Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here. Hercules and I decided to have a brief summit meeting this evening about the great work he's done here on COAX lately. We met at Olympus, where Herc was good enough to provide some sweet ambrosia served by lovely frolicsome wenches. How the hell you advertise for "frolicsome wenches" is beyond me, but he's a god... he's got the hook-up. As he often does, he tried to convince me to watch a new show or two. This is a man who advocates for TV in a serious way. In addition to discussing tonight's return to the air by NOW & AGAIN, he's got a bit to say about why the show's worth catching overall. Enjoy.
“Now and Again” is so good you’ll forget you’re
watching CBS!
What’s something as fabulously and entertainingly
inventive as THIS -- comedy genius Glenn Gordon
Caron’s first TV series since the groundbreaking
late-1980s juggernaut “Moonlighting” -- doing on the
same channel as “Nash Bridges,” “Becker,” and “Walker
Texas Ranger?”
No matter. I’ve waited seven years for “Now and
Again,” and having to remember which channel carries
the Tiffany Network is a small price to pay for fun of
this caliber.
Why seven years?
Because “Now and Again” is the REAL “Lois & Clark.”
The GOOD “Lois and Clark.” The “Lois and Clark” we
were promised SEVEN YEARS AGO, when the crack ABC
marketeers (God love ‘em) promoted it to press and
public alike as -- “‘Superman’ crossed with
‘Moonlighting.’”
“Lois” creator Deborah Joy Levine’s spirit was
willing, but her ability to emulate Caron’s precision
characterization and dialogue was THE weakest. 1993’s
“Lois & Clark” played more like “Superman” crossed
with “Hart to Hart” or “I Dream of Jeannie.”
“Now and Again’s” premise, recounted at the start of
every episode, is that fortysomething insurance
executive Michael Wiseman’s body was obliterated by a
speeding subway train, and his brain was salvaged and
implanted by government scientists into a man-made
genetically-engineered 26-year-old superbody. “The
only catch is,” the announcer points out each week,
“under penalty of death, he can let no one from his
past know he is still alive. And that, my friends, is
a problem, because this man is desperately in love
with his wife, his daughter, and his former life.”
One of the adjectives most often associated with the
“Now and Again” is “original,” and perhaps the most
original aspect of the show is that it’s really two
shows set in the same universe.
The first show each week deals with Wiseman (Eric
Close) and his brainy, imperious creator (the
scene-stealing Dennis Haysbert) as they solve crimes,
undertake government missions, and generally keep the
world safe.
The second show each week deals with Wiseman’s wife
Lisa (Margaret Colin) and daughter Heather (“Welcome
to the Dollhouse’s” Heather Matarazzo), two bright,
witty and vulnerable young women who suddenly find
themselves trying to carry on following the “demise”
of the man they both love.
Coincidences and other circumstances cause Wiseman to
cross paths with his wife from time to time, but
mostly they are forced to long for each other from
separate corners. While Wiseman deals with mad
scientists and supervillains in Manhattan, Lisa very
separately sorts out insurance matters and pursues a
career as a real estate agent in the city’s suburbs.
For a rundown of all of the Wisemans’ adventures to
date, go here!
Caron, who is said to have a hand in all the
scripting, keeps everyone’s storyline lively. As one
might expect, he has little difficulty getting the
“Moonlighting” end of the “Moonlighting” meets
“Superman” equation right. And it’s a tribute to his
craftsmanship that Lisa’s suburban adventures are
absolutely no less compelling than Wiseman’s big-city
superheroics.
Wiseman has the Last Son of Krypton’s super-strength,
super-agility, and super-speed, but also turns out to
be something of a super-wise-ass, with dialogue much
closer to that of Bruce Willis’ David Addison than
Dean Cain’s Clark Kent. Witness:
“Hey, the regular teacher’s back!” Wiseman greeted
Haysbert last week, well in earshot of the bald,
humorless and overdemanding government agent
temporarily assigned to him. “Good thing, too -- none
of the kids liked the substitute!”
The real star of the show, though, is the guy who put
Wiseman back together again. Haysbert’s Dr. Theodore
Morris is Wiseman’s superb foil, part Lex Luthor, part
Don King, and part Oscar Wilde.
A lot of what drives the fascinating relationship
shared by Morris and Wiseman can be traced back to
episode one, when Morris had a conversation with
Wiseman's’ disembodied brain. Morris gave Wiseman a
choice. Wiseman could a) agree to all of Morris’s
demands and have his brain transplanted into a new
body -- or b) decline, at which point his brain would
be disconnected from the speakers, cameras and oxygen
and tossed into the nearest garbage pail. Wiseman’s
brain decided to go with the new body.
Morris sees Wiseman as little more than a lab animal;
he not only deprives Wiseman of contact with his loved
ones, he insists that his guinea pig maintain a
Spartan lifestyle: Wiseman is confined to quarters,
forced to subsist on a bland, carefully regulated
diet, and until last week was deprived of all
knowledge of the outside world: newspapers, radio,
television. (Despite his superpowers, Wiseman can’t
flee his stifling world because his keepers have
installed something akin to a lo-jack in his skull.)
Still, Morris seems in recent episodes to have
promoted Wiseman from lab rat to pet mouse, even
granting his bored-silly experiment permission to
read. I laughed aloud as Morris indulged a bit of
selfishness even as he tried for once to play
good-hearted humanitarian: “I have some Grisham in
here and some, um, ‘Gray’s Anatomy.’ Uh, it was just
there and I – I’ll – I’ll keep this.”
Caron also seems to have no difficulty marrying comedy
with clever, thought-provoking science fiction. The
first three episodes featured an eye-opening subplot
about a meek-looking Asian man who engineered a reign
of terror with raw eggs: eggs, which when cracked,
turned all nearby human beings into messy lumps of
bleeding tissue.
(Sounds like an “Ain’t-It-Cool” kind of series, yes?
“Now and Again” should not be confused – but always is
– with “Once and Again,” ABC’s Sela Ward series from
the creators of “thirtysomething.” “Once and Again”
has yet to reduce an entire subway train of commuters
to screaming piles of bleeding flesh.)
Another great episode involved a pharmacist who had
invented a serum that made people utterly fearless,
causing them to do all sorts of insanely fearless
things. Wiseman barely arrived in time to stop the
druggist from dumping the solution into the city’s
water supply.
More recently, Wiseman and Morris tracked down
Wiseman’s long-lost prototype, a superman who escaped
the government, indulged some plastic surgery, and
established himself as a world-famous (not to say
undefeated) heavyweight boxing champion.
Last week, the show depicted a world in which
microscopic, self-replicating robots of Morris’ design
escaped and managed to throw civilization into chaos
-- by eating away all of the world’s ink, reducing all
books, love notes and money to blank paper.
Tonight’s episode, “The Bugmeister,” is an okay
installment with a killer ending. (Spoilers beyond.)
It begins as a man is pursued through an office
building by a bee. Within minutes he is stung and
collapses dead upon an escalator.
When a mosquito enters Wiseman’s room, Morris is
thrown into a panic. When Wiseman kills it, Morris
orders the superman’s hands wrapped in plastic. On
the way to a lab, Morris explains to Wiseman that
there has been an epidemic of deadly attacks by “out
of season” insects and he wants the mosquito’s corpse
analyzed.
Meanwhile, Heather visits a New York museum, where she
is taunted by classmates over a failed romance, but
soon meets a charming entomologist named Stanley Bing.
Morris gets a call telling him there is nothing
unusual about Wiseman’s mosquito. Wiseman, recently
allowed reading privileges, relates that the paper is
calling the insect attacks an outbreak of
“white-collar cholera,” because all the victims had
white-collar jobs. Morris dismisses the moniker as
ridiculous. “It’s not as if they check your tax
returns before they attack.”
The next day, Heather decides to revisit the
entomologist. As he shows her his lab, she learns he
is bitter about new breeds of crops that repel and/or
kill bugs.
Bing’s benefactor, unhappy that Bing’s new report
categorizes his corporation’s agricultural methods as
ecologically unsound, cuts off Bing’s funding. That
night, the ex-benefactor’s bed is swarmed by thousands
of ants which promptly devour him.
Heather’s school nurse calls Lisa to see how Heather
is feeling. Lisa has no idea what the nurse is
talking about.
On orders of the Pentagon, Morris and Wiseman meet
with city officials baffled by the insect attacks.
They learn more than 100 New Yorkers have lost their
lives to these attacks, including the CEO of a
pesticide manufacturer, a member of the board of
directors of a chain of bait and tackle shops, and a
city official who ordered a spraying of Malathion.
Morris suggests that the specificity of the attacks
indicates a human being is behind the bugs’ behavior.
Anxious to collect a specimen of these killer bugs,
Morris suggests they might attract one if they
“declare war.”
Morris installs Wiseman in the deputy mayor’s office
and advises him not to destroy any bugs that might
attack him. We then learn that a newspaper with the
page-filling headline “DEPUTY MAYOR DECLARES WAR ON
BUGS!!!” just hit the street.
Back in the suburbs, Lisa grounds Heather for missing
school for three days.
Michael, asleep in the deputy mayor’s chair, awakens
to find a bee stalking him. The bee flees for its
life, and Wiseman chases it through city hall and onto
the roof. Wiseman grabs the bug, but we see in an
episode-closing freeze-frame that Wiseman, who does
NOT share Superman’s flying ability, has just stepped
off the roof of a skyscraper.
Tonight’s is the first of three new episodes CBS has
yet to air. Stay Tuned.
I warn you not to defy me!
I am -- Hercules!
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