Mon 9 Jan 2012
A TV Review by Michael Shonk: BROKEN BADGES “Chucky.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[16] Comments
“Chucky.” An episode of Broken Badges (1990-91). Season 1, Episode 2. CBS. December 22, 1990. Created and Executive Produced by: Stephen J. Cannell and Randall Wallace. Written by Stephen J. Cannell. Directed by Kim Manners.
Cast: Miquel Ferrer as Beau Jack Bowman, Ernie Hudson as Toby Baker, Eileen Davidson as J. J. “Bullet” Tingreedes, Jay Johnson as Stanley Jones, Charlotte Lewis as Priscilla Mather. Guest Cast: Dietrich Bader as Chucky, Clint Carmichael as Joe, Lyle Alzado as Tommy Moran.
In the voiceover opening, Chief Sterling (Don S. Davis) asks, “What do you do with a bunch of cops like these? One is a kleptomaniac. One is a compulsively violent ventriloquist. One is addicted to danger. And their leader is a transplanted Cajun who makes up his own rules as he goes along. What do you do with a bunch of cops like these?”
If you answered, fire them or suspend them or give them desk jobs and take away their guns, you have a fine grasp of reality and would have had no chance of writing for Broken Badges.
Instead the Captain answers, “Give them a psychiatrist and pray.”
The episode “Chucky” tells the story of the naïve son of dirty ex-cop turned crime boss Tommy Moran. Chucky is more interested in Shakespearean theatre than his father’s business. Despite being a bad guy, Tommy is loved by his many friends on the police force. Of course our group has a different opinion of Tommy.
Toby, the kleptomaniac cop, was responsible for Tommy getting kicked off the force. After Toby taunts Tommy to fight, in the middle of the police station, Tommy walks away and Toby threatens that he might be the one to put Tommy in the ground. I will pause here for you to regain consciousness from being hit over the head with foreshadowing.
Joe, Tommy’s second in command, guns down Tommy and frames Toby (what a twist). Cops happily arrest their fellow cop. The next day there is a hearing and the Judge orders Toby to jail awaiting trail for murder.
Our heroes bond and use their assignment of catching parking meter vandals as an excuse to roam the city, go undercover, and plant expensive surveillance equipment, all without any authorization. Now BFF with Chucky, who inherited Dad’s business, our group takes on the bad guys whose response is threatening to kill our heroes. Does that work? Yes. Until Beau puts a great gris gris on the bad guys. Spoiler – good guys win!
If you can accept the premise that three cops on “psychological restriction” and a renegade Cajun (the best kind) are allowed to roam the streets solving crimes while armed, then your suspension of disbelief has been strengthen to Superman levels from years of watching mindless TV shows such as this one.
Maybe you will find this funny. Maybe you will laugh instead of wince when ventriloquist Stanley has a violent fight with his dummy Officer Danny for half a minute of screen time and Danny knocks Stanley “out.”
Miguel Ferrer as Beau the group’s Cajun leader and Ernie Hudson as the manic-depressive kleptomaniac Toby turn in fine performances, while the rest of the cast were unable to rise above the limitations of their characters and the series’ premise.
Stephen J. Cannell is rightfully remembered as one of TV’s best producer/writer (Rockford Files, Wiseguy), but he often pushed the genre towards the odd (Greatest American Hero, Tenspeed and Brownshoe, A-Team).
Sadly, Broken Badges was just one of a string of losers Cannell produced in the 1990s (his two success of the 90s were The Commish and the Rockford Files TV Movies). In the decade of Homicide: Life in the Street, NYPD Blue, and Law and Order, Cannell held on to the cheesiness of the 70s and 80s and produced such failures as The Hat Squad, Palace Guard, and Broken Badges.
Granted, perhaps wisely, CBS never gave Broken Badges a real chance. The first episode (pilot) aired on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, three more episodes aired during the Holidays in December (“Chucky” ran the Saturday before Christmas), and the final three ran in June long after it had been cancelled.
The series is available on a DVD called Prime Time Crime: The Stephen J Cannell Collection. You can currently watch this episode (and others of the series) on YouTube in four parts, starting here.
January 9th, 2012 at 11:13 pm
I bought that DVD set just for the complete run of UNSUB. You should check it out; it’s forgotten but better than most everything else in that set.
January 9th, 2012 at 11:18 pm
I bought that set myself last summer, looking at it and see that it contained a lot of series I’d never even heard of. The price was OK, so I bought it, and I’ve never watched any of them.
But it’s there, ready and waiting for me, any time I get around to it.
Contents: [on 10 DVDs]
FEATURING 42 EPISODES FROM 4 PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED SERIES:
Missing Persons – All 18 Episodes
Broken Badges – All 7 Episodes
Palace Guard – All 9 Episodes
UNSUB – All 8 Episodes
INCLUDING 12 FAN-FAVORITE EPISODES:
Wiseguy – Pilot – Parts 1 & 2
The Commish – “Suffer the Children” – Parts 1 & 2
Hunter – “Hot Pursuit” – Parts 1 & 2
Cobra – “The Gnome”
Greatest American Hero – “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”
Tenspeed & Brown Shoe – “Savage Says: There’s No Free Lunch”
Silk Stalkings – “To Serve and Protect”
21 Jump Street – “La Bizca”
Booker – “Father’s Day”
January 9th, 2012 at 11:21 pm
I forgot to add that UNSUB was one of the shows I’d never heard of. I don’t remember it at all.
From IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096720/
here’s the basic plot: “A special team of FBI forensics experts investigates serial murderers and other unsolved violent crimes.”
Before its time, perhaps!
January 10th, 2012 at 10:29 am
Odd, or not, that that set leaves out the disturbing CBS latenight anthology series Cannell did, his SCENE OF THE CRIME, which took full advantage of the late-night slot for sleaziness (as I remember it).
January 10th, 2012 at 11:40 am
david gideon, I was busy doing other things and missed most of the nineties TV series. You Tube is helping me catch up. I have heard only good things about UNSUB, I need to check it out.
Todd, this is not a complete collection as they left off THE HAT SQUAD as well. Cannell sleazy? The man who gave us SILK STALKINGS (LAW & ORDER SVU 80’s style) was of pure heart.
Speaking of THE HAT SQUAD, the opening (watch it on You Tube) with James Tolkan telling the three young boys the story of the four detective who scared people because they wore hats (Batman was right, evil is a cowardly lot) makes me laugh. That is until I discovered The Hat Squad did exist in LAPD. Check out this (Times is misspelled in the address)
http://lapd.com/assets/Hat_Squad_LA_Tiimes.pdf
January 10th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Michael, thank you for the link concerning The Hat Squad. A great article!!!
January 11th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
This show is one of a trio described by John Abbott in his book “Stephen J. Cannell Television Productions: A History of All Series and Pilots” (surely among the worst titles of all time) as among Cannell’s “crazy cop” shows — the other two being “Last Precinct” and the pilot “Nightside” (a collaboration with Glen Larson — a truly deadly combination). I thought this show sounded familiar, so I looked it up in the Variety index of reviews, and discovered that I actually reviewed it myself while toiling for the “showbiz bible” back in November 1990. My lede: “Stephen J. Cannell has cooked up some turkeys in his time, but ‘Broken Badges’ may be the fowlest yet. This clunker will be lucky to last the rest of the season [bull’s-eye!], but there is a bright side: Maybe star Miguel Ferrer will be free to return to his role as the inimitable Albert in ‘Twin Peaks.'” Sadly, the pilot was directed by the late Kim Manners, whom I consider one of the great TV directors of all time, who helmed many episodes of “The X-Files” and was just a joy to meet and talk to about his craft many years later, during a Paley Center panel on “Supernatural.”
January 11th, 2012 at 5:28 pm
David, I mentioned that CBS buried the show during the lowest viewing times possible. I read but could not confirm that BROKEN BADGES had not been picked up by CBS for its 1990 schedule. But when E.A.R.T.H. FORCE was cancelled after three episodes, CBS tossed this in as an emergency replacement for their Saturday 9pm slot. Is that true?
Poor Ernie Hudson, he was in two of the three Cannell Crazy Cops series. And I got his name wrong in my review. Little editor elves will hopefully magically change the Eddie (paragraph next to his photo) to Ernie. No doubt they will be coming soon to strip me of my proofreading merit badge.
January 11th, 2012 at 6:19 pm
The Ernie error has been rectified.
— Editor Elf in Charge.
PS. I didn’t spot it either!
January 11th, 2012 at 6:04 pm
I really liked UNSUB twenty years ago.
Memory says it was long on forensics, but light on serial killers. They especially stressed crime scene investigation.
It was one of the first TV shows to do heavy scientific sleuthing.
I saw a few episodes oF PALACE GUARD, but they made little impression.
January 12th, 2012 at 11:49 am
As I recall, the 1996 movie MULHOLLAND FALLS (not to be confused with David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE) was also based on the L.A. Hat Squad. I always had the suspicion that Roy Huggins and Stephen Cannell made a secret pact around 1980, in which Huggins passed the sacred flame of TV crime auteur-ship to his sometimes-collaborator Cannell.
January 12th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
11. Fred, You Tube has a clip from an interview with James Garner who tells an interesting story about the writing for THE ROCKFORD FILES and Huggins and Cannell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfCGGfOPZU
If the link is a problem search for:
James Garner on the genesis of “The Rockford Files”-EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG
The clip is around three minutes long.
The web continues to find ways to break this Roy Huggins fanboy “heart.” I need to watch the Archive of American Television interviews with Huggins on You Tube and at the site EmmyTVlegends.org
January 13th, 2012 at 11:38 am
Michael, the two-hour pilot debuted on CBS on November 24, 1990, leading into the 10 pm showing of Cannell’s “Wiseguy,” which by this point was starring Steven Bauer and was on life support. The show moved to 9 pm the following the week and ran through December 22 (the episode you review here), with one preemption (December 15). Regrettably, I don’t have access to the Abbott book, so I don’t know anymore about the show’s pre-air history vis-a-vis the network. I do know that CBS began the season with the following Saturday night lineup: Family Man, Hogan Family, EARTH Force, and 48 Hours — all in all, a disastrous schedule for CBS. Wiseguy was not even on the original fall lineup — Saturday night or elsewhere (no doubt production delays due to the change in leading men). It returned on November 10, 1990, so two weeks before Broken Badges, with a two-parter, and lasted just four more weeks itself (it’s ABC competition was Twin Peaks). I’m sure CBS was hoping to work some double-Cannell magic by pairing Broken Badges and Wiseguy, but obviously wound up failing twice. E.A.R.T.H. Force was indeed a calamitous failure, lasting just six episodes — the first casualty of the 1990-1991 season.
January 14th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Thanks, David.
It really looks like CBS used BROKEN BADGES as filler until they could find something to counter NBC’s GOLDEN GIRLS. It would take too much effort to find out, but I wonder what series CBS sent in January 1991 to die in the Saturday at 9pm(E) time slot.
January 16th, 2012 at 11:29 pm
Michael,
It looks like CBS ran specials and movies in that time period at least through February.
January 21st, 2012 at 10:03 pm
Chuck, thanks.