Names: Nicholas Campbell as "The Hitchhiker" (see notes below); guest cast members Jackson Davies, Audrey Launders, Judy Launders and Marlane O’Brien; Director Ivan Nagy.

Set up: We open on The Hitchhiker crossing a town thoroughfare, his over-stuffed backpack clutched beneath one arm. From this we quickly cut to a glistening skyscraper (or at least what is considered a skyscraper in Canada). Inside this edifice we meet Jake McElhaney, a nerdy looking fellow dressed in the latest togs from the Orville Redenbacher Executive Collection for Men. He sits in a tiny cubicle as he attempts to sell a woman real estate over the phone. On this show, that means he’s obviously a goner.

Lest his cubicle, shiny bald pate and bowtie have failed to label him as a ‘loser,’ we watch as he is dissed by his more aggressive co-worker Barb. Jake is a formerly successful salesman now in the midst of a very long dry patch. Even so, he is shocked when Barb informs him that he has but a week to make a sale if he wishes to save his job. "Old Man Potter’s after your head," she taunts. (Well, maybe he needs something to shave in.) All in all, imagine Glengarry Glen Ross if David Mamet had been repeatedly dropped on his head as a child.

Further establishing Jake’s schlub credentials—if The Hitchhiker as a series believed in anything, it was that no equine was too deceased to be profitably pummeled (and pummeled and pummeled and…)—we cut to him in his car, an exaggeratedly dilapidated jalopy that spews gigantic clouds of smoky exhaust. Even so, they apparently still feared we wouldn’t ‘get’ it, and so this image is accompanied by the sort of ghastly comedy music that might play over a bunch of circus clowns climbing out of a tiny automobile.

All in all, I thought this a bit strange. Why set up a character as an object of ridicule, when given the nature of the show he will almost certainly be meeting a dire fate? I’ve previously mused that the program’s initial three episodes, which amounted to an extended pilot of sorts, experimented with different subject matter (i.e., the unabashedly supernatural plot device featured in "Shattered Vows") and tone. Presumably this was to see what would work most successfully should the show be brought back on a more permanent basis, which it obviously was.

Likewise, the doomed males that each episode centered on are also played differently. In the first chapter, "Shattered Vows," the main character was a regular joe who, in traditional film noir fashion, was seduced into murder by a treacherous female. (Actually, it didn’t so much play that way. However, the guy’s putative initial innocence was half-heartedly established through the Hitchhiker’s opening introduction, in which Our Host described him as "not a bad guy.")

Meanwhile, the male lead of "When Morning Comes" was pretty much an out and out prick, not to mention a braggart and a coward. Finally, this last episode seems to be setting up a rather pathetic figure for the inevitable climatic comeuppance.

In the end, the series most typically went with the second option, providing characters who did everything short of wearing a black top hat and twirling a long mustache to announce that they were just begging for some crudely-delivered just desserts. Again, subtlety was definitely not the program’s forte.

Anyway, to a further blare of Komedy Muzick, Jake pulls up to a cluster of street signs that consist of several arrows pointing in different directions and announcing ONE WAY. Ho ho. He then backs up though a bank of Komedy Exhaust before coming to a stop to ask directions from…The Hitchhiker! (I’m not sure why the Hitchhiker, as an intrinsically transient figure, would know the local streets, but there you go. On the other hand, as he functions as an Omniscient Narrator, I guess he’d know pretty much anything.)

Hitchhiker Intro (Although, as indicated above, he’s already been introduced.):

"There goes Jake McElhaney. He thinks he’s a charming sort of a guy. But charm can sometimes fool the charmer…and that’s where the danger lies." (Wow!)

Jake pulls up to a house, still accompanied by incredibly labored Komedy Muzick. Admittedly, there’s not much else to actually suggest that Jake is meant to be a comic figure, except in that way we’ve been conditioned to laugh at fussy guys who wear plaid suit coats and bow ties. Even so, I think the music has done it’s job, and frankly, the prospect of listening to nearly twenty more minutes of the stuff is about all that lends the episode a real sense of gut-wrenching tension.

Yet the stuff continues playing as Jake approaches a large but ramshackle house with a gated yard. An equally decrepit mailbox announces this to be the home of The Packards. As he enters the grounds, the music at last shifts to what I suppose is meant to be a suspenseful motif. This was reassuring, as bad suspense music is much more amusing (or at least easier to ignore) than bad comedy music.

In the large overgrown backyard garden, Jake comes across a blonde woman in a flannel shirt who’s cutting up a log with a small chainsaw. (The Hitchhiker was the kind of show where you often saw some object or other and thought, "Well, we’ll be seeing that later." And so it went with the saw, although this was true only in a larger sense.) He approaches her and starts up with some patter, while she regards him without apparent emotion. Finally, she hooks her finger at him and silently leads him to the house.

Jake continues to ‘comically’ blather while the woman removes her bandana to reveal a lush shock of golden hair, and doffs her loose flannel shirt to disclose tanned arms and a patently braless (if you know what I mean), prominent bust thrusting out from her undershirt. When she finally speaks to him, she naturally evinces the trademark Landers’ voice, which has a soft, breathy Betty Boop quality reminiscent of that of the Tilley sisters. Actually, except for being brunettes, Meg and Jennifer could have filled in for the Landers and the show would be exactly the same.

Per tradition, Ms. Packard (whichever one she is) is a ditzy blonde who doesn’t realize the effect she has on men. When she pulls up short at one point and Jake ends up staring directly down at her chest, she innocently inquires, "I suppose you want to see the rest…[pause]…of the house?" Comedy Ahoy!

The front door indicates that the house is in even worse shape than the exterior portends, as it only opens to a slight degree and forces people to squeeze their way inside. However, the interior of the home proves to be in remarkably good shape and abounding with pristine antique furniture. It’s almost like some sort of weird dualism is going on. Anyway, his hostess announces (naturally) that she needs a shower, and leaves Jake to poke around further.

A moment later a similar—although hardly exactly so—looking woman enters the room, wearing the sort of featured corset and hosiery one normally associates with dancehall girls in Western movies. This results in a purportedly comical blat of music as Jake ‘naturally’ mistakes her for the woman who just left in the opposite direction. Again, they don’t really look that much alike (and their hairstyles are quite evidently different), but hey, that’s the idea.

More ‘comic’ confusion occurs when she recognizes him to be the man she spoke to on the phone earlier, yet doesn’t seem to remember that she’s just been speaking to him. (Because, you see, she’s not in fact the same woman! Ha!) Then she leaves the room to get him a cup of tea, whereupon the other woman, now wearing an identical corset, enters from the first direction. Not one to spend overmuch time in the shower, I guess.

As the wacky music continued to batter me, I considered sticking a sharp object in my ear and rooting around a bit. However, I refused to take so easy a way out and continued watching, and even listening, to the show. And so continued the hilarious Farce, of a quality that certainly would have a fervently applauding Moliere jumping up and shouting, "Fantastique!" before doing that thing where you open your clenched fingertips against your pursed lips and making a popping noise. Assuming, of course, that Moliere somehow ended up living another four hundred odd years and had become addicted to watching bad English language television suspense programs.

The first woman leaves again, promising to get him a beer, whereupon the second woman enters with the promised tea. Jake is comically befuddled, and the jocular music plays on and on. Oh, my, yes. Finally, though, sweet surcease must come all good things must end, and the two women enter the room at the same time and the ‘mystery’ is solved.

Sister #1 is identified as Francis, #2 as Priscilla. "Stereo Blondes!" an enlightened Jakes quips [?]. "This is going to be delightful!" Well, for the dedicated Jabootuite, anyway. (Still, I hope the show isn’t intimating that being grossly unfunny warrants whatever horrible fate Jake ultimately reaps here. I’ve got enough problems, thank you very much.) Jake’s bon mot fails to find an appreciative audience, however. "What’s that supposed to mean?" Francis inquires Boopishly. I think this is meant to again establish how scatterbrained she is, although, now that I think about it, it’s a pretty good question.

Jake comments on a nearby table with a large handsaw resting upon it. At this point we’re about eight minutes into our teleplay, with roughly a quarter of an hour left to go. So you can see why the showrunners might have been concerned that, perhaps, possibly, some stray viewer out there might not yet have figured out where this episode—revolving around a male who visits the secluded home of two seemingly nutty sisters who own a number of saws, in an story entitled "Split Decision"—could be going. Indeed, such concern would only be wise. You could even call it…oh, I don’t know…Solomon-like.

In any case, lest we don’t get that two *cough, cough, wink, wink* identical sisters who live in a schizophrenic house and greet afternoon male guests in matching fringed corsets and hose might be a bit tetched, the two answer his query in unison, like Mothra’s Fairie Princesses. "We like [the table]," they echo. "Daddy used it to saw people in half." Hmm, you know, I think I might be starting to get a very vague glimmer of where this tale is going. Anyway, as you might have figured out—were you some sort of freaky Einstein-like Supergenius—Daddy was a magician, and the girls’ corset and hose ensembles were the outfits the sisters wore as his stage assistants.

There follows a moment of uproarious hilarity when Jake accidentally triggers a guillotine that’s also standing in the living room, followed by the girls describing the illusion their father used the device for. Only this time, they not only speak in unison, but circus music plays on the soundtrack. Then, they turn to follow Jake as he begins to walk through the house, although pausing to simultaneously wiggle their derrieres in time to the conclusion of the music. Man, that’s just so funny I’m not even sure how to describe its exact level of funniness.

Seriously, I don’t.

With several threes and fours of minutes remaining until whatever brilliantly unforeseeable twist ending is sprung upon us, we pause to enjoy further jollity. As the sister describe what sort of separate abodes they’d like Jake to find them while he sells their house, he walks through the place and interacts with various and sundry wacky props, such as the spring-loaded stuffed bear that resides inside a closet. However, when he starts moving towards the kitchen pantry, the girls shriek and block his way. Hmm, I wonder if those pantry doors will come into play later in…nah, probably not.

[By the way, said doors are decorated with framed pictures of various men. Said photos have been split in two, with each half hung on separate sides of the door trim. Amazingly, the cameraman wasn’t directed to zoom in on these, and neither do we get an otherwise pointless close-up shot of them for emphasis. They are just there, and if you notice them, that’s cool, and if you don’t, so be it. That’s a startling display of subtly for this program, and not one which would be much repeated.]

Upstairs, the girls show Jake their shared bedroom, which is cramped and remains filled with their childhood possessions—like, say, oh, I don’t know, Norman Bates’ bedroom in Psycho, coincidentally enough—whereupon they mutually grab up a doll and explain how their father raised them:

I’m telling you, I am absolutely stumped as to where all this is headed.

[*As faithful readers of this site will know, I suffer from a mental frailty that I generally describe as possessing "faulty facial-recognition software." By which I mean, I am horrible at telling one person from the next if they at all look alike. This often means that I am nearly at an end of a film before I realize that a character isn’t who I thought they were, especially when we are offered a large but generic cast, as in a Slasher-type movie. Indeed, there have been occasions when I have posted a review, only to have an alert reader point out that I began misidentifying some character or other halfway through the article.

The reason I bring this up is that, in the dialogue quoted above, I had absolutely no problem telling which sister was saying which line. That should sum up exactly how unidentical these ‘identical twins’ really are.]

And so the girls escort Jake downstairs, both on one side of him and holding onto one of his arms. Much the same way, by extraordinary coincidence, that they were just holding onto that doll that turned out to be split down the middle. Not that I’m saying. I’m just saying.

Jake makes his goodbyes, and Priscilla flirts with him a moment. Outside, Jake pauses to reach into his back seat for a ‘For Sale’ sign to plant on their front lawn, an act he executes with ‘comic’ difficulty. Moreover, as he bends over to see to the latter half of this task, a hand reaches through the front gate and gooses his ass. Turning, he finds Francis waiting to wish him a quick return. She then waves him off, while up over her shoulder Priscilla is standing full in one of the house’s upstairs window, looking on. Lest this proves too subtle, however, the camera helpfully—albeit rather clumsily—zooms in towards her, just to make sure we register Priscilla’s glowering puss.

Back at the office, Jake is waiting while his amazingly modern dot-matrix printer types up a document. He is soon visited by Priscilla, who is wearing a frilly white dress of a sort not much seen since Here Come the Brides went off the air. He hazards a guess as to which identical sister she is, and she rewards him with a smile. "Not many people are able to tell us apart," she explains. If you say so, lady.

As they prepare to leave, so that he can show her a house he’s found for her, coworker Barb—man, you know dozens of actresses fought for that role—acerbically shouts that he has a phone call. Jake grabs the line, and Priscilla smiles knowingly when she hears that it’s Francis calling him. Jake schmoozes Francis with a line that he just used on Priscilla, which is pretty bright as she’s still standing right behind him, while Barb understandably rolls her eyes in disgust while looking directly into the camera. I’d accuse them of breaking the fourth wall here, except that I don’t think they have one wall, much less a quartet of them.

Jake is next seen showing Priscilla the house he mentioned, all while issuing obviously ridiculous statements for, again, ‘comic’ effect. Out front he refers to a large tree, while a harpsichord plays on the soundtrack to provide, I guess, a ‘whimsical’ note. (Is it possible to be laboriously whimsical? From the evidence here, I’d say yes.) "This shade will keep you cool in the summer and toasty in the winter," he inaccurately suggests. Then he leads her inside, noting that "rooms always seem smaller when they’re empty [of furniture]. It’s a scientific fact." See, that’s funny, because in fact rooms generally seem bigger when they’re empty. Oh, my sides.

So he continues acting like an oily jerk, and she continues to flutter her eyelashes at him, and blah blah blah. Then he leads her into a front room with a fireplace. (It really is a nice house, which make his exaggerations about it a tad odd). "Does it work?" she asks. "Does what work?" he responds. Gee, I don’t know, perhaps that fireplace you’re both standing right in front of?

Meanwhile, she keeps vamping him, which he barely even notices because he’s focused so hard on making the sale. Now, I have to admit, the Landers sisters are not my type. That big blonde hair, big chest, super-heavy make-up look doesn’t really do much for me. Still, there’s no doubt these women are way out of Jake’s league, if only because he’s such a schmo. You’d think professionals would know that comedy generally works a little better when it has some shading, but amazingly they often don’t.

Even so, when she says that she can’t dream of them [her and Jake] living in the house together, knowing how Francis feels about him, he changes his tune. "How can we think of her while we’re in our dream home?!" he preens. As he plays her fantasy up, she gets all turned on and starts removing her conservative dress. However, the Landers famously refused to do actual nudity—they even did a 1983 cover spread in Playboy in which they wore enough to cover that which the readers presumably bought the magazine to see—and so it is here, no doubt much to the frustration of the show’s producers, as she merely strips down to her lingerie.

Jake rather chastely embraces and kisses the half-clad woman, all while asking her for a down payment check. No wonder his sales have plummeted, given his apparent sense of timing. Still, the implication is that they do the deed, although off-camera.

Later, Jake meets up with Francis, who as the ‘wild’ sister wears a highly disconcerting blue striped mini-dress/culet combo. She has requested a condo in a swinger’s colony, and Jake dutifully shows her one. However, she disappears (as we get ‘funny’ shots of the manikins decorating the model unit apparently looking with disdain upon Jake’s folly), and Jake goes to look for her. Apparently expecting that he’s going to get a little something-something, he ‘comically’ tosses his suit jacket over the heads of the watching manikins. A zany music chord sounds as he does this, just because it’s so darn hilarious.

He searches around for a short while—hey, you try to fill over 23 minutes of screentime—and finally is pounced upon by her in, of all places, the bedroom. Just when he least expected it, huh? This bit is edited in an extremely weird fashion, with a jump cut while she’s in mid-pounce to her straddling him (both still dressed) on the bed, the latter shot from behind her. As she’s currently in her underwear, and as we don’t get a good look at her face because of the editing, I’m assuming this was in fact a body double. Which, considering that the character isn’t even nude, would be pretty lame if that’s the case.

Back at the office, Jake gets a call from a woman who has toured the Packard house and is interested in buying it. He loudly celebrates his return to the business elite, in the process calling himself "Jake the Snake." (I don’t care what he means by that, I don’t want to know). Then he receives another call, this one from Priscilla, and his elation turns to panic.

Arriving at the Packard house, he finds Priscilla wearing yet another of her corset ‘n’ stocking combos. She lets him in, but confirms that Francis has changed her mind about selling the house. Jakes heads into the kitchen where Francis is making a large sandwich on a split loaf of bread, and tries to talk her into following through with their original plans.

She reveals they both know how Jake’s been two-timing them, and declares that it’s time to end things. Jake notes that since they both profess to want him, however, they can just share him. They place themselves to either side of him as he stands before the kitchen table (just as..hey!..they placed themselves on either side of that doll), link their arms through his, and gesture for him to pose for a camera on a timer located on the opposite side of the table. He dutifully smiles, unaware as the previously established pantry doors opens up behind him and….

…a large, spring-loaded blade mechanism silently slides out. We cut away, but following a loud squish sound effect, we cut to a shot from Jake’s former perspective to see that the sandwich that had been laying on the table directly in front of him (and which was positioned over a strategic cutout in the tabletop) is now sliced neatly in half.

Cut to sometime in the future, out to the garden, which we now see has several large mounds in the vegetable garden.


The Hitchhiker Wraps Things Up*: "Jake McElhaney would have done anything for a sale. Now, he’s a permanent fixture in the garden. I guess if the Packard sisters ever do sell, he’d go with the house."

[*Instead of having Our Nomadic Narrator talk directly to the camera here, we hear him as he’s seen busting thumb in a reflection caught in one of the Packard house’s front windows. Tres artistique!]


Immortal Dialogue, The Hitchhiker Edition:

Francis: "I’ve got to go upstairs and wash off some of this sweat."
[Amazingly, though, this doesn’t lead to a shower scene. See my previous note on the Landers not doing nudity. Still, I’ll bet you there was a shower scene in the original script.]

****

Locked in a romantic clinch, Jake attempts to (financially) seduce Priscilla: "Just give me the check, and we’ll slide into escrow together."


Gratuitous Naked Boobies? Nope.

Loads of ‘Adult’ Language? Again, no. All in all, a rather tame episode.

Afterthoughts:

As noted in previous reviews, the first ‘season’ of The Hitchhiker consisted of three episodes, all directed by Ivan Nagy, which served as a sort of pilot for what became one of the earliest original-for-cable TV shows. In this case, the program ran on HBO for eight years, and given the channel’s modus operandi at the time, featured what the network shows then couldn’t: Naked boobs, simulated sex and curse words. Sadly, however, they obviously thought that was enough of an edge, and small matters like, say, good scripts quite apparently weren’t a priority. (Luckily, this situation has improved markedly in the last decade.)

One bit of trivia is that during these three initial shows, the Hitchhiker was played by an actor named Nicholas Campbell rather than the more familiar Page Fletcher, who assayed the role throughout the rest of the program’s lengthy run. When the show eventually went to syndication—initially on the USA Network, who ran the chapters sans their trademark explicit content—Nicolas was removed from his episodes and Fletcher was awkwardly inserted in his place. Details can be found in my reviews of the first two segments, "Shattered Vows" and "When Morning Comes."

However, for whatever reason, the third episode, "Split Decision," escaped this alteration process, both in syndication and now on DVD. Thus, it remains the only available look at the original Hitchhiker. From the small amount of available evidence, Campbell seemed to present a rougher, more punkish take on the Hitchhiker, as opposed to Fletcher’s more male-modelish version.

The Nicholas Campbell opening credit sequence is interesting, in that it both includes shots that were exactly replicated by Fletcher for his more familiar introduction, while also including some divergent shots. For instance, while Fletcher generally appeared to completely unruffled, despite trekking on foot through the desert, Campbell is shown wiping sweat from his brow. It’s hard to judge from such a paucity of evidence, but Nicholas’ Hitchhiker seemed like he might have been a little earthier, less above it all.

On the other hand, to the extent we can judge from his roughly one minute onscreen—and in much of that he’s seen in long shot via a window reflection—Nicholas is undoubtedly stilted and monotone in delivering his handful of lines. Meanwhile, his discomforted body language suggests a chagrined high school football star who, entirely due to his popularity, inadvertently finds himself acting the lead in the school play. Certainly Campbell lacks Fletcher’s ability to add his own twist of absurd earnestness to the Hitchhiker’s memorably silly epigrams. If Nicholas is the shy football player forced against his wishes to act in the school play, Fletcher is the more confident one who enjoys regaling his star-struck posse with his own poorly composed doggerel.

Meanwhile, the program had yet to find its rhythm. Eventually the standard structure would be to introduce that story’s characters and to some extent set up the storyline. Following this prologue, the Hitchhiker would walk into shot, address the camera and deliver one of his trademark, oft-incoherent and generally hilarious mock-Twilight Zone introductions.

In contrast, this episode opens with a brief and weirdly pointless shot of the Hitchhiker crossing a street, after which we cut over to Jake in his office. I suppose they wanted to establish that Our Host was in the vicinity, but really, wouldn’t we assume that this was the case? I mean, you know, seeing that we’re watching an episode of The Hitchhiker? Did anyone ever fear that a huffing Rod Serling would tardily run into this week’s edition of The Twilight Zone, suit jacket misbuttoned and gesticulating with a yet unlit cigarette?

Meanwhile, the script’s attempts at humor largely result in several incidents of what might be called "Perhaps Comedy." This is when there’s a line or bit of business that strikes the viewer as perhaps possibly being meant to be funny, but which leaves him unsure. For instance, the reference to "Old Man Potter," might, perhaps, be a joking reference to cinema’s Uber Mean Capitalist, Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. Also, the street Jake inquires the Hitchhiker for direction to is "Doppler Way," which I guess, maybe, could be a half-assed attempt to sound like ‘doppelganger,’ which conceivably could be a bit of not entirely exact foreshadowing regarding the twins.

Possibly.

Meanwhile, there’s the issue of the episode title. Very few programs in history worked as strenuously to telegraph their ‘twist’ punch lines as The Hitchhiker. Usually within a minute or two you had a pretty good idea where things were going, and basically sat back and watched as the show meandered its way there, presumably while waiting for the inevitable gratuitous shower scene and/or the bout of patently choreographed ‘hot’ sex of the Cinemax After Dark variety.

Even so, you’d really think that they could have foregone giving these things titles that let the cat out of the bag before the show had barely even started. "Shattered Vows" featured a character whose physical well-being was mystically tied to that of a ceramic figurine. Three guess as to his eventual fate.

Meanwhile…"Split Decision"? Basically, only the very talented should attempt this sort of punny title, since they only work when you don’t realize that the title is a pun until the climax occurs, whereupon you smile at writer’s cleverness in handing you a clue that you didn’t even realize was such. For example, the classic Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Mankind." Of course, even when Twilight Zone titles were too obvious about where things were going, as with "In the Eye of the Beholder," the episodes still held up better than ones of The Hitchhiker because The Twilight Zone as a whole didn’t, you know, suck.

That said, one of The Hitchhiker’s inexplicable charms is the way that it relentlessly telegraphs whatever that week’s putatively ‘surprise’ climax is going to be. "Split Decision" is a perfect example, what with the chainsaw, then the saw in the living room, then the explication of how the girls’ magician father sawed people in half, then the monologue (well, duologue) about how their father taught them not to share things they both desired, but rather to divide them equally…and all that before the episode is even half over.

Short of inserting animated flashing arrows and pop-up text windows, or perhaps having the Hitchhiker sitting in front of the action and commenting on it like Joel and the ‘Bots on MST3K, it’s hard to imagine how much more they could have done to make absolutely, positively sure we saw the ‘twist’ ending coming from a mile away.

Whatever Happened To…:

Readers Respond:

Several correspondents wrote to say that "Split Decision" seemed more like a typical Tales From the Crypt entry than a Hitchhiker episode.  As noted, this is no doubt due to the fact that the original three chapters represented the program's experimental period.  However, venerable Friend of Jabootu Brandi Weed proved that this contention was literally true:

"["Split Decision"] sounds a lot like a pussified version of the Tales From the Crypt episode "Split Personality", where Joe Pesci (for some reason I thought it was Danny DeVito) pretends to be twins to date (and marry) a pair of crazy twins. Since it was Tales from the Crypt they came up with a suitably nasty tableau of each girl with half a Pesci for her very own..."

Meanwhile, long-time Northern correspondent Sandra (who also suggested that there was a similar Tales From The Crypt entry), also provided information on our erstwhile Hitchhiker: 

"I think the Nicholas Campbell in your review is the same one who has gone on to fame and fortune - comparatively - as the title character in DaVinci's Inquest on the CBC ( that's Canadian tv).  He's around 50 now, thinner and much craggier, but I think it's the same guy.  He still says his lines in a monotone :-D , or maybe that's just a Canuck accent.  If you look up the CBC's website, there might be a photo of him on it somewhere. That's cbc.ca, I think.   

If you're wondering, DaVinci's Inquest is a drama series about the coroner's office right here in Vancouver BC.  Every week, DaVinci and various cops encounter a couple of stiffs and try to determine how they died. And it's nothing like Quincy!  The title is misleading.  In six or seven seasons he has held an actual inquest maybe one time. Campbell's character is based on Larry Campbell - no relation - who used to be the Coroner but is now our mayor." 

Sandra subsequently noted that Googling "DaVinci's Inquest" would bring up a current picture of Mr. Campbell.

On a similar career note, reader Frank T. Miller noted that Campbell had also played the murderous Frank Dodd in the movie Dead Zone. 

Meanwhile, Jabootu Proofreader Bill Leary suggests from the Doppler reference:

"There's also the effect known as "Doppler Away," where the frequency of a signal drops as it moves away from
you.  Like the classic movie bit where a car horns tone drops as the car goes past.  Although what possible
relevance that might have to this episode, I don't know except, perhaps, that your interest in the thing wanes
as it goes on..."