Cat(harsis) fight! Cat(harsis) fight!

May 3, 2001 AD
First off, I do use cuss words in here. Not just my old-guard favored cusses, but also "bitch" and "pissed off". If you're offended by that, well, it's too late. But there's a situation here that just requires use of those words. Several times. Close together.

Second off, as I write this paragraph (at 1:00 AM on July 14, 2001 AD) I find I'm doing a lot of heavy re-editing. Because of that, be warned that all dates listed are the date the text was originally written, and that it likely got badly abused over the next week or two as I saw fit.

Third off, this page isn't being updated anymore as of right now (August 19, 2001 AD), except for corrections. Future installments of The Egolf Chronicles and Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies will be put on their own page.

Fourth off, there's been a shakedown as of right now (October 17, 2001 AD). Len's Lack-of-Sleep Litanies are now on a different page from The Egolf Chronicles.

Okay, so I'm at Lee Goldberg's site and I find he's put up some of his scripts and stuff for download. There's several Martial Law ones, including one for the episode TNN ran last night, "Sammo Blammo". Martial arts and high explosives.:)

But on to the point: One problem with the early episodes of season two of Martial Law was that Amy Dylan and Grace Chen (played by Gretchen Egolf and Kelly Hu, respectively) spent enough time sniping at each other that you were half-expecting a catfight to break out.

As sexually entertaining as some members of the audience would find that, that is a bad thing.

Now, I don't know if these scripts were edited after the show was produced (beyond a couple of "OMITTED" lines), but I'm going to make the (possibly dangerous) assumption that Lee Goldberg has as much editorial integrity as I do, and doesn't change things later to make himself look better, a la 1984.

I noticed, when reading the script after watching the show, that there was some subtle differences between the script and the final product. Which, for the hell of it, I'm going to point out.

So, contained below, is something I "borrowed" from the script Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin wrote for "Sammo Blammo". My commentary is in italics. The text is ripped right out of the file linked above, with only some minor editing to fit it into this page's format.

Use of closeups is rather important as well. There's three main angles (all shot from the back seat of the van where the scene takes place, BTW) - one where you can see both Amy and Grace*, a closeup of Amy* and a closeup of Grace.

(*Where, rather amusingly, you can see Amy's reflection in the rear-view mirror, making it rather obvious to physics students that she's completely blind to anything behind her because all she would see in the mirror was the camera. Good thing use of reverse gear never comes up in the scene, else the cameraman would need to be tied across the hood so he could get a shot while she backed up.)

Amy is behind the wheel as they drive through the BAD SIDE OF TOWN. Grace glances at the speedometer then glares at Amy.

GRACE: Do you need some help finding the gas pedal... or are we going to coast all the way there?

Amy just gives her a look.

Being a good driver, I suppose, Amy didn't give a look. Either that or it was cut out.

GRACE: See that button on the dash marked siren? That means we can go faster than the speed limit -- I read that in the rule book.

AMY: If I turn on the siren and floor it, you'll feel a lot better. But the guy we're going to see will hear us coming, disappear, and it'll take another couple hours to find him again.

Grace turns her gaze back to the street, even more pissed off because Amy is right.

Were I a better writer, I'd likely be warranted in pointing out that the subtle difference between "pissed off because Amy is right" (as it was meant) and "pissed off because she thinks Amy is a bitch" (as the audience was likely to take it - since Amy's been doing a great impersonation of a bitch up until this point) is very hard for an actress to convey. But I'm a two-bit hack, so I won't point it out.:)

But the point is moot, since this bit was removed at some later time - the camera never breaks from a closeup of Amy, and she doesn't give enough time between lines to cut to a closeup of Grace without evoking memories of that other LAPD-based show (Dragnet) and its use of a series of quickly-switched-between closeups for dialogue-heavy scenes.

AMY: You think I'm a rigid, pencil-pushing bureaucrat.

GRACE: You haven't proved me wrong. Your beat is your desk.

Amy smiles to herself -- she doesn't take it personally.

Now, here's where I wonder. Amy's driving and the camera is in the back seat. How could we see her smiling? (And no, you can't see in the rear-view mirror - I checked!)

She does have a sort-of smile on when she turns her head while making a right turn and delivering the next line**, but she's seen in profile and it could be anything from a smile to an I've-argued-you-into-a-corner-now smirk. In all fairness, I have the benefit of hindsight here.

(**Nothing like someone who can multitask well - I can't even chew gum and walk at the same time, mainly because I never chew gum.)

AMY: How do you think we found this guy? By searching the databases for known getaway drivers with big scars on their faces and then pulling up his file.

There's more of this, and I could spend all day doing this, but I won't. I will point out one more thing though, from a bit later in the scene....

(Snip.)

BRUTAL THUG: You looking for a good time?

Grace is utterly at ease. Amy isn't... her hand is straying towards her GUN (...)

What I find amusing is that this was changed later. Amy, in the televised version, appears as calm as Grace.

And the gun bit is rather funny, since this is the one scene where she's not wearing the suit jacket she wears the rest of the episode. It could be due to how warm it is in LA, a minor continuity screwup, or it could just be so the perverts in the audience (me!:) could get to see Amy Dylan (who - in case you haven't yet noticed, though that's rather unlikely - is played by my current rant-page obsession, Gretchen Egolf) running around in a nicely form-fitting white shirt.

But, as becomes slightly more obvious once you've read this script, there is a very good reason for not wearing the jacket - so we can tell she's wearing her gun, and when she's reaching for it.

But when played out as it was, having the gun apparent makes the "Brutal thug" a real dimwit - when Amy charged past him to catch the escaping bad guy, he had a golden opportunity to grab the gun out of the holster on the back of her belt, and she wouldn't have even known, lacking eyes in the back of her head.

This is why I write fanfic and not stuff I expect the actors to ever even see.:)

Incidentally, in the next episode (in case you're curious, I'm writing in the hours on either side of tonight's showing of Martial Law) Lisa Klink (the writer) did a very good job of taking the sniping and naturally diluting it over the course of the episode. There was also some constructive dialogue as the two characters started to understand each other better. If the writers in season one had the same skill at wearing down the abrasive aspects through dialogue, CBS might not have removed Dana Dixon (played by Tammy Lauren) simply because she wasn't incredibly fond of Sammo's flashes of insight (his "Yoda moments").

(Incidentally 2.0, there was some gossip on Usenet at the time that she was ditched because she wasn't exactly sweetness and light off-camera. Of course, if it's on Usenet it must be true, right?)

And here's something else off Lee Goldberg's site.... Part of the original doc file outlining what season two of Martial Law was to be. (One bit of punctuation edited because I don't have MS Word installed and can't figure out what it's supposed to be from the binary - I made it a semicolon.)

At 26, she's the fastest-rising female cop in the history of the department. She got that way by being single-minded about her work, absolutely dedicated to her job. Some would say obsessed.

Her goal is to be the first female police chief in LA history. To get there, she knows she has to not only be good, but better than everybody else. She will play the politics of any situation - and believes that this so-called promotion to the unit was actually designed by her male superiors to derail her rise to the top. To her, this is a demotion. She believes she's only one big arrest away from getting back into robbery-homicide and the promotion track.

As a result, she's relentless when it comes to pursuing a case, and making sure it's done if not by the book, within the bound of acceptable procedure. It's for her own protection - if they break all the rules to make a bust, and the judge throws the case out, they've wasted their time, returned a crook to the streets, and tarnished their careers.

Because she comes from a wealthy family, she can afford all the latest technology (even if the department can't), and is forever looking for any gadget that can give her an edge.

She talks to Sammo, Terrell and Grace as if she is the only adult, and they are unruly children when, the fact is, they actually have more experience than she does. Sammo has no desire to show her up; unlike Terrell and especially Grace, who will rub Caitlin's nose in a mistake every chance she gets. It's the one thing Grace and Terrell can always agree on.

(...)

What They All Have in Common:

Despite their differences, they genuinely like and respect each other. And together, make an extraordinary team. Although they may argue, although they may have different approaches, their basic respect and affection for one another never wavers.

May 3, 2001 AD (post-Martial Law)
What am I updating about? My following is going to love this. Yes, I have a following - he's a nice guy. I also have a second following who knows a thing or two about the television industry. Two more followings and I'll be a cult classic.

I am updating about.... Hair! Yes! In the official non-existent Len Pitre drinking game, a hair-based rant is the signal to empty the bottle if it happens on the index page, take as much as you can swallow in one shot if it's on the Random Thoughts page, and one drink the first time it happens on a Random Thoughts subpage like this one. So drink up!

Though this one is also about clothes. Isn't it grand?

So, I'm watching tonight's episode, "Thieves Among Thieves", and I have a Gilligan's Island flashback (that show is like LSD, I tell ya...). No, really. Sammo Hung was the Skipper, Arsenio Hall was a very badly sunburnt Gilligan, Kelly Hu was Ginger, and Gretchen Egolf was an extremely young Lovey Howell.

Why did I have a flashback? Simple: Gilligan and the Skipper never changed clothing all the time when they were on the island, except for comic purposes. Ginger and Mrs. Howell, on the other hand, were in different outfits at least every second scene. Same with tonight's Martial Law.

I noticed it while watching, and it was even worse when I rewound the tape I had made. Watch these timestamps I did. (Commercials taken out, so it only goes to 0:45:00.)

0:00:00: Show starts.

0:03:24: Gretchen Egolf and Kelly Hu (I'm too lazy to type the character names:) show up.
Clothing.... Egolf: Blue t-shirt, medium brown slacks. Hu: Black blouse and black slacks or leggings, can't tell.
Hair.... Egolf: Done in a way that makes lovers of bangs like me have random twitching fits. Left loose on the back and sides, with the front combed back over the top of her head, though not in the sort of extreme way Conway Twitty did with his hair before it mystically curled one day. What the hell was I talking about? Oh, yeah, sort of.... Ah, screw this:

0:13:40: After several cutscenes, Hu and Egolf are still looking the same as before. At this point they leave the scene of a crime and head back to the office.

0:14:55: They've left the office and gone to an insurance company's building, presumably fifteen to thirty minutes have passed (to wit: Ms. Egolf delivers the line "Fifteen minutes in front of a computer and we found a connection...."). So has a quick trip to the shopping mall.
Clothing.... Egolf: Red sleeveless t-shirtish thing, black slacks. Hu: Blue-purple blouse and black legging-type things.
Hair.... Egolf: Now, her hair is parted and the excess is pushed behind her left ear. Why not another picture?

(Rant time.... For God's sake, what is wrong with BANGS?! They don't need to be pushed and prodded and shoved behind ears to look good! They just sort of fall by themselves so you can spend more time worrying about the REST of your head!)

0:30:50: After more cutscenes to Sammo Hung and Arsenio Hall (who are still wearing the same things as they were at the start of the episode), this is the end of a scene with Egolf and Hu. They look the same as 0:14:55.

0:31:40: (Not even one bloody minute! No commercial break, just one quick dialogue scene between Sammo, Arsenio, and the guest star.) Egolf and Hu are back at that insurance company's building. Are the receptionists there part-time fashion designers?
Clothing.... Egolf: White gray-vertical-striped blouse, unbuttoned black suit jacket, black slacks. Does a wonderful job of dulling down every part of her body that cues you on to the fact that she's female - for all I think she's cute, she can look just-a-little-too-butch-for-my-taste. Might not be so bad if not so quickly juxtaposed against that red sleeveless number. Hu: White sleeveless t-shirt or halter-top, can't tell, with a black shirt over it, white slacks.
Hair.... Egolf: No obvious change. Wooo. Hu: Pulled back in a ponytail. Were I a phrenologist, I could give a reading from here.

0:34:40: Egolf sheds the suit jacket. This improves things.:) And this is likely a trick of the light, but her slacks look more brown than black.

0:42:29: (Or thereabouts.) Big good-guys-arrest-bad-guys scene, Egolf and Hu present in background. Maybe one change: I don't know if it's the outdoor light of this scene (or the location shooting schedule), but Gretchen Egolf's slacks look medium brown again. Still no suit jacket, but the white/gray shirt's the same.

0:42:39: Presumably a lot of time has passed, since Arsenio Hall and Sammo Hung finally get to change their clothes for this scene.
Clothing.... Egolf: Greenish-beigeish blouse faintly reminiscent of military vehicles, brown dress. Hu: Red t-shirt, black leggings.
Hair.... Egolf: No obvious change. Wooo again. Hu: Back to left long/pushed behind her ear. Bobsey Twins again.

0:45:00: End of episode.

May 7, 2001 AD
BTW, I'm likely going to use character and actor names semi-interchangeably here. You've been warned.:)

May 10, 2001 AD (Episode: 'My Man Sammo')
Obsession of the week: I still don't know why anyone, least among them whoever did Gretchen's hair, thinks pulling someone's hair back in a supertight bun is a good idea. For something functional, it's fine. For form... never! However, the (likely high-maintenance) curls-that-weren't-quite-ringlets that she wore during the party scene looked simply wonderful. I like three dimensional hair. Were I more of a pervert I'd also comment on the dress she was wearing, how much time she spends walking around in it, and how it relates to that well-functioning hydraulic masterwork that is her hips and backside.:)

I also like how, rather than keeping to one outfit all episode or randomly changing for no good reason (see above), the writer stretched everything out to a multi-day timeframe so it made perfect sense when Amy's clothing and hair changed from scene to scene.

I'm more like a demigod: A lesser mortal would pick on the fact that Amy Dylan had no reason to be the one undercover, since while she did bear a distant resemblance to the arms-dealing woman she was replacing, no one not in jail knew what the dealer looked like. Of course, if you pay attention to the dialogue (well, Deep Meaningful Speech) a bit later in the episode - somewhat hard to do considering the low-cut dress Amy was wearing in that scene:) - it's not a flaw, but the point of the whole affair. She had no reason to be the one to go undercover, except to get rid of her own doubts that she could do it. The whole "I look like her" thing was a deliberately flawed excuse.

We're absolutely fabulous.... When Amy was decked out as the arms dealer at the beginning in the dark brown is-that-a-tiger-print-or-a-bad-attempt-at-camouflage outfit (not the low-cut one:), with her hair done up really weird, I had a flashback to Absolutely Fabulous. It's been a couple of years since I've seen AbFab, but I couldn't get the thought out of my head that if Amy had been holding a drink and saying something like "Darling? You are a fabulous wonderful individual!" or "Lovely, sweetie!" with a British accent, she would have almost perfectly invoked the memory of Joanna Lumley's AbFab character, Patsy Stone! (Or, barring speaking in a British accent, she could have just got bombed, smoked a cigarette or two, and fallen out of her car instead of getting out like a sober person. That'd invoke Patsy just as well.)

Gratuitous ratings moment: Not only was Amy kind of cleavage-intensive at one point, she (still in the same outfit) has to go through the following.... She's betrayed as a cop by the guest star, and (searching for bugs, I guess, or 'cause he needed the clothing for whoever was taking Amy's place in spy-camera range) the bad guy pulls a gun on her and orders "Strip!" Now, the conveniences of the direction mean she's currently facing away from the bad guy (which no self-respecting bad guy would do, in case she's packing heat and a death wish) and towards the camera. So you get to see her unbutton (well, untie) her jacket (which she's clearly not wearing a thing under, given how low-cut it was and my minimal knowledge about women's underwear) and go to open it, and... of course, it cuts to a new scene. It was one of those moments I wanted to be a friend of the director and on the set, if only to wait for him to say "Cut!" so I could run up into the camera's viewing range and throw dollar bills at her. (Poignant commentary, not wish fulfillment - for once.:)

May 14, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Blue Flu')
Gratuitous ratings moment: Amy gets her blouse ripped off (not like you saw anything, there was a beige brassiere and some of makeup's handiwork - still-bloody scabs - underneath the blouse) because her heart had conveniently stopped and was in need of defibrillation. Funny, I thought a heart defibrillator didn't restart a stopped heart, it stopped a fibrillated one (some of the muscle fibers get going on their own beat instead of the pacemaker's and it starts throwing the whole heart off). A massive shock is delivered so the heart stops dead and the pacemaker has a chance to reassert itself. I could be wrong, but considering the whole heart angle was kind of forced anyway.... Bleeding to death internally could probably cause heart problems, but you're likely to be dead soon after. Nope, she hung around in a coma for the rest of the episode, despite a slice of Usenet wanting her to die an ugly death. (Though not me, certainly.:)

This is also the first time I remember where she was wearing a blouse that didn't look uncomfortably like a man's shirt. Someone in wardrobe take the hint?

May 15, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Sammo Claus')
While my daughter's talking to Santa, why don't you sit on my lap and tell me what a naughty little elf you were this year.... Okay, for once never mind the excessive costume changes over the short term. Try to riddle this one out....

You're a woman. (Named Amy Dylan.)

You need to dress as one of Santa's elves.

You, ergo, need a green dress. Okay so far.

So you get one that shows cleavage.

An elf. Helping a department store Santa. Showing cleavage. Only green dress she had, maybe? Now, I'm not saying that Gretchen Egolf showing cleavage is a problem, mind you - I'm one sick puppy and enjoy that sort of thing. I'm just saying that only showing it in conjunction with playing an elf is kind of disturbing.

Who did wardrobe on these things and what sort of pervert are they? And how can I get into this rather entertaining field?

May 16, 2001 AD (Episode: 'No Quarter')
How to tell when the budget ran out: They blow up a car. Then when it comes time to blow up a goalpost, they use the fakest digital effect you've ever seen.

The ubiquitous hair comment: Kelly Hu was wearing a wig that had bangs. BANGS! Thank you God! Looked great, which is better than she normally looks.:)

Clothing: The t-shirt and vest combo Gretchen Egolf was wearing at the beginning of the show was nice. As was the epilogic final scene, when she was wearing a blue sweater - pretty blue, pretty tight. While my mother doesn't read this page, I'm obviously transparent in my feelings. While rewinding the tape of tonight's episode, my mother not only commented on the sweater, but she also told me she didn't want me licking the television screen if I replayed said scene.:)

Ah, the wonders of having parents who have better TV reception than you do.

Other fun things: Gretchen got to tackle and perform some pain-assisted interrogation on Michael Dorn (who was guest-starring as a corrupt politician). So any ST fanboys who happen to hate Worf (or like Michael Dorn in really worrying ways) can rest easier, a bit of wish fulfillment is taking place in Martial Law reruns.:)

Black (not African-American) comedy: While the darker tone of season two isn't always to my taste, there was a marvelous black comedic moment in this episode. The gang lord bad-guy person has killed a rebellious henchman, and the corpse has fallen behind the couch in his office. Before he has a chance to clean up the body, Michael Dorn (who was still assumed to be a not-so-corrupt-politician at this point) shows up, sits down on the couch, and has a short conversation with the gang lord. And all the time the gang lord is trying to be the gracious host when he knows there's a still-warm corpse not two feet away.:)

Another thing.... In this episode both Gretchen's and Sammo's characters got busted down to meter maids. So they were wearing similar uniforms. While the uniforms were sized differently (a short, heavy man and a taller, thinner woman can not wear anything of the same size:) the ties looked identical. Except Sammo's had to take the long route across his stomach, while Gretchen's got to go almost straight down*. So they're wearing similar ties, only Sammo's doesn't reach his belt buckle while Gretchen's goes past. This is why men and women should dress differently - the men always wind up looking worse.:)

*Someone reading this page is thinking "breasts" right now. Most likely me, but anyway.... Having two fat storage units (namely, breasts) has an advantage over having one fat storage unit (namely, a stomach). A tie fits rather neatly between 'em.:)

Ye gods, I'm a pervert....

May 18, 2001 AD (Episode: 'No Fare')
Rant time: First off, the writer (Paul Bernbaum) did an excellent job on dialogue. He also did a horrid job on characterization. I'm debating if I should have him given a medal or taken out and beaten.

Basically, he portrayed Sammo as a person with no life. Season one, Sammo had a girlfriend. He liked being away from the office. He took walks by the ocean. He watched the Discovery Channel. If I was half a foot shorter, a bit heavier, Chinese, and had a girlfriend and an office job, he'd be somewhat like me. I know they broke continuity between seasons, but the supercop-who-never-takes-time-off routine is a bit hackneyed, unlike the cop-who-has-a-life routine.

But here, he has no life (sort of like I really am...). He's forced to take time off and he still figures out how to get back on the job.

The dialogue was a treat, though. A lot of light comedy counterpointed nicely with the murder plot.

Amy (convincing Terrell to deliver bad news to Sammo): "You're partners, you're buds! You know, you could make it like a... male... thing."

Terrell (talking about Vegas to the uber-good-guy Sammo): "You could... hit the strip clubs, shut them down!"

Grace (on vacation time): "Where would you go?"

Amy: "I don't know. Some place with white sandy beaches and a deep blue ocean and lots of really strong...."

Grace: "Men?"

Amy: "Uh.... Well, I was going to say margaritas but yeah, men are good."

Terrell (convincing Sammo to calm down an angry Doberman): "You got that thang going, you know."

Sammo: "What 'thang' going?"

Terrell: "You got a thing with dogs and kids, you have a way about you...."

Sammo: "First I have a 'thang', now I have a way?"

There's several others, but they all require you to hear the delivery. (Actually, the one about men and the thang one need to be heard too.:)

Hair dee hair hair: Gretchen had her hair in a hey-that's-not-bad style* before going back to something like that first argh-I-don't-like-that image above.

*That was my fourth guess. Before that I wrote "form", "format", and "configuration".

Like this, except slightly wavier (which was a further improvement) and a bit further back so it doesn't block her far left field of vision. The scene was lit a bit better than this one too.

Incidentally, this pic is rather newer than Martial Law - it's from the film Nicolas, which was filmed on one of those new 24P digital cameras. So if some Star Wars fan starts saying how daring George Lucas is for filming Episode 2 on a 24P camera and being the first ever to do that, please educate (or hurt...) them for me. Episode 2 is the second American film to film on 24P! Nicolas - a $500,000-budget independent film - was first! (SW:E2 might make it to theaters first, but that's simply because independent films don't get as much coverage as Star Wars. Nicolas has already been shown - assuming my sources aren't mistaken - at Digidance and Sundance.)

Yes, mocking George Lucas is one of my hobbies.

May 23, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Honor Among Strangers')
Honor Among Strange Rangers: Ah, the Walker, Texas Ranger crossover. I suppose I must make the mandatory snide comment on Chuck Norris' ability to deliver every line with the exact same intensity no matter if he's ordering a beer or the bad guy to drop the gun*. But I just did, didn't I?:)

(*The world's most torturous zeugma. If you don't know what a zeugma is, look it up. Look up "gnomon" while you're at it.)

Here's some film stock for your gravy: More to the point... stock footage of a missile being shot. Talk about clashing with the rest of the show! And the missile launcher with the painfully obvious DirecTV dish (logo covered) attached to it was a nice touch too.

May 24, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Freefall')
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a nuclear fireball! Ah, the episode where the spy satellite hits Los Angeles. The beginning of the end.

Hair, hair, we must mention hair. Gretchen had a variation on that style I pointed out last time. Looked nice.

Begin the ending: But I must explain my "beginning of the end" comment. You see, this was about the point where Martial Law collapsed under its own plotline weight. The umbrella plot bad guys, Scorpio, just weren't incredibly interesting, and they were in five of the last six episodes. They had their moments, admittedly, but as soon as you heard Tim Curry's (or, later, Christopher Neame's) voice over one of those laptops, you knew that Scorpio was involved and that Sammo and the bad guy weren't going to be squaring off or even meeting in the big finale. And it sort of sucked all the mystery out of the episode.

To compare, Season One's bad guy (Chinese drug dealer Lee Hei) was kind of nice. He was hateful and killed without a thought, but he was kind of likable. He dressed loudly, but with a sort of over-the-top formality - he always had a brightly-colored vest on under his brightly-colored suit jackets, for instance, and it had a kind of gaudy-yet-rather-nice style to it. He was a complete bastard, but I didn't hate him for it - he was just too cool a villain to hate.

Scorpio and their enigmatic leader (The One - AKA Tim Curry or Christopher Neame) weren't like that. The One was the only recurring bad guy, the rest all died (save his second-in-command Miss Bock) at the end of the episode. And since you never saw The One (except for the series finale) he was kind of hands-off. He gave his orders via laptop and that was it. Ooh, there's a bad guy I can get behind. And Tim Curry was hamming things up something fierce - especially in this episode. And not kind-of-funny like he hammed in Rocky Horror, either. This was just ham. When Neame took over the role for reasons best known to anyone but me, he didn't have much to work with, except for Tim Curry's dubious legacy.

Another contrast: When Scorpio killed someone, the person often just vanished, with the implication that they were tortured to death. When Lee Hei killed someone, it was with some panache. Knocking them into a pool and then kicking a radio in. Or, the time his real estate agent tried blackmailing him. He leisurely told his henchman, "Bury him up to his neck in the sand, feed him to the sharks, do whatever you do to real estate agents."

I really should write up my opinion of the show and its changes....

(Take cover, 3000 word rant ahead. Feel free to take the detour.)

Middle of season one:

Getting rid of Dana Dixon (Tammy Lauren): Bad (but maybe necessary). Depending on who you ask, either the character wasn't working well with the other characters or the actress wasn't working well with the other actors. Assuming it was the character, then they really should have just used the dialogue to try improving her opinion of Sammo and his rather odd methods. If it was the person, then I can't really comment. So it was either a bad change or a necessary change, depending.

Adding Melanie George (Julia Campbell): Good! Ah! This was an improvement. Melanie was cute and her odd quirks (her talkativeness, her lack of cooking skills, her astrology beliefs) just made her cuter. Even her relationship with Sammo was a "cute" one, sort of like a teenage girl trying to draw the shy boy she likes out of his shell. Her transparent-as-hell attempts to get Sammo out on a date when he didn't quite understand the American dating scene were really funny, and added a nice light touch to the show. For instance, the time she asked him for some self-defense training and tried to get him to act like an attacker - when he wasn't quite as hands-on as she liked she basically threw herself into her "attacker's" arms. (Though the way she got away from him - the point of the lesson - was funny and wonderfully unexpected.)

Granted, if she had been in every episode, it would have worn thin very fast. But she was only around every few episodes and it worked well. It gave Sammo a much-needed personal life and some extra dimension. Their relationship did get more serious near the end (they kissed!:) but it could have kept at that boyfriend-girlfriend level for a long while without looking faked.

Adding Terrell Parker (Arsenio Hall): Goodish. While I didn't like Arsenio Hall at all when I started watching, and his character was a bit silly at times (read: silly like a clown at a funeral - often jarringly out of place), within a few episodes I had reversed my opinion. His acting was IMHO good, and his character's most obnoxious aspects (and the incredibly ridiculous elements of his past - come on, an ex-accountant?) were quietly done away with in the span of about three episodes and change, with only a few annoying throwbacks later on. Some of the writing made him look stupid though, like the time drug dealer Hector Florez (sic) was throwing frying pans at him while Terrell had a gun. If neither was armed and they were both reduced to throwing kitchen implements at each other, it would have been a marvelous fight scene. As it was, it was still funny but tainted with the question about why Terrell didn't use his gun or why Hector wasn't really scared of a cop with his gun drawn.

Ending on a cliffhanger: ARGH! I hate shows that do that. Hate, hate, hate. End the season on an up note or you likely won't be back for another one.

Umbrella plot bad guy Lee Hei: Good. Like I said, he was a nice bad guy. He was also fairly evenly-spaced in his appearances (two episodes at the start, one in the middle, two for the season finale) and the actor (Tzi Ma?) was talented as hell. Though, I do admit, Lee Hei needed to die at the end of the season; he had escaped from the cops so often it was becoming a cliche. But he deserved a better finale than the falling-from-a-helicopter finale he got. Even if he had fallen out and deliberately tried taking Sammo with him, instead of falling out and accidentally taking Sammo along when Sammo tried rescuing him....

Season two:

Replacing Producer Carlton Cuse with Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, to increase the ratings: Uhhhh.... Well, they tried. They do deserve credit for the brave attempt (and for being flamed to death when they appeared on Usenet and still staying around to justify their decisions). But why CBS felt that the guys that turned around a failing Diagnosis Murder could do the same to a moderately-successful Martial Law is beyond me. The shows are so different it's like comparing apples and Illithids. Most of the following changes were their idea (fault?).

(July 29, 2001: Hmmm. I'd like to amend that last paragraph a bit. In retrospect, some of the changes were half-way done, Goldberg and Rabkin just saw them through to their conclusion. There's also some debate as to whether Martial Law wasn't on thin ratings ice before Goldberg and Rabkin took over. Granted, they didn't improve the ratings....)

Not following along from that cliffhanger, except for about six lines of incidental dialogue: DAMN YOU! The only thing I hate more than a cliffhanger is not following it up next season. Lee Hei was reported to have died in the fall, Sammo wasn't hurt at all. Lee Hei, and the audience, deserved better than that.

Getting rid of Melanie George: Goldberg and Rabkin (hence called G&R) claimed this subplot was too childish and made Sammo look like a lovesick teenager, or some such. It seems that very few people agreed. (Including me.) I liked the character, the scenes involving two of them were good (and sometimes heart-rending, like when Melanie was kidnapped), there was a good chemistry between the characters, and Julia Campbell is cute. 'Nuff said.

Replacing Lieutenant I've-forgotten-his-first-name Winship (Tom Wright) with I've-forgotten-her-rank Amy Dylan (Gretchen Egolf): No comment...? I'm biased as hell, so I can't really give an answer. But let's try anyway.... From an acting point of view, Gretchen and Tom were both IMHO competent, despite what others say (and someone had guts for casting an unknown like Ms. Egolf whose major acting credits are almost exclusively on- and off-Broadway stage work). Also despite what some others say, Gretchen's a hell of a lot better to look at. And I want her to bear my love child. (Did I just say that out loud?)

But on to their characters: Night and day. An older, black, well-heeled man vs. a younger, white, inexperienced woman. Their personalities are even more different.

After one whole season, Winship was still a blank slate. Were he more two-dimensional, he would have been a Larry Niven character. He was the guy who said "Okay, do it." and went back into his office for a few more hours. (Yes that's hyperbole. Not much hyperbole, but hyperbole nonetheless....) He had a few episodes where he did much more (and actor Tom Wright certainly did well with them), but they were exceptions.

Amy Dylan, on the other hand, was the opposite end of the spectrum - she was characterized so much that she became something of a walking paradox as her earlier aspects clashed with her later ones. Yet (I will likely hold this opinion until my dying day) both Gretchen Egolf and - more importantly - a few of the writers managed to work the paradox into a viable character. Some, of course, didn't; you need to throw half the episodes out.

While characters need to change and adapt, she didn't change so much as metamorphose. She started off being by-the-book and bossy, and wound up being a somewhat vulnerable buddy-buddy type who was more coworker than commander. Sadly, the change was completely necessary to make the character tolerable, else she would have gone the way of Dana Dixon (Tammy Lauren) before her.

Ideally, for the character to be much more cohesive, she'd have started out friendly (more like her later incarnation) but with the undercurrent of undeniable ambition that got her to the head of the MCU in the first place. The vulnerability part was fine as-is, though it was rather sporadic, showing up in two episodes ("My Man Sammo" and "Blue Flu") and then all but vanishing. I'm not saying she had to be a complete sissy or a paragon of invulnerability, but I find it amusing that she developed a weakness, conquered it, then redeveloped it within a month like pushing down bubbles under wallpaper. (First time she went undercover to prove to herself that she could do it. Second time she admitted that she didn't think she was qualified to head the MCU. Both are basically thoughts of inadequacy, and both times she mentioned fear of having her authority undermined through her own flaws.) Of course, Martial Law isn't the first or last show to deal with someone's problems in neat one-hour chunks.

(Suddenly an idea occurs to me. A bit of twisted fiction in which my two parody forms - the cynical, violent Archon and the lovesick Fanboy - square off against Amy Dylan's two aspects - the Authoritarian and the Friendly One. There'd be so much blood spilled it wouldn't be funny.:)

Never mind the disbelief one needs to suspend to accept that she was a mid-twenties woman who was already head of at least one, maybe two different divisions of the LAPD, and was almost promoted even higher mid-season (part of her adaptability, I suppose). Some people have actually blamed Gretchen Egolf for being so young - it's her fault she isn't turning 46 this week or something? Read the design docs off Lee Goldberg's site (or even the excerpt off this page) - Sammo Hung, Arsenio Hall, and Kelly Hu are all mentioned along with their characters. When referring to Caitlin Sweeney (the prototype Amy Dylan) no actress is mentioned, yet an age (26) is. That implies that Ms. Egolf was cast as an improbable character, rather than the character being made improbable to fit her. (Though, after some discussions with people on the topic, I do agree that casting a 26(ish*)-year-old to play a 26-year-old is a daring move in an industry where 26 is a viable age for someone playing a teenager.)

(*I'm guessing at Gretchen Egolf's age, given what minimal evidence - valid or not - one finds in the World Wide Webaverse. For all I know, she could be pushing 40 - she'd be looking damn good for 40, though.)

I'm also reminded of something inherent to cop-show dynamics. Either the commander is not seen very much and keeps a certain viability (he or she does command a whole division, not just two or three cops) or they're a full-fledged character and they lose their commander's aura. It's a rare character that can do both at the same time. Amy was both, just not successfully (or at the same time). But back on topic....

Replacing Louis Malone (Louis Mandylor) with Terrell Parker (Arsenio Hall): Necessary.... I think. What's up with this one, you ask? Wasn't Terrell Parker already on the show from about the midpoint of season one? Yes, but between seasons he completed his transformation from buffoon and wimp into a rough-and-tumble savvy urban type who had clearly been in a streetfight or two. In doing so, he became almost exactly the same as Louis Malone. One had to go, else they'd be fighting for the same lines and scenes. (Like the Wright/Egolf replacement, I have no complaints about either actor, despite one being almost universally hated for their poor acting/their character/just because. Unlike the Wright/Egolf replacement, I don't want Arsenio Hall to bear my love child. Interracial relationships can be so problematic....:)

I'd like to think that Terrell was the better one to keep because the character fit better to over-the-top humorous situations, but humor was downplayed in season two anyway. The character of Louis Malone would have fared better in season two's darker environs, if only because his humorous moments were all light - witty commentary, not physical or comedic gags - and were sometimes juxtaposed with much darker scenes. Also, actor Louis Mandylor was (so I'm told) a genuine martial artist and (so I've seen) faked his fight scenes well. Arsenio Hall could certainly act like he couldn't fight well (season one), but he couldn't act like he could fight well.

Such debate lends truth to the rumors that Arsenio Hall was going to leave at the end of season two (had the show not been canceled) because he didn't like the writing.

Umbrella plot bad guy Scorpio: Nope. I can't really think Scorpio was a good idea, especially since five of the six Scorpio episodes were clumped at the end. Easy way to get someone sick of it. At least The One showed his face in the last two and sort of brought the whole thing up a bit simply through use of - gasp! - acting.

Breaking continuity: YEARGH! G&R (After making up such a cutesy acronym, I had to use it once.) openly claimed that they were breaking continuity. Then they didn't, at least paying it lip service. (Else Amy Dylan would have been made commander with no explanation, instead of during the first ten minutes of season two's first episode.) But then came the later episodes ("Freefall" was guiltiest here and it was written by G&R) where we learn that Sammo's father had sent him away to be trained in martial arts. In the first season, Sammo's father was imprisoned during Mao's Cultural Revolution and Sammo was sent to Peking Opera School by the Chinese government, where he learned martial arts. Also, Grace was suddenly revealed to have grown up on the streets of Shanghai. Which explains her American accent and mannerisms just perfectly.

(Update, September 6, 2001 AD: Actually, that last one is wrong. You may wish to read this, which explains this precise continuity break.)

Sammo Law (Sammo Hung) being replaced by Sammo Law (Sammo Hung): Never. Another explanation: The character changed too much. He had the same name, but it wasn't him. Not only was his past different (see above), but the fish-out-of-water aspects were played up more, he no longer had a personal life, his English fractured slightly (though that could be accidental), and he switched from being more Western in thought (Shanghai is as Western as a Chinese city is going to get!) to being a closet Communist. No, really. He didn't call Amy a "capitalist pig" (though that might have been great comedy when Amy was learning martial arts), but he actually said that Gilligan's Island was a parable about "the struggle between rich and poor" and then claimed "it could have been written by Mao", which he clearly wasn't saying as an insult! (Scriptwriter Michael Gleason likely takes the blame for that one!) As long as you're supporting stereotypes, might as well have Arsenio put a bone through his nose and admit to eating missionaries.

Also, the scene in "The Thrill is Gone" where Sammo asks why Ginger and Mrs. Howell had so many different outfits is just begging for it, since Martial Law had the similarly clothing-excessive Grace and Miss Dylan.

"Sexying up" Kelly Hu and giving her character an acid-tongue transplant: Ick. Kelly Hu doesn't look bad, but she's not my cup of tea. She looked fine in the businesslike outfits from season one, insofar as a purple sweater and leather jacket look businesslike. It didn't help that the season two outfits she wore ran the gamut from gratuitously-tight to impractical-for-a-cop-unless-she's-undercover-as-a-streetwalker - talk about pandering to ratings. (See also my commentary on Amy Dylan being forced to strip, dressing as an elf, and getting her blouse torn off.)

In addition, Kelly's character had a new bad attitude that did little for her interaction with the bitchy Amy Dylan. Thankfully, both women got declawed posthaste.

Turning Kelly Hu and Gretchen Egolf into clothes-horses: Bad. I'm being uncharitable with this one, and I know it. I can't remember season one's clothing changes, just that I didn't notice them*. Ideally, I should research more closely before whining about it. Oh well.

(* June 29, 2001 AD: I've re-watched most of season one, and yes, sometimes people suddenly changed clothes for no apparent reason. To further abuse John Nathan-Turner's oft-abused quotation, "the memory cheats".)

While some things (like Amy not wearing her jacket in that scene detailed above) were incidental, I'm talking about the three-outfits-in-one-day thing. It shatters continuity only slightly less than the actors calling each other by their real names. Most episodes were admittedly free of this sort of thing - clothing was changed approximately once a day, less or more if appropriate. But some were so bad it was pathetic. Kelly Hu suffered a bit more than Gretchen Egolf, if only because Kelly was the "sexy" one.

(July 21, 2001 AD: I've now re-watched most of season two, and I noticed that I wasn't so much wrong as off-target. Their clothes weren't excessive, just impractically tight.)

The new MCU set: ???? I've heard people whine and whine and whine about this one: I don't know why. I know it was a different sound stage, and I know it was laid out differently from season one, but it still looks like the same place to me! There's a mural there that was at least part of the one from season one, and despite the more spacious digs (why does everyone use the free-standing PC terminals and not their own desks?) it still looks like it's at least the same office after a renovation. Really, this one just never struck me as being problematic. A bit unrealistic, but when there's so much more to whine about....

The darker, humorless environment: Ugh. Only a handful of season two episodes played up the humorous dialogue while remaining serious, and I found they worked wonderfully (despite having continuity holes large enough to drive a taxi through). Season one was much lighter in tone - Terrell Parker was more comedic (for good or bad) and the entire Melanie George subplot was light (save some wonderful dramatic moments). What few fish-out-of-water moments Sammo had were counterpointed sharply by obvious fish-out-of-water setups that collapsed when Sammo knew something a stereotypical Chinese person would never know.

Another contrast is that season two bad guys often relished torture as a weapon where the season one bad guys were more shoot-to-kill types. This isn't to say season one bad guys were nice - some plots involved baby stealing, a hunter using humans as quarry, truck drivers strong-arming older people, people trying to shoot down a plane.... But season two had a bad guy who wanted to kill Sammo via slow evisceration, a psycho who tortured a cop to death over the span of eight hours, someone who was using biological weapons to slowly kill cops for the hell of it, Scorpio, etc. etc.

Even the fight scenes in season two lost some of their over-the-top zaniness and comedy.

Writing and direction: ???? I can't comment on this one, since I was paying attention to the direction only after season two started. But I do remember that such things as the nice slowly-rotating-around-the-characters-as-they-talk shot were done away with, and closeups were at least slightly more prevalent. I don't really like closeups that much. They're fine for some things, but they don't really allow for you to see the other character's reactions to what the person in the closeup is saying. Writing was obviously darker, and I found it was a bit heavier on the Deep Meaningful Speeches that often accompany closeups. (As in: Amy and her fears of inadequacy, Sammo and his fears about never finding his son, Grace and the memories of how she was forced to watch someone be tortured to death, etc.)

New theme music: Fine. Well, season one's opening credit music was sort of "Chinese man in the starring role" music. It had some of the stereotypical Asian kind of instruments mixed with the electric guitars, though it was still very nice. Season two's opening credit music was more "It's a cop show" music but wasn't bad. The closing credit music, on the other hand, wasn't as good. Season one's was a wonderful electric guitar solo with only the most minimal Asian kind of influence. Season two's, on the other hand, was just a variation on the opening theme.

Sammo Wars: Could've been better. I'm being even more uncharitable here, and I've used an awful pun to boot. Sammo Hung claims to have spent, near the end, much time fighting the producers over the Sammo-Law-looking-for-his-son subplot, which got tangled in the Scorpio umbrella plot. Not only did he want his real-life son to play the part*, but he apparently didn't like the way the plot was handled. That's understandable - despite the fact that some people feel that Sammo Hung can be a real bastard about getting his own way - since at times it felt like Star Wars turned upside down. Imagine Darth Vader was good, Obi-Wan was evil, and Luke was evil being tempted to become good. Now you have an idea about how the subplot went: Sammo was the good Vader, his son was the evil Luke, and the head of Scorpio (The One) was the evil Obi-Wan mentor kind of guy. There was no "you're not my father!" line - just something akin to "you can't boss me anymore!" - and the ending was still Good triumphs over Evil, but still....

(*The Department of Immigration scotched that one, though Mr. Hung now says that the actor hired to play his son worked hard and did a good job.)

Anything else...? I don't know. Let me run through my tapes a bit more!:) (It'll be a 4000 word rant before I'm done....)

Rant Update: June 27, 2001 AD. Well, since Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin have been so good at keeping up an Internet presence even when assaulted by flamewars, I figure I might as well let one of 'em defend their choices. The following paragraph is from a message board post on Lee Goldberg's site, when asked what he'd do differently if he could do Martial Law's second season again. I'm not saying I agree, but I'm not one to stifle another's opinions, unless they really tick me off. It appears here in its complete unedited glory. I haven't even added the last period to that ellipsis, even though it bugs me.:)

I probably would have kept the main title sequence and hokey theme, not because it was any good, but because it was familiar and established. I would have made the same cast changes, though I might not have moved them to the MCU and created such a high-tech set (as cool as it was). What ultimately caused ML's demise had little to do with the initial conceptual changes we made (the ratings were sliding towards the end of season one and through the summer leading into season two), and a lot more to do with Sammo, Arsenio, and their relationship with each other, the rest of the cast, and with us more than anything else. Some day, probably some years from now when I have more perspective, I'll go into more detail. I'm still too close to it...

So there you have it. From what I've found, Lee Goldberg keeps scrupulously (and wisely!) quiet on the issue of actors' personalities - and this is either truth or a lie artfully built on known facts - so this is a bit of a departure for him. Not much, though, since I've already heard - second hand, I admit - that Arsenio Hall publicly stated that he was not fond of his character's direction under G&R, and that Sammo Hung has similarly claimed that he was locking horns with them over the issue of his character finding his son. The part about "their relationship with each other (and) the rest of the cast" was a new one on me, though. I didn't know that they personally had any problems (as is implied here) with each other or their co-workers. It sort of tosses a rather dark cloud over the blooper segments, since you wonder how much of their reactions to their coworker's screw-ups was just more acting for benefit of the camera and how much was their real reaction.

Though that bizarre and wonderful half-cackle that's only present twice, conveniently the only two times when Gretchen Egolf is in the scene but off-camera, does not sound faked. No one fakes a laugh like that.* Assuming it is her, then that means her on-camera laugh was faked, or at least better-controlled.

Oh, and I still think that the season two set looked like the same damn place!

* Just like I don't fake my own strange falsetto tittering (no, really, I have a deep bass voice and a falsetto laugh - if I try talking when I laugh I speak in that same falsetto).

May 25, 2001 AD (Episode: 'The Thrill is Gone')
Bangs for a Thrill: Never mind the weak pun in the title, since Thrill is, in-story, a new drug brought to you by your old pals at Scorpio. Kelly Hu must have got her hair cut between episodes, because here she has some wisps of hair that could be mistaken for... could it be.... bangs! Wooo! Time to go out and get bombed.

Gratuitous ratings moment: Kelly's character (Grace, for review purposes) lying in bed, without anything on save a sheet (due to the way she moves around, it's not exactly as sufficient as it sounds). I suppose I could sit here and discuss Kyle Strode's motivation for undressing the unconscious Grace, putting her in a bed, and not doing anything else, but it all comes down to this: They needed some flesh shown, and Grace certainly wasn't hopping in the sack with Kyle... just yet.

Get naked, then get dressed again: Something I find funny about CBS and their 9:00 programming slot.... They can get away with forcing a woman to undress against her will - see "May 10, 2001 AD (Episode: 'My Man Sammo')" on this page - or having someone undress a woman while she's unconscious (what I'm talking about right here). Sexual assault goes beyond the pale without any further payoff, since they can't show a sex scene anyway. So men - no matter if they're thinking with their balls or not - just have this thing about stripping women of their clothing (sometimes with an audience composed entirely of men - May 10, 2001 again) without any particular interest in what could possibly follow.

Okay, the May 10 one was sort of functional plotwise (if disturbing to see all those well-armed men standing around watching), but this one didn't really do anything to expand or explain the plot, just gave people a quick glimpse at part of Kelly Hu's right boob.

May 28, 2001 AD (Episode: None tonight, thanks to a Memorial Day Miami Vice marathon)
It seems that most of the opinions on this page clash with the rest of the world's opinions. Well, world, you can get stuffed.

But here's an amusing thing on difference of opinion. (From two different reviews of More Lies About Jerzy, a stage production from earlier this year, in which I'm told Gretchen Egolf spent more time onstage than her clothing did.*)

Holmes' often flat and flavorless dialogue doesn't help (Georgia to Jerzy: "It's hard to be with someone who won't let you in").

...and...

Her efforts to win his full trust make for some touching interaction, as when she states "It's hard to be with someone who won't let you in" and he responds "So how do we do this? How do I let you in?"

I found that rather amusing.

* I usually have these footnotes one paragraph below the footnoted line, but now I bumped it down a bit. Partly for word flow, partly to keep you reading with the lack-of-clothing reference.:) About one in four reviews of the show mentions the nudity, and virtually all of those comment on how gratuitous it was:

Gretchen Egolf, who is fairly likable as Jerzy's lover, has to endure a nude scene that's entirely gratuitous (if the lady feels comfortable taking off her clothes in front of Jerzy, why does she immediately cover herself up with a blanket?). - nytheatre.com

I can't answer for the character, but I can guess at the actress' reasons.:) To quote Rez after he read the beta version of this rant... "Was probably friggin' freezing in there, for one :)"

The fetching Gretchen Egolf, playing the starry-eyed, gullible mistress Georgia, strips naked to prove some obvious point to our goading hero about 'naked feelings,' and rarely has an actress undressed onstage with less interest in the outcome. - The New York Observer

Incidentally, that's about the most damning comment about Gretchen's acting skills I've seen in 14 or so reviews of More Lies.... (The other damning one went like this: "The reporter (Daniel London) and his research assistant (Gretchen Egolf) - who has an affair with Jerzy - seem to be literary devices rather than real people." Everything else went from mediocre - as one reviewer said, "adequate" - to outstanding - uh... "outstanding".)

As a result, the production gives off the panicky sense that the narrative hasn't covered all its bases. (The scene in which Georgia takes off all her clothes to illustrate the difference between nakedness and the vulnerability of intimacy seems thuddingly gratuitous.) - The New York Times

Maybe the scriptwriter was as big a fan as I am.:) As proof, I point to the Martial Law fanfic I'm working on which has Amy Dylan (Gretchen's character) saying "Do a nice little striptease, then remove my clothing using only your teeth and tongue. I'm feeling frisky." I suppose I shouldn't mention the value of context to a quotation....

Best are Boris McGiver, Lizbeth Mackay, and Gretchen Egolf, delightful both clothed and in her nude scene, deemed gratuitous by the Times. Less so, I should think, than the play. - New York Magazine

Not-so-incidentally, that's not the most damning comment I've heard about the play, which reviews almost all claim is mediocre. Except for the few who loved or hated it, of course.

When Georgia calls herself "organized and awkward, neither of which has anything to do with being chaste, except in people's minds," she speaks for all the characters' difficulties in separating their own identities from other people's perceptions. When she strips naked in front of Lesnewski to demonstrate her willingness to remove all barriers between them, she displays the kind of redemptive trust that Lesnewski - a habitue of sex clubs and devotee of sadomasochism - is tragically unable to reciprocate. - Usenet (Attributed to Ted Merwin in an article for The Jewish Week)

My heavens. A NEUTRAL comment on the nudity! Will wonders never cease?

Almost every scene grinds its simplistic morality into the ground. This is particularly evident in the relationship between Jerzy and Georgia, where their heavy handed dialogue covers Big Issues including honesty, trust, commitment and the trappings of fame. When Jerzy discusses being physically naked as vulnerability, the play can't resist the obvious choice of Georgia shedding her clothes and asking, "Do I seem vulnerable to you?" - Matinee Magazine

Using the reviews as a benchmark, it seems to me that few people were paying attention to the vulnerability of the character at that point!

I'm glad I wasn't in New York City that week. Had I been, I'd still be kicking myself for missing it. I mean, forty-five bucks for a cheap thrill that you won't die from is pretty good for NYC. - Me

(No comment.:)

(Actually, I will comment. I'm going to get sued for slander one of these years....:)

(December 29, 2001 AD: Any of you regular visitors notice that I just added the Jewish Week and Matinee Magazine reviews? Or were you too busy daydreaming...?:)

May 31, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Final Conflict, Part 1')
September 30, 2001 AD Update: Probably should've done this before, but better late than never. If you're going to read this rant (or the rant for the other half of "Final Conflict") visit my Department of corrections, retractions, alterations, modifications, mutations, and other improvements on the truth.

I Wanna be the Only One.... Well, we finally get to see The One. Christopher Neame, I must admit, managed to add some dimension to the character, simply through use of facial expressions. I was duly impressed. The "kid tearing wings off flies" look that he cultivated for his "I'm winning!" kind of scenes was very nice. And he even managed to say "Sammo Laaaaaaw" sort of like Tim Curry did, though without quite as much bile behind it (or ham, depending on one's opinion of Curry's acting).

Ah, ah, ah, ah, Buried Alive, Buried Alive: Amy got to spend the entire episode, save for the beginning and the end, buried alive with her fiancé (Dennis, only mentioned before this in "Blue Flu" as her boyfriend, and not even seen there), who confesses to an affair. Ten minutes of screen time and he's already a real son-of-a-bitch, no offense meant towards his mother, who I doubt raised him to be such a pig. (Am I being vindictive? Hell yeah. I've seen what that sort of fictional thing does to a fictional relationship. It all ends in fictional tears.... I hope he rots in fictional Hell, the bastard.)

Someone was paying attention to continuity, and Amy didn't change clothing once.:)

Grace, on the other hand, got decked out as a construction worker in a skimpy undershirt and jeans for reasons which I'm still not entirely clear upon.

June 1, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Final Conflict, Part 2')
September 30, 2001 AD Update: Probably should've done this before, but better late than never. If you're going to read this rant (or the rant for the other half of "Final Conflict") visit my Department of corrections, retractions, alterations, modifications, mutations, and other improvements on the truth.

Ah, the end of the end. The final episode. Sammo turns his son away from the Dark Side and The One gets his British-accented candy-ass kicked. Woo. The end was kind of depressing, even though it was inevitable. Sammo and his son head off to China to continue their reconciliation, sort of leaving Grace in the lurch, since she treated Sammo like a father as well. (Blood is thicker than long-term father-daughterish relationships.) Amy and her adulterous fiancé might still get married (my suggested wedding gift: a male version of the chastity belt). However, it's in the air, as was Dennis - he wasn't even in this episode, but on a plane to New York that was taken over by Scorpio. Comparison:

Part one: Dennis loves Amy. Amy loves Dennis. Amy and Dennis are going to get married. Instead, they get buried alive by Scorpio. Dennis figures he's going to die and confesses that he bonked ex-girlfriend Christine one night. Amy hates Dennis. Dennis says he still loves Amy more than words can say. Cynical audience member (me) knows men better than that. Dennis again says he loves Amy more than words can say. Amy almost seems to buy it at one point when Dennis freaks out at learning what a dead body looks like.

Part two: Amy hates Dennis, sort of. Dennis is going to New York, I guess so Amy can clear her head and not have him in arms' reach should she decide to strangle him. Dennis might die, again, only this time Amy isn't going to die with him. Amy says she loves Dennis. Dennis doesn't die. Amy loves Dennis, but she still hates him. Wedding plans in similar limbo.

And Terrell is just Terrell. The end.

Up next: "Shanghai Express", the very first episode. But if you think I'm going to stop whining about things just because Gretchen Egolf isn't in the next month's worth of episodes, you've got another thing coming....:)

June 4, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Shanghai Express')
Ah, the beginning of the beginning.

Credits: Anyone who claims Kelly Hu was brought in to replace Tammy Lauren wasn't paying attention to the opening credits, which they're both listed in. The scene where they're walking side-by-side with the three male leads also kind of revealed that this "Grace/Pei Pei is working for the bad guy" subplot wasn't going anywhere. The fact that it took me two viewings to figure that out is beside the point.

Umbrella plot bad guy Lee Hei: Dressed rather somber, mostly, but always with a flash of color. (Light purple shirt under a black suit. Or, brown vest, purple shirt, red tie. And he almost made it work.)

Clothing: Everyone changed their clothing approximately once per day. Wow!

Hair: Tammy Lauren has a lovely head of hair, even if bottle blondes don't exactly turn my crank. She got it cut a few episodes later (witness its changing length during the credits). A few episodes after that, CBS cut her. I make no connections between those two events.:)

Sammo: Going from end-of-season-two to start-of-season-one makes one thing rather obvious: Sammo lost a good slice of weight while working on Martial Law. He didn't lose his trademark rotundness, but the stress of doing a weekly TV show with fight scenes obviously did a number on him.

Grace Chen (AKA Chen Pei Pei): She's described as being 25. Actress Kelly Hu was apparently turning 30 around the time of taping. In contrast, season two's Amy Dylan was about 26, and Gretchen Egolf was (unless my sources are full of it again - see next item) about the same age. Which supports the theory that the more popular you are, the younger your character is.:)

Dana Dixon: Yes, I had referred to Tammy Lauren's character as having the last name "Doyle". Yes, Louis Malone referred to her as "Dana Dixon" (or Dickson, but I remember a really cool actor - one might even call him a hoopy frood - named David Dixon so I'm going with that) in this episode. Yes, my notes were wrong. Yes, this is what I get for going off of a webpage that spelled "Dylan" with an "i". Yes, an "i"!

Sammo's Sage Wisdom of the Week: When asked why he gave three armed robbers his money without putting up a fight: "You don't break rocks with eggs."

Sammo's Effective Questioning Technique of the Week: He removes a lowlife's shoe and beats said lowlife on the ball of the foot with it, while asking questions. Then he says, "I'm a very patient man. I can stay here and question you for days!"

June 4, 2001 AD (The Egolf Chronicles, V1.0) (Roswell spoilers ahead.... Click here to skip.)
I tried watching Roswell tonight, as it should have been starting reruns of the last season (first three eps had Gretchen as the not-quite-human Congresswoman Vanessa Whitaker). But it got cancelled (so sayeth Internet scuttlebutt) and apparently the WB takes that as cancelling the reruns too.

Some people my age watch the WB to leer at the younger-than-them nubile teenage stars. I watch the WB to leer at the older-than-me married pushing-30 guest star. I'd like to think I'm the better adjusted.

Another amusing thing is that, in the span of a year and change, Gretchen's two television characters were Amy Dylan (age 26) and Vanessa Whitaker (age 36*).

* The wonders of SF. Whitaker's age(s).... Official age: 36 (as is noted in a death announcement in the funeral episode). Current body's age: 49, going on time-to-get-a-new-body 50. Chronological age: A damn sight more than 49.

Funny coincidences: 1) Both Martial Law and Roswell got new producers between seasons.
2) Both had Ms. Egolf in some sort of power-wielding role for at least a few episodes.**
3) Both got cancelled at the end of the second season.

(**In Martial Law she quickly got less heavy-handed in her use of power and was more friendly, in Roswell she got too friendly with an in-use power wire and was quickly incinerated.)

Anyone who wishes to draw further comparisons is free to so. Anyone who wishes to link the producers to the cancellation is free to do so. Anyone who blames the woman who is the focal point of much of this page (and my hormones) is free to do so and then light their hair on fire. Thank you.

Ah, hell, why not a few pictures? (Thanks to Rez for the HTML tip that let me wrap the text.:) These have been appropriated from Crashdown.com which I found - hold onto your command prompt - via a page linked from a page linked from Lee Goldberg's site. So I guess I can thank Lee Goldberg for indirectly furthering my obsessions. Poor man, he tries to perform a service and just winds up contributing to the delinquency of a fanboy.

(Update, September 28, 2001 AD: These images aren't from Crashdown.com anymore. The ones on the linked subpage are, though. Click on one to get the complete explanation.)

(Since many of the pictures are from low-light or night scenes, they've been gammaed up by a factor of 2.0 or 200% or whatever your personal gamma choice calls it - click on the image for the original, or some reasonable facsimile.)

Quick rundown of the pictures: Top one is the evil Congresswoman Whitaker acting drunk and jilted to pry information out of one of the other characters. So, by extension, it's Gretchen acting like she's acting like she's drunk. Think about that too long and you want a pint or two yourself.

In all honesty, I included picture number one because I think it's kind of nice. Not only does she look good with longer hair (though that blondish streak she had in Martial Law looked like it was making a bid to colonize the rest of her hair) but I also like it because I'm male; drunk women - by default - turn me on. (Like all men, I can never tell if a woman's faking it.)

Second one - never mind that this text is next to the third, I'm going for an aesthetic here - is included for the pretty colors. And it was a major tip-off that Whitaker was an alien (in lieu of the actual episodes, I've read transcripts:) since most people don't survive grabbing a live wire and causing it to spark directionally by sheer force of will. Too bad one of the good aliens manifested the same ability to shove electricity around and hoisted Whitaker up onto her own high-explosive petard*** (pic number three, see left or up or left and up, depending on browser).

There's a good (relatively speaking) screencap just before these two that really conveys Whitaker's "I'm going to send you to Hell, you half-breed non-human bitch!" attitude in this scene, but the feral scowl and flared nostrils really don't do anything for Gretchen's looks, and it reminds me a bit too much of an elementary school teacher I had. Yes, I had a teacher who conveyed the "I'm going to send you to Hell, you half-breed non-human bitch!" attitude on a regular basis.

After getting all blowed up, Gretchen got to play a role only present in SF - after Whitaker's body was obliterated (or at least dry-roasted) in the explosive finale to episode 3, a fake was made to cover for her death and to lead the good aliens into a trap. So she got to play a copy of her character's corpse. There's one that I think should top her resume. (Seems like she spent all her onscreen time acting like she was acting. Meta-acting?)

The fourth picture, of the funeral, is included because, when all is said and done, I'm a closet necrophiliac. (When you look like I do, any woman**** who's lying down and doesn't complain about things is fair game.)

You know, I just realized that - thanks to excessive viewing of assorted blooper segments and TV shows devoted to bloopers - I actually know several different things to say in an effort to get the "corpse" to start laughing.

***"Petard", despite sounding somewhat obscene, isn't - it's a kind of explosive - so "high-explosive petard" is almost tautology. Of course, the root word is rather crass to a Frenchman, but that doesn't bother me. After all, you can tick off a Quebec Frenchman by calling him an "Hostie pea-soup" (first word is pronounced "auh-stee", and means "Host", as in the one that is found in Roman Catholic church ritual... most Quebecer profanity involves the Church).

**** Qualifier: Any woman not related to me who's lying down. I'm a necrophiliac, not a pervert.

June 5, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Diamond Fever')
Is the Winship sinking? Or at least being demoted. I've referred to Winship as a captain on this page (now fixed), since Amy Dylan (and, by extension, scriptwriters Goldberg and Rabkin) referred to him as such in the episode "Sammo Blammo", and that was the last time he was mentioned. However, I should have known better than to trust a scriptwriter who's claiming that he's going to break continuity. The dialogue and (more tellingly) the big sign outside Winship's office door clearly denote that he's a lieutenant. (No telling what happened between seasons, but I'd like to be halfway accurate here....)

Sammo's Effective Questioning Technique of the Week: Emptying the suspect's pockets by picking the suspect up, turning him upside down, and shaking him like mad.

Louis Malone's Effective Questioning Technique of the Week: Splinters under the fingernails, or at least the threat thereof. I'll tell you, the early Martial Law episodes painted the LAPD as a bunch of really sick suspect-abusing psychos.... Oh, wait, never mind, that's what they are. (I'm going to Hell for that joke....)

Hair-pin(e): Tammy Lauren (and therefore Dana Dixon) got her hair cut. Doesn't look as good. Oh, well, she'll be gone by the end of the week's run of episodes anyway....

Clothing: Once a day, it looked like, except for Sammo's brief undercover stint as a Ming vase seller in gaudy shirt and gold chains. Speaking of which....

It's not a v-ay-se, it's a v-ah-ze! The fight scene with the Ming vase was delightful choreography. Winship's near heart attack over the near loss of the vase was delightful acting.

June 6, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Dead Ringers')
Calling a twentysomething by the name "Pei Pei" is a bit silly, isn't it? Chen Pei Pei reveals that her Westernized name is "Grace Chen", since her father was a fan of Grace Kelly. I suppose someone named "Pei Pei" (pronounced like "Pay Pay") who doesn't have a Chinese accent could get a bit hard to explain to viewers who start watching at episode #13. Then, there's scriptwriters, since even I can't type "Pei Pei" and get it right consistently. And I could see what a spell-checker would do to that....

Do you really think this episode was cowritten by Carlton Cuse? The Bad Guy (Gal) of the episode, Gabriella Zane, speaks of globalization of TV and makes reference to people in Madagascar watching Nash Bridges. Well, at least it staved off a crossover episode....

I lived on the streets of Shanghai with no family. My father wasn't too happy with that. Season two Grace made a throwaway comment about living in Shanghai. Here, on the other hand, Grace made a much more sensible throwaway comment. She was born in China (a later ep will state to a diplomat father) but "Grew up watching Scooby-Doo and The Brady Bunch" in the U.S. before moving back to China. This, unlike the Shanghai bit, explains why she's as American as the rest of the cast (save Sammo) but is still a member of the Shanghai police department. Breaking continuity is one (bad) thing, but breaking reality is another (much worse) thing.

(Update, September 6, 2001 AD: This needs to be amended; I should have done it a month ago, but it slipped my mind. After listening carefully to both season one's and season two's comments, it's possible to make them work together, albeit a bit uncomfortably, since season two's are more concerned with Grace's late teens while season one's comments are closer to her early teens. It's still not a great fit, but it's a fit nonetheless.)

It's like watching a train that's about to derail, really. The wonders of reruns. I know Dana's got two episodes left, and it's sort of tragic, especially with lines like these:

Louis (in reference to Bad Gal "Miss" Gabby Zane): "Do you think there was ever a Mr. Zane?"

Dana: "No, she's a black widow! If there ever was a Mr. Zane, she probably ate him."

Or, Dana (In reference to a drugged-up Olympian): "Oh, it was a big mess. They actually found blood in his steroid system."

But then you're not really sorry to see her go with lines like this one.... Grace finishes explaining why her Western name is Grace. Dana gives Grace a kind of offended/surprised look and then turns to Winship and says: "Lieutenant, could I see you for a minute?"

Okay, so it was a way of getting Dana and Winship offstage so the other three could run down the plot. But was the dirty look really necessary? Couldn't it have been done like she wanted to ask Winship about something not relevant to the plot, rather than - as was implied - to say that she didn't like these Chinese people coming along and arbitrarily changing their name whenever the hell they felt like it?

This is why Amy Dylan and Grace Chen went from catfighting to being confidantes in about eight episodes of season two.

June 7, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Funny Money')
Want a piece of skin? With your choice of colors and pattern.... Okay, so this isn't relevant to tonight's episode.... But actor Robert LaSardo - Hector Florez in Martial Law episodes "Requiem" and "End Game" - showed up in whatever episode of Nash Bridges USA Network was running. In both series someone made reference to his heavy tattooing.

Smoke on the water, fungus in the walls: There's one person in the entire audience who's going to get that joke, and only if he doesn't forget what I told him about my high school days and the time the fungus made people sick.

But more on topic: Sammo played a few notes on an electric guitar this episode. While looking for the name of Robert LaSardo for that last item, I found a source that I have no trust in whatsoever which claims that the notes were the opening riff from "Smoke on the Water", whatever that means.

Sammo's Effective Questioning Technique of the Week: Providing a hug and a shoulder to cry on for someone who really needed both.

What, you were expecting something violent?:)

How to write around someone: Grace Chen never interacted with the main plot. Instead, she spent all her time dealing with a subplot. This was a very good way of avoiding "third/fifth wheel" syndrome. It was also a funny as hell subplot.

Sammo Holmes, consulting detective. Pam Veasey, consulting scriptwriter. Hoopla, consulting IMDber. Len Pitre, consulting moron. I'm going to have to attribute this one to the IMDb (ye gods, I have sunk low). More accurately, to one of the people who posted a Martial Law review, Hoopla.

Sammo, while searching an apartment with Louis, points to a picture of the young woman they are looking for, who was seen with the (hospitalized) owner of the apartment. Then he pulls a Sherlock Holmes by stating: "The girl is Tony's sister. She's from New York. Took a red-eye flight into LA."

Louis replies, "You got all that from looking at the photo?"

Sammo says, "No. Her suitcase is next to the couch. You didn't see that?" Seems he read the (prominent) luggage tags.

Then, later, Tony's sister says this about her brother: "He even flew me out here on his private jet!"

As Hoopla points out, how could she take the red-eye flight and get the needed luggage tags when she flew on a private jet?

So, Sammo gets credit for being a fictional Sherlock. Hoopla gets credit for being a real-life one. Pam Veasey gets credit for being the scriptwriter who let that fall through the cracks. And I get credit for being a moron. I didn't even notice 'til I ran across the IMDb entry while looking for the name of the actor mentioned above.

Priceless moment: The look on Winship's face when listening to the two subplot characters (British rockers) insulting someone in thickly British lingo. It's a feather in Tom Wright's cap that he managed to convey things perfectly here (and again later in the episode) despite his utter lack of dialogue.

One episode left, get 'em while they're hot! Dana quote, when referring to arresting her Secret Service boyfriend who's turned rotten.... "I'm a cop first. I'm a heartbroken revenge-seeking woman second. Either way I win."

Priceless moment 2.0: Tony's sister (see above) thanks Sammo for saving her life, then says: "You are so cute!". After she walks away, Sammo looks rather happy with himself and says, "I'm so cute. Hmmm!"

Side-splitting moments: Sammo singing "Twist and Shout" in Chinese while the bloopers ran.

Here's how to make a minor character a complete jerk and do it right. David Hasbro (actor David Leitch) - the martial arts instructor for the LAPD. In earlier episodes he's shown himself to be an utter jerk, who's always been shown up by Sammo. In this episode, he tries to pick up Grace (in the guise of teaching her self-defense) and she kicks his ass.

Is USA Network having a theme night? I finish writing this thing on the actor who played Hector Florez showing up on Nash Bridges, and what follows it but JAG - guest starring Tzi Ma (Martial Law's Lee Hei) as a Chinese military type. Almost enough to warrant me staying up half an hour to see if the Chinese woman who played Lee Hei's daughter is going to show up in anything - USA's turning into a theme night for the guest stars of Martial Law's season one finale!

June 8, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Cop Out')
He's stalking me! Or am I stalking him? Read that last bit on Tzi Ma. He was on Nash Bridges tonight as a Chinese drug dealer. At least he's not typecast - on Martial Law he was a drug dealer and diamond/car smuggler.

So I like her now, and she's gone! Dana Dixon really did well this episode. She was very likable, yet still her sharp-witted self. So, of course, this is the last episode she's in.

Yet another euphemism for sex: Dana and her ex-hubby apparently wind up doing a bit of hunka-hunka-woo every time they share pizza. Never again (for the next week, anyway) will the line "Want a slice of pizza?" leave me with a straight face.

Alas Dana, we hardly knew ye. You know, from the right angle Tammy Lauren looks a bit like Vanessa MacNeil, a girl I was all moony over in high school, though Vanessa didn't have a chin cleft.

Dana's scenes with her ex-husband (Lance Carter, I don't know the actor's name) were rather good - though they were a bit friendly for exes, especially when they were in bed together.:)

Memorable Dana quotes.... (On stakeouts): "Kind of like camping with guns."

(When she finds out her ex-hubby has "borrowed" police evidence for his own gain): "That is evidence in an on-going case! I can't.... I'm never having pizza with you again!"

(After they knock out some crooked cops who broke into her house.) Lance: "Pizza?"

Dana: "Yeah, what the hell."

That last one is Dana's last line before vanishing. It's not "Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice!"* but it's not much better.

*Colin Baker's (Doctor Who - Doctor #6) last line before being similarly ousted from Doctor Who.

Mudskippers: Fish out of water who don't seem to care that much that they're out of water. Sammo had a fish out of water moment today, though it was rather funny. When Louis Malone mentions "wraps" (as in the food) Sammo says, "I like Puffy Daddy." Considering Puffy's recent name change*, it's only funnier.

*Which might be a warranted change, as I know people who use "puff" or "puffy" as slang for "homosexual". Watch a Puff Daddy video and think of that, see if it makes you laugh more than Puffy's pathetic dancing attempts do.

Bad gay joke time: If this were the SFPD, would it be "Code Pink"? How does the bar called "Code Red" stay in business if violent vigilante cops are the only clientele? Oh, wait, this is the LAPD....

We're having a Tom Baker moment: Tom Baker (Doctor Who - Doctor #4, no relation to Colin) supposedly once asked the director if he could trip when walking down a hall, simply because it was a scene of nothing but him walking down a hall, with no value whatsoever. Martial Law took a page from that by having a purse-snatcher trip - twice - while running from the cops. It's the occasional bit of physical comedy like this that I missed in season two.

Gentle Ironies: Sammo Law (actor Sammo Hung) has a scene where he's driving around town in his new car. He passes a theater showing Jackie Chan's Rush Hour. While this is funny because Sammo Hung has directed several of Jackie Chan's films, it's even funnier when you think that Arsenio Hall's character was originally a wisecracking black sidekick cut from the same cloth as Chris Tucker's Rush Hour character.

And again: Guess who else was (according to that font of truth, the IMDb) in Rush Hour? Tzi Ma!

June 11, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Extreme Measures')
So nice of them to tell me: I knew Dana was getting nixed after last episode, but I can imagine how the first-run Dana/Tammy Lauren fans must have felt. The episode starts and she's nowhere in sight - no problem, since not every episode starts with every character. But then the credits roll and her spot had been supplanted by a couple of shots of Sammo. And the shot of Sammo & co. walking side-by-side has been changed to a Dana-free one.

And then, the slightly more subtle change I needed to watch two sets of credits to confirm - in the credits shot of Kelly Hu, there's one cut from episode one when she pulls Dana's gun using a fancy flourish (she twirls the gun after grabbing it, sort of the direct antithesis of a cowboy who twirls his gun then holsters it). You can't see anything of Dana but the back of her head and her long blonde hair, but they still cut the start of the shot (or zoom/cropped it) so you can't see anything of Dana but her left arm. I wondered about that one, since it's not identifiable as her unless you saw the whole scene in episode one.

Also nice of them to make no mention of Dana during the episode....

She's an airhead, but she's a darn cute one! No, it's not a harsher re-stating my opinion of Gretchen Egolf during some of the blooper segments, I'm describing Julia Campbell's character and Sammo Law's new friend-who's-a-girl, Melanie George. She's a wonderful comedic character and I think that having a not-entirely-defenseless damsel amongst the brown and black belts was a nice addition to the cast. Of the original five regulars - Sammo Hung, Kelly Hu, Louis Mandylor, Tom Wright, and Tammy Lauren - apparently the only one without martial arts training is Tom Wright (Lieutenant Winship), and he was (so I'm told) a stuntman before he got into acting. Their characters all have similar hand-to-hand combat training.

Sexy Sadie Sammo: Due to a case of mistaken identity (actually, someone not listening when Sammo said who he was), Sammo got seated with a support group for nymphomaniacs. An excellent "what the hell is going on here" look or two from Sammo (including in the next scene when Louis asks him what he learned while he was out) really make for some wonderful comedy.

Clothing: Once a day! Oooh!:) And whoever claimed Kelly Hu was dressing like an insurance salesman didn't see her running in that pink sweater. Or they know a better class of insurance sales(wo)man than I do.

It SPEAKS! Someone thought to give Winship a subplot about selling his kid's chocolate bars. Amazing what an actor can do when you give him lines that actually build character and not just plot.

Father knows best: Surprise (or not) henchman for the main bad guy is one of Grace's old boyfriends. He (when Grace still thinks he might be a nice guy) mentions that Grace never answered his letters, and she mentions that he never answered hers. Seems Grace's father intercepted their letters using his diplomatic ties. Considering that the fellow kills two people before the episode's close, I think Daddy was dead on this time.:)

Surface tension: Louis Malone, who sort of has a thing for Grace, asking about how her talk with her old flame went. Maybe I'm imagining things, but I think Louis Mandylor did a nice job of putting an undercurrent of "Oh, old boyfriend. How... nice." into the act without overdoing it.

Climbing down the evolutionary ladder: The main bad guy looked faintly like a monkey. Not nice to say, but he really looked a little more simian than most people care to aspire to. Funny, I thought a lawyer bad guy would look more like a snake.

June 12, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Trackdown')
Subplot-o-rama: Two very good subplots: One with Sammo trying to get his driver's license, and one about an ex-police officer's young daughter.

Where's Dana? Gone back to her hometown, as a few lines of incidental dialogue show. Ah, if only Louis Mandylor knew that the lines he spoke were a harbinger for Gretchen Egolf's even more succinct single line giving his character the kiss-off. Maybe it's just my rerun-given foresight obscuring my normal sight, but Sammo and Louis (the actors, as opposed to the characters Sammo and Louis) look kind of worried as they read those lines. Maybe they were being made uncomfortably aware of their own expendability?

Nice... peacocks: The difference between actor Sammo Hung and character Sammo Law.... A tattoo artist shows her peacocks (tattooed on her breasts) to Sammo Law. He looks like he'd sooner expect her to spontaneously combust than do that. In the blooper segment, Sammo Hung deliberately blows the first take by lolling his tongue. (If these bloopers are any proof, Sammo Hung's got a real mischievous bent.)

He's still a jerk, but he's a nice one.... Overbearing martial arts instructor David Hasbro (who invariably gets kicked around himself when he tries to kick Sammo around) actually has a redeeming moment - in exchange for pulling some strings to get Sammo a second driver's test (first sort of went out the window thanks to some "police business" and a hail of automatic gunfire scaring the DMV tester witless) he extracts a rematch from Sammo. Sammo wins yet again, and Hasbro still willingly holds up his end of the bargain. He's a jerk, but he's a jerk of his word!

A Pakistani actor who isn't playing a 7-11 clerk.... Is playing a DMV driving tester. Who wants to be an actor but doesn't want to play a 7-11 clerk. Very good performance from the fellow.

A Chinese woman and a white man walk in to a white-supremacist-owned gun shop.... No, it's not the start of a really bad joke, it's one scene from tonight's episode.

I hope they get paid well.... Stuntman takes a kick to the chest, lands on the roof of a van, falls off, and hits ground with the back of his neck or thereabouts. Owww.

Nitpick: I love little continuity mixups. Angle one, a little girl is holding a teddy bear/backpack combo under her right arm. Angle two, it's slung over her shoulder. They only cut between angles once, but they cut right in the middle of a dialogue line, so it looks like the thing teleported.

Quote of the nanosecond: Sammo (on driving in Shanghai): "You have to run someone over not to get a license!"

June 13, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Takeout')
Sammo Can Cook: The plot (everything was tightly interwoven except for Sammo's new bank account adventure, which felt tacked-on by comparison) revolved around an evil fried-chicken dealer who was trying to buy out a Chinese restaurant owner, by hook or by crook. But he picked the wrong guy to strong-arm: Mr. Wu (or Woo or something that sounds like that) had Sammo Law for a buddy.

Mirror reflections, looking glass variations: Mr. Wu(?)'s daughter, Vanessa, was an interesting character - a young woman caught between doing "her own thing" and the family business, which was ultimately a conflict between the bad memories (her mother's death) and the good memories (her childhood) she had of the restaurant. In addition, she made an excellent contrast to Grace Chen. While they were outwardly similar (Chinese women with American upbringings, students of martial arts) the similarities ended there. For instance, Vanessa Wu was enough of a connoisseur of traditional Chinese cooking (which included intestines and other things that you wouldn't notice if not informed about them beforehand) that she could identify the chef who cooked it. Grace Chen, on the other hand, fell into sheer terror at the thought of even nibbling on those kind of foods. Then, there was the fact that Grace was still practicing her fighting skills (and was comfortable in her line of work), while Vanessa's skills had fallen into disuse (and doubt about her future had crept up on her).

G.C. phone home: And there was Grace's continued avoidance of her "nagging" parents (who were phoning incessantly), while Vanessa almost lost her one remaining parent to a heart attack. Like I said, most of the subplots were tightly interwoven with the main plot.

What are you wearing? NOTHING? Vanessa Wu spent one scene at home with a naked man. Strictly an artist/nude model relationship, but when Sammo stopped by he didn't look convinced about things.:) Okay, in the last three episodes, he's met some nymphomaniacs, seen a pair of tattooed breasts, and now found a naked man at the house of his best friend's daughter. When Sammo is a fish out of water, he seems to always land in the red-light district.

What's the opposite of "fish out of water?" Louis Malone (for no obvious reason other than to make the funniest scene of the night) volunteering as a waiter at the restaurant, trying to cope with a Chinese customer.

Buffalo Duck, Peking Wings? Sammo asks Grace why they call a certain fast-food staple "Buffalo Wings". She says that the "Buffalo" refers to the place in New York (where the wings were invented) and not the large animal. Sammo's observation: "Like 'Peking Duck'." Now I'm left wondering if both of those are for real.

Random thought: "Buffalo" is a word that never looks like it's spelled right.

I drink purple ox blood: Oxblood (or brown, depending on the TV's tint mood) leather jacket + blue walls + purple sweater = purple-looking leather jacket.

I drink the blue stuff too: But then, Kelly Hu has worn a blue leather-like jacket before. It's just that this one seemed to change depending on wall color and lighting. So either it was just the jacket's tint off the walls or the continuity person should be slapped around a bit.

I can't think of a good chicken pun: Sammo fighting in a chicken outfit. He even made chickenish sounds instead of his normal incomprehensible shouting.

What should happen to all crooked health inspectors: Getting their own planted roaches dumped on them. I'm not going to eat fried chicken for a week, though.

And all that watching of Kung Fu just taught me that Chinese men have a lot of flashbacks to their skinhead days: The plot ground to a halt for one minute and fifteen seconds while Sammo and Vanessa had a relaxing Tai Chi meditative moment. It didn't seem out of place, and 75 uninterrupted seconds looking at the pretty lass who was playing Vanessa Wu isn't something I have a problem with.

Chairman (Sam)mao: Two episodes, two times the not-related-to-the-main-plot thugs (last episode they robbed a hardware store, here some other thugs robbed a bank) called Sammo "Chairman Mao". Not only do they know history, they also got their faces beaten in.

Reruns not scene (seen?) before: Is it just me, or did the exterior ranch shots look like they were from the same neighborhood as the "climbing tree" in "Extreme Measures"? And did the interior stable shots look like the stable that will be used in "Trifecta" later in the season?

I wish I could tell my bank's manager this: Sammo: "Does this mean I never have to come back to the bank?"

Bank manager: "Yes."

Sammo: "Good!"

Quote of the nanosecond: Sammo (when the nude model asks if he's got some time to give martial arts lessons): "Yes, but you must wear clothes."

Night of the Living Vanessas: I just realized that I've mentioned three women named Vanessa on this page. A recap for those who are asleep or dead....

Congresswoman (yes, I know the proper title is "Representative", leave me alone) Vanessa Whitaker: The character my current TV infatuation, Gretchen Egolf, played on Roswell. Gretchen also played Amy Dylan on Martial Law.

Vanessa MacNeil: My old real-life infatuation, who looks a bit like ex-Martial Law co-star Tammy Lauren.

Vanessa Wu: A character on tonight's Martial Law. Didn't set off my infatuation alarm, but the actress is cute. (She's also rather white for a Chinese girl!:)

June 14, 2001 AD (Episode: 'How Sammo Got His Groove Back')
Lovely title.

He's got a first name! And a family! At this rate he might actually gain a third dimension! Lieutenant Benjamin Winship. Benjamin. There's a Mrs. Winship, and they have a daughter. Granted, they serve as the vehicle for the subplot, but at least he got to have a domestic moment or two. (His speech at the end to the person holding the toys hostage was inspired.)

Harbinger Alert: Two episodes ago, Louis Mandylor gave the line of dialogue sealing Dana Dixon/Tammy Lauren's fate, a cold prequel to his own character suddenly transferring to a faraway police department between seasons. A perfect harbinger, as it were. This episode, Louis Malone got bumped from the major plot to the subplot, replaced by the uncle of the victim - Terrell Parker (played by Arsenio Hall). Make of that what you will.

Ginuw(h)ine. Oh, I'm going to Hell for that one.... Ginuwine (some music type) was playing Terrell's nephew, a recording artist who was shot by the bad guy in order to boost the bad guy's bootleg sales. Some people like his voice; I don't. Good thing he spent all but the prologue and epilogue in the hospital.

Throw Momma from the Train: The mother of Ginuwine's character was played by Vernee Watson Johnson, the same one who played Will Smith's mother on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Typecast as a hip-hopper/rapper's mother. What a lot in life.

Cuddlebug dolls? No, but I remember hugabug dolls: The subplot involved Winship trying to get his hands on a "Rainbow Sally" Cuddlebug doll (think of a salamander who's had a run-in with Rainbow Brite and her evil gang of graffiti artists) for his daughter. Terrell attempted to buy one himself and bribe Winship with it, but he lost it and Sammo wound up saving Terrell's hide.

The Cuddlebugs were obvious takes on fads like the notorious Beanie Babies, though I will admit that some of the Cuddlebugs shown were cute (like the blue spotted duck:) and didn't inspire fad-loathing in me. Of course, Rainbow Sally proves the unspoken rule of toymaking that states: "You can't make a salamander look cute without making it gaudy."

Cuddlebug continuity: Season two episode "Sammo Claus" has the MCU trying to find out who's stealing fad toy "Armando the talking armadillo". It also had a marvellous moment where a kid throws a tantrum to try get an Armando. The toy that she currently has (and throws to the ground, saying that it's not her favorite anymore) is a Rainbow Sally. Trenchant social commentary and wonderful unbroken continuity moment, all in one!

Oh, wait, this is the LAPD.... When the unarmed Cuddlebug hostage-taker finally gives up, there's more weapons pointed at her then at a real hostage taker, like filling a housewife full of holes is a viable course of action when the housewife's only possible violent act is ripping a stuffed animal open. (Yes, I know it's meant as parody. Whether it's a parody of fads or of the LAPD, I'll never know.)

Car, follow that taxi! Well, not quite. Terrell's love of police chases took on a whole new dimension when a crook hijacked Sammo's car (and therefore Sammo and Terrell). The news program playing on the radio that was narrating the events happening in and around Sammo's car was rather funny.

Terrell Syndrome: Terrell tries nudging Sammo into action, and the hijacker points his gun at Terrell and asks him what he's up to. Terrell claims he has Tourette Syndrome. Under normal circumstances I'd claim that was a horrible and insensitive joke, but I have to admit to smirking at it a bit.

World's fastest fight scene: Sammo delivers one punch to a glass-jawed bad guy.:)

Where's my Terrell Parker voodoo doll? I didn't like Arsenio Hall before he showed up on Martial Law, and I didn't like him in his first few episodes after he did show up - I was convinced he was the most annoying mass of DNA ever hurled onto this sick planet. In retrospect, I can see he was acting exactly what he was given - the most annoying character in the known universe not meant for a kid's show or for Adam Sandler.

Things that worked....

His attempts to make Sammo "hip" and Sammo's reaction. Maybe I'm crazy but I got a kick out of it.

Terrell and Winship interacting. Seems that Mrs. Winship dated Terrell before meeting the man she would marry. This led a very funny and awkward moment when Terrell's reminiscing started getting a little raunchy.

Terrell and Winship being in the same room. They're direct counterparts - Terrell (as he is here, for better or worse) is a black man who happens to be a police officer. Winship is a police officer who happens to be a black man. I didn't think of Terrell as being a cop and I didn't think of Winship as being black. Having them in the same room reminds you about how similar - and different - they are. Fortunately, after this point was made, Terrell's more annoying "hip black guy" habits got nixed.

Terrell's second fight scene. He fared well in that one, and answered the complaint some people have about these kinds of series - that everyone (good or bad) is a martial artist. Here's the answer: give the good guy who can't fight well a bad guy who can't fight well. There's still an element of excitement, but neither one is doing any sort of high kicking stuff.

The serious moments, like when he was comforting his family members after his nephew was shot and then again after a home invasion type affair.

Things that didn't work....

His first fight scene. He kicked someone and he went flying, while his target didn't even wince. No one can kick so hard that they propel themselves across the room without doing serious damage to what they kicked.

How he was buddy-buddy to Sammo's face, but kept calling him "Oddjob", etc. when speaking to Winship. Even the recently-removed Dana at her worst wasn't a backstabber. (She could be a jerk, but she was usually a jerk to one's face.)

How damn annoying he was. His pseudo-kung-fu moments were painful to watch, and some lines were so asinine (both in writing and delivery - for instance, his anguished scream when his Rainbow Sally doll met with a moving vehicle) that they should have sent a warning to TV affiliates in Jewish areas, given the intense hamming going on.

I'm flying! One stunt looked like Sammo was rigged on wires - he jumped three or more feet in the air from a standing start, without even bending his legs before leaping. I know that everything in the show is faked, but there's a difference between being faked and looking fake. This is why I didn't like The Matrix or the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Leaning on my suspension of disbelief and treating me like I don't understand grade school physics are two different things.

June 15, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Bad Seed')
Dem Crazy Canadians: I won't comment on the fact that Terrell Parker is an accountant turned LAPD press liaison turned detective. I won't comment on the fact that his accounting job brought in enough for him to buy a Porsche and yet he still went to the LAPD press office for no apparent reason. I won't make any of the old jokes about a black guy driving a Porsche. I will, however, ask who in the name of Jehovah thought up making a bunch of stereotypical Canadians (actually, these guys were fighting so vainly to conform the stereotype they weren't even doing it right) into car thieves who drove a Moosehead truck for a living. The hockey-playing Frenchman ringleader was a nice touch. It's scary to think that, for once, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues showed more sensitivity to foreigners than Martial Law did.

But the real icing on the cake, let me tell you, was Louis Malone's pronunciation of the word "Canadians!" He didn't sound quite that vindictive in previous episodes when talking about a hostage-taker or a drug lord. Sort of gave him a serious-childhood-issues-that-need-to-be-worked-out kind of hatred that makes you wonder why the LAPD lets him carry a gun (insert tired old LAPD joke here) or why the Writer's Guild lets the scriptwriter brandish a pen. To turn the tables, I will now be a Canadian acting hateful towards the scriptwriter. Brian Fuld: You will die in a pit of lime, my friend. Or fire ants, if my stock is replenished before I find you, eh?

(And Carlton Cuse: Rumor has it that your other show - Nash Bridges - is similarly anti-Canadian. If you had a run-in with the psychos at the CRTC - Canadian Radio and Television Committee or something - it would be understandable. However, please understand that is like treating every German like he or she was Hitler. The government hand-picks CRTC members from the deepest boondocks, places where outhouses are almost a luxury. In reality, no one in the CRTC not doing secretarial work knows what a radio or television is. Make members of the CRTC villains and, trust me, 99% of Canadians won't give a damn. If, however, you continue on your current path, I've got an iron maiden with your name on it.)

2.5 dimensional Lieutenant Winship has a brother! And a dysfunctional niece who's a villain in this episode! Amazing. You'd actually think they were treating Tom Wright like an actor and not a stuntman with second-from-top billing.

Put the voodoo doll down, at least after a few more jabs: Okay, so Arsenio wasn't hamming the lines as much. In addition, Terrell wasn't a backstabber this episode, just a suckup. This is an improvement, according to Dante. It's one Circle of Hell up, from the frozen Lake Cocytus (9th Circle) to the Second Bolgia - a sewage pit - of Malebolge (8th Circle).

I'm allergic to old gags: Sammo's allergies act up and he, thanks to his sneezing and sniffling, winds up buying an expensive watch at an auction. The trite setup has a payoff when the auction-house fight scene, where Terrell borrows some gauntlets from a museum exhibit to fight off a sword-carrying bad guy, was actually good.

Happy Birthd... oh, damn, we can't sing it. In the blooper segment, everyone on the crew sings Happy Birthday (in Chinese) to a fellow named William. A quick look at the credits revealed that it's likely William Cheng, First Assistant Director of the action unit. An accurate date was even given: by his own admission his birthday was, at the time of taping, "yesterday". And I'm sure William knew why they drew a chocolate icing fish on the cake, 'cause I don't.

June 18, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Lock-up')
The kick heard halfway around the block: When Lee Goldberg took the reins in season two, he said that he didn't want Terrell's gun kicked out of his hand ever again. So, I'm keeping count. Here's gun-kicked-out-of-his-hand #1, in the first fight scene of the episode.

He's still incompetent, but not that incompetent! Here's how to keep Terrell's character interesting in the fight scenes - he's an incompetent fighter, but he's good at improvising a club or snare-type thing out of anything convenient. The character also went through the episode without being annoying. A bit farcical, but not really oh-God-how-I-want-to-make-him-bleed-for-this like before.

I'm having a season two flashback. Flashforward. Whatever. The bad guy (Hessman) felt like one of the more coldhearted season two bad guys. I suppose a gangster who's running a gun-modifying operation out of prison is not going to be nice, but he reminded me a little too much of a less-cuddly Hannibal Lecter.

Okay, maybe they had Closeup-Intensive Long Meaningful Speeches in season one, too: Sammo talks of how his father was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution.

I put together a list. Now, if you want me t- So sayeth Terrell. It was apparently part of a punch line that got punched out in editing. Since you couldn't see his face when he was saying it (there was a closeup shot of Louis Malone's reaction to Terrell's multi-page list of things he wanted Louis to pick up for him) they really should have killed the sound for that line, if possible.

Want some eye-ced tea? Bad Gal Corrupt Prison Guard Type uses eyedrops in iced tea to give the drinker awful stomach cramps. Ah, the wonderful things you learn watching TV. Excuse me, I need to go poison someone.

I wouldn't have noticed if not for the bloopers: Terrell and Sammo are handcuffed together. Sammo has the key, and moves to unlock them. He doesn't even get the key within a foot of the cuffs, and they fall off. I only noticed when re-watching the scene after seeing the blooper segment where the cuffs fall off before Sammo even gets the key.

Is this a TV show? Louis Malone gives a phone number as 555-whatever. Fine, it's a TV show. But then later, you see a sign on a dumpster - that fills the screen - that reads:

*** Rubbish
(805) ***-9400
(818) ***-2474

Where the asterisks are numbers carefully painted over with almost-matching-the-dumpster-color paint!

Quote of the moment: Sammo (sarcastic reply to someone asking how to use a not-very-well-kept prison toilet): "It requires balance!"

Moment of the moment: Sammo (undercover) asking a mortician if he could buy a green - jade green - coffin.

June 19, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Painted Faces')
Wanted to buy: One can(n)on cleaner. In the "Previously on Martial Law" flashback, Dana showed up twice. They can't quite get rid of her, no matter how hard they try.:)

Lee Hei's back, and he's in pastels! Number three out of Lee Hei's five episodes, and his third escape from the fuzz. First time the still-undercover Grace held a gun to Sammo's head and ordered him to let Lee Hei go. Second time (two days before this episode takes place) his prison transport was attacked in an ambush set up by his lawyer. Third time Grace had a gun on him (funny how she - like Sammo - wasn't allowed to have one and now gets one whenever convenient despite Sammo's continuing lack of one!) and got distracted long enough for Lee Hei to make a break for it. (Distraction is something the LAPD needs to work on. Dana had an almost identical thing happen to her in "Funny Money".)

His clothing was very nice. Magenta (suit jacket and pants) isn't a color many men could make work. Neither is a blue jacket, black vest, and orange shirt and tie! (Which explains why it didn't really work.)

Sammo's Effective Questioning Technique of the Week: Letting Terrell "I wanna be the bad cop!" Parker be the bad cop for once - but not until after the suspect had tried to spit at Sammo and accidentally hit Terrell instead.

Localized weather lighting patterns: Lee Hei somehow manages to figure out Sammo's cell phone number, and phones him. They're both in outdoor elevators, facing each other. Except for two panes of glass and a 40 foot drop, there's nothing separating them. Yet Sammo's face is bathed in gentle side-lighting while Lee Hei (in an identical elevator!) is cast into harsh overhead lighting. Remember, kids, being evil forces you to move in the shadows and stand in the badly-lit areas. I understand the technique, and I didn't notice it until my second watching (when someone said how ugly Lee Hei looked), but it makes it real obvious which Chinese guy is Bad.:)

But why Lee Hei did that freaky snake hiss thing, I'll never know.

Boom. When defusing a bomb, "there's a stripey one" is probably not an adequate description of a wire unless you're the comic relief. (It was funny though, since Terrell did a finger-twirling thing to denote the spiraling stripe pattern.)

MBF. God, what a bad joke that is. No matter. Both in this episode of Martial Law and the crossover episode of Walker, Texas Ranger ("The Day of Cleansing", if titles turn your crank), someone takes the long route away from a bomb (running right over it in Martial Law, running right next to the truck containing it Walker, Texas Ranger) simply so the two good guys could dive for the same cover during the Big Explosion. Good guys are smarter than bad guys unless the director tells them to do something really dumb.

Terrell Throwback Number One: Ten seconds on the bomb's clock and Terrell asks Sammo what to do. ("Run!" strikes me as the only valid option.) Good thing they didn't write Amy Dylan that stupid in season two episode "No Quarter", else she and an entire SWAT team would have been the LAPD's first unit that was well seasoned but slightly burnt on the underside.

Quickie Redemptions: The bigoted/ignorant cop (Portman) who was sent to Shanghai as the other half of the cultural exchange for Sammo and Grace has redeemed himself. He starts off looking (how apt) like he's in Hell, 'cause to him it is. But by the end of the episode he's both proved he's a good cop and traded in his ignorance (presumably his inability to show the former caused the latter), and is out on a date with a Chinese co-worker. He figured out that a woman's a woman no matter what country she's born in.:)

I'm half-French and not this bad: While the French are good for punctuating their sentences with their hands (not as good as Certain Other Europeans... cough...), Portman's got us beat. Every time he got on the phone, his free hand was waving around like a flag or pointing at the listener who wasn't in front of him.:)

Run-run-run-run-runaway: When Sammo picked up the phone and it was the newly-converted Portman on the other end, all the others (Winship, Louis and Grace) made a break for it to avoid talking to him. Terrell, having never met Portman, follows Grace and asks, "Who's Portman?"

Problem is, she's never met Portman either! He was sent away at the end of episode one, when she was still undercover and hanging out with Lee Hei. Unless his reputation got around (a possibility, though he's the guy people always try to forget) or Grace is a telepath on the side, she should be as in the dark as Terrell.

A Meaningful Speech that works: Terrell temporarily dons his old LAPD press liaison cap to rescue the new, floundering, press liaison. It's a speech sort of like Joe Friday's in the good ol' Dragnet episodes, except without the monotone voice and film noir sensibility. (Insert cheap joke here about how anything with Arsenio Hall in it is 'film noir'.) Terrell's duds were rather snappy too. Nice sweater and jacket combo. Didn't even need sunglasses to look at him, unlike Lee Hei.:)

Quote of the nanosecond: Inept henchman meeting his replacement: "Is he going to kill me?"

Lee Hei: "No, he's gonna take you to the zoo!"

Missing links: While typing this, I wear headphones (playing the VCR's audio through the PC - so I don't disturb anyone - or something musical, currently Ultravox's "The Voice") so I just missed almost all of what was playing on Fox Family channel - the episode of Early Edition that Sammo Law (Sammo Hung) cameoed in!

Funny, I didn't even know they were still running that show. Of course, if a Certain Site wasn't Flash only, maybe people who prefer a low-bandwidth browsing experience could CHECK THE SCHEDULE!

June 20, 2001 AD (Episode: 'Substitutes')
Retroactive typing: I haven't actually seen tonight's episode as I type this and the next four items. Thanks to my sharp memory, my VCR, and my almost-complete tape archive, I can look over the episodes beforehand. And yet I still tape 'em, because after a bad experience with a Memorex tape (I have since switched brands), I now like having two of everything I want to keep.

Credit where credit is don't: Arsenio Hall is finally elevated from "Special Guest Star" to his own opening credit spot, sharing top billing with Sammo Hung. Sort of obvious that they were going for the cop-buddy-show angle, since they could've just given him Tammy Lauren's old spot (which is still filled with a few random shots of Sammo). Oh well, at least the character isn't as annoying anymore.

Trust me, it looks nothing like her uncle Oscar: Terrell gets to go back to his old elementary-school alma mater to protect a kid, but gets stuck with the reality check after he learns that the name has been changed to reflect someone who has given money to the school. Goodbye North Central Elementary, hello Oscar de la Hoya Elementary.

Random thought: "Alma Mater" means "Bounteous Mother". Jimmy Kimmel (of Win Ben Stein's Money fame) has a different take on it: "(Bounteous Mother), from whose breasts I guzzled beer."

Rock it and box it: When I see the actor (Tony Plana) who was playing the villain (Chava Rocha - try saying that without thinking of a cockroach), I think of him as the family patriarch in those commercials for Showtime's boxing-related program Resurrection Boulevard. When I hear the actor (Joseph Ashton) playing the villain's son, I think of him as the voice of Otto Rocket from Nickelodeon's Rocket Power. Sadly, that does mean that I have actually sat through Rocket Power, though it certainly wasn't as painful an experience as sitting through Invader Zim.

Or, just rock it: And, of course, Rocket Power was on Nickelodeon's west coast feed right after Martial Law finished on TNN's east coast feed.

The kick heard across