2007-12-23

What ever happened to the cool private investigator?

I lament the death of the cool, independent, maverick gumshoe on TV. I'll take Simon & Simon, Rockford Files and Magnum PI any day over those dreadful CSI shows.

Yeah they're entertaining but they all seem to lack - not just CSI -character and charm. And the subplots into the character's lives - Yeesh. Just plain cheesy. Heck, even The A-Team did a better job of managing Murdoch, FACE, B.A and Hannibal.

Jim Rockford or Thomas Magnum seemed to be more realistic characters than anything on CSI. We actually got a "feel" for who they were and we believed them. It's tougher to get into Grissom (who I like) and ADHD boy Horatio. It's very possible the classic shows did not attempt to imitate life tightly yet they seemed to have achieved this more than shows of today (I deliberately exclude Law&Order which is very good.)

Rick, TC, Magnum and Higgins remain the best quartet this side of Des Moines. There was a fluidity between the characters that is not captured today.

I could be wrong. It's early in the morning.

2 comments:

  1. I don't watch a lot of TV these days but I'll take me some A-team any time I can.

    Four great guys, all with terrible aim.

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  2. Here I am about to get some sleep and you come out with that terrible aim thing.

    Laugh I did. I giggled harder given I have not slept for over a day.

    I could never quite figure out how four commando's had such bad aim. Were they trying to tell us something about the U.S. military? Or did they in fact have great aim and merely sought to disable their enemies without killing them?

    Man, even Magnum knew when to be ruthless. "Ivan, have you ever seen the sun set..." or something like that.

    Sweet.

    ReplyDelete

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