Hart to Hart to Bartowski to Walker

NBC's been having much fun with these cute "Sneak Peeks" of their current series, showing up on the web and elsewhere, and this one's a keeper: a promo for Chuck that's an affectionate tribute to one of the great cheesy whodunnits of the 70's, Hart to Hart.

Enjoy ...

 

A New Rockford? No. Just ... No.

Let's be clear here: we have nothing against Dermot Mulroney. We can't actually can't remember anything he was in, except maybe The Family Stone and a couple of romantic comedies. Still, we're sure he's a perfectly nice guy. But ... Jim Rockford? 

There is only one Jim Rockford.  There were always only be one Jim Rockford. And he's not making TV shows or movies anymore.  He's in  graceful, modest retirement in his mobile home down in Crystal Cove, and we should just leave him alone.

Sure, there's an attempt to treat this "property" - ew! -- with respect. Alan (Dollhouse, Firefly, V) Tudyk will impersonate Dennis Becker; Beau (Do we even have to list them?) Bridges will stand in for the late Noah Beery, Jr. as Jim's dad, but it doesn't matter. There are certain stories that are unique to their times, intimately and irrevocably connected to a special time and place -- and a special face. James Garner and the folks who created the original show deserve to have that artifact left undisturbed. There are plenty of new ideas, plenty of "properties" that haven't been done or were done poorly the first time around. Go find them. Expand the world. Just don't mess with one of the brightest spots in 70's TV. Garner deserves better.  Hell, Mulroney deserves better.

Let Jim Rockford alone.

 

Bob from ReGenesis Returns (if only for a moment)

Once upon a time -- from 2004 to 2008, actually, there was a totally cool Canadian TV show called Regenesis. (Yes, we are well aware: using the words "cool," "Canadian," and "TV show" in close proximity is a rare and often erroneous thing, unless, of course, you're talking about Corner Gas.  Still, it's true.) The hour-long drama starred the remarkably intelligent and intense Peter Outerbridge as a brilliant viral investigator with an unlikeable, almost House-like temperament, running NorBAC, an international team of equally brilliant viral investigators who try to keep nightmarish outbreaks from occurring throughout the Americas. The show lasted for four seasons; the first two are particularly absorbing and complex, in no small part because of some creative and unexpected characterizations. (And best of all the first three seasons are available for free on Hulu. Start with Episode 1, Season 1. You won't regret it.)

Chief among the fascinating characters: Bob Melnikoff, Outerbridge's right-hand man and probably the only scientist on staff who was actually smarter than Outerbridge's David Sandstrom.  Unfortunately, Bob had a fairly serious case of Aspberger's Syndrome, and though he was thoroughly off-putting at first, fans of the show -- and there were plenty -- quickly warmed to the quirky but charming work of Dmitry Chepovetsky as Bob himself.
The show ended rather abruptly and unceremoniously, and one can't help but wonder whatever became of poor Bob, a great scientist but -- outside of this fictional facility -- completely unemployable.

Well, good news! Chepovetsky may not have landed another series -- yet! --, but Bob lives on! Under the obvious and embarrassing pseudonym of "James," Bob somehow made it all the way into the U.S. and over to California, where he apparently found a gig with an ill-fated biotech company outside Santa Barbara.  That's where Sean and Gus of Psych caught up with him, in a recent episode called "Death Is In The Air." (Also available on Hulu, as it happens.)

It really is kind of odd. It's the same actor playing essentially the same role, in an entirely different context. But it almost makes you feel like you're dropping in on an old friend, and it's nice to see that Bob's still lhanging in there (though, as you'll see from the clip, his muted delight at the prospect of the company "coming back" is particularly poignant with the backstory.

Anyway: here's a shout-out from The Rush to Bob Melnikov: HEY, BOB!

 

From Water Cooler to Parking Lot at the Mortuary

Remember those TV shows we used to talk about at work the next day?  The thrillers or science fiction or cults shows or action series that everybody was watching then; they were the talk of the lunch room and water cooler and the first ten minutes of any committee meeting you didn’t really want to attend. In the old days it was shows like The X-Files, Friends, and ER. More recently, it’s been Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, 24, Survivor, and Lost. And as this season began, you heard some chatter about V and FlashForward.

But here's the weird thing.  According to our patent-pending mega-scientific Rush Survey, there is exactly one show on that list that people are actually still talking about ... yet all the rest  are still on the air.

What happened?

Check out longer, wider and uncut (?) ruminations over on Contrariwise. Meanwhile ... what did you think of the Lost re-premiere?  The beginning of a satisfying conclusion or Much Ado?

The Human Target: A Secret Comic Book (but not really...)

FOX is rolling out a new action/adventure show, called The Human Target, and it's not bad.  Mark Valley, not known as an action star (at least not in Boston Legal or even in his strange dead-partner appearances in Fringe) is remarkably convincing at Christopher Chance, the private operative who protects people who need protecting and elminates threats to the innocent, or semi-innocent.  The show has a wicked sense of humor as well as failry interesting supporting characters in Chi McBride, whom we've loved since Night Court, and Jackie Earle Haley, whom we've loved since he was a child actor stomping people to death in Day of the Locust (and oh, yeah, there was that Watchmen thing, too, but a guy's got to eat).  Anyway: Valley isn't bad, the script popped right along, and it's worth a second look.

You'd never know it was based on a comic book.

The fact is The Human Target has been a C-grade superspy hero in the DC universe since ... well, for more than fifty years, if you go back to his very first appearance in a single Batman story.  He was re-invented by comics writer Len Wein and artist Carmine Infantino as "Christopher Chance," a master of disguise who put himself in the place of threatened innocents, way back in 1972, and he's been skipping around the edges of teh DC Universe ever since. (If you're interested in the complete and almost psychotically details history of this minor faivure, there's an excellent article at http:/at Human Target Online.

In this version, however, FOX and serires devleoper Jonathan E. Steinberg has really retained nothing except the cool name for the series and the equally cool name of the hero: Christopher Chance.  Gone is the 'master of disguise' schtick and any other high-tech or superpowerish elements.  This is just a truly resourceful guy with your typical mysterious past, either in Special Ops or Gangsterland (which will no doubt soon be releaed as episodes progress; they're certainly dropping enough hints about it).  Valley has a couple of good fight seens and plenty of snappy repartee; this doesn't seem so much of a breakout show as it does a competing action-adventure we could all enjoy for a year or three.

Not that he's any Rick Springfield, 'cause, come on, who is?

The thing is, Springfield, back in his light rock "Jessie's Girl" days of 1992, actually starred in a pretty awful version o the same comic for ABC TV.  Barely half a dozen episodes aired (this was from the same production company, Pet Fly, that had perpetrated a couple of other equally horrid action/adventure shows -- Viper and The Sentinel, as well as another comics-based show, the near-career-ending version of The Flash starring John Wesley Shipp and featuring a pre-Munch Richard Belzer.  The "master of disguise" schtick was stil in place for this show, but that didn't help much: it chalked little more than half a dozen episodes before cancellation, and Christopher Chance went back into hybernation for 18 years or so.

It's interesting to note that FOX is not playing up the comic book aspects of the show at all; in fact even the credit to DC comics is buried deep in the end credits, with a card that goes by so fast you're not sure it's there at all.  This is much closer to a James Bond (or Remington Steele, really), and relies pretty heavily on the charm of the key actors and the cleverness of the plots.  Which, after exaclty one whole episode, it has displayed in adequate amounts.

DC, however, is not about to let the connection be forgotten: they've just released a trade paperback of Peter Milligan's re-imagining of the character, and character creator Len Wein, still in there kicking (and making not a dime on all this, we assume, since he created the character back in the days of work-for-hire, pre-creator's rights) has authored a brand new six-issue mini-series -- a kind of back-door pilot all its own -- that premieres in comics stores on February 10.

Any actual relationship bewteen the the Christopher Chance of the comics, the Nineties, and today is almsot entirely coincidental.  But it is a cool name.

Check out the first episode on Fox On Demand

Buy the Trade Paperback of the Human Target's Earlier Incarnation here.