Now this was a quality show. The plot lines were good, the producers and writers assumed their audience had half a brain cell, the acting was good. It was a good show. It starts about with the murder of a mountie, in Canada, which draws the mountie's son, Ben Fraser, to Chicago. Fraser's a little odd, a lot determined, and full of a basic belief in doing the right thing. Because Fraser eventually brings his father's killer to justice, he is exiled from Canada, and so makes his return to Chicago with the wolf Diefenbaker to work with a police detective by name of Ray Vecchio, and laster, when Vecchio takes an undercover assignment, Ray Kowalski. Due South had wonderful sequences within it filled with music that set the mood for the scene and the show, as well as a great twist of drama and humor melded together making for an addicting series.
Typing this out, I am beginning to see a trend in the shows I watch. Just about everybody in the quiet town of Trinity, SC owes Sheriff Lucas Buck a favor. Too bad they realized too late that he is the closest thing to the devil incarnate that any of us will ever see. And he has a son whom he is grooming for the job. Well was, at least, before the son tried to kill him. Lucas didn't fully appreciate that gesture of Caleb's. Yup. Caleb was a product of rape, Lucas killed Caleb's half sister Merly (who appears as a ghost in the rest of the short-lived series), Caleb (10 years old btw) tries to kill Lucas, Lucas almost kills him back, but before that Caleb steals Lucas' mistress (who is boffing the town doctor in Lucas' bed in other eps) from him and nearly kills Lucas' girlfriend, who happens to be his (Caleb's) cousin. What a family!!
Quantum Leap is one of those shows that has come to embody a mythical archtype for some people. A good guy (he's so many things, multi-PhD, genius, friend, husband, son) accidently embarks upon a lifetime journey through time to help others, setting wrongs right and teaching the audience of Quantum Leap about history, good, right, justice, love, friendship and integrity. If there were ever a television show I thought should be used to mentor young children, this is it. Sam Beckett is the ultimate Hero of this century of the Information Age. For four seasons we see him doing his best to do right by people, and we are given to believe it is because he is searching for the ultimate leap home, the leap back to his own time and his own life. We see him confront his selfish desires to save his brother from dying in Vietnam, his quest to save his finance/wife from her personal demons so she'll stay with him when she meets him in the future, and a host of other moral decisions he must suffer to make. And in the final episode of the series we see him discover that it hasn't been a flukish or whimsical accident, his traveling through time, but it has been his destiny. And by the end it is a destiny he has come to not only accept, but embrace. The most powerful words of the series, the most meaningful, and the ones that turned Sam Beckett from lead character in a television series to Archtypal Hero read, in the final message from the show: "Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home."
Fade to black. Thank you, Sam.
Darkness, light, and massive amounts of character growth between two primary characters, Nick Knight and Lucien LaCroix. Nick is a vampire who works in Toronto for the police, night shift. He searches for a way to become human again, with the help of his friend Natalie, the cornoer. His fight for his humanity runs contrary to his immortal family, his sister/lover, Janette, and his make, LaCroix. There is a beautiful development of a father/son relationship between Nick and LaCroix over the three seasons Forever Knight ran. The entire series is brought to an end in the fantasticly directed final episode, "Last Night", as Nick's search for humanity is brought to an end, and in a way, LaCroix's begins.
Jeffery Meeks starred in this show. I don't know how many episodes there were, but it was many. I have maybe half of them. Okay, Jeff played a guy who was a U.S. government agent who defected, only he didn't, he was a double agent. When the Berlin Wall came down he thought he would get to go home, but someone framed him for murder and then tried to kill him. He had a couple of friends in France who gave him a new identity, and who try to help clear him in the show. Unfortunately we never get to see of he gets to go home, because they CANCELED THE DAMNED SHOW!!! Bastards! (I have this talent of
picking doomed shows.)
Yet another great show that shouldn't have been canceled. (Great music, Loreena McKennitt.) The lead (Ken Olin) is a cop who looks dirty and is trying to find out who killed his partner. Jimmy Murtha is a small time gangster looking to make it into big time gangster stuff. Olin's police chief wants Murtha. Olin only wants who killed his partner, and it is really looking like Murtha a) did it himself or b) knows who did it. There is a third sub-story about a man named Danny. He went to jail for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now Murtha owes Danny because of that.. His estranged wife is a junkie who raises their six year old daughter. Danny is trying to stay straight, but eventually, from pressure in EVERY direction (Murtha wants to repay the debt he owes, so he gives him a job. Olin is making his life a living hell because he thinks he may know who killed his partner. His wife wants him to pay $100 to $200 per visit to see his daughter, and he doesn't have that type of money.) he succumbs and goes to work for Murtha. It was a great story, with highly evolved plot lines, great music, pretty good acting, and believable characters that was cut far, far too soon.
The story of a cop-lawyer-judge who was finally pushed over the edge by the
murders of his wife and daughter. What does one do when the justice system
breaks down on all levels? Judge Nicolas Marshall turns to vigilantism to settle
the score: when the system breaks down, he and his Nightwatchmen, (Kelly, a PI;
Gibbs, an effects man who has a little too much fun at his job sometimes; and
Moon, an ex-safecracker), set to work at making sure justice is served.
I love this show. Sure Bruce Abbott gets a little too into his role of playing a
macho big-guy, but that's okay! Nick is that way because he's hurting inside.
And he's a complete womanizer (understatement) because he's afraid of getting
close to others. Dark Justice is very aptly named. This show constantly walked
the line between justice and vengeance, and it did so in a very convincing way.
Nick didn't get away without scratches on his body or scars on his soul. He had
to agonize over plans that went away and someone got hurt. He had to deal with
real life interfering with his night time activities. He had to deal with his
memories, his friends, his family. It was a great show, filled with just enough
action and the dark side to satisfy my hungry little soul.
Here is a link to a growing site about Dark Justice, Dark Justice, Crimetime After
Primetime run by Robin. Make certain to visit and see. It has pictures, fan-fiction, interviews, articles... Go see!
(Gracious thanks to Robin for correcting my little oopsie about Gibbs!)
How unjust that this show was cut after only 4 shows! Those fiends!
EVERYBODY liked this show. And they canceled it. Jim Profit is a sociopath
at the company Gracen & Gracen. He wants to be president of acquisitions, and
he doesn't care how he goes about doing it. Profit was a great show about a
guiltless bad guy, who was intelligent and ruthless: two great qualities in a
villain. He was also patient. Setbacks, no matter how big, were always minor to
him, and he always made the best out of a bad situation. (He gets accused of
murder. So what does he do? He frames himself. Not quite as simple as all that,
granted, but that's the gist while he sets up the rest of his dominos pieces.)
Anybody out there think Shakespeare's Iago was pure evil? He is but a pale
shadow to little Jimmy.
Jonathon Raven is an American who was raised in Japan, and now lives in
Hawaii, searching for his son with his old military buddy Ski. Oh, and by the
way, he's being hunted by a secret Japanese assassin's guild that he used to be a
part of before he betrayed them. (They killed his parents, he joined them for
revenge, he killed them, they ran after him, he ran faster.) DOES ANYBODY
OUT THERE REMEMBER THIS SHOW??? E-mail me if you do!!! This
show had lots of pluses going for it (for me): The main character was major
league into Japan, there were lots of martial arts on the show, Jeffery Meeks did
his own stunts (he even did a decent kipp-up), gorgeous on location filming from
Hawaii, and Jeffery Meeks and Lee Majors were excellent co-actors. This show
aired for a while, and was taken off. I never saw the beginning shows. In a
January of some year that I can't remember they started re-airing some of the
shows and those were the ones that I caught. I was in love with the show from
the very first commercial I saw of it. Nobody that I know of remembers this
show. Nobody's even heard of it. It's disheartening. I tried getting Melissa to
watch it while it was still on, but noooo. She had better things to do. It was a
good show!! Hey! I found a link!!
Raven: Title and Air Dates Guide Raven (1992) International Movie Database
This show was just weird and wacky. I think that it should have continued.
While granted it really *didn't* have a real theme to the show, it was still cool.
Chance is a guy that thing just happen to. (Get the title now? Strange Luck.
See? Good, I was worried there for a second.) He is always there for all these
bizarre happenings, so one day he decided to bring a camera along.
Unfortunately, because all these strange things happen around him, he can't hold
down a job. So he is a kind of freelance newspaper photographer, since he is
almost always around breaking news stories. Sigh. I kinda miss this show
sometimes.
If ever there was a show which did not deserve its fate, this is the one. It was
about exactly what the title says. Two actors (Sean Patrick Flannery and a little
guy I whose name I don't know) played Indy at ages 19 and 6. This show
showed exactly how Indy grew up, what shaped his life, molded him into the man
we all know and love. The acting was really quite good, the plot lines lovable
(we already know that Indiana Jones managed to get entangled in more historical
messes than we could possibly count, so we have the suspension of reality thing
down here). The shows that I got to record included an affair with Mata Hari,
Indy mixing with a very young Elliot Ness and "Ernie" Hemmingway, a close
brush with a just as young Al Capone before the beginning of his empire, getting
caught in the crossfire in the October pre-revolution Revolution in Russia, and
the list goes on. This was a wonderful show which never really had a chance on
regular TV. I believe there was (hopefully still is) a cable station out there still
showing YIJC's.
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