Television Tuesdays: Human Target

I'm a big fan of the FOX action show, Human Target, so I was delighted when it was renewed for a second season. It sports one reformed assassin, one not so reformed, and a bitter former cop. Brought to life by Mark Valley, Chi McBride, and Jackie Earle Haley, from the start, this was a great, fun, exciting way to spend an hour every Wednesday night. Ever since the great Keen Eddie, I've been waiting for Mark Valley to get another chance at his own show and this immediately seemed to the perfect fit.

Imagine how I feel now to have to admit my disappointment with this new season.

The premise is this: reformed assassin Christopher Chance takes the impossible jobs protecting/helping people who are on their last hope for survival. If it sounds a bit like the intro to The A Team television show – "If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them..." – that's no mistake. Human Target invokes the very best of that era with strong characters and relationships – and ample chances to blow stuff up. Assisting our hero in his weekly endeavors at redemption is the former cop Winston (Chi McBride, late of Pushing Daisies, which I adored but I hear tell that he felt differently) and the morally ambivalent but fiercely loyal Guerrero (Jackie Earle Haley), who you do not want to ever meet in a dark alley. Week to week, they take cases, they save lives, they banter, all while pieces of their respective pasts are slowly, tantalizingly, revealed.

In the season one finale, the origins of Christopher Chance finally came out. "It's the name that strikes fear into a man." If you're having Dread Pirate Roberts déjà vu, you're not alone. In riveting flashback, no less than the iconic Lee Majors explained how Christopher Chance was a name passed down from one reformed human weapon to another. That finale was a masterpiece of infodump done right including how our Christopher Chance assumed the mantle of that name. It ended with Winston kidnapped by really bad guys, and Chance having to team up with his former mentor (Armand Assante, gleefully chewing every piece of furniture in sight) in order to rescue his friend from certain death.

Ooh baby.

Notorious for its lack of faith in new shows, FOX dumped the highly touted Lone Star after only 2 episodes and brought the season debut of Human Weapon forward from January to fill its spot. Cool, thought I. Less wait time before I can finally see the conclusion of that great cliffhanger.

Alas, whilst on hiatus (no, I don't know why I'm suddenly talking like a Victorian suffragette), Human Target had a production shake up that culminated with a new showrunner.

And man, can you see the difference.

Immediately noticeable is the absence of the evocative, "victorious" (according to my closed captions), theme song from Bear McCreary, who contributed so much gorgeous music to BSG. In its place, a pale imitation tries and fails to live up to its predecessor. Then the resolution (and I use the word lightly) of that great finale cliffhanger was wrapped up in the freaking cold open of the first episode. This was a huge waste of Timothy Omundson, who played a seriously creepy antagonist who could have been mined for several more back story episodes and instead was killed right off the bat. But the biggest change that is really beginning to bug me is this:

They added women.

Those Who Do, Don't Speak

Today is Veteran's Day, the day set aside for us to remember and thank those who have stood on the front lines in defense of freedom and liberty – and sometimes, simply because they were ordered to and honor and training compelled no other response.

My grandfather – my Dad-dad, often featured on this blog because he rocks hard – served in the Pacific Theatre of World War II on the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard. He is 92 now, but the memories of that service have not faded.

USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) c. 1944

Not too long ago, he told me the tale of his return, when the ship was anchored off the coast of California. It was one of the last carriers to arrive as one of its last duties was transporting discharged soldiers home. A fellow sailor sought Dad-dad out in the bowels of the ship to tell him Dad-dad's brother was on deck looking for him. When he went up top, he found my Great Uncle Henry, my grandmother's brother who was a Marine, himself recently returned from the war. They went off for a day doing whatever sailors do only on this day, after root beer at the club (he may have edited himself here), they went together to buy what would be my Great Aunt Vera's engagement ring.

It's been a few years since he told me this story, but I never forget it. I never forget how Uncle Henry referred to himself as my Dad-dad's brother when he was, in fact, a brother-in-law. Such distinctions had no value then. I never forget the smile that crossed Dad-dad's face when he revealed to me that it was Uncle Henry up top awaiting him or the pleasure learning his brother lived still gave him all those years later. I never forget how this was the first memory of that time that he ever shared with me, and that it was a memory of joy.

I never forget.

He doesn't talk about the war. He'll talk about what happened afterwards, once he even talked about a non-combative situation on the aircraft carrier, but he doesn't speak about what he did or what he saw.

And that in itself speaks volumes.

I was an adolescent when I first watched a Charlie Brown special called What Have We Learned?, the one with Snoopy as the ace WWI fighter pilot drinking root beer in the French café. The show concludes when Linus (who else) recites In Flanders Fields in a field of poppies. I'd never heard that poem before, and I had no clue to what event it referred. But my young self was so touched by the words, so impacted by the visual of cartoon poppies surrounding white crosses, the next day I went to the library to find and memorize it.

I can still recite that poem to this day (along with the opening paragraph to The Outsiders, but that's a different story), though I've only just realized that I've had the last line wrong lo these many years (still so Polish).

My grandmother's family sent seven men to World War II, including my Dad-dad; miraculously, seven came home. We are fortunate in the fact that it was the last time my family sent members into combat (we're mostly a family of women) but I am never unaware that others went instead (I'm thinking of you, Cavanaugh, wherever you are). They serve their country in battlefields around the world and many are suffering for it as well, as Aaron Sorkin illustrated this morning in his great piece for Veteran's Day.

Today, I'll call Dad-dad and thank him for his service (I tear up a little thinking about it) and I'll probably watch an episode or two of Band of Brothers and remind myself of the unfathomable courage those men exhibited every dang day.

In honor of those many men and women who have served and lived to tell about it, go thank or even hug a veteran or active duty soldier today, and tomorrow, and then again next week.

They've earned that and more.

Television Tuesday: Sherlock

I dislike plot points that invoke a disease as explanation for a lead character's personality quirks. I don't particularly like Temperance Brennan of BONES because I think she's a bit of an arrogant tool. Is she brilliant? Yes, unquestionably. But her assertion of rationality above all else is conveniently set aside when she's the one making leaps of judgment based on unqualified data, impressions, intuition, or gut instinct. Her inconsiderate and often outright offensive treatment of people is justified by her brilliance and success, and her rudeness and lack of social know how is generally excused (though never, to my knowledge, explicitly stated in the show itself) as due to her having a disorder along the lines of Aspergers syndrome.

I disagree. Now I know jack all about Aspergers syndrome beyond what TV tells me, and we all know how accurate that is, so please don't harangue me about how ignorant I am about the disease because I am well aware. Deconstructing the syndrome isn't my goal here. Commenting on its use as a character trait/excuse is.

I think Brennen's simply an arrogant if brilliant tool with no concern for the feelings or viewpoints of anyone else beyond herself (which are sacrosanct) and the people she values personally – and often, not even them – most especially evidence by the way she shifts her views of rationality based on what suits her best at the moment. This seems most evident to me when she insists on wielding a gun and going through a door side by side with her FBI "partner" Booth. A trained sniper and agent, Booth has the experience and training to go into potentially violent situations bearing arms. That Brennan vehemently and repeatedly insists she has every right to do the same without those years of training or specialty irks me sorely. I've stopped watching BONES because I can't tolerate the character any longer; not even the pleasure I have watching David Boreanaz succeed post-Angel is enough for me to further stomach more Brennan quirks. And with BIG BANG THEORY and COMMUNITY now in competing time slots with the show on Thursday nights, it's bye-bye-BONES.

As I watched A Study in Pink, the first episode of the BBC's brilliant new series SHERLOCK, early on I worried that this would be another quirky/annoying Aspergers-like sufferer exercising his brilliant mind coupled with an insulting and annoying personality in the pursuit of justice. I should have trusted the brilliant Stephen Moffat (co-creator of SHERLOCK and writer of A Study in Pink) more. Very early on in the episode, the exchange between Sherlock Holmes and the bitter pathologist with a grudge against him put my fears to rest.

"This from the psychopath," (or words to that effect) the pathologist sneers in response to one of Sherlock's startling observations.

"I'm not a psychopath," Sherlock retorts. "I'm a highly-functioning sociopath. Do your homework, [Smith]." This last bit of signature patronizing snark is laced with a keen self-awareness refreshing for its lack of glamor.

Color me hooked.