• Michael Hayes (1997) s01e01 – Prequel

    This episode of “Michael Hayes” isn’t on IMDb. It’s been a while since I’ve watched something not on IMDb. Something made in the 1990s and airing on one of the Big Three networks? I don’t even know. What’s amusing is the New York Times review of the episode is a top Google result.

    So this episode’s called Prequel because—and I’m going off twenty-plus year old memory—the pilot episode wasn’t as impressive as the other stuff the series did. They brought in Paul Haggis (post-“EZ Streets”, pre-everything else) because it turned out having Nicholas Pileggi (who co-created) without Scorsese doesn’t really work out. Haggis came in and fixed it up post-pilot, so then they made an episode to be a better pilot than the one CBS ordered off.

    The show’s a working class white male savior story about ex-New York cop (an “NYPD Blue,” if you would) David Caruso who goes to night school and becomes a prosecutor and then a U.S. State’s Attorney. There’s a lot to date “Michael Hayes.” It’s pre-9/11, which doesn’t just mean World Trade Center in New York skyline shots, but an attitude about the gee whiz Mayberry take on federal law enforcement; they need Caruso because he’s going to yell at people and coerce testimony. But he’s going to be doing it for the right reasons and even a gruff old guy like Philip Baker Hall isn’t actually tough enough to confront mobsters about being criminals. Certainly smarmy blue blood Peter Outerbridge isn’t going to do it. Plus, if Caruso’s not around, who’s going to acknowledge the existence of the occasional Black guys. Again, late nineties TV—especially CBS—has a lot of aging problems.

    I think someone says “asshole” to show it’s grown up, but the plot is Caruso’s mad fellow U.S. Attorney Outerbridge made a deal with mobster Leo Rossi (who’s terrible because Leo Rossi is always terrible). Rossi had to confess to all his crimes for immunity and threw in a cold case of Caruso’s, a dead teenage girl. Only Rossi says she was a hooker so Caruso’s incensed. The episode opens with a very iffy flashback to the original crime scene, which actually has Caruso prototyping his “CSI: Miami” role, only while pretending it’s “NYPD Blue” and director Peter Weller wishing he was doing “Homicide.”

    But Caruso and his old partner, Scott Lawrence, are going to prove she wasn’t a hooker and therefor not deserving of being murdered. Caruso puts his current investigator (and, awkwardly, driver) Ruben Santiago-Hudson on the case too. Lawrence and Santiago-Hudson are the Black guys. They don’t interact with anyone else except Caruso. I’ve been wanting to go back to “Michael Hayes” for literal decades, but there have been availability issues—I have a long story involving an SVHS recorder too—but it hadn’t occurred to me I was going to see seeds of Crash in it.

    The show’s very carefully coding Caruso as progressive, just, and empathetic. During the show down scene with Outerbridge, you wish Caruso would punch him in the face because Outerbridge is clearly a Brett Kavanaugh. Not much would beat a progressive, just, empathetic working class white male savior popping Brett Kavanaugh in the face. It’s like if Clint Eastwood did a last minute righteous man left turn with an Aaron Sorkin script.

    Sadly, there’s no punch, just normal (well, for Caruso) righteous seething rage from Caruso.

    There are a lot of scenes in this episode where it’s clear better direction would’ve changed everything. Weller’s bad at the 4:3 frame, but the hip late nineties tone of the show is worse. It’s not grim and gritty because it’s so far pre-“Wire” and even “SVU.” Grim and gritty hadn’t won yet. But writers Paul Haggis and Paul Romano know they can get great film noir out-liners from Caruso—and they really try with Santiago-Hudson and I hope he gets better—so you’ve got this kind of CBS Tupperware bland but edgy but not actually. If cinematographer James L. Carter and editor Daniel Valverde are capable of inventive work, it would come as a surprise after seeing these forty minutes. Again, of course, it’s mid-to-late nineties TV. It’s pre-HD, it’s pre-16:9. The asshole kind of grown-up hour long American TV show is a literal neanderthal of genres and “Hayes” is a startling reminder of that fate. When TV stopped being such an easy pejorative… it wasn’t because this kind of show evolved enough. You’re still hunting and picking for good performances, hoping they won’t cut away too fast or maybe, just maybe, they won’t go to a close-up and miss the far more important reaction shot.

    “Hayes” tries some a lot of the time with the procedural stuff. There’s an effort. But the show also takes some effort to overlook how blandly energetic television can get. “Hayes” is trying to be “NYPD Blue” without the butts or boobies but also CBS but also higher brow. Oh, it’s pre-“West Wing” too. It’s at the end of an age and not going to be remembered in the next.

    But Caruso’s good. Like, he’s tolerable during his worst scenes and he finds great little moments in the rest. The mise-en-scene (lol) of the show works against him, but he’s good. Ditto Rebecca Rigg as a brilliant U.S. Attorney who knows the law better than anyone else but in career hell for stepping on toes. And the stuff with Caruso and subordinate Hillary Danner; Danner’s expecting him to be a sexist jerk but he’s not because he’s progressive, just, and empathetic.

    Jury’s out on every other regular cast member, including Caruso’s entire family situation—about-to-be-released-convict little brother David Cubitt, his suffering wife Mary B. Ward, and their adorable son Jimmy Galeota, who looks up to Caruso.

    The episode also does this echoing hugging thing where you know someone was trying to do an Al Pacino Heat beat and Weller missed it both times because he and Carter are so bad at shot composition. Though the nineties pop bop grit synth music from Mark Isham and Roger Neill is terrible.

    I remember having to stick with “Michael Hayes” for it to prove itself and I feel fairly comfortable assuming that assessment stands twenty-four years later.

    Fairly… comfortable. The nineties were bad. We shall see.

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  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)

    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—it’s pronounced Gee-kyl, incidentally, as in Fronkensteen—is a stunning disappointment. It’s difficult to know where to begin, given the film is about a scientist, Fredric March, who’s really horny for his fiancée, Rose Hobart (and she’s horny for him too), but her dad, Halliwell Hobbes, thinks March’s a no good horn-dog so he won’t let them hurry the engagement. It’s very frustrating for March, who’s working on a serum to make men less horny and more productive. For a while there’s that joke about Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire is the song your mom liked about the Boss being so horny could die but then Jekyll becomes about March holding lower class working girl Miriam Hopkins his prisoner and raping and beating her for a month while Hobart’s away.

    Large portions of the film are just Hopkins in utter terror as March, in the Hyde persona, threatens her until the scenes fade out on him inflicting pain on her while terrorizing her. March plays Hyde in makeup to make him look more savage, like a caveman. Only we’re going to find out the only savage thing about March as Hyde is his lack of empathy, which cave people had obviously. And then we find out… March the “good guy” is well aware of his bad behavior. The whole reason Hopkins is in this situation is because after March whines to his butler, Edgar Norton, about Hobart going away, Norton tells him just to start seeing a prostitute but March is too high class for it. So instead he takes the serum, which lets him terrorize and assault with abandon.

    While the film is Pre-Code and so can get away with quite a lot, including Hopkins’s suggestively dangling her leg for forty-some seconds—see, March the good saves Hopkins in the street, she fancies him, but he’s engaged after all… so he has to take the serum to give himself the excuse to rape her.

    I don’t think I’ve seen this film more than once or maybe twice before—a long time ago—and it’s possible I watched the cut version, which apparently excises the entire “March sets Hopkins up so he can constantly assault her” plot thread by dropping six minutes. But I’m trying to imagine how they recapped this movie for the Crestwood House kids’ monster books I used to read. Most of my memories of the film are things I’m sure were stills in that book.

    So, another thing about the film is how much it acknowledges the reality of the situation. When March confides in fellow doctor Holmes Herbert, you’re hoping Herbert will have the sense to turn him into the cops. All of Hobart’s scenes become these layered suspense sequences; she’s under threat from March, who she’s convinced is a literal saint. I mean, March does operate on the poor and help little kids walk again, but he’s clearly only doing it because otherwise he’d be abusing women.

    March is great as Hyde, low middling as Jekyll. The film punts resolving any of the multitude of questions it raises with a rushed third act. In addition to getting the movie done without fully addressing March—the good—as the villain, director Mamoulian doesn’t tie together any of the visual stuff he’s been doing throughout. The film opens with a length first person perspective shot, which echoes during one of March’s transformations (the transformation scenes start great but are terrible in the third act) and then Mamoulian forgets about them. The film’s aurally and visually ambitious until all of a sudden it’s just not anymore. Mamoulian’s composition is still good, it’s just not wildly ambitious like the start. He does do the big chase action sequences really well—and it’s really impressive if March did all the Hyde stunts himself–and Karl Struss’s photography is superb.

    It just seems like Mamoulian’s going for something and instead all we get for a moral is “beware horny scientists.”

    Again, March is terrifying and fantastic as Hyde. Hopkins is even better. Hobart’s good, Hobbes is good.

    If the film’s third act were as deliberate and intentional as the first act, if it tried to resolve itself even a little instead of dropping the ball and running away as fast as humanly possible—which, even Pre-Code, might not have been possible… who knows. Also if March were anywhere near as good as the good guy as the bad guy, though Samuel Hoffenstein and Percy Heath’s screenplay deserves much blame on that one. They punt on March’s character development far sooner than anyone else.

    The film’s just the right combination of unpleasant and unrewarding; it’s undeniably effective but also a pronounced failure.

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  • The Eagle and the Hawk (1933, Stuart Walker)

    The Eagle and the Hawk starts light and ends very heavy. Astoundingly—and appropriately—heavy. Eagle is a WWI flying ace picture, all about a group of British fliers who go to France only to discover war isn’t like playing polo actually.

    Right after an inventive segue from opening titles to the present action, the film has a very lumpy first act. Cary Grant has just landed he and Fredric March’s plane upside because he’s a bad pilot and then Jack Oakie comes along to make some jokes. Bogart Rogers and Seton I. Miller’s script is particularly rough in this section, ditto Walker’s direction. There’s also the problem Grant’s not very good and March’s character is real shallow. Oakie’s around with a shallower character, so it works out a little, but not well.

    Soon enough, March and Oakie are in France—March having left Grant grounded in England—and they quickly find out people you meet die in war too, not just faceless Germans. Walker is bad at the first act comedy and noticeably better (if still not great) at the drama. A lot of the problem is the script, but then there’s also James Smith’s (uncredited) editing. Sure, Walker probably didn’t give Smith enough coverage–Eagle always feels frustratingly rushed and slightly on the cheap, particularly with the supporting cast—but there are some profoundly bad cuts in the film. It gets to the point you have to predict the jump cuts so you can follow where the actors have moved while still in the middle of the same continuous scene.

    March goes through numerous observers—which ought to be a great montage sequence but Walker screws it up in an obvious way (the film ends up implying only March ever loses any observers in combat and yet gets all the medals for them dying)—until there’s no one left in France so they bring in Grant. They’ve got some unresolved hostility to work through, in addition to Grant being a sociopathic bully, but eventually March’s functional alcoholism starts getting dysfunctional and commanding officer Guy Standing has to do something about it.

    That something ends up involving a Carole Lombard cameo—the public’s got to have a pretty face—and she’s great but it’s complete filler. Though it does give March another good couple scenes, including meeting bloodthirsty little ghoul kid Douglas Scott and his mother, Virginia Hammond, seemingly realizing toxic masculinity is probably bad.

    At its best, Eagle and the Hawk gives March the material he needs to give an exquisite performance. It’s never quite up to snuff—the final monologue needs to be better, even if March knocks it out of the park—thanks to the script and the direction. Walker (or possibly “associate” director Mitchell Leisen) have some occasional great instincts and the sound design is always right and Harry Fischbeck comes through on the photography when tasked… but there’s only so high Eagle can fly with its various albatrosses.

    Grant in particular doesn’t help. Even as he improves throughout, it’s a combination of his acting being a tad too inconsistent and Walker not knowing how to direct the film.

    And Standing needs to be better if he’s going to be so earnest in his indifference to the loss of human life.

    Oh, and Kenneth Howell. Howell’s the new kid whose supposed to be angelic and it’s a fail for multiple reasons, including Howell not being very good. Again, Walker’s no doubt responsible for a lot of it.

    But March is good enough alone he almost makes Eagle and the Hawk worth it.

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  • Bob (1992) s01e06 – P.C. or Not P.C.

    The cold open is Bob Newhart whining about wanting a son to watch sports with. He whines to the cat, who’s the only one who has any interest in joining him. It’s kind of foreshadowing for the eventual plot, but it’s also not funny.

    The main plot is Newhart’s daughter, Cynthia Stevenson, starting her first regular day at the comic studio as a colorist. She comes into the kitchen to ask Newhart what he thinks of her outfit, but he doesn’t look because it’s silly she wants to look nice. Then there’s a joke about comic book colorist not being a real job.

    Things are off to a great start.

    Fast forward a bit and Stevenson notices the female character she’s coloring is always either taking a bath or a shower, which kicks off John Cygan berating Stevenson and the other women in the office for having an opinion about it—what’s a little weird is they’ve established Newhart draws the comic and Cygan writes it so… unclear why Newhart’s got nothing to say. Even when Cygan’s yelling at Stevenson, something the episode just skips over.

    Cygan’s not in favor of Stevenson as a colorist firstly because she’s Newhart’s daughter and he hates nepotism (there’s no mention he got his girlfriend the same job last episode) and secondly because she’s a Bible thumping, book burning Feminist communist. It’s weird Cygan’s not in favor of nepotism because it’s the only way to explain why he got the part on the show, especially for this episode’s take on the character. The show creators contributed the script, which seems like a bad sign six episodes in no one can get a handle on the show. Maybe because they keep screwing it up.

    Stevenson stages a walkout and there are changes after Newhart decides he can’t pointlessly objectify women in drawings his daughter is going to have to color.

    As a “Bob Newhart wakes up,” the episode’s way too thin and way too noncommittal. Especially after it rewinds all the progress for a dumb joke from Cygan.

    I was expecting something worse from a 1992 TV episode entitled P.C. or Not P.C.—and at least the female background characters get lines and SAG pay—but it’s pretty bad.

    Especially when Andrew Bilgore’s terrible jokes (he’s socially awkward office guy) land better than anything else in the episode.

    There are also some continuity issues as it’s unclear why the comic is all about scantily clad women showering together when it’s been about a male superhero until this point but clearly no one involved cares.

    Ruth Kobart’s got a subplot involving being a baseball fanatic, which directly contradicts the cold open but again… clearly no one involved cares.

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  • Bob (1992) s01e05 – Terminate Her

    The episode opens with Bob Newhart taking the L home and realizing there are a number of little people on the train and he comments on it to one of the little people. He does it in that muted Newhart way—the issue is his embarrassment over questioning whether or not people have the right to exist; it’s fairly gross and astoundingly dated. And very sad it wasn’t dated for 1992.

    It’s an appropriate start for the episode, which is all about Newhart wanting to hire daughter Cynthia Stevenson to be a colorist on his comic book but John Cygan has already hired his girlfriend, Christine Dunford. Dunford is a ditzy, Bronx-rude blonde caricature and the episode is astoundingly sexist. Show creators Bill Steinkellner, Cheri Steinkeller, and Phoef Sutton wrote it, which is a surprise and a big disappointment.

    The job stuff with Stevenson makes fun of her for not being able to get a job with her liberal arts degree, then shifts to Dunford. Newhart’s too nice to fire her while Cygan doesn’t seem to want to upset the relationship. But when Newhart can’t bring himself to do it, Cygan reveals the real problem is he’s a little bit of a woman when it comes to confrontation.

    Luckily Timothy Fall’s around to make fun of Andrew Bilgore’s mental health issues and to suggest they kill Dunford to get rid of her.

    The end manages to do introduce some toxic masculinity into the mix—it’s funny because Newhart’s tougher than Cygan (wokka wokka).

    It’s a really gross episode, with all the laughs leveraging internalized or externalized misogyny. Though Bilgore gets a laugh. No one else gets a laugh.

    Cygan’s got some terrible early nineties outfits again this episode—his performance is terrible but who can blame him, it’d be worse if he were any better—if only they were the only crap thing about it.

    Oh, I forgot to mention Carlene Watkins, who gets to be subject of some sexism too. She doesn’t get to do anything in the episode herself, of course. Just to take some eye-widening shit.

    It’s so bad. Possibly jumping off bad.

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