Cross-referencing

I take great pleasure from seeing actors I know from certain crime shows popping up in others. Law & Order is particularly good for this.

Last night in an episode of Homicide, I encountered something I like even more but that happens less frequently:

Crime shows mentioning other crime shows

In this episode, "Abduction", it is suggested that the police use a hypnotist to get more information out of a child witness. Falsone is unconvinced, but Giardello says "At this point, I'd even use that woman from Profiler".

Genius!

Sick as a Detective

I was off work sick yesterday which in itself was a bad thing but it did mean I got to watch a lot of television. A huge amount in fact including lots of things I normally wouldn’t watch.

Cagney & Lacey
The plot involved an informant going undercover in a school to find out who was selling drugs to the pupils. The drug was PCP, not something you hear much about these days but obviously a big worry in Eighties New York. There was also a subplot involving Harvey Jr’s school project.

Starsky & Hutch
An improbable story of an old people who fill a car with dynamite in a plan to blow up their residential home, but the car is then stolen. I must admit I dozed off during this but it will seemed to work out fine in the end with the old folks being promised better food in their home.

Profiler
A beauty queen is murdered and suspicion falls on her uncooperative parents, but then similarities are noticed with other murders. It was pretty dark, taking in possible incest, voyeurism and piano tuning! The on-going storyline of Jack stalking the profiler reared its head at the end of the episode too.

The Rockford Files
An airhostess friend of Rockford (Sharon Gless of Cagney & Lacey in her younger days) gets into an argument with a passenger, a Coin Collector when she comments on his frequent flying. He later attempts to kill her. Rockford gets involved with some strange plan to get the Coin Collector arrested which seemed rather foolish and pointless. But it was an engaging episode and I’ll make a point of watching it again next time I’m ill.

Hart to Hart
Redhead prostitutes are being murdered and the police aren’t that interested in solving the crime. So Jonathan and Jennifer get involved, much to the police’s disdain, another girl is murdered, they solve the crime.

Charlie’s Angels
The Angels are sent to Mexico to trap a drug baron. They each adopt a persona that suits their varied talents – Sabrina pretends to be an air hostess because she speaks Spanish, Kelly attracts the drug baron by wearing a daring bikini and Jill becomes a swimming coach for his daughter – the latter two roles obviously based more on getting the girls in swimwear than furthering the plot. There was a plot twist at the end that I saw coming a mile off.


Plus a couple of episodes of Homicide Life on the Street to round the day off nicely.

Career Choices

So I don’t want to join the police and I can’t become a private investigator, what other avenues are open to me, if I still want to solve crimes? Plenty, if you believe the television.

Criminal Psychologist – often working a police department but not actually a police, Fitz in Cracker is instrumental in solving many crimes, as is Dr Grace Foley in Waking the Dead. So far, so plausible. But then there is Profiler, where the Sam Walker is portrayed as being psychic which she uses to put together a profile of the criminals. This seems less likely but now we've got someone in Medium doing the same. Highly suspect. I'd say stick to the formal qualification in psychology, rather than having visions.

Lawyer – not such a stretch to believe that if you are a lawyer, like Perry Mason or Kavanagh) that you might have to do a bit of detection to ensure the right man is convicted. However, you have to be a criminal lawyer – it is less plausible if you specialise in property/contract/commercial law.

Medic – Quincy was a medical examiner and in the process of investigating how someone physically died, he often got caught up in the motive and moral side of the case too. Still not that unlikely as death is his line of business. Dr Mark Sloane on the other hand is a physician and really should be concentrating on practicing medicine rather than sleuthing. Although, his son is a cop, that is really no excuse – his son doesn’t perform operations so he shouldn’t be solving crimes, Nor should he tap-dance or roller-skate around hospital wards.

Crime Writer - Jessica Fletcher is always caught up in some murder. Does she recycle these real-life crimes in her own book? Its never quite made clear, but she must do because otherwise how would she find the time? I can't think of any other crime writers who do a bit of solving on the side - Ian Rankin sticks with the writing as far as I'm aware and gets help with police procedure details from real police - it isn't the other way around.


Gardener - that pair of green-fingered ladies, Rosemary and Thyme are always digging up corpses along with the weeds. Unearthing a body may happen once but every time you do a bit of weeding? Very unlucky or highly suspicious. If it happened to Monty Don repeatedly, I think he'd look for alternative employment. Gardening in my new home I did wonder when I found a few small bones in the peebles out the front - for a moment, I wondered if they were fingers, but then I remembered the previous owner had a small dog. So again, I don't really think gardening goes hand in hand with crime-solving.


I think I'll have to stick with my current job for now...

Rooting for the Bad Guy

When looking for the Talking Heads clip, I came across this quote from David Byrne about his inspiration for the song, Psycho Killer:

"Both the Joker and Hannibal Lecter were much more fascinating than the good guys. Everybody sort of roots for the bad guys in movies"

I understand why many actors prefer playing the bad guy, as it is more of a challenge than playing a bland goodie and I've also worried about what it says of me that I enjoy crimes so much - but actually rooting for the bad guy takes this further. So I started to wonder, do I ever root for the bad guy?

Unfortunately I think the answer is 'Yes, sometimes'.


Moral ambiguity is integral to both The Wire and The Sopranos, and are designed to make you identify with what would traditionally be a baddie. There would be no point in watching the Sopranos if you didn't like Tony at all and the same is true of the drug dealers in The Wire. So I don't think these count.


But I have sometimes rooted for the bad guy when they are definitely the all round baddie.

The most recent case was watching 'Dial M for Murder' the other week. Ray Milland was just so charismatic that I really wanted him to get away with it. Grace Kelly, I didn't care about one way or another. Or was that Hitchcock's intention with his love of making his blondes suffer?

Whilst I do love Columbo, it does sometimes get on my nerves that he solves the case so easily, that he immediately instictively knows who the culprit is. So sometimes while he plays his cat-and-mouse games with the murderer, I do want them to get away with it. Just for once. Especially if its an episode I've seen before, I hope that somehow it may have an alternative ending.


Watching Profiler, the main character did get annoy me and I was bored with watching the show and wanted it over with, so often found myself hoping that Jack of All Trades would hurry up and do her in. I kind of got into it towards the end, but then the first series finished, and I was still none the wiser about his identity and haven't seen any more of it. So I still wish he'd have finished the job off.

But then there are some shows where I always want the good guys to win - Morse, Monk and the Law & Order lot, so perhaps there is hope for me yet.