Robbery Homicide Division Fans--Alert
Apr. 7th, 2003 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI know there's a few of you out there. USA cable network will be airing the last three filmed episodes of Robbery Homicide Division starting tonight at midnight, continuing for the next few weeks. They've been airing the episodes that were shown on CBS this fall before it was cancelled, in that time slot.
Of all the shows this year I was excited about, this was the one I expected to last and was really surprised to see get cut. Michael Mann has a certain pedigree that I figured would at least merit most of a year; even though Crime Story and Private Eye were short-lived, they were both critically acclaimed, and Miami Vice completely changed the landscape of television in its five years. Mann has a knack for portraying crime in a way few filmmakers can (Steven Soderbergh is the only other director I can think of, maybe John Frankenheimer when he's on that game) -- gritty, realistic, harsh, but fascinating. Despite the outward glitz of Miami Vice, he never made crime look like anything but what it was -- ugly, vicious, and destructive.
In RHD he was shooting with all-available light, and the picturescapes he created were incredible. And he had an astonishingly adept cast and crew working on it, especially in Tom Sizemore as the lead, Sam Cole. Sizemore gave the weirdest, most Shatnerian line readings, often weirder than Shatner would read them, and he sounded like a bull terrier whose growls and snaps were cut off by a choke-chain. It was a bit disconcerting at first, but once you got used to it, fascinating. And he was a savvy cop, one who'd seen pretty much everything, yet still seemed to have the capacity to care and to invest his emotions. The episode where he had to make a decision about which home to send his armed teams into without knowing who they were looking for was amazing, and if his off-screen antics often obscured what a good actor he was, that episode confirmed it for me. As did In/Famous, where he fell for the actress whose manager was murdered.
I really wanted this show to succeed, and was just heartbroken that it didn't, especially because I figured for sure it had a better shot than Firefly or many of the others I liked but that were riskier investments. Damn CBS yet again - my most hated network. Les Moonves is satan, pure and simple.
Set your TiVo or vcr to catch these last three eps, I'm sure they'll be amazing.
Of all the shows this year I was excited about, this was the one I expected to last and was really surprised to see get cut. Michael Mann has a certain pedigree that I figured would at least merit most of a year; even though Crime Story and Private Eye were short-lived, they were both critically acclaimed, and Miami Vice completely changed the landscape of television in its five years. Mann has a knack for portraying crime in a way few filmmakers can (Steven Soderbergh is the only other director I can think of, maybe John Frankenheimer when he's on that game) -- gritty, realistic, harsh, but fascinating. Despite the outward glitz of Miami Vice, he never made crime look like anything but what it was -- ugly, vicious, and destructive.
In RHD he was shooting with all-available light, and the picturescapes he created were incredible. And he had an astonishingly adept cast and crew working on it, especially in Tom Sizemore as the lead, Sam Cole. Sizemore gave the weirdest, most Shatnerian line readings, often weirder than Shatner would read them, and he sounded like a bull terrier whose growls and snaps were cut off by a choke-chain. It was a bit disconcerting at first, but once you got used to it, fascinating. And he was a savvy cop, one who'd seen pretty much everything, yet still seemed to have the capacity to care and to invest his emotions. The episode where he had to make a decision about which home to send his armed teams into without knowing who they were looking for was amazing, and if his off-screen antics often obscured what a good actor he was, that episode confirmed it for me. As did In/Famous, where he fell for the actress whose manager was murdered.
I really wanted this show to succeed, and was just heartbroken that it didn't, especially because I figured for sure it had a better shot than Firefly or many of the others I liked but that were riskier investments. Damn CBS yet again - my most hated network. Les Moonves is satan, pure and simple.
Set your TiVo or vcr to catch these last three eps, I'm sure they'll be amazing.
