Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 15th, 2009
“William Banks has saved 257 people from addiction to drugs, sex, and gambling. He’s not a cop. He’s not a superhero. He’s just a man with a calling. This is his story.”
What he is, is Benjamin Bratt, returning from the thespian dead as William Banks, better known to the show’s fans as The Cleaner. Bratt hasn’t been seen much since he left the gig at Law & Order. I almost didn’t recognize him here. But, he’s returned in style. The Cleaner has all the characteristics of a police procedural series with a lot more excitement. His methods are often harsh. He’s your worst nightmare of an intervention. When Banks is called in, you haven’t hit rock bottom. Rock bottom has just hit you. The character is a recovering addict himself and does this as a kind of making amends. Of course he doesn’t work alone. He’s assembled a kind of Impossible Mission Force style team that helps with each case. Together they form a private company that a family member can call when they tire of a friend or family member’s addiction. The series was based on the real life story of Warren Boyd, who also acts as one of the show’s producers.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 10th, 2009
Steven Bochco has amassed quite a nice little television empire over the years. He’s one of the most award winning producers in television history. He cut his teeth on Columbo and has never looked back. You know his work, or at least you’ve heard of it: Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue are the most famous of these works. Bochco wrote the book on the ensemble police and legal drama. He counts as his students Dick Wolf and David E. Kelley, both of whom got their start working on Bochco shows. He’s had a few misses, to be sure. Does anybody out there remember Cop Rock? I didn’t think so. But, it’s been a little while since Bochco has graced the small screen, so it was with some eager anticipation that I attacked the new DVD release of his latest series, Raising The Bar.
The series involves a group of young folks in the legal profession. Some work in the public defender’s office. Some work for the prosecution. The catch is that they were all college buddies and attempt to keep the camaraderie together outside of the courtroom. Needless to say, it doesn’t work most of the time, as their interests often conflict. The characters include: Jerry Kellerman (Gosselaar). Jerry’s a character you’ve seen a hundred times before. He’s young, rather unkempt, and too principled for his own good. Yes, the series starts out with him willing to go to jail on contempt charges before bowing down to the tyrannical judge. He often faces Michelle Ernhardt (Sagemiller) who is determined to prove she’s more than just a pretty face in the courtroom. She’s desperate for respect, so winning becomes something of an obsession. It doesn’t help that, as the series begins, Bochco has them in one of his trademark opposite sides romances that he appears to plant in every series he’s ever done. The two are often refereed by Judge Kessler (Kaczmarek). She’s a rather morally bankrupt individual with political designs of her own. She doesn’t appear to think that the courtroom is any place for such quaint ideals such as fundamental fairness or justice. Of course, that sets the stage for many of Jerry’s dramatic stands. The public defenders are led by Roz (Whitman), who is rarely in the courtroom and is more of an administrator and shoulder to cry on. Then there’s Richard Wooslsley (Sears). He’s the mandatory rich kid who is rebelling against his father’s establishment mentality. So he works in the public defender’s office instead of in his dad’s political machine. Charlie (Scarfe) is the judge’s clerk and attempts to be the conscience she doesn’t have on her own. He flirts with her to manipulate her but is secretly gay, which is going to cause its own special set of problems. It seems that Angel’s Gunn (Richards) kept the legal knowledge he received through a spell at the infamous evil law firm on Angel. He’s now Marcus McGrath, but make no mistake. He’s still Gunn. He’s the smartest of the group and the most unfeeling. He constantly wants to prove he can overlook race and poverty in his cases and so is extra tough wanting to put them all away. He’s the ace prosecutor here. The prosecutors are led by Nick Balco (Graham) who doesn’t think guilt or innocence should play a part in the equation. It’s a constant source of irritation to him that these young lawyers try so hard to be friends.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 10th, 2009
What if you took the Desperate Housewives and placed them on an Army base? If that thought has been keeping you awake at night, sleep tight, gentle reader. You can find out simply by picking up a copy of Army Wives on DVD. I’m not exaggerating about this at all. Army Wives has the very same soap opera plotting and tone as the ABC hit does. You gotta really be into that sort of thing if you have any hope at all of keeping up with the antics of these four friends, or of having any desire to. I’m afraid I have to confess that I am not in that group and so found the 19 episodes to be very trying indeed.
The series follows the trials and tribulations of four wives of enlisted Army personnel. They call themselves “The Tribe”. Claudia Joy (Delaney) is the unofficial head of the group. The other women are Denise Sherwood (Bell), Pamela Moran (Brannaugh), and Roxy LaBlanc (Pressman). The show often focuses on their rather emotional situations and makes a center for itself in the idea that these women are there for each other. In this second season the Army life aspect of the show was intentionally held back somewhat, and the stories dealt more intimately with the wives. Likely a good move for the target audience that would have very little interest in the military aspects of the setting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 8th, 2009
At this rate it’s going to be quite some time before you complete your collection. I’m not even sure that DVD will still be a viable format before the end of the series on DVD. It’s another half season, and the episodes continue to fly at us at a snail’s pace. But, slow and steady wins the race, and as long as the quality episodes continue to deliver that classic Mason charm and style, I guess folks like us will continue to come back for more.
Erle Stanley Gardner wrote crime fiction, and while many of his 100 or so works are unknown to most of us, he created a character that has become as identified with criminal lawyers as any other in fiction. It was in these crime novels that Perry Mason first faced a courtroom. He developed a style where he would investigate these terrible crimes his clients were on trial for. He would find the real killer, and in what has become a Hollywood cliché, reveal his findings in a crucial moment during the trial. While we may not remember the novels, we all remember the man in the persona of Raymond Burr. Burr had a commanding presence on our screens and enjoyed a well deserved 11 year run as the clever lawyer. What makes this run so amazing is that the show followed pretty much the same pattern the entire time. We always know what’s going to happen, but we wait eagerly for that gotcha moment when Perry faces the witness on the stand. We know when he’s got the guy squarely in his sights, and we can’t sit still waiting for him to pull the trigger. OK, so maybe that’s a little over the top, but so was Perry Mason. From the moment you heard that distinctive theme, the stage was set. To say that Perry Mason defined the lawyer show for decades would be an understatement. Folks like Matlock and shows like The Practice are strikingly similar to Perry Mason. If you haven’t checked this show out, this is your chance. See where it all began.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 8th, 2009
William Conrad was no stranger to audiences when Cannon joined the Quinn Martin stable of television dramas. In fact, most folks knew his voice before they got to know his trademark girth. Conrad was the original Matt Dillon when Gunsmoke was a radio drama. When the drama entered the visual medium of television, even Conrad admitted later that the audience, who thought of him as tall and handsome, would have been disappointed. His voice lent authority to any role he played, and on radio his size was never an issue. He was famous as the voice of the stern narrator in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons who often crossed the laws of the trade and interacted with the title characters. He was also the voice that narrated the struggles of Dr. Richard Kimble on The Fugitive, another Quinn Martin production. He continued to narrate series intros even after his own success. He gave us the informative opening dialog in Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. As a voice, Conrad was one of the best, but when CBS approached Quinn Martin asking for a television vehicle for Conrad, it was a huge gamble. The gamble, of course, paid off… well… huge, and Cannon became an iconic figure in television. Cannon was so popular he was showing up on other shows as well. He appeared on the pilot for Barnaby Jones. The show ran 5 seasons and returned with appropriately enough The Return Of Frank Cannon tele-film in 1980. It is also interesting to note that Conrad, while greatly overweight, lived to be 74.
Frank Cannon was unlike any detective we’d ever seen on television before, or since. He was known as a high priced PI with a taste for the finer things in life, particularly fine food. His appearance was counter to all of the rules about rock-jawed handsome detectives who ran around shooting it out and beating up the bad guys. Cannon was a big man and wasn’t about to do much running and fighting. He wasn’t totally different, however. Cannon had a lead foot and could run a car chase with the best of them. He was smart and often a bit flashy in his technique if not in his appearance. It was also rare for a series to have a lone regular to carry the … um… weight. Conrad was up to the task and made the show and the character a permanent part of our pop culture.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 29th, 2009
This 4th season release of The Closer would become my first exposure to the rather good series from TNT. I don’t have time for network television these days, so the cable shows often fall by the wayside in my schedule. Of course, I’ve made time for some of the better ones over the years, but The Closer never seemed to find its way onto my radar. It should have. Of all of the cop or detective shows I’ve seen over the years, I can relate to this one better than any of them.
You see, years ago, I was a detective. I wasn’t a cop and mostly did internal investigations for a large Florida retail chain. While I was a fair detective in most areas, I did eventually develop a specialty of sorts. When other detectives ran into a brick wall interviewing their subjects, they’d often call on me to get whatever information they were trying to extract. No, I didn’t beat it out of them. I was never a physically intimidating guy. I was just good at getting them to talk. I guess I was a little bit of a con artist who was working for the good guys instead of preying on hapless marks. I never lied to a subject and never threatened violence. It was a battle of wits, and I always won. That’s exactly how you would describe Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) in The Closer. While the series was, in many ways, your standard procedural police drama, each episode would end with Brenda getting some reluctant perp to spill their guts. She relied on Southern charm. She looked and sounded harmless enough that she could get the person to lower their guard and fall for some rather simple trick or another. Case closed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 28th, 2009
It’s a disc loaded with pilots. No, you won’t find any daring men and their flying machines here. These pilots owe more to Philo T. Farnsworth than The Wright Brothers. Farnsworth transmitted the first televised image in 1927. In case you’re wondering, that image was a dollar bill. These pilots follow in those footsteps; that’s because these pilots are television shows. They’re the first episodes of some of the best action series to appear on CBS over the last few decades. Going back as far as the 1960’s, these shows represent a nice cross section of television action entertainment.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 28th, 2009
This single DVD contains the premiere episodes of 7 of CBS’s most endearing comedies. All were influential to those that came after. These weekly shows offered that much needed relief from the pressures of whatever decade they appeared in. The stars are names that everybody knows, even those that appeared 50 years or more ago. If you ever wondered how some of these shows began their historic runs, here’s your opportunity to go back in time with Forever Funny.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 27th, 2009
Another release, and it’s another half season of that iconic western, Gunsmoke. Among the 20 episodes found on 3 discs you’ll find Claustraphobia. Dillon has to arrest his old friend Ollie who kills a man because he killed Ollie’s hogs. In Ma Tennis, you’ll meet the ultimate Mama’s boy. When a man ends up in Dillon’s jail, his mother breaks him out. In Sunday Supplement, a couple of newspaper writers come to Dillon looking for a juicy story, even if they have to instigate one themselves. In Texas Cowboys, Dillon closes up all of the shops in town until they are willing to tell him who committed a murder. A woman comes to Dodge wanting Matt to kill her in Amy’s Good Deed. In Hanging Man, there’s a vigilante out there killing folks and making it look like suicide. Dillon’s got a serial killer on his hands now. Chester is nearly killed in a break out attempt in Chester’s Hanging. Finally, in The Gentlemen, Dillon gets caught up trying to keep the peace with a torrid love triangle brewing in Dodge.
The setting for Gunsmoke was the by now famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20 year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy, he had a taste for bourbon and a soft heart underneath a rather gruff exterior and was always ready with free advice. Dillon’s love interest throughout most of the series was Miss Kitty Russell (Blake). While there were certainly a few romantic undercurrents, the romance never came to fruition. Miss Kitty was a prostitute on the radio and was likely one here as well, but CBS chose to underplay that aspect of her character as a “saloon girl”. Finally Dillon’s faithful sidekick deputy was Chester (Weaver). Chester often found himself in trouble and was the naïve son figure to Dillon.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 27th, 2009
Infected is one of those many made for television films that appear on the Sci-Fi, I mean Sy-Fy Channel almost weekly, I mean weakly. Most of them are relatively low budget affairs that utilize very low grade CG f/x and often actors that haven’t been getting a lot of steady work in the legitimate world. It amazes me, actually. How can a network dedicated to science fiction consistently produce some of the worst movies in the genre? You would think that after a hundred of these things that they would have to get it right once in a while. The law of averages almost demands it. Instead, week to week, month to month, and year to year, the worst the genre has to offer finds its way as “original” movies on the network.
Infected is a sort of V meets The Arrival. A band of evil aliens have arrived on Earth to help them to repopulate their species. The somehow arrive at the idea they can best do this by setting up a bottled water company and selling humans plague tainted water. Of course, no one catches on, and the company grows to conglomerate size in no time. Enter a pair of reporters. Ben (Bellows) and Lisa (Roy). Of course, they used to be an item and now have trust issues working together on a tabloid. When the mayor is killed, a sample of his blood is retrieved and finds its way to the couple. Tests prove it is some wacked out hemoglobin. The clues eventually lead to the bottling company and its boss, Peter Whitefield (Dinsmore) who is actually a big insect under his fake human skin. The plot unravels and Ben discovers he has a natural immunity which he can use to fight off those pesky grasshopper things. And we all live happily ever after. Naturally, there’s a government cover up. Invasion? What invasion? We know nothing about no stinkin’ invasion?
