the male-dominated department, brings the intriguing themes of feminism into police drama. Brenda is not all hard cop; she uses tricky interrogation methods to break hardened criminals, but also has a hidden desire for sweets, with a desk drawer full of Moon Pies, and a personal life with her fiancée, an FBI agent. A nice mix.
Another good one is Burnt Case, a visually upbeat crime series full of lightness and Florida sunshine starring Jeff Donovan as Michael Weston, an American secret agent who has been dumped by his agency and lives on his wits in Miami, taking detective/strong arm jobs, meanwhile trying to find the reason for his dismissal and the individuals conspiring behind it. He has the help of a skilled ex-agent ex-wife, Fiona (Gabrielle Anvar), and another former agent with FBI connections. Gadgets and humor abound, and little inserted footnotes explaining techniques and characters add a fresh touch. An unwelcome incident was the capture of a killer from the Russian Mafia, kidnapper of young women, He was confined in a room, with a bag over his head, to confuse him about passage of time, and tortured with piped in loud rock music. A reminder of Panama and Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Prison, it seemed to validate lite torture , too close to current events and reminiscent of our government’s twisted logic. Not again!
The Burnt Case threesome reminds one of The A-Team, of the 1980s, of Charlie’s Angels, and of the Jason Bourne movie series with Matt Damon, Digging further into the past, a predecessor is also The Man From U.N.C.L.E, if memory carries that far back. For the aficionados of antique television, it was a 1964-68 series inspired by Ian Fleming, starring Robert Waughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Ilya Kuriyakin, charming agents of a United Nations organization led by Alexander Whittaker (Leo G. Carroll), fighting with wit and intriguing gadgets an international crime syndicate, THRUSH, whose last initials denote subjugation of humanity. Lastly, Burnt Case has traces of Mission Impossible, another worthy 1966-73 series with intriguing theme music and the suave Peter Grimes as CIA chief Jim Phelps, fighting the Cold War. With that kind of heritage, how can you go wrong? Some place between the three sources we should find the origins of the phrase about "your mission, should you choose to accept it." I honestly cannot trace it, feel free to jump in , if you can..
Ms. Havrilesky also likes In Plain Sight US marshal working on the witness protection program. Not attractive, the episode seen was bloody, full of dysfunctional family and warped justice, and lacked humor. I watched it to the end, anything to avoid the overabundance of serious political shows, where currently the nation’s and world’s future is balanced on McCain’s and Obama’s choices of a vice-presidential running mate.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 3:00 PM 
