Sunday, August 19, 2007 Covington: Phfffft By Gary Covington Looking In
THAT'S it then. RPN's Heroes went out not with a city-destroying bang but with a whimper’s damp squib if ever was. The ticking time-bomb hero about to wipe New York of the face of the earth was whisked into the sky by the hero who could fly and silently exploded up there in the noiseless nothing of space.
The bad guy -- he of the eyebrows and given to de-braining folks as you or I would chip the pointy end off a boiled egg, the I thought indestructible bad guy, was dispatched with a sword thrust from the hero who could time travel and that was that. Anti-climax writ large.
I'll admit right now that right back from first episode, I've had no idea what was going on. About half-way through the series I had serious thoughts about calling it quits but Heroes knew this and wheeled on Malcolm McDowell and Malcolm -- he of Clockwork Orange, Fantasy Island and the guy who killed Captain Kirk - is always worth watching and so I stuck it out.
The plot of Heroes had holes in it big enough to drive a truck through. What happened to the black guy married to the white gal with the two twin sisters (I know, don't ask) who had filched a couple of million dollars from the Mafia (the guy, not the gal)?
And, was he, the black guy, a hero or not? And where did the Japanese hero go? And why did he turn up half-way through the series in the now talking to himself in the past from the future?
Stateside, Heroes has collected awards by the bucketful -- awards given out I can only assume by folks like me who couldn't understand the show either but didn't like to look uncool.
Channel 23, meanwhile, has been program shuffling again and now both CSI and Criminal Minds go out on a Friday.
Criminal Minds is relatively new -- more "faction" -- recounting the adventures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Analysis Unit, i.e. good guys thinking like bad guys to foil whatever dirty deed they, the bad guys, had in mind before they get round to doing it.
This is the crowd to get a job with. You get a chunky pistol to wave about, get to see the country, get to travel around in a dinky jet with upturned wingtips or monstrous great black 4x4s and, best of all, you get to lord it over the local law. Even the Swat teams cringe when this crew turns up.
The show? Like the curate's egg, good in parts. It's slick, just the right amount of special effects, plenty of red herrings to sniff at but why are the good guys always so good and why does everything roll along so smoothly? They never need to gas up the wagons, never take a pee break in the woods, hardly ever eat and that dinky jet is never off on another errand.
Lead good guy is played by actor Mandy Patinkin. I'd never heard of him but he looked familiar -- thuggish, moody, maybe from the Sopranos, but no, I looked up his creds and he's a singer, a Broadway musical man, turning to television. 2nd i/c is Greg. You know -- Dharma and Greg Greg. And he hasn't changed one whit, even wearing the same suit. I wonder what happened to Dharma? I was in lust with Dharma.
CSI, the original -- CSIs Miami and New York having sunk without trace -- remains as good as ever despite Nick's hair issues.
You hadn't noticed? Starting out all those episodes ago Nick wore a young man's sensible haircut -- neat, trim and unremarkable. Then, Grissom grew a full set and Nick......well, Nick can't seem to make up his mind. Last week he was sporting a 70s haircut complete with sideburns. A few weeks before he was Marine clean with a buzz-cut and before that mustachioed.
The rest of the cast remain tonsorially constant -- Griss and the Doc with full sets, Brass with a shine and Greg with a mess so what's with Nick's hair. Or have Channel 23 stuffed up the running order again? Phfffft.
