|
Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
 Posted - 03/01/2011 : 9:42:46 PM
|
"The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (1982)
The Greatest American Hero was funner then poop. A fun twist on standard superhero fare, the show featured a dorky character who, in his superhero persona, was STILL dorky. And instead of having a sidekick like some comic book heroes do, this superhero WAS the sidekick. Nominally a drama, but according the creator Stephen Cannell, the show was nominated for seven Emmys in its three-year run, all in the comedy category.
And that's what the show should be taken as: A comedy. Because it's every bit as cheesy, cheap, and sometimes flat-out stupid as any other action show of the era. But it didn't care, it had fun with it. And so did we.
Here we go.
Right off the bat, I have a complaint about the DVD presentation of this show. With most shows, if you don't want to sit through the theme song, you hit the Next Scene button, and it takes you to the first scene of the episode proper. Not so with The Greatest American Hero. It takes you into the middle of the first scene. So I had to fast forward past the theme song (and it's a long one, isn't it?), paying attention not to shoot through the beginning of the episode. Annoying.
We start with a pleasure boat on a calm sea under sunny skies. A caption reads, “Five miles off the coast of St. Croix, Virgin Islands.” I've been to St. Croix. Lovely place. The boat contains two 20-something couples having a good time. There's no other ship in sight, but in the next cut, a motorboat zooms alongside, and four men in black and armed with machine guns storm the boat and throw the passengers to the deck. Before they can do whatever they were going to, there's a rapid sequence of a shot of an ominous something cresting the water (I'm guessing its stock footage of a humpback whale), then a shot of the boat, named the Contrail, rocking hard to starboard (the camera turns while the actors throw themselves about, a la Star Trek), and a panicked black-clad man on the bridge radioing to someone named Devereaux.
Cut to....I dunno, the villian's HQ. Another black-clad goon (I can see the attacking men dressing in all black, but this guy's at the HQ, or base, or whatever. It's like the Batman TV show where the goons all wear goofy uniforms round-the-clock) tells Devereaux (Jeremy Kemp), a 50-ish balding guy with a British accent that I can't pin down, that their men had captured a boat but lost radio contact in mid-transmission. Devereaux tells him to give them time to report in, and if they don't, to contact LeClerq.
Cut to a beach country club. The high school kids are performing a soft rock song while folks of various ages relax. Props to the Hispanic kid on guitar, his fingerings actually match the sound, including the brief lead break. I can't tell about the others because their hands are obstructed from view, although there is one drum fill where the drummer also plays it as heard. Attention to detail, I like it!
Ralph and Pam are among the audience, cooing to each other about how beautiful everything is and how awesome it would be to live here. Ralph and Pam, as played by William Katt and Connie Sellecca, do make a charming couple, but I'm not quite sure I buy a lawyer (who, as seen in a previous episode, had serious upward mobility) falling for a public schoolteacher in the rather inglorious job of teaching remedial students (some episodes described them as flat-out Special Ed students, but that isn't so). Of course, in this fictional universe, a low-level schoolteacher lives in nicely lush digs, so I dunno.
Tony Villecana (sp?), Ralph's John Travolta-esque student, is waiting tables, and he spills drinks all over Pam and Ralph. Pam exposits that Villecana brought the waitering gig on himself when he didn't include a provision for himself in the band's contract when he booked their gig at this hotel. So Villecana is the manager of this band. This was established in an earlier episode, although he must have prodigious skills to be able to book a high school band from LA at fancy hotel in St. Croix, especially when he himself is a still a teenager. In this scene, he also refers to himself as a producer. Wow. My band's manager is in her 40s, and she has to pound on all sorts of doors and flash all sorts of cleavage just to get us booked at clubs in downtown San Francisco. And she has nothing to do with our producing. We produce our own albums.
**shameless promo mode on**
Wanna see and hear? http://www.6amband.com/
**shameless promo mode off**
Villecana is jealous of the bigshot at the next table who's successfully hitting on Rhonda, the singer for the band and Villecana's squeeze. I giggled at the “Prince of Wales” bit. Ralph maybe-jokingly tells Villecana that red wine on white clothes is hellacious, but Villecana takes him seriously and does just that to Mr. Bigshot, with only Rhonda preventing the two from fistfighting.
Cut to Pam and Ralph strolling on the beach, telling each other how awesome it is that they get a week to themselves without Bill Maxwell bothering them. I'm glad they like it, because Bill Maxwell is a key reason the show was worth watching. So we're hoping he shows up. And of course, he will.
Hearing screams of a drowning woman out at sea, Ralph dives into the water and hauls her safely to shore. At first, I thought this was a typically hokey TV drowning scene, where the water is nowhere near rough enough to prohibit the drowner from swimming to shore herself, and the drowner stays afloat for a remarkably long time so she can scream her head off. But as Ralph brings her to shore, we see that she's holding a life ring labelled “Contrail.” Okay, so this is a survivor of whatever happened on board the Contrail, five miles off the coast. That is believable. Life ring or no, five miles is a difficult and exhausting swim, so calling for help that close to the shore isn't unbelievable. No sweat.
Cut to Ralph talking on the phone with Bill Maxwell (tol'ja). Ralph tells Bill to get down to St. Croix immediately because this is The One The Suit Was Made For. He doesn't give Bill (or us) any specifics beyond having found a survivor of the Contrail, but his excitement infects Bill enough that Bill agrees to fly straight down and worry later about what he's gonna tell his boss. This is fairly interesting, because very seldom does Ralph get excited about anything the suit might be for. It's almost always Bill who gets excited and has to badger Ralph into getting into the suit. So what's got Ralph so enthusiastic off of a sudden?
Cut to a airborne helicopter carrying Bill to St. Croix. We get the title card here, nine minutes in. That's an awfully long time for the title card in a 47-minute episode. **shrug** The GAH theme song plays here, in slow-tempo calypso steel drums. Neat! It's charming.
Brief bit of Pam driving Bill to the hotel. Bill can't wait to hear what Big Case Ralph has got for him, while Pam hints by tone of voice alone that he isn't gonna like it. She's right, but the audience definitely does like Connie Sellecca in a white bikini top, hell yeah!
Cut to Ralph in his hotel room doing some enthusiastic book research. What he reads out loud to himself as he reads is kind of annoying. Here it is in full:
“Mary Celeste, Mary Celeste....here we go! 'Mary Celeste, November 16th, 1979. Three passengers, a captain, one mate, last sighting off the coast of St. Croix by a local fisherman,' I knew it!”
Anal blood!
NONE of that is accurate. Google “Mary Celeste” and see for yourself. If you don't wanna, the Mary Celeste was found abandoned but still in good condition in 1872, its missing populace was one captain, seven crew, and the captain's wife and two-year-old daughter, and it was found near (but not TOO near) the Azores. In 1885, it was deliberately wrecked off the Haitian coast by its new owner in a failed attempt at insurance fraud.
Since this episode kinda involves nautical paranormal activity, maybe the Mary Celeste's name was used as a wink at paranormality buffs. But it just comes off as stupid; and back then, I'm certain there were at least a couple folks who took this misinformation as accurate. Yuck.
Bill and Pam arrive. Bill is thrilled at Ralph's “command post,” with all the maps and charts and drawings. Ralph explains to Bill, using a stick-pinned map, that there have been a host of disappearances in an area of the Caribbean known as “The Devil's Triangle.”
“The Devil's Triangle,” huh? They can use the name of the Mary Celeste and butcher its history, but they don't wanna use “Bermuda Triangle?” What, is the name copyrighted or something?
Bill is hoping it's all about pirates or “white slavery....drug runners....Communist cell....secret missile complex....Dr. Mengele.....Goldilocks and three bears, c'mon Ralph, what is it?!?” Ralph totally pops Bill's balloon but proudly showing him a drawing of a sea serpent, saying that's not without precedent for a sea creature thought to be extinct to still exist. In what is now a cliché and may already have been back then, he mentions the Ceolecanth (sp?), a thought-extinct species until a live one was caught in the 1930s. That much is accurate, but if I was a mythical creature, I'd be miffed at the ceolecanth who got caught and caused all the conspiracy nuts to keep chasing after me.
Noteworthy here is the reversal of characters. Throughout the run of The Greatest American Hero, Bill is always the one who excitedly pursues the cases with such single-mindedness that he wouldn't listen to a word Ralph would say. Several times in the series, Ralph would cuss Bill out for never listening to him. Now we're seeing the opposite. Ralph really should've known that Bill wouldn't be on board for a hunt for a sea serpent, especially given Bill's reluctance to even discuss the very aliens who gave them the suit. And when Bill now acts nauseous with the dashed hopes of a major case to sink his teeth into, Ralph is the one whose so single-minded that he doesn't seem to get why Bill feels this way. Doubly bad on Ralph because Pam is very obviously uncomfortable about springing this on Bill.
The scene ends will Ralph saying that he's going to use the suit to try to get some holographs off of the lady he rescued and said saw the creature.
Cut to Ralph trying to do just that. He's excited that she confirms that the drawing of “Carrie,” as he calls the serpent, looks pretty much like what she saw. But apparently she never mentioned the armed thugs who stormed the boat. It's those thugs that Ralph holographs, as well as a nautical chart or map, which deflates his hopes. The lady gives a brief high-on-life talk to Bill, with a predictable but very fun reaction from Bill. Having Robert Culp playing Bill Maxwell must've made the writers jobs so much easier. Any time the plot's a little thin and you need to stretch out a scene or two, just have Bill interact with anybody and you're all set! I don't know if he was ad libbing or not, but it comes off that way, and it's a kick!
Leaving the hospital, Bill is excited that Ralph got the holographs he did, because it means that he can try to make a bust and salvage something out of this wild serpent chase that he thinks his boss is gonna kill him over. He assures Pam that he is a top-notch sailor, so all they need is to rent a boat and they'll be all set. Unknown to the trio, they're being watched by a black dude in a white suit and tie.
Cut to said black dude, identifying himself on a phone as LeClerq and asking to speak to Devereaux. Ho ho! This is the guy referred to in the opening scene. Devereaux had said in that scene that if his men who hijacked the boat didn't return, to contact LeClerq. Okay, so from this we gather that his men did not return, and LeClerq was contacted. I'm guessing that he must've learned about a survivor from the Contrail and found where she was recuperating, hence his hanging out on the hospital grounds.
Cut to commercial.
Back from commercial. Ralph, Bill, and Pam are in a tiny rubber outboard motorboat. For over one full minute, the three of them just bicker their asses off at each other. And it's totally in character all around. Bill tells everyone to stop panicking and nothing's wrong, while verifying that Ralph does indeed have the suit on; Pam bitches that they're lost and they're sinking, Ralph tries to use a compass while assuring both of them that yes, he has the suit on. It's charming! I know that's the second time I've said that, but really, that's the appeal of the series overall. These three are great fun to watch! Although I do have to wonder which whitecaps Ralph is referring to when the water is as calm as any I've ever seen.
The encounter some stock footage of sea swells heading straight for them. Ralph mistakes (or perhaps not) them for Carrie's passage. But Bill bursts his balloon by spotting an approaching yacht, saying that that's what causing the swells. Unlikely. The Contrail's bow is pointing towards the trio's boat. Also unlikely is Pam identifying it as the Contrail. How would she know? She's never seen it before. **shrug** Ralph is pumped, anyway, having found an derelict boat like it's already a legendary mystery even though it's been missing for less than a day.
In his suit-powered enthusiasm, Ralph fires up the boat's motor, sending it rocketing right at the Contrail, which is also plowing forward through the water. So he throws Pam and Bill several dozen feet through the air and into the water. Then, he super-swims up behind the Contrail (realized by simply towing the stuntman while he makes broad swimming strokes) and flies up onto the Contrail (realized by the series' trademark crappy matting in). Now on board, we've got a continuity error: The Contrail was chugging along towards the motorboat, making a nice froth. But now, it's completely adrift. Finding nobody aboard but getting a nice holograph of the panicked thug radioing Devereaux from the opening scene, Ralph retrieves Bill and Pam from the water. I don't know why I giggle at what Bill and Pam say as they're treading water, but I do anyway.
Pam can't believe that the Contrail has nobody on board, saying that it just tried to run them down. Okay, so it wasn't a continuity error. Bill isn't too worried, and makes to bring the boat in. Ralph seems to think that the bunch of seaweed clumps he found on board is proof, or at least strong evidence, that Carrie must've been here. The only gripe I have here is that the whole unmanned-boat-going-full-speed bit is totally dropped after this scene. Nothing ever comes of it. Yeah, Bermuda Devil's Triangle, but still.
Cut to the dock, where the Contrail is now safely berthed. Our trio is speaking to LeClerq, who we see is a cop of some kind on this island. LeClerq has a lot to hide, but he seems believable when he doesn't take Ralph's inquiries into the supernatural seriously, having heard the theories before. He explains that on a busy island with lots of drug running going on and lots of shallow areas, wrecks are common, but are called “disappearances” because the ships sink. Bill is totally with LeClerq, but after a brief and pointless quibble about salvage rights, Ralph asks if he knows anyone named Devereaux. LeClerq, obviously rattled at the mention of the name, assures them that he is just the warden at the prison a few islands over, and that he will go speak to him now.
Cut to LeClerq meeting with Devereaux, who seems to really be the warden of the prison colony, and totally evil as well. He near-panickedly tells Devereaux about Bill Maxwell being close to catching onto them. He exposits for the audience's benefit that he, LeClerq, has been sending boats Devereaux's way so Devereaux can hijack them, and that most of them are U.S. Registry. I'm guessing that the only reason U.S. Registry matters is for folks like us who might wonder if an FBI agent can make busts in another nation for crimes that don't involve the U.S.
Devereaux isn't impressed that LeClerq came to him in broad daylight, so after getting LeClerq's assurance that nobody knows that he came there, orders his men to drag LeClerq out of the room, presumably to kill him or tickle him or something. I dunno. The scene ends with a pointless zoom-in on some goldfish in a tank. Cut to commercial.
Back from commercial....hell yeah, we get a good loooong shot of Pam in a black one-piece bathing suit strolling past the swimming pool. Fantastic! She takes a seat with Ralph and Bill, and the three of them are just lazing in the sun like lizards on the rocks as they talk about the urgent need to rent another boat and get back out looking for......Ralph wants to look for Carrie the sea serpent, while Bill wants to bust what he thinks are drug runners.
Then we get an extended bit with Ralph's students. Villecana is miffed that his girlfriend Rhonda is paying so much attention to Mr. Bigshot, who the other kids think can get them into the upper echelons of music production and promotion, saying he's a Duke of some kind. Doubtful. This hotel they're staying at ain't bad by any means, but it's ain't really posh, either. After complaining about Rhonda's outfit (I'm with Ralph on this one), Villecana quits the band on the spot and storms off, saying that he'll sleep on the Contrail because quitting the band means losing his hotel accomodations. I've had singers do that, it's f**kin' annoying because they always come off as crybabies, and that's how it comes off here too. He storms off to everyone's annoyance, pausing long enough to push Mr. Bigshot into the swimming pool as he passes. This wins points from Bill and Pam, although what brought on Pam's change of heart from the earlier scene, I don't know.
That night, two thugs abduct Bill from his hotel room. Bill acts cheerful about it as he commonly did throughout the series when he'd be in danger. I don't quite know what he means about nine cents, and I can't understand a word the talking thug says. So.....**shrug**.....he gets abducted.
Cut to Pam and Ralph. Ralph is wearing his suit and trying to get a holograph from the map he recovered from the Contrail. And he gets one! He sees Bill being abducted, and flies off to save him. Said saving takes about 15 seconds. He just tackles the goons, chucks them in the water, and watches them flee. There's also a pointless bit with a drunk old man trying to fly as well, but it's just dumb. Drunks reacting to extraordinary stuff stopped being funny with the end of The Andy Griffith Show. Knight Rider also used this gag occasionally, as well.
Later that night, Bill, Ralph, and Pam board the Contrail to find Rhonda there. She's almost in tears. She tells the trio that she was hanging out with Mr. Bigshot, and he wasn't interested in her music, just her smokin' hot raunchy nasty steamy sweaty sex, so she came to the Contrail to make up with Villecana, only to find him gone and the interior of the boat ransacked.
Cut to Devereaux's prison island that day. Villecana reacts to being imprisoned like it's a detention handed down by a principal.
Cut to sea, where Bill's idea is to ride the Contrail into the general area where Devereaux's thugs might see it, and let them bring our heroes to him. Ralph is stilled bummed over Carrie the sea serpent not being real, and Bill's lines are f**kin' inexplicable in the way that only Robert Culp can do.
Soon enough, a boat carrying Devereaux's men find the Contrail. They order her to follow them or be sunk. Why not just board it like they did in the opening scene? A couple possible reasons, but it's no biggie.
Once they get to Devereaux's island and are let around by armed thugs, Bill immediately recognizes that this is a nautical chop shop. This is where all the missing boats went. No sea serpents, no black holes, just a capture/facelift/resell operation. After saying hi to Villecana, the trio is thrown into a cell. Ralph calmly recommends kicking the door down and leaving. I love his tone of voice. This was late in the second season of the series and by this point, he'd gotten at least kinda comfortable with some of the suits abilities. Here, he sounds totally calm and not at all worried about their predicament. He's getting the psychological hang of his powers. I like it. Bill doesn't want to go anywhere just yet, knowing that Devereaux will want to speak with them, they just have to wait out a spirit-crushing indeterminate-length stay in the cell. An indeterminate length of time later, Bill and Ralph are hauled out to see Devereaux. Must not have been too long, they just look a little tired.
Devereaux spells out, or rather Bill spells out to show how clever he is, that Devereaux does indeed hijack boats, brings them here, imprisons anybody who was onboard (for life, by Bill's estimation), and resells the boats. Despite the lack of any guards in the room and lack of any physical restraints on Bill and Ralph, Devereaux is totally British-laidback, reclining and fanning himself. Bill gets a kick out of Devereaux's consternation about his inexplicably lost men from the Contrail. Ralph tries to convince Devereaux of Carrie the sea serpent, and Devereaux takes it as the total insult to his intelligence that you can't rightly fault him for. I love the look on Ralph's face when he nods in confirmation to “My men were eaten by a sea serpent?!?” Devereaux rings for the guards, and Bill and Ralph are dragged outside.
Ralph is about to be keelhauled! Hands bound together and tied to the back of a motorboat and dragged through the water until he drowns! Ralph acts like it's the humiliation of this particular mode of capital punishment that bothers him. Bill isn't bothered at all, giving Ralph his standard “Ah, you'll be fine” bit.
And of course, Ralph is. He flies straight out of the water, pulling the boat up with him! This is realized by close-ups of Ralph-and-bluescreen, and long shots of the boat being pulled maybe 50 feet in the air by off-screen apparati. Those long shots do look pretty awesome! The two boat drivers fall out, then Ralph drops the boat itself into the water. I'll bet that was a lot of fun to shoot.
Bill verbally swaggers his ass off as Ralph flies back, throws Devereaux and a guard into the water, and disarms another guard who is frozen solid by what he's just seen.
Epilogue: On a big-ass cruise yacht (with both engines AND sails, how 'bout that), the schoolkids perform another song (there's NO stage room at all. I've played on tiny stages, but nothing like that!). Rhonda wants Villecana to make up with Mr. Bigshot. Villecana reluctantly agrees, but accidentally spills another drink on Mr. Bigshot, who exits without comment. **shrug** Ok.
On the forecastle, Ralph is bummed that Carrie the sea serpent isn't real. Pam gives him gentle consoling, and Bill gives him brutally UN-gentle consoling. The scene ends will Bill derisively laughing about the idea of sea serpents. The camera watches the yacht sail away for a bit, then pans down.......as the goofiest looking monster bathtub toy I've ever seen rears it's head up at the camera to overdubbed roar! It's so cheap that I can't help laughing! Why even bother if that's the best you can do?!?
Roll credits.
After the first season (a half-season, really) did solidly well in the ratings, ABC green-lit the show for this second season. In its first season, its competition was Benson and Real People, so its no surprise that it did okay. But in the second season, the ratings fell to middle of the pack against those same two shows. For its third season, ABC moved it to the dreaded Friday night slot, where it had to compete against perennial powerhouse Dallas and rookie sensation Knight Rider. And The Greatest American Hero wasn't able to compete, and it was cancelled halfway through season 3. A damn shame, because it was some fun stuff! |
Edited by - Food on 03/04/2011 6:58:23 PM
|
|
The Greatest American Hero episode (1982)
Forum Locked
