THE YOUNG AND THE CANCELLED

by Rob Lopresti

I have been busy at my VCR lately, eliminating this season’s bright hopefuls, new TV shows that I have decided after a few episodes, or a few seconds, that I never want to see again. For the record, the only new show I am still watching is Blue Bloods, and that’s hanging on to my recorder by a fingernail.

All of which made me think about some TV shows of the past. I am not talking about the great series we have discussed here before. I’m referring to the inspired failures, better than anything we have been offered this season, but which died sad and untimely deaths. Here are a few of my faves. Feel free to add yours.

EZ Streets (1996-1997)

From the mind of Paul Haggis (Due South, Crash). Pity Danny Rooney (Jason Gedrick), a petty criminal fresh out of prison and desperate to go straight. Only two people are willing to consider giving him a job: a crazy mob boss (played by the always wonderful Joe Pantoliano) who wants to hire him or kill him, depending on his mood, and a cop (Ken Olin) who wants him to work undercover against the mob boss. Character actor Mike Starr was terrific as a thug you had to love. The show was set in a chillingly empty rustbelt city and the soundtrack was haunting Irish music

Favorite scene: The mayor (Carl Lumbly) is giving a speech in a factory, promising the workers that he will save their jobs and the plant will not close. There is wild applause but the camera suddenly pulls back to reveal the mayor standing in an empty factory, reliving his glory days . . .

Johnny Bago (1993)

Pity Johnny Tenuti (Peter Dobson), a petty criminal fresh out of prison. (Does that sound familiar?) But in this case, Johnny was framed. Now he’s out and on the run from mobsters who want him dead, and from a vicious, unstoppable, highly motivated parole officer who wants him back in prison. Did I mention that the parole officer is his ex-wife?

The dude can’t catch a break, except for one. He meets an elderly man who promptly dies of natural causes, leaving Johnny in possession of his Winnebago (and a new name).

George S. Kaufman said satire is what closes on Saturday night. If he had worked in TV he would have said it gets cancelled after six episodes. Johnny’s travels through America are a wild mockery of life in the 1990s.

Favorite scene: What could be wholesome, more normal than a midwestern farm? Except the one Johnny stumbles across has plastic chickens and a nuclear weapon in the silo. It’s a don’t-scare-the-neighbors front for a missile base and the two soldiers on duty have just had a lovers’ quarrel. One of them has decided, hey, if I’m unhappy, why shouldn’t the whole world blow up?

Police Squad (1982)

Ah, this one you have heard of. It died after six episodes, but had a happy afterlife as The Naked Gun movies. It is often said that the show failed because you actually had to watch it. If you just had it on while you read the paper or knitted you would miss the visual humor that made up much of the show.

Favorite scene: Oh lord, pick one. But take this bit. If you weren’t watching, just listening, you’d be a minute into the scene before you heard a joke. But if you watch…

Boomtown (2002-2003)

Here’s an original concept: a show about cops in Los Angeles. How the hell do you make that new and interesting? By changing the style of storytelling. The show follows different characters, seeing the same scenes from several different viewpoints, piecing the story together. One episode starts at the end and fast-rewinds back to the start. Another begins with a patrolman, one of the good guys, handing a gun to an unseen character and telling him exactly how to get away with murder.

Like Police Squad was TV you had to pay attention to. It made it to a second season, barely, and died six weeks in.

Favorite scene: Charming, alcoholic Assistant District Attorney David McNorris (Neal McDonough) attempts to convince a suspect to talk. It’s right here, starting at 11:00.

The Black Donnellys (2007)

Four Irish-American brothers in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City move from the legal borderlines to being major criminals.

Another Paul Haggis attempt, and not as good as the other shows in this list. It feels like Haggis sold it based on a great pilot but hadn’t figured where to go after that. So why is the series on my list at all? Because it has a feature that is almost unique in TV: an unreliable narrator.

The stories are told by Joey Ice-Cream, a friend of the Donnelly family who is now in prison, being interrogated by cops. He cheerfully tells them about events he could not have possibly heard or seen, but hey, that’s no problem. They know that he is a compulsive liar.

Favorite scene: Joey Ice-Cream tells a tale; the cops do the editing. It starts at 2:40.

And a bonus . . .

When I think of series like these I always remember The Middle Ages, another classic loser from 1992, but this one had no crime connection.

Peter Riegert played a salesman who turned forty and had a mid-life crisis, deciding to try to get his old band back together. This cliché of a summary doesn’t do justice to a well-written ensemble show about generations of people unsatisfied with the life they have grown into. Riegert’s first line, dreaming that he is in elementary school and air raid sirens are going off: “Is this real or is it a test?” Good question.

Favorite scene: The hero’s father-in-law was laid off from his salesman job and is enjoying a no-necktie life as a taxi driver but he gets called back in an emergency. The pompous boss sends him to lunch with some important clients with the warning that corporate headquarters is keenly attentive.: “Remember: The coast is watching you!” Unfortunately the clients are such arrogant jerks that the salesman rips off his tie, drops it into their Mexican food and marches off, shouting back at them “The coast is watching you!”

Unfortunately, nobody was watching the show.