Rerun Junkie

Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy

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Let me just disclaimer this by saying that I haven’t thoroughly researched this post. I’ve just been thinking about it.

And what got me thinking about the depiction of sex work in cop shows, particularly pimps in the ’70s, was an episode of Hawaii Five-O that I just covered for an episode of Book ’em, Danno called “Tricks Are Not Treats”. The basic plot of the episode is a group of pimps (called “macks” in the episode for some reason because they’ve had no problem calling a pimp a “pimp” in previous episodes) led by Harley Dartson, played by Glynn Turman, are at odds with a loan shark named Lolo, played by Gregory Sierra, who is taxing their business.

The episode was shot and aired in 1973. Without watching it, I bet you know what the pimps look like, act like, and sound like. There is a certain image that’s been embedded into popular culture when it comes to pimps, particularly of the 1970s variety. These pimps fit that image.

Most of the pimps in this co-op are Black, though there is at least one Native Hawaiian, one Asian, and one token white guy with a ‘fro. All of them are decked out in the classic pimp styles: slick suits, bright colors, fab shoes, and fetching hats. Oh, the hats! It may be stereotypical as hell, but they had style. These Honolulu pimps would have been able to blend into any city on the mainland. They had the look.

The characterization of the pimps of this time period in particular lends them to be very convenient bad guys on cop shows. Just get them in the right outfit and the audience doesn’t need much more than that. It was understood that pimps were bad because prostitution was against the law. Pimps exploited the women who worked for them and weren’t above using violence to get the women to turn their tricks. Frequently, it was these violent tendencies that had them crossing paths with our police heroes. And it was probably not an accident that it seems like a majority of pimps depicted on TV at this time were Black. It seemed like if it was a white pimp as a main villain -and this is just my impression as I have no scientific data or research to back this up because I’m lazy- that he was depicted more as a businessman. He had “escorts”. He had an office. He wore respectable suits. He might not be above committing violence, but at least he was “classier” when he did it.

In “Tricks Are Not Treats”, Harley Dartson is positioned as sort of a good guy in comparison to Lolo, an unlikely and uncommon position for a pimp at the time. The pimps in the episode are humanized beyond the stereotypes that they’re usually presented as. Their line of work isn’t excused and it’s mentioned that they are still willing to use violence against the women in their stables to keep them in line, but that isn’t the focus. It’s them against Lolo and the writers want you on their side. So, they make them likeable, relatable. J. Paul (Ron Glass), prior to his demise, comes across as a funny, friendly guy. Wunton (Moe Keale) is deeply affected by his friend’s death, to the point of losing his cool to defend J. Paul’s memory.

Harley, our main mack, is given a normal home life with a wife, who used to be on the streets as one of his girls, and two children. Sure, Semantha (Lynn Ellen Hollinger) is still very much involved in the administration aspect of the business, keeping track of the women in Harley’s stable and the jobs they’re doing (or should be doing, as she does threaten one woman over the phone to get to a hardware convention before Harley takes a coat hanger to her), but it’s treated as a normal Mom and Pop kind of business. Pimps are having a meeting out on the lanai and Semantha is tracking tricks while the kids eat lunch at the kitchen counter and Harley fusses at the older boy about doing his homework. It’s a rare depiction to get that much into a pimp’s personal life and have it be so suburban.

(It’s also worth mentioning that Harley and Semantha were an interracial couple with biracial children, something else not often seen on TV in 1973.)

There’s a pimp with a heart of gold in an episode of Barney Miller as well. In “The Hero”, Carl Gibson’s mack character Mayflower is arrested for pushing a trick out of a window and ends up helping the guys put a baby Todd Bridges back on the straight and narrow. Sure, he’s doing it in part to ease his own punishment, but a pimp on another cop show wouldn’t have done it at all.

The bad buy blueprints for cop shows are interesting in how they both contribute to stereotypes and then deviate from the stereotypes they helped create. The way pimps are used in these shows is a great example of that.

Imagine what I might discover if I actually applied myself and researched it.

Rerun Junkie Show–Chopper One

/ Kiki Writes / 2 Comments

chopper one

I have a list of ’70s cop shows that I want to watch. It’s definitely a wish list because not all of them are available on DVD or streaming, and the ones that are available, I’m not exactly getting around to them at a quick pace. When Dan and I were talking about covering another show for Eventually Supertrain, I decided to use it as an excuse to knock one short-lived, ’70s cop show off my list –Chopper One.

I pitched it to Dan like an adventure because neither one of us had seen the show, but from what I gathered from the series synopsis, it would be like Adam-12, but in a helicopter.

I was kind of wrong.

Running for 13 episodes, the 1974 half-hour series follows Officer Don Burdick (Jim McMullan) and Officer Gil Foley (Dirk Benedict) as they fly over Los Angeles and fight crime under the supervision of Captain McKeegan (Ted Hartley) and are kept in the air by mechanic Mitch (Lou Frizzell).

Like Adam-12, it’s a 30 minute cop show featuring partners and crime. And that’s kind of the end of the similarities. Chopper One has a different vibe to it, and that’s not a bad thing.

Most of the episodes begin with an unrelated opening crime that Foley and Burdick foil. Some of them are pretty entertaining, like the burglar masquerading as a pizza delivery guy who had no trouble scaling to a second story window to enter the house and then JUMPED out of the window once his ill-gotten gains were gained. Burdick and Foley spotting his shenanigans in the air and Burdick surprising the thief in his own car was pretty great.

Then there are openings that are amusing for the wrong reasons, like the pair of joy riders they chase down in the chopper. The couple looks to be in their thirties. Whose parents are these? Or the mugger in the bright red jacket who pushes random kids on the swings in the park as a cover before stealing a lady’s purse -in front of those kids!- and eventually getting caught on a baseball diamond. Sir, you deserve your fate and those kids need to be educated on stranger danger.

A couple of episodes, including the pilot, opened with the chopper being utilized for non-crime reasons. In the pilot, a kid was in trouble on his sailboat way out to sea. Burdick and Foley rescued him. In another, the captain had Foley and Burdick pick up a star little league player from camp in order to make it to a game. Considering in the previous episode, the captain didn’t even want to authorize a kid who’d helped them catch some crooks go for a ride, I have questions.

Actually, this show left me and Dan with a lot of questions, but I’ll get to that.

After the opening, the episodes tended to focus on one crime. Now, I know what you’re thinking. How many ways can a police chopper be involved in an investigation? I wondered that, too, and it turns out that there are several. They got pretty creative about it. Over the course of the series, Burdick and Foley used their chopper to deal with hostage situations, robberies, rooftop shooters, ransom deliveries, abductions, and hijackings.

Mechanic Mitch became my favorite character pretty quickly, so it should be no surprise to those who know me that the episode “Killing Time”, in which his wife is kidnapped, is my favorite. I love to see my favorites go through it (yes, I’m a bad person). The reason that Mitch’s wife is kidnapped is so he’ll be persuaded to ground the chopper to avoid police interference in a political assassination plot orchestrated by Lloyd Bochner, who did more of the dirty work than I anticipated. Though Mitch initially does the usual thing of not telling anyone, he eventually comes clean and delivers the key clues to help rescue his wife, which leads to Burdick and Foley saving the day.

Though Burdick is older and therefore more of the veteran officer between the two, Foley isn’t exactly a rookie. From what little background we get on the two officers, it could be supposed that Foley has spent most of his police career in the chopper, perhaps recruited and/or joined the police force for that express purpose; whereas Burdick has obviously spent more time on the ground patrolling.

The episode “Downtime” really illustrates this. The chopper is grounded for repairs because they got a kite caught in their rotor and it’s done some damage. Instead of taking some time off, they’re put on patrol, with Captain McKeegan giving them a sarcastic lesson on what exactly a patrol car is and its function. The time on the ground reacquaints Burdick with a familiar thief played by Dub Taylor, and has Foley begging Mitch to get the repairs done so he can get off the ground. I would have actually liked that the entire episode was this light-hearted and fun, but then a bomber played by William Watson enters the mix and things get pretty serious as now they’re in a race to find the bomb before it goes off, which leads them to perform some trickery to get the bomber to reveal his secret. The second half of the episode is also good, and I wish that it was an episode of its own, too. But smooshed together, it’s still a good watch.

Other fabulous guest stars that either bedeviled Burdick and Foley or received their assistance include Laurie Prang, John Quade, and John Hudson; future Dirk Benedict foil William Lucking; Lew Brown, Skye Aubrey, and Austin Stoker; frequent TV guest stars France Nuyen, Norman Alden, and Frank Marth; Kim Hamilton, Kenneth Tobey, and Jamie Smith-Jackson; Vulcans Mark Lenard and Lawrence Montaigne; Tony Young, Jesse Vint, and Ross Elliot; Western alums Dabs Greer and Michael Ansara; Victor Argo, Eddie Firestone, and James Daughton; legends Dick Van Patten, William Windom and Bruce Kirby; Marvin Kaplan, Rick Hurst, and Harry Lauter; Hawaii Five-O guests Mitzi Hoag, Edward Binns, and Patricia Smith; Penny Fuller, James Luisi, and Jenifer Shaw; horror film alums Christopher Stone and Ford Rainey; Art Lund, Roy Jenson, and Arch Johnson; M*A*S*H alum Allan Arbus; Darleen Carr, Vince Howard, and Richard X. Slattery; and future star Nick Nolte.

Thirteen episodes isn’t a lot to work with, but Chopper One still managed to work in a few cop show tropes that I look for: a cop mentor either in trouble or causing it; a cop being investigated for something; and someone seeking vengeance on a cop or cops. If the show had continued, I’m sure we would have gotten a police-involved shooting episode.

Thirteen episodes also isn’t much time for character development, not that cop shows of this time were super keen on it, but it did happen. But in the course of the short season, we did get a sense of our heroes. Foley might be young and spend most of his time in the air, but he could come up with some good ideas and he had a much better way of relating to people than Burdick. Burdick, the veteran officer, tended to be…we’ll say brusque sometimes. Okay, he was not above yelling at people in situations that didn’t necessarily require a raised voice. His hard-nosed approach to policing served him well in the line of duty, leading him to take risks other cops might not take. Jim McMullan and Dirk Benedict have great chemistry, so their lighter moments played just as well as the heavier stuff.

Captain McKeegan might have changed most over the course of the very short series, going from an unreasonable, shouty prick in the beginning, to a more reasonable, less shouty, not quite prick by the final episode. Mitch pretty much remained Mitch throughout, a loveable, sometimes snarky mechanic. Practically perfect in ever way.

Given what must have been a huge budget thanks to the helicopter and required helicopter stunts (Jim McMullen getting in on a few of them towards the end of the run), only a huge hit right out of the gate would have guaranteed a renewal. Unfortunately, this was a series that could have used a little more time to find itself. Overall, the quality is pretty good, though there are a few episodes that feel a little off. Dan suggested that some of the writers weren’t well-versed in making a 30 minute drama and I think he might be on to something. Some episodes felt like they could have benefited from a full 60 minutes to allow us to get to know the victims were were supposed to be sympathizing with better.

The short run time also left us with questions. How exactly is this wheelchair-using child that apparently can never leave his house getting an education? With his single mother working all day, what happens if he has an incident and falls out of his chair? Were there no support systems in 1974? Why is official firearm disposal procedure just dumping guns into the ocean? How the hell was Lloyd Bochner going to shoot this politician in a moving car from his crane? How could he be sure where he was sitting? Why sacrifice Mitch’s wife instead of using a decoy in the motorcade since they couldn’t change the route or ground the helicopter? What was the point of Ginger? We could have the entire episode without her and nothing would have changed. Do helicopter mufflers really exist? If so, do they really work like silencers? (Actually, don’t answer that one. We live in bliss believing they do.)

Lingering questions aside, the show is very watchable. Even the episodes that I wasn’t keen on aren’t awful. It’s a fine ’70s cop show and I would have loved to have seen what it could have become if it ran longer.

We could have seen what that chopper could really do.

Rerun Junkie Guest Star–William Smith

/ Kiki Writes / 2 Comments

William Smith has a great face. Rugged. Handsome. A big, strong guy, it wasn’t hard for him to be imposing. He could be that rough good guy or a nasty bad guy. And anything in between. He had quite a few movie roles and plenty of guest star spots, but not nearly enough regular/recurring roles on shows. A guy like that deserves to be seen on a regular basis.

He was Jimmy Delaney on Zero One; Joe Riley on Laredo; Falconetti in the mini series Rich Man, Poor Man and in the series Rich Man, Poor Man Book II; Brodie Hollister on Wildside; and he had a recurring role as Willie Shell on Emerald Point N.A.S.

I probably know him best as Detective James “Kimo” Carew in the last season of Hawaii Five-O. At that point, the series had undergone several cast changes over the years, the most recent being James MacArthur choosing not to return after Season 11. William Smith was brought in to help fill that void.

Mr. Smith’s first appearance is a memorable one. He’s not a local boy. He’s an ex-cop from Boston tracking a mainland gangster who may have info about who murdered his wife and child. This mainland mobster’s ties with Hawaiian mobster Tony Alika gets James Carew all tangled up with Steve and Five-O. In the end, Carew ends up joining the team and earning the nickname Kimo, which is Hawaiian for James.

Kimo stands out because he’s not local and he has a personal agenda. He shows up with more baggage than just a change of clothes, an unusual introduction for a team member on this show. It stands out. And the way he bullies Tony Alika, played by Ross Martin, stuck with me.

One of my favorite guest appearances of his is in the Season 1 episode of The A-Team called “Pros and Cons”. The episode is a favorite because of Murdock’s antics and the lengths that Hannibal, BA, and Murdock go to get arrested, but William Smith is the whole reason that the A-team get involved in the first place. Mr. Smith plays Jase Tataro, a friend of B.A.’s who’s doing time in a jail that has prisoners fight to the death for fun and profit. The winners of these fights are given a head start to escape. Jase makes it all the way back to L.A. and meets up with his little brother (who is like twenty years younger than he is; there’s some serious late baby action happening there) before he’s captured. Little brother and B.A. convince the rest of the A-Team to go in on a jailbreak.

Mr. Smith and Mr. T are believable buddies, using their brief screen time before Jase is captured to establish their friendship. The next time we see them together, they’re fighting to the death. Jase’s surprise and joy at seeing his friend in the training area quickly disappears with a simple “shhh” gesture from B.A. The actual fight pulls no punches, the two of them selling it until the rest of the team shows up to put an end to this fight club. We already know about B.A.’s toughness and we saw Jase’s in the beginning. It’s a brutal beating between friends. William Smith does a whole lot for what screen time he has.

As a guest star, he spent a lot of time on Westerns like Stoney Burke, Wagon Train, The Virginian, Daniel Boone, Death Valley Days, Alias Smith and Jones, Gunsmoke, and The Young Riders. He also turned up on plenty of cop shows like Mod Squad, Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco, S.W.A.T., The Blue Knight, Dan August, Bert D’Angelo/Superstar, CHiPs, T.J. Hooker, Ohara, Houston Knights, Due South, Hunter, Walker, Texas Ranger, and Nash Bridges.

He hung out with Raymond Burr on Perry Mason and Ironside; was intriguing on Mission: Impossible, Masquerade, and Search; privately investigated on The Rockford Files, Vega$, Matt Houston, Riptide, Simon & Simon, and Barnaby Jones; went to war on Combat! and checked in on Trapper John, MD; got a little creepy on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Kolchak: The Nightstalker; saw some action on Knight Rider and Airwolf; hung out with Lee Majors on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy; traveled on Movin’ On and B.J. and the Bear; did some lowkey investigating on Longstreet, Murder, She Wrote, Mr. Lucky, and Danger Bay; got a little silly on I Dream of Jeannie and took a vacation on Fantasy Island; went to the dogs on Lassie and martialed some arts on Kung Fu; made some names with Julia, Benson, and Vinnie & Bobby; dealt with caped crusaders on Batman and the General Lee on The Dukes of Hazzard; found some sci-fi fellas on Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century; and even got a little nighttime soapy on The Yellow Rose.

Though William Smith had a certain look which might have landed him more of certain kinds of roles than others, he always brought his best, and the TV Universe is greater for it.

Rerun Junkie Character–Wo Fat

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Police procedurals will sometimes brush their heroes up against the international. However being set in Oahu during the Cold War, it made sense that Hawaii Five-O would feature perhaps more than the average politically based storylines. So, naturally, a recurring villain of this caliber would be a perfect nemesis for the great Steve McGarrett. Enter the most diabolical foreign agent to ever grace the Hawaiian Islands: Wo Fat.

Played impeccably by the wonderful Khigh Dhiegh, Wo Fat is introduced to us in the very first episode of the series, “Cocoon”, as the mastermind who uses sensory deprivation to break people for useful information. The cocoon set-up is something out of a horror film -the victims fitted in a wet suit, their ears and nose filled with a kind of putty, blindfolded, placed in a tank of water, breathing through a tube- and Wo Fat is the perfect man to implement such a horrific torture. He’s dressed in a suit and his almost relaxed demeanor about the horrific psychological torture he’s inflicting on his captive speaks to how comfortable the man is with cruelty in the pursuit of his goals. He’s ruthless, but he’s no brute. Intelligent and sophisticated, Wo Fat sets himself up as a formidable foe from the very beginning.

Unlike other villains who might be motivated by vengeance or the need for power, Wo Fat’s motivation comes from patriotism. Just as Steve McGarrett loves and wants to defend his country, Wo Fat loves and wants to empower his. In a way he’s seeking power, but not necessarily personally. He benefits as his country benefits. It’s an interesting motivation because when viewed through a certain lens, one could say that Wo Fat is merely an employee who excels at and takes joy in his job. We love a person who takes pride in their work.

And Wo Fat puts in the work. What sets him apart from other operatives of the time is his investment in his work. In the two-part episode “The Ninety-Second War”, it was revealed that Wo Fat had spent years investing in a frame job against Steve McGarrett, an elaborate, labor-intensive scheme that necessitated the creation of a doppelganger, a Swiss bank account, millions of dollars of apparent bribes and payoffs accumulated over three years, and a staged car accident to trigger the culmination of this plot -a distraction to divert attention away from a Chinese missile test. With McGarrett occupied with clearing his name, he won’t have time to even realize that Wo Fat has strong armed a scientist by kidnapping his daughter into purposely blacking out the Pacific missile tracking system for ninety-seconds, the time China needs to perform their test.

It’s intricate, meticulous planning that proves to be a Wo Fat trademark. The man would rather go big and then go home. Whether it be an elaborate frame, faking a tidal wave, using his spies to brainwash people into murder, kidnapping children as a form of leverage, working with the Russians to obtain counterfeit currency plates, orchestrating two murders to smuggle a device out of the country, stealing deadly toxins, Wo Fat’s flair for the dramatic is on display. What else could you expect from a man with his own submarine and a few doubles of his own?

I think the episode “…And a Time to Die” gives the audience an excellent insight into Wo Fat’s character. In order to guarantee that a man dies on the operating table after a botched assassination attempt, Wo Fat kidnaps the brain surgeon’s daughter, calmly explaining to the agonized parents that it would be in the child’s best interest if the doctor allows the man to die during surgery. It’s such a well done, well-written, well-acted scene because Wo Fat explains this entire heinous act as an unfortunate, but necessary step to gain his objective. At one point, he actually says that he’s as much of a victim as the parents and the child are, insinuating that if the assassin had done his job, then none of this would be happening.

However, my favorite line from that scene is Wo Fat clarifying the trustworthiness of his word.

“You’re wondering if you can trust me to keep my word. I can assure you…you can. I would genuinely hate to harm your child. But more important, in my profession, a man cannot be afforded a credibility gap. He must keep his promises if he wants anybody to believe his threats.”

It is such a good line and it’s delivered so beautifully.

As for the child in question, we learn even more about Wo Fat from his interaction with the little girl, Ellen. He doesn’t want her to be frightened of them and even offers her some lunch. He then tells her how important it is to be brave, telling her a story about a little girl he knew a long time ago, about how he and the child’s mother tried to keep her safe and teach her to be brave during “a time of great war” in his country. He doesn’t finish the story, getting choked up at the unsaid fate of the little girl after she ran out into the street during the fighting. The implication is that Wo Fat’s daughter was killed during the war, and that his patriotism is, at least in part, motivated by her death.

Wo Fat is then delighted to find out that Ellen plays chess and offers to play her a game. When he finds out that she likes chess best when her mother lets her win, he agrees that winning is the most important thing, but after a beat admits he doesn’t always enjoy it, inferring that while Wo Fat is invested in being excellent at his job, he’s not always at peace with what he has to do to accomplish his objectives. I’m guessing kidnapping and harming children would fall into that category.

That one scene adds so much complexity to an already intriguing character. His actions -his elaborate plots and plans executed over the course of 12 seasons and 13 episodes- take on a new depth when viewed through that framework.

Even though Wo Fat was Steve McGarrett’s greatest nemesis, he wasn’t even in every season of Hawaii Five-O, failing to appear in the 6th, 10th, and 11th seasons. However, in a fitting farewell to the show, as it began, so it ended, with Steve McGarrett facing off with Wo Fat. In the final episode of the series, McGarrett finally gets his man, going undercover as a scientist in order to be kidnapped by Wo Fat, who’s going full Pokemon trying to collect the whole set in order to have the four men create a space-based laser weapon.

Go big and then take it on home.

The series ends with McGarrett finally getting his man, a fitting end to the show and a satisfying conclusion to the relationships between the two men. While Steve has no love for Wo Fat, Wo Fat has a certain amount of admiration and respect for Steve. He sees him as an enemy, sure, but he also sees something of himself in McGarrett, a man motivated to excel in his job. The difference between them lies in the execution. Their differing moral standards allows for weaknesses to be exploited and strengths to be uncovered. The dynamic between the two men is impressive, especially when you consider that there are episodes when they never directly interact. But when they do, Jack Lord and Khigh Dheigh set fire to the screen bringing these two characters to life. These two men going back and forth is something to be savored.

Though Wo Fat was apprehended in the final episode, I find it hard to believe that this cool, sophisticated, intelligent villain would have been kept behind bars for long.

A man like that always has a plan.

Let’s Make Bad Decisions for Fun and Plot Lines

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In an episode of the short-lived ’70s cop show Chopper One called “The Informer”, Dick Van Patten is in police protective custody so he can testify against a mobster. Our mains, Foley and Burdick, use the police helicopter to take him to a safe house…where he later calls his wife and tells her exactly where he is so she can come see him.

It’s a frustratingly stupid decision, one you know that the bad guys will capitalize on by following the wife out to the beach house of hiding. I am on record stating that I wanted something bad to happen to Dick Van Patten for this dipshittery. And yet! We wouldn’t have an episode if he hadn’t made this poor choice. Or we wouldn’t have this episode. Things would have played out much differently for everyone involved otherwise.

And like I said in my recorded statements, I can’t even really be mad about it because people willingly make such terrible decisions in real life.

Making bad life choices is sort of a key component to cop shows. Someone has to make the dubious decision to commit a crime, after all. That’s what gets the ball rolling. If people left the house every morning with the goal of making good choices, our TV cops would be out of work.

It’s not just criminals making poor life choices. There are the bad decisions by the (mostly) law abiding citizens that skitter events in a different direction. Like Dick Van Patten making that ill-advised phone call to his wife. Or the guy in the CSI: Miami episode “Long Gone”. The dad and his family are kidnapped because dear ol’ dad finds drugs buried on his property and decides to go into business for himself.

And then there are the guys (so often they’re men) that compound one bad decision with another. Like the rancher in the Hawaii Five-O episode “Paniolo” who lets his anger get the best of him when dealing with a real estate developer. The physical altercation leads to the developer’s accidental death, and instead of contacting the police, he decides to stage the developer’s death as a car accident. Does it work? No, of course it doesn’t work. It just makes things a whole lot worse.

Or the guy in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode “Homo Homini Lupus”, who gets in trouble by failing to repay a loan shark in a timely fashion. As a result, his family is kidnapped. Does he accept help from the authorities? Of course not. Why would he do such a thing? That would make sense, at least in the world of TV law enforcement. So, shit gets to go extra pear shaped for his sins.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe people could be such dipsticks. And then you read the latest Florida Man story. We can say all we want that the bad decisions people make on TV are unbelievable, but we know deep down that’s not necessarily true.

I realize I’m focusing on cop shows here, but that’s only because it’s my area of expertise, so to speak. Bad decisions motivate plots in other genres, too. The plot of more than one episode of Stargate: Atlantis was motivated by Dr. Rodney McKay’s ego-driven bad decisions.

Family-oriented sitcoms thrive on the bad choices of their precocious children. With the TGIF line-up, I know I put a slew of bad decisions in front of my eyeballs back in the day. The only one that sticks out in my memory is the Full House episode “I’m Not D.J.”, in which Stephanie allows Kimmy -of all people- to pierce her ears against her father’s wishes so she can impress her friends. It’s a relatable dubious decision because kids don’t have the life experience to know better than to do stupid shit. They’ve got to do the stupid shit to get the experience. Everyone knows that they’re not going to take anyone else’s word for it.

The adults on those sitcoms, though, don’t have that excuse. They’re doing it for the laughs of the live studio audience.

And because adults make dubious life choices, too.

At least on TV, they do it for the plot.

Rerun Junkie Guest Star–Alan Fudge

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Alan Fudge is a face you’ve probably seen because it’s no exaggeration to say that he’s been in just about everything. With 168 credits going back to 1972 on IMDB, his first listed credit is on Gunsmoke, which I feel sets him up perfectly for a career as “that guy”. Of course, this isn’t to disparage his talent. Mr. Fudge always shows up with his best game no matter what role he plays.

Though he often showed up on the same shows multiple times as different characters, he only had a handful of regular and recurring roles. He was CW Crawford on Man from Atlantis; Deputy Commissioner Kimbrough on Eischsied; Dr. Van Adams on Paper Dolls; and Lou Dalton on 7th Heaven, the longest running series of the bunch as the rest were short-lived.

What I appreciate about Alan Fudge is that he doesn’t necessarily look like he should be a bad guy -he sort of has an uptight executive/accountant vibe about him- but he can play a downright nasty individual.

One of my favorite bad guy roles he played was in the Season 2 episode of The A-Team, “Water, Water Everywhere”. He played a rich rancher attempting to push three disabled Vietnam vets off of their land in order to gain access to the spring water on it. Mr. Fudge’s character is already sent up to be a rat bastard. I mean, he has three disabled men beaten up in an attempt to muscle them off their land. But, he chooses to keep his diabolical nature low key, preferring to make him menacing in a quieter way, making him a more challenging enemy for the A-Team. Naturally, our heroes give him his much needed comeuppance, but he makes that comeuppance well-earned.

Even though Alan Fudge can play a fabulous villain, he can also swing completely in the other direction and play a character that you ache for. In the Season 4 M*A*S*H episode “Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler”, Mr. Fudge plays a soldier with a superficial head injury claiming to be Jesus Christ. Dr. Sidney Freedman is called in to determine whether or not the man is faking it. The sincerity with which Mr. Fudge plays Captain Chandler gives the audience little room to doubt that he’s a severely wounded man, and Dr. Freedman confirms our diagnosis. The war has so damaged him that he’s become a savior rather than continue to be a killer. Alan Fudge and Alan Arbus gift us with an incredible scene between the two characters leading to the memorable moment in which Captain Chandler responds to Dr. Freedman’s question of whether or not God answers all prayers with a well-time tear as he says, “Yes. Sometimes the answer is no.” It wrenches the heart every time.

He also has the distinction of showing up on the M*A*S*H spin-off AfterMash, albeit as a different character.

Due to Mr. Fudge’s talent, he appeared on a wide variety of shows.

He got daytime soapy on Santa Barbara, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and the Restless; he got nighttime soapy on Dallas, Falcon Crest, Dynasty, and Knots Landing; and got teen soapy on Beverly Hills, 90210 and Dawson’s Creek.

He sought medical help from Marcus Welby, MD, Trapper John, MD, and Doogie Howser, MD; and checked in for further treatment on St. Elsewhere, Diagnosis Murder, and Grey’s Anatomy.

He got on a first name basis with Lucas Tanner, Kate McShane, Lou Grant, Barnaby Jones, Matt Houston, and Sledge Hammer!; got on a last name basis with Banacek, Kojak, Petrocelli, Delvecchio, MacGyver, Mannix, Matlock, McCoy, Hunter, and Columbo; and took on the dynamic duos of Starsky and Hutch, McMillian and Wife, Simon & Simon, Cagney & Lacey, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Hardcastle and McCormick.

He continued a classic on Archie Bunker’s Place and brought a couple of other classics into the 80s on The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents; ran into a couple of superheroes on Wonder Woman and The Greatest American Hero; and went out of this world on Alien Nation and Dark Skies.

He spent time with the family on The Waltons, Our House, and Home Improvement; flashed back on The Wonder Years and Quantum Leap; and hung out with Michael Landon on Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven.

He traveled on Movin’ On, took flight on Wings, went north on Northern Exposure, and hit the beach on Baywatch; found trouble in paradise on Hawaii Five-O, Magnum PI, and Riptide; and spent time on the west coast on The Streets of San Francisco and LA Law.

He did martial arts on Kung Fu, rode around with Knight Rider, and fell with The Fall Guy; tangled with the law on The Rookies, Police Story, The Closer, and The District; went to work on The Office, discovered polyamory on Big Love, got introduced on How I Met Your Mother, and experienced heaven on Charlie’s Angels; and took on Jessica Fletcher more than once on Murder, She Wrote.

He may be a face you recognize from somewhere even if his name doesn’t immediately come to mind, but his talent and ability to play a range of characters makes Alan Fudge one of a kind. And we’re grateful that he’s been gracing us with his presence for decades.

Five Favorite Villains

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I’ve made no secret that I love a good bad guy, someone to really make our good guys work with their nefarious, sometimes elaborate, plots. I make a distinction between villains and antagonists. Antagonists are the every day assholes that make a protagonist’s life more difficult. Villains do that, too, but typically less often and with a lot more razzle dazzle.

Here are five of my favorite villains in no particular order. Yes, I realize there are no women on this list. Maybe next time. Like I said, I do enjoy my villains.

Wo Fat (Hawaii Five-O)- I think it’s no surprise that this Chinese operative makes the list. He vexed Steve McGarrett for 12 seasons, always managing to elude justice until the very last episode of the series. Khigh Dhiegh plays the character with a sophistication and refined ruthlessness that plays well with Jack Lord’s upright lawman in the scenes they share, but makes for a believable, formidable foe even when they don’t cross paths. Wo Fat is a smart, cultured man with high expectations who isn’t afraid to make long-term plans, like investing YEARS into a plot to frame Steve. That’s the kind of job dedication you don’t get from your average criminal. He’s got an endless supply of henchmen, his own little submarine, and at least two doubles that we know about. He’s also got that drama kid drive for the theatrical. His plans never fail to be grand, even when they don’t need to be. He’s willing to go that extra mile to make it worth all of our whiles.

Dr. Miguelito Loveless (The Wild Wild West)- My favorite 19th century evil genius. I’ve written about Dr. Loveless in the past, so of course he’s going to end up on my list. Michael Dunn brought a charm to the character that elevated him to arch rival status. He took a certain joy and pride in pursuing his goals, and of course his goals involved becoming ruler of his own kingdom. Whether he was after California, the United States, or the world, Dr. Loveless’s scheme was sure to be as diabolical as it was eccentric. And he’s not going to spare any expense when trying to get rid of Jim West and Artemus Gordon. Hell, he tried to give West a premature burial at sea once. He also faked his own death. Dr. Loveless had a flair for the dramatic that even the biggest men couldn’t best.

Memmo Fierro (CSI: Miami)- A show as bonkers as CSI: Miami could get needed a recurring villain with some pizzazz. Enter Memmo Fierro. A member of the Mala Noche gang, he was first introduced in the fourth season as Marisol Delko Caine’s killer. He could have easily been a one-off character, but Memmo had style. And a lot of tattoos. He’s inked from the chin down and I’m sure that he somehow had more every time he appeared onscreen. Anyway, despite being put in prison, Memmo continued to be a thorn in Horatio Caine’s side thanks to his ability to escape prison for reasons ranging from finding out his daughter was being mistreated in foster care to exacting some Mala Noche revenge. And if that meant disguising himself as an old white man, then baby, he was all in. The interesting thing about Memmo is that he started as a ruthless killer, but every subsequent appearance reveals him to be more than that. Robert LaSardo gave dimension to what could have been a one-dimensional character, a bit of humanity to the cold blood killer. He’s never really redeemed, but when Horatio declines to take the opportunity to get rid of him once in for all, you understand why. And just because there’s a sort of…truce?…between the two men, doesn’t diminish Memmo in the least. He’s still bad ass. And probably scheming.

Michael (Stargate: Atlantis)- One of my favorite things about Stargate: Atlantis is how often the peril our heroes face is their own damned fault. The living embodiment of just because you can doesn’t mean you should is Michael, a Wraith the Atlantis crew captured and then turned into a human. It probably would have worked out fine if they could have kept up the “Oh, you’re just a soldier with amnesia” routine, except Michael found out who he really was and saw footage of his torture and transformation. It should come as no surprise that he didn’t take it well. Connor Trineer does an amazing job at portraying the pain of the betrayal that pushed Michael over the edge. Michael’s escape led to him reverting to something of a Wraith/Human hybrid that wasn’t accepted by anyone, so he decided to just fuck shit up. His grandest plan was to create his own race of Wraith/Human hybrids, but he did also manage to take over Atlantis once. Then again, who didn’t? We might not agree with what Michael does, but we all understand exactly why he’s doing it. And even though he was presumed dead before the series came to an end, you have to think that maybe…just maybe…we’d see him again.

King Tut (Batman)- Like I could make this list without naming a Batman villain. It might not be the popular choice with Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, and Riddler around, but King Tut is my guy. First of all, he’s not actually a villain. He’s an Egyptology professor who gets hit on the head and becomes one of Batman’s most theatrical foes, which given the Gotham City bad guys, is no easy feat. It’s Batman, so of course the plots have to be over the top, bordering on ridiculous, but when executed by a big man who thinks he’s a long dead Egyptian ruler with a penchant for one-liners and tantrums, well, they’re just that much more over the top. In the hands of Victor Buono, this baddie chewed scenery like he was at an all you can eat buffet and the dining was too good. King Tut could never best the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder, but he will always be the royal ruler of camp.

As always, if you don’t like my list, feel free to make your own.

Where Do Your Sympathies Lie?

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Minor trigger warning for mentions of sexual assault.

Something I frequently encounter while watching my cop shows are the grey moral areas that our heroes wander into. Specifically -at least for this post- I’m thinking of the victims and culprits and the audience’s perception of them.

For example, in the Hawaii Five-O episode “Little Girl Blue”, the two men who kidnap the little girl of the title aren’t your typical hardened criminals. Luther -played by Ron Feinberg- is a 6ft 7in beast of a man who has the mental equivalency of a child thanks to a brain injury incurred during his service in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Frank -played by Jackie Coogan- is a former orderly with a bad heart and considered the brains of the operation only because he’s at least functioning at an adult level. It’s not quite a Lenny and George scenario from Of Mice and Men, but it has that flavor.

We know from the initial kidnapping that these aren’t your ordinary criminals. The two men take the time to wrap the little girl up in a blanket and put her slippers on her. In fact, if their getaway hadn’t been interrupted, little Debbie would have been treated to a picnic while waiting for the ransom to be paid and everything to work out. None of the violence we saw would have happened if that cop hadn’t pulled Luther and Frank over. And really, the only reason Luther panicked in the first place was because the cop asked him for his license and he didn’t have one. It’s just an unfortunate series of events that land these two guys in hotter water than they’d intended to boil.

You just kinda feel bad for these guys. Obviously, Luther’s diminished capacity and Frank’s bad heart and bad choices don’t absolve them of their behavior, but you’re not exactly rooting for Five-O to come down hard on them.

Or maybe the audience was back when this episode aired in 1973. Maybe the deaths of two cops was enough to erase any shred of sympathy the viewer might feel for Luther and Frank. Or maybe when the kidnapping went sideways and Debbie was crying for her mom, maybe that was enough to alienate the viewers and have them rooting for Luther and Frank to get what was coming to them.

Or maybe they felt just as torn about it then as we do now. Or at least I do.

Then there’s the flip side. When the victim isn’t that great and you’re kind of not sorry they’re dead.

In the CSI: Miami episode “Forced Entry” a burglar/rapist gets what he gives in the exact fashion that he gave it. Only, he didn’t kill his victims. Instead, one of them kills herself and it looks very much like the grieving husband might have exacted revenge. Who else would know how the victims were bound, gagged, and assaulted so that they could recreate it with such detail?

The husband in question points out how cruel it is that the police are more concerned with finding the killer of his wife’s rapist than they are with his wife’s assault, which led to her suicide. And it is a cruel. Even Speed says that killing this piece of shit should earn the husband a medal if he did it. I’m on Speed’s side here. My guy played around and lost big. Oh well.

But that’s not how these sorts of episodes work. We might be on the side of the killer, but as it’s pointed out, it’s not the killer’s job to dispense justice. I don’t know about that. I think they didn’t a pretty good job here.

Okay, yes, there’s the whole concept that nobody deserves to die, and maybe that’s true, but that doesn’t mean we have to feel bad when some vile garbage gets their comeuppance. We’re not in the wrong to save our sympathy for the killer when justice is served because it feels like it’s being served to the wrong person.

These sort of muddy moral waters are interesting because of how they age. Some are timeless. Some switches the sympathies, swinging them around from the original, intended person to someone else. Just look at hippies. They were the villains in many cop shows back in the day, particularly Dragnet. Nowadays, though, you’d probably find more people on their side than on Joe Friday’s. Especially when it comes to marijuana.

I love exploring these moral grey episodes. They make me angry and they make me uncomfortable and they make me think and it’s fascinating to see how that shade of grey can turn black or white over time.

In the end, I find it quite colorful.

Five More Favorite Couples

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I pinky swore before that I would come up with five more favorite couples and here I am, still needing to put couples in quotes because this list doesn’t have a single romantic pairing on it. It is bromance heavy, though. I’d apologize for that, but I’m not sorry.

Once again, these couples are listed in no particular order; I’m not saying they’re objectively the best couples ever, they’re just my favorites; and if you wanna argue, make your own damn list.

Jim West and Artemus Gordon, The Wild Wild West– It could be argued that I should have included this pair in my first list, but let’s not argue. My brain works in mysterious ways. Anyway! Jim and Artie are secret service agents in the steampunk wild west and that sort of situation creates a bond. These are dangerous assignments and Jim West frequently found himself in trouble. When that happens, your only hope is a guy willing to put on a dress or a fake mustache and a wig. Fun, smart, and witty, these are the guys you want to go on an adventure with. You know they’re going to save the day…and each other. There is something magical about these two together. I love their chemistry and their banter. Jim West is a suave, masculine hero and Artemus Gordon is a suave, charming master of disguise. They are a dynamic duo of heart eyes. Okay, maybe that’s just me.

Lenny and Squiggy, Laverne & Shirley– Hello! As much as I love Laverne and Shirley, Lenny and Squiggy are my bromance goals. Two compatible weirdos coming together to make a life. It’s a beautiful thing. Sure their behavior towards women can sometimes be problematic, but their behavior towards each other is pure. Mostly. These two have their arguments (Squiggy did kind of push Lenny out of a window during one), but they are better together and everyone knows it. These two men go to extremes to protect and uplift each other, like Lenny playing into Squiggy’s sleepwalking behavior to keep him safe. Like Laverne and Shirley, there’s no doubt that Lenny and Squiggy love each other even while getting on each other’s nerves. Not to mention that Lenny and the Squiggtones is one of the greatest bands ever.

Ryan and Natalia, CSI: Miami– I said before that I have several favorite couples from this show, but I’m once again picking another couple featuring Ryan. He makes a good partner. What I really like about Ryan and Natalia is that they have a beautifully platonic relationship. It starts off with Ryan having a thing for Natalia and they go on at least one date, but after that, it’s bestie city, population two. The best part is that removing the romantic element (while leaving the occasionally flirty banter) doesn’t diminish the relationship. These two people care about each other and they’re not afraid to tell each other the hard truth, like Ryan confronting Natalia about denying her hearing loss or Natalia telling Ryan he needs to step away from the camera to get his life together. Considering that Ryan at one time didn’t like Natalia due to a betrayal, the friendship coming back from that makes it even more solid and real.

Blanche and Rose, The Golden Girls– I could honestly put any combination of these four women together -Dorothy and Sophia, Blanche and Dorothy, Dorothy and Rose, Rose and Sophia, Sophia and Blanche- but there’s just something about Blanche and Rose that makes my day. Sweet Rose and sexy Blanche couldn’t be more different, yet they compliment each other so well. Blanche bringing Rose to her senses while waiting for the results of her AIDS test with her own experience and education is one of my favorite scenes with the two of them. It takes a lot of love to straighten your friend out during a dark moment. Even when they find themselves at odds, like when Rose thought Blanche had slept with her husband, you know the make-up is going to be hilariously sweet. Whether they’re cutting a rug doing a tap routine or dirty dancing in the living room, these two have all the right moves.

Roy DeSoto and Johnny Gage, Emergency!– I’ve got a lot of bromances on my list this time around, but this one is probably one of my favorite ones when it comes to coworkers. You know how it is with your work bestie. You might not hang with them outside of your place of employment, but on the job, you’re thick as thieves. That’s like Roy and Johnny, only they do hang out away from the firehouse. The practical married man and the slightly impractical bachelor, these two opposites probably wouldn’t have become friends if they hadn’t worked together, and I think that’s what makes their friendship so great. These two men will butt heads over where Roy should take the family on vacation or how Johnny should fix a paycheck mishap, but there always on the same page when it comes to a rescue or a patient. They’re a solid team, even when Johnny should keep his spaghetti recipes to himself.

Will I come up with five more favorite couples at a later date? Maybe.

Okay, yeah probably. There are so many great duos that I love.

“What Do You Recommend?”

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As a day job, I work as a clerk at the local library. We have something called Reader’s Advisory, which is one of the stats we keep to show our usefulness to the community and therefore justify our existence and budget and financial requests. Specifically, Reader’s Advisory is when we recommend books or movies or TV shows or other items in our collection to our patrons. This sometimes comes from us knowing our regular patrons and their reading/viewing habits well enough that when we see a new item come in, we automatically recommend it to them. Or in the case of certain patrons (or former coworkers) we just put it on hold for them.

Most often a Reader’s Advisory comes from patrons asking us to recommend something. They’re looking for cozy mysteries or beach reads or werewolf fiction or ’80s comedies or sci-fi shows or whatever. It’s our job to recommend specifics. This is part of my job that I’ve struggled with because rarely do people ask me to recommend stuff I regularly indulge in, like queer romances or books on decomposition. I’ve made great strides in the past couple of years, but it’s still something that gives me split-second brain freeze when people ask me to recommend something.

I said all of this just to point to the subject line and say that I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to recommend reruns to people, at least not that I can remember and not in the context I described above in which I’m asked to recommend specific types of reruns like cop shows or sitcoms or cozy mysteries featuring a priest. I tend to force those recommendations onto unsuspecting people who wander into my sphere and dare to broach the subject (like my coworker April mentioning that she didn’t like CSI: Miami when it first aired and me championing it to the extent that she said she’d give it another try just so I would shut up). But nobody has specifically asked me to recommend a certain kind of show for them to watch.

Honestly, it’s probably for the best. I’m not sure how I would respond to having that much influence. My brain would probably fritz with the possibility of turning people on to David Cassidy: Man Undercover or Tales of the Gold Monkey or Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Also, even though I’ve not seen all of the reruns in the world, I still have strong opinions. Very strong opinions. There are some shows I’d be more likely to push and some I’d be reluctant to promote due to my own preferences. Not very objective of me.

However, I do believe that my library clerk training has prepared me for the unlikely occurrence that someone might come to me for a recommendation. Even if I haven’t seen every rerun in the world, I do know a great deal about many of them. So, I have the knowledge necessary to make informed recommendations. But working in the library has taught me the neutrality required to make good recommendations. I have to recommend what the patron is looking for, not what I think they should read or watch or what I like or prefer.

Will I be able to utilize this training when I’m not getting paid to be neutral?

Well, I suppose someone will have to ask me what I recommend so we can find out.