Last night on the season premier of “Hell’s Kitchen” on Fox, the narrator promised that this season will push the envelope like no other–claiming that “this is the season you’ve been waiting for,” he mentioned that it will be more intense and have more sexual prowess and fighting than ever before. Of course, we know better. Shows like this always hype things way more than the actual plot delivers. Still, a program like this has to shake things up to stay fresh.
Given that the A&E drama “The Cleaner” only lasted for two seasons, it’s probable that there aren’t a great number of people who are clamoring for the answer to this question, but for those of you who did watch the series throughout its run, I’d like a show of hands if you wondered what happened to the character of Darnell McDowell – played by Kevin Michael Richardson – after the first season.
Not that Richardson hasn’t got more than enough work to keep himself busy: he’s one of the most prolific voice actors in the animation business. At present, you probably know him best as the voice of Cleveland, Jr. on Fox’s “The Cleveland Show,” but he’s also the voice of Maurice on “The Penguins of Madagascar,” turns up with some regularity on “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” (he voices Black Manta, B’Wana Beast, and – yes! – Detective Chimp), and, on a related note, did an admirable job of stepping into Mark Hamill’s shoes as The Joker on “The Batman.” But, still, I love the guy, I thought his character on “The Cleaner” was interesting, and when Season 2 of the series premiered and he wasn’t on it, I noticed.
I ran into Richardson briefly last year at the TCA Press Tour, and I asked him what happened. In truth, he seemed pleased that someone had even noticed his absence, but as far as the reason why he’d been written out of the show, he didn’t really have much of an answer, short of saying that he’d gotten the impression that the writers had kind of hit a brick wall as far as knowing what to do with the character of Darnell.
Okay, fair enough: I understand how the business works, and I also understand that shows evolve and characters originally intended to be series mainstays unexpectedly become superfluous. While screening “The Cleaner: The Final Season” in order to write my review of the DVD set, however, I remembered the biggest reason why I’d been so annoyed with Darnell’s departure: not only was he written out of the show, but there wasn’t even so much as a mention of Darnell, let alone any sort of clarification as to his ultimate fate. Given everything that he went through with the team during the course of Season 1, this seemed like the kind of oversight that would really irk fans of the show…like, say, me…so I did what any self-respecting journalist would do: I went on Facebook, found the page for the show’s head writer, Jonathan Prince, and asked A) why Darnell was written out of the show, and B) why there was no reference to his departure from the show.
I said this on Facebook this morning after watching my screener of this week’s episode, and I’m saying it again now for all of the readers of this blog: not only is “Breaking Bad” the best show on AMC (which is a hell of an accomplishment, given how much I enjoy “Mad Men”), but it is now officially my favorite show on television, period. Not even having to blog it every week can kill my love for it…and that’s saying something. Watching this week’s episode, though, really served as a turning point for me. I’m someone who, when faced with a plot development which involves a ridiculous amount of coincidence, often finds himself whispering under his breath, “Oh, give me a break…” Tonight’s episode effectively tied new characters from this season into events from last season in a way that, on another show, might have left me feeling the same way. Instead, I was left in awe.
Let us begin, however, at the beginning, with a flashback that allowed Krysten Ritter to return from the dead and play Jane once again. That Jesse was left less than impressed by a trip to an art gallery is hardly surprising, but being reintroduced to Jane after so long served to remind me of a question that occurred to me a few times last season: why is a girl as deep as this involved with a tool like Jesse? Her rap about how “sometimes you get fixated on something and you might not even get why” struck me as a suspiciously on-the-nose callback to Walt’s obsession with the fly, but I could watch Ritter recite from the phone book, so I have no real complaints about that. Besides, if nothing else, the scene provided us with the origin of the lipstick-encrusted cigarette in the car’s ashtray.
Hank didn’t have a huge amount of screen time this week, but his brief appearances in the episode nonetheless served to underline how much he’s struggling with his recovery…and by “struggling,” I mean that he’s kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place: he refuses to leave the hospital until he can do so on his own two feet, but he’s barely willing to participate in the physical therapy that’s being provided. I loved his back and forth with Marie on the matter of pain (“Pain is weakness leaving your body.” “Pain is my foot in your ass, Marie!”), but it shows the depths of his anger about his situation that he should be giving shit to Walt, Jr., a kid who has to use his own crutches to walk out of the room. Gee, you don’t suppose his nephew’s condition serves as a constant reminder about his own physical limitations, do you? Nahhhhhhh…
The world blacks out and sees a glimpse of its near future. It was a good premise, yet here we are a few months later and “FlashForward” has been canceled. What happened?
Ratings were strong in the beginning and kept falling throughout the series run. ABC shelved the show for a while during the Olympics, but ratings continued to plummet when it returned.
Generally, I enjoyed the show, but grew a bit weary at times, largely because I really didn’t feel that there were any characters worth rooting for. Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) was supposed to be the hero, but he was always so angry and serious all the time that it was hard to like the guy. Everyone was so weighted down by the emotions surrounding their flashforwards that no one was happy. Moreover, no one was funny.
“FlashForward” made me realize just how important it is for any show, even a drama, to have a good sense of humor. Think about the last few great dramas — “Lost,” “The Shield,” “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Sopranos,” hell, even “The Wire” — they all had moments of hilarity. Can we say the same about “FlashForward”? I can list several funny moments for each of those aforementioned shows, but I can’t think of a single funny moment in “FlashForward.”
That said, I gave up on “V” but stood by “FlashForward,” yet the former has been renewed while the latter has been canceled. I thought the storytelling in “FlashForward” was far superior to “V,” but that’s not saying a whole lot. “V” doesn’t have a sense of humor, either, which is why I deleted my season pass.
With the departure of “Lost” and “Battlestar Galactica” and the failure of “FlashForward,” sci-fi television is struggling.
I rather suspect that Gary Coleman had long ago resigned himself to the fact that, on the event of his death, he would be forced to endure a series of obituaries which liberally utilized the adjectives “diminutive” and/or “pint-sized,” used the phrase “child star” as an obscenity, and found some way, no matter how desperately, to incorporate the words “whatchu talkin’ ’bout” into their text. Fair enough: the man had a legacy, and that legacy – for better or worse – inextricably revolved around his work as Arnold Jackson on the fondly-remembered-almost-exclusively-by-those-who-lived-through-the-’80s sitcom, “Diff’rent Strokes.” In that I resemble that remark, however, I do not deny that I mourn Coleman’s death.
Coleman, who died today at the age of 42 after suffering an intercranial hemorrhage, was as much a part of my childhood as any other pop culture icon. Despite the fact that my father hated “Diff’rent Strokes,” my sister and I forced him to endure it week after week, much as NBC forced me to endure a crossover with “Hello, Larry” just so that I could see how the crossover between the two series panned out. The character of Arnold Jackson was the classic example of the kid who was ostensibly saying everything that we were thinking, and Coleman played the role to perfection…so much so, in fact, that he parleyed the same characteristics into every other character he played for the next several years, be it a boy scout (“Scout’s Honor”), a baseball player (“The Kid from Left Field”), a brain (“The Kid with the 200 I.Q.”), or even an angel (“The Kid with the Broken Halo,” which was spun off into an animated series simply entitled “The Gary Coleman Show“). This served him well during the ’80s, but once “Diff’rent Strokes” ended, so for all practical purposes did Coleman’s career.
Oh, sure, he continued to make guest appearances in films and on television series, generally as himself…or, at the very least, someone who had a tendency to demand to know what people were talkin’ ’bout. Once reality television took off, he was able to pick up even more work, courtesy of shows like “Star Dates” and “The Surreal Life” (and, unfortunately for him, “Divorce Court”), and, lest we forget, he made a few memorable voiceover appearances on “The Simpsons,” too. For the most part, though, you tended to feel bad for him. His financial battles, many of which could be traced back to when his parents wreaked havoc on his “Diff’rent Strokes” money while he was still a minor, were almost as legendary as the health battles which kept him trapped at a height of 4’8″ into adulthood.
In the wake of Gary Coleman’s death, better we should forget all of the years we spent watching him painfully trying to wring a few more moments of fame (and, in turn, a few more paychecks) out of his past and, instead, focus on what made him famous in the first place. It might’ve been an albatross around his neck as often as not, but when I was 10 years old, I thought it was the funniest thing on earth to hear him say his signature line, so I think I’ll listen to it one more time and remember how much laughter he gave me back then.
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