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aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2010-07-04 08:12 pm
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2010-07-04 08:12 pm
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Another GAH episode round-up
Small Child remains enamored of Greatest American Hero. I've been discussing with a few of you in a few places (but primarily the comments to my recent books post) the problem of a perverse SC who takes recommendations from her parents as poison. Some of you may remember how much she loved The Sarah Jane Adventures. She cried real tears that we didn't get s2 over here (ever, so far as I know), so her devoted parents got her the boxed set of s2 for Christmas this past Christmas. The one over six months ago. We have seen one two-part story of SJA now, because since we showed too much eagerness to see it, she's no longer interested. We have threatened to watch without her, though it seems unfair since it's her set.
I think the fact that we never urged but merely allowed her to watch GAH has provoked her into a fan-like love for the show. She has already rewatched two or three episodes that we all saw together. I didn't dare tell her about the SyFy channel marathon today for fear she'd demand to watch all 22 episodes. She wanted to see another episode. We suggested SJA. We finally, grudgingly allowed that we'd watch an ep of GAH as long as we all watch SJA tomorrow (which we all have off because Independence Day fell on a Sunday this year). I think she felt quite victorious about the negotiations. It's a good negotiation: everybody wins! (We win twice, but who's counting?)
Thus we've seen three more episodes since my last post on the show. I still love this show. Part of me is [age redacted] again when I watch, but part of me appreciates the less obvious humor more. Spoilers in my posts for individual episodes.
"Fire Man"
Michael Paré gets to shine as Tony in this one. I do like Tony, rather in spite of myself—I'd have hated him in high school, most likely. Tony gets arrested as an arsonist because the car he's repossessing matches the description of the car that nearly ran down a guard at the scene of the most recent fire—and has the arsonist's equipment in the trunk. Bloopholes, let me count them:
1. The arsonist's car gets repossessed. There's not a chance the arsonist would actually allow that to happen; the man's on the take and has been doing quite well for himself. (Tony's boss is actually stealing cars, but that still leaves all the other bloopholes in place, plus I'd think he'd have the new guy doing legit repossessions.)
2. Tony repossesses the car from a rental car lot. Even if the arsonist were renting the car he used, he would never let it return to the lot with all his equipment in the trunk.
3. The arsonist never took the equipment out of the trunk? Srsly?
4. Tony never produces a copy of the repossession papers he had when he took the car.
5. None of the various federal agencies that get involved ever seem to care who might have ordered the arson.
6. There were more, but I forgot them.
The funny thing is: I don't care! I complained during the show, I list them here (perhaps out of OCD), but I still enjoyed the episode. I loved Ralph and Pam working so hard to help Tony and presenting a united front against Bill when he tries to persuade them to give the kid up. I also love how quickly Bill folds, and how he keeps on helping them even when he knows the other feds know and that he could be in big trouble.
I also love how Ralph rushes to save a homeless woman who then naturally thinks he's a nut and tries to flee or defend herself from him in the midst of the next fire. The firemen brush Ralph off, and he makes a joke about "taking off now". No one ever seems to remember the guy in the suit, except for the few perps who tell someone and end up diagnosed as head cases. (No one ever notices that multiple head cases brought in at different times have the same delusion about a superhero in red jammies.)
I realized in this episode that Bill seems to have exactly one plan, which he uses over and over: expose himself as bait and let Ralph catch the bad guys. He manages to flip his car in this one before Ralph gets there.
Ralph helps ease Bill out of the now partly crushed, upside-down car.
Bill: Easy with the leg.
Ralph (with deep concern?): Which one?
Bill: Dunno yet.
"The Best Desk Scenario"
Pam learns that one of the senior partners in her law firm is mixed up with the mob. She learns it just after being offered a promotion to junior partner. Ralph is named Interim Assistant Principal. Bill suffers a double crisis as first a friend his age dies and then he watches his younger friends' stars rising while his own seems to be falling at the bureau.
I especially enjoyed the scene at the law office. They do what this show perhaps does best: talk past each other. Bill fails to realize, and then to believe, that Pam is showing them the office she'd get as junior partner—if only she weren't about to have the senior partner who offered her the promotion locked up. Better still, Ralph goes into the closet and dons the senior partner's hat to holograph in on some key documents being held "by a beautiful woman." Meanwhile, at nearly the other end of the office, Pam is the one holding the documents and showing them to Bill. Ralph's calling out his vision, but they can't quite hear him; they're talking about the documents, but he can't hear them at all. When he comes out and realizes what's happened, Ralph is furious and starts to rant about them laughing at him. Yet it's not quite clear that Pam and Bill ever realize what has happened, because they're too busy reading the documents and planning the next phase! They don't pay much attention at all to the rant.
Here Bill actually varies the plan: he exposes Ralph as bait after the bad guys grab Pam. Of course, Ralph is wearing the suit and thus escapes injury, while Bill's in the line of fire. Bill manages neither to get injured nor to lose a car in this episode!
And Pam makes junior partner anyway. Thus endeth the first season; the show was a mid- or late-season replacement.
"Operation: Spoilsport"
Netflix put this first in s2; IMDb says it's second. Whoops. Whatever. There's not a whole lot of arc here.
In this episode, we learn that our government has a plan called Operation: Spoilsport (surprise!) that, in the event of a nuclear war, will keep back 30 nukes for 24 hours after the end of the war, so that we can nuke the Soviet Union once they think it's safe, even if we're all dead. Even Bill is really creeped out by this idea, although not as much as he's creeped out by the dead guy that the aliens reanimate to deliver a message to Ralph and Bill. We get a deranged general who reminded both Brilliant Husband and me very much of Lloyd Bridges's character in Airplane!.
Sadly, Pam only appears very briefly, at the start, on a phone call with Ralph; she's out of town on a case. (I think this must have been when Connie Selleca was either about to deliver or had recently had her son; she learned she was pregnant between the filming of the pilot and the filming of the rest of the first season. She went in to tell Stephen Cannell, who kept trying to put her off, saying he was busy. She finally barged into his office, told him the news, and said she'd understand if he replaced her. He looked up long enough to tell her that he sold the show with three leads and she was one of them, he was filming them as they'd been cast, and could she please go away because he was busy?)
Bill puts his usual plan into action yet again, successfully but for one hitch: when the bad guys grab him, Ralph is supposed to follow, but he loses them. Oh, and there's a second hitch. Bill thought the good guys would grab him, because what he has done is look up classified files on a computer scientist who has been kidnapped. Sadly, the general is the bad guy. (Nitpick: as far as we know, Bill served in the army in Korea, but he tells an Air Force general, "I served under you." BH quibbles. I note that Bill is given to hyperbole and outright falsehoods at times. "I'm not scared of the spaceship.")
Unable to find Bill, Ralph locates the computer scientist's girlfriend (by using the phone book in a phone booth while an amused crowd gathers to laugh at the guy in the superhero outfit) and knocks down her door when she won't let him in. He apologizes profusely but insists he needs information. She tries to humor him. He knows she's humoring him but can't stop her or get any real help from her! That's my favorite scene.
A close second are the scenes with Drugged!Bill. Once he succumbs, he starts to reveal everything. "Who can stop the missiles?" the general demands. "My partner, Ralph. With the jammies. They're magic. The dead guy told us.... The little green guys...." "He called me nuts!" the general harrumphs to his lackey. Bill's still whacked out when Ralph arrives, but that doesn't stop him from firing a machine gun. "Huh. I got a bent barrel on this one," he says as the bullets go everywhere.
I enjoyed all three, and I certainly hope to see more Pam in the next episode than in "Operation: Spoilsport"!
I think the fact that we never urged but merely allowed her to watch GAH has provoked her into a fan-like love for the show. She has already rewatched two or three episodes that we all saw together. I didn't dare tell her about the SyFy channel marathon today for fear she'd demand to watch all 22 episodes. She wanted to see another episode. We suggested SJA. We finally, grudgingly allowed that we'd watch an ep of GAH as long as we all watch SJA tomorrow (which we all have off because Independence Day fell on a Sunday this year). I think she felt quite victorious about the negotiations. It's a good negotiation: everybody wins! (We win twice, but who's counting?)
Thus we've seen three more episodes since my last post on the show. I still love this show. Part of me is [age redacted] again when I watch, but part of me appreciates the less obvious humor more. Spoilers in my posts for individual episodes.
"Fire Man"
Michael Paré gets to shine as Tony in this one. I do like Tony, rather in spite of myself—I'd have hated him in high school, most likely. Tony gets arrested as an arsonist because the car he's repossessing matches the description of the car that nearly ran down a guard at the scene of the most recent fire—and has the arsonist's equipment in the trunk. Bloopholes, let me count them:
1. The arsonist's car gets repossessed. There's not a chance the arsonist would actually allow that to happen; the man's on the take and has been doing quite well for himself. (Tony's boss is actually stealing cars, but that still leaves all the other bloopholes in place, plus I'd think he'd have the new guy doing legit repossessions.)
2. Tony repossesses the car from a rental car lot. Even if the arsonist were renting the car he used, he would never let it return to the lot with all his equipment in the trunk.
3. The arsonist never took the equipment out of the trunk? Srsly?
4. Tony never produces a copy of the repossession papers he had when he took the car.
5. None of the various federal agencies that get involved ever seem to care who might have ordered the arson.
6. There were more, but I forgot them.
The funny thing is: I don't care! I complained during the show, I list them here (perhaps out of OCD), but I still enjoyed the episode. I loved Ralph and Pam working so hard to help Tony and presenting a united front against Bill when he tries to persuade them to give the kid up. I also love how quickly Bill folds, and how he keeps on helping them even when he knows the other feds know and that he could be in big trouble.
I also love how Ralph rushes to save a homeless woman who then naturally thinks he's a nut and tries to flee or defend herself from him in the midst of the next fire. The firemen brush Ralph off, and he makes a joke about "taking off now". No one ever seems to remember the guy in the suit, except for the few perps who tell someone and end up diagnosed as head cases. (No one ever notices that multiple head cases brought in at different times have the same delusion about a superhero in red jammies.)
I realized in this episode that Bill seems to have exactly one plan, which he uses over and over: expose himself as bait and let Ralph catch the bad guys. He manages to flip his car in this one before Ralph gets there.
Ralph helps ease Bill out of the now partly crushed, upside-down car.
Bill: Easy with the leg.
Ralph (with deep concern?): Which one?
Bill: Dunno yet.
"The Best Desk Scenario"
Pam learns that one of the senior partners in her law firm is mixed up with the mob. She learns it just after being offered a promotion to junior partner. Ralph is named Interim Assistant Principal. Bill suffers a double crisis as first a friend his age dies and then he watches his younger friends' stars rising while his own seems to be falling at the bureau.
I especially enjoyed the scene at the law office. They do what this show perhaps does best: talk past each other. Bill fails to realize, and then to believe, that Pam is showing them the office she'd get as junior partner—if only she weren't about to have the senior partner who offered her the promotion locked up. Better still, Ralph goes into the closet and dons the senior partner's hat to holograph in on some key documents being held "by a beautiful woman." Meanwhile, at nearly the other end of the office, Pam is the one holding the documents and showing them to Bill. Ralph's calling out his vision, but they can't quite hear him; they're talking about the documents, but he can't hear them at all. When he comes out and realizes what's happened, Ralph is furious and starts to rant about them laughing at him. Yet it's not quite clear that Pam and Bill ever realize what has happened, because they're too busy reading the documents and planning the next phase! They don't pay much attention at all to the rant.
Here Bill actually varies the plan: he exposes Ralph as bait after the bad guys grab Pam. Of course, Ralph is wearing the suit and thus escapes injury, while Bill's in the line of fire. Bill manages neither to get injured nor to lose a car in this episode!
And Pam makes junior partner anyway. Thus endeth the first season; the show was a mid- or late-season replacement.
"Operation: Spoilsport"
Netflix put this first in s2; IMDb says it's second. Whoops. Whatever. There's not a whole lot of arc here.
In this episode, we learn that our government has a plan called Operation: Spoilsport (surprise!) that, in the event of a nuclear war, will keep back 30 nukes for 24 hours after the end of the war, so that we can nuke the Soviet Union once they think it's safe, even if we're all dead. Even Bill is really creeped out by this idea, although not as much as he's creeped out by the dead guy that the aliens reanimate to deliver a message to Ralph and Bill. We get a deranged general who reminded both Brilliant Husband and me very much of Lloyd Bridges's character in Airplane!.
Sadly, Pam only appears very briefly, at the start, on a phone call with Ralph; she's out of town on a case. (I think this must have been when Connie Selleca was either about to deliver or had recently had her son; she learned she was pregnant between the filming of the pilot and the filming of the rest of the first season. She went in to tell Stephen Cannell, who kept trying to put her off, saying he was busy. She finally barged into his office, told him the news, and said she'd understand if he replaced her. He looked up long enough to tell her that he sold the show with three leads and she was one of them, he was filming them as they'd been cast, and could she please go away because he was busy?)
Bill puts his usual plan into action yet again, successfully but for one hitch: when the bad guys grab him, Ralph is supposed to follow, but he loses them. Oh, and there's a second hitch. Bill thought the good guys would grab him, because what he has done is look up classified files on a computer scientist who has been kidnapped. Sadly, the general is the bad guy. (Nitpick: as far as we know, Bill served in the army in Korea, but he tells an Air Force general, "I served under you." BH quibbles. I note that Bill is given to hyperbole and outright falsehoods at times. "I'm not scared of the spaceship.")
Unable to find Bill, Ralph locates the computer scientist's girlfriend (by using the phone book in a phone booth while an amused crowd gathers to laugh at the guy in the superhero outfit) and knocks down her door when she won't let him in. He apologizes profusely but insists he needs information. She tries to humor him. He knows she's humoring him but can't stop her or get any real help from her! That's my favorite scene.
A close second are the scenes with Drugged!Bill. Once he succumbs, he starts to reveal everything. "Who can stop the missiles?" the general demands. "My partner, Ralph. With the jammies. They're magic. The dead guy told us.... The little green guys...." "He called me nuts!" the general harrumphs to his lackey. Bill's still whacked out when Ralph arrives, but that doesn't stop him from firing a machine gun. "Huh. I got a bent barrel on this one," he says as the bullets go everywhere.
I enjoyed all three, and I certainly hope to see more Pam in the next episode than in "Operation: Spoilsport"!