The following are archived comments from December 2017. After looking around, please add your own comments! Links back: Discussion Forum Main Page • Other TV Shows Discussion Forum Archives
Submitted ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaYes I saw that, Mike. As a fan of THE A-TEAM I found it quite fascinating.
Added: December 29 2017 07:01:12 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverInteresting documentary, this fellow from England makes it his mission to hunt down stars and people involved with the production of The A-Team (show from 2006):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0bAZEgF_y0Added: December 28 2017 09:19:34 PM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaGood job on SOSF Mike! There’s a few episodes I want to rewatch and I’ll be referencing your reviews of those episodes. I never saw “The Hard Breed” in its entirety.
Added: December 28 2017 12:43:58 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverThanks, Fred. I didn't bend over backwards to accommodate Hatch ... as far as I was concerned, he was best ignored or treated at the level of other cops in the squad room like Healy, Lessing, Sekulovich, Tanner, etc. That way you could concentrate on the stories, some of which were quite good. I'm glad this is over, and am definitely not going to be doing any other shows to the extent that I "anal-yzed" SOSF -- unless someone wants to subsidize me with a GoFundMe campaign, LOL. My relatively quick writing up Sentinel episodes has been abandoned for the time being, mainly because I started to get a bit too interested in some of the shows, and the fact that one of the discs of the final season which I got from the library is damaged so badly that I cannot watch it. At least I did track down one episode where members of my family were extras, but they are in a crowd at a basketball game (there are two Sentinel episodes with basketball games, actually) and can't be seen ... so far.
Added: December 25 2017 09:16:25 AM
Submitted by: Fred
From: ChatsworthMike,
Great job on the SoSf reviews! My memory was that you had no interest in the series with all the lame "buddy boy" references. But you've did a 180 degree reversal and the series has earned your respect. It's too bad that the series only ran 5 seasons or maybe a blessing as it never had a chance to suffer a 5-O type demise.
Thanks for also creating a one page series ratings page, like 5-O. You have season 2 as the lowest overall season at a respectable 2.83 rating. Season 5, at 2.85, barely ekes out Season 2, which shows that the Hatch for Douglas switch was moderately successful. Season 1 takes the title as your highest overall rated season at 3.02. It's no secret that I hailed Season 1 as my favorite and I probably would have had a higher overall rating.
I know these reviews are time consuming and are a labor of love for you. As a fan, I say thank you for your hard work.Added: December 24 2017 03:06:54 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverI have put up a page with all the SOSF episode ratings, similar to the one I did for Five-O/Zero.
Added: December 24 2017 10:02:09 AM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverI have finished The Streets of San Francisco episode reviews:
http://www.thestreetsofsanfrancisco.info/
I did 4 episodes (the last ones) today!Added: December 23 2017 11:53:11 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverI watched SOSF episode A Trout in the Milk again. Of course, the big question about this show is WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?
This phrase is taken from a quote by Thoreau: "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."
According to some WWW page, "The meaning is that although you did not see the dairy farmer do it, he most probably dipped the milk pail in the stream to water down the product. It’s not direct evidence but a very strong circumstantial case."
But I didn't get this at all when I first heard the phrase! It is quite possible that whoever put the trout in the milk got this trout from somewhere else, like a stream while fishing or the refrigerator or whatever. They didn't have to dip a bucket of milk in a stream.
The meaning of this phrase seems quite appropriate for this episode, because it involves jerking everyone around, both the cops and the viewers of the show.
Stone and Keller are jerked around by the poet Dancy, who sends them on a wild goose chase to a Chinese laundry, saying that is where his daughter lives. I don't understand why Dancy seems to be protective of his daughter's location, because the two of them don't seem to be getting along very well. He even makes up some story about how he was having a homosexual relationship with her boyfriend who people think that she killed, and says that he killed the guy himself!
This is definitely one of the less interesting episodes of the first season, if not the entire series.
Anyway, as previously mentioned, I have re-viewed numerous first season episodes with eight more to go. Check 'em out (link below)!Added: December 21 2017 09:09:50 AM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverMy revision of season one episodes of SOSF is ongoing, so check them out:
http://www.thestreetsofsanfrancisco.info/sosf-1.htm
I am not going to announce every time I put up a revised one...
If I am lucky, I will be finished them by the end of the year.Added: December 14 2017 06:09:16 PM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaOh I forgot “Light My Fire”. That was another favorite of mine from season 2. Of course “Dead Drop” is my favorite!
Added: December 14 2017 12:28:20 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverMore "don't think about it too hard" Sentinel reviews:
S02E13 – Hear No Evil – Jim has wax removed from his ears and experiences a huge improvement in what he can hear, but the sounds are so loud he almost goes crazy. One of the first things he senses is the sound of man falling out of a helicopter. Rushing outside his place, he sees a police helicopter flying up into the sky from where the man's body hit the ground and dropping the body into the harbor. It turns out this body is that of an undercover cop who was looking into dirty dealings by his fellow officers. Blair gives Jim two small earplugs containing white noise generators which make what he can hear more tolerable. Jim has a lot of difficulty convincing Sheila Irwin from Internal Affairs to open an investigation. You may recall he had a big run-in with her before in S02E03. (Sheila is a hot redhead.) They eventually become friends and Jim invites her to his place for dinner. The two of them investigate a cabin in the woods connected with some bad cops, who kidnap Sheila and are going to drop her from a helicopter as well. The last 10 minutes of the show consist of a chase involving two helicopters flying over Vancouver … er … Cascade. Predictably, Sheila is rescued, but Jim looks annoyed later when she introduces him to her fiancé.
S02E14 – Light My Fire – Jim is investigating a series of fires connected with insurance scams where the temperature is an abnormal 5,000 degrees. He is joined by Arson Investigator Deborah Reeves who is very hot (no pun intended). Deborah's father Mitch is an ex-firefighter who is a suspect because of his previous experience with airplane fuel (which burns at a very high temperature), a very peculiar attitude towards fire and the fact that a special firefighting suit he designed was rejected when he tried to get it put into production. But it turns out that it is not Mitch who is the arsonist, who goes by the name Prometheus, but his friend of 25 years, another firefighter named Dan Matson. This becomes obvious when Mitch is killed in a fiery explosion. The big clue which leads to the resolution of the case has to do with a kind of wax used for surfboards that both Mitch and Dan own from many years ago. This wax is called "Hot Sex." At the finale, Jim and Deborah are caught in a blazing building, but they use her father's special suits (which are in the building for some mysterious reason) to help them escape.
S02E15 – Secret – Sorry, this one was horribly complicated, and I have no idea what it was really about. I may watch it again some day. It has something to do with Jim's military past, the CIA, and various other top-secret baloney. At one point, Jim finds himself locked in a prison-like cell with some woman who pretends to be also a captive of the bad guys, but she is working with the baddies and was just put into the cell as a "plant." In other words, she starts out as a babe, and ends as a bitch. Blair gets involved with some professor at the university who is connected with something very conspiratorial (I think).
S02E16 – Dead Drop – Blair finds himself stuck in an elevator with three other people, one of whom is the daughter of the man who owns the multi-story building where the elevator is located. The woman's psycho husband stops the elevator and threatens to drop it down multiple stories, killing everyone inside unless he gets payment of five million dollars deposited to some offshore bank account within an hour. It seems that his brother, who is helping him with his plan, knocked up his wife (the woman in the elevator, who is kindly of babely, though very nervous), and he shoots the brother (but doesn't kill him). The cops turn off the electricity to the building, but that doesn't resolve matters, because hubby left a suitcase in the elevator earlier which contains a bomb that does not rely on the building's power. For some reason, one of the other people in the elevator has an acetylene torch which Blair uses to cut a hole in the floor that they can drop the suitcase through. Using what looks like an electrical cable, Jim lets himself down from the building's roof to the upper floor where Mr. Psycho Husband is micro-managing his evil plan and punches the guy out.Added: December 13 2017 09:35:46 PM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaOut of those 3 I think I only remember “Blind Man’s Bluff”. I think. I’m not even positive on that one. But the synopsis does seem kinda familiar.
Added: December 13 2017 12:34:40 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverThe Sentinel continues!
S02E10 - Second Chance - Maya Carasco, the woman Blair lusted for in S01E08, returns to Cascade, and Jim and Blair are assigned to watch over her. She wants to take the money her gunrunner father accumulated and do something nice with it, but some bad guys almost immediately kidnap her, with the intention of keeping the money for themselves. Maya's uncle Gustavo, the only person in her family she can trust, get involved in the search for her, but things get complicated, because one of the kidnappers is Gustavo's son, who he hates. The money is in a bank account which can only be accessed with special codes that Gustavo manages to get from Maya's father who is in a local high-security jail (I thought for a moment that he was in a jail in his native Chile, which would drag the story out quite bit). At the end, Gustavo takes control of the situation, overriding even the cops. After Maya is rescued, she leaves town, and Blair is sad.
S02E11 - Black or White - Churches attended by black worshippers in Cascade are being bombed by the Aryan Warriors Command, a right-wing skinhead organization who have a connection to some ex-military types. There are 9 of these churches in Cascade! The cops work with Candace Blake, a local woman who was once a cop and now is a vocal opponent of the racists. Of course, she gets kidnapped by the bad guys and almost blown up at the end. Captain Joel Taggart of the bomb squad has difficulty defusing some of the explosives because he has been seriously rattled by a situation in the past where he barely escaped with his life. Considering the seriousness of the subject matter, the mindless chit-chat from Blair and Jim at the beginning and end of the show about their love life seems kind of inappropriate. As well, the crackpots in this show seem kind of sanitized; there is no use of the "N" word, for example. Compare this to a show in the late 80's reboot of Mission Impossible: http://www.missionimpossible1988-1990.com/mi88-2.html#8
S02E12 - Blind Man's Bluff - A young girl jumps off a dam to her death after ingesting the current designer drug called "Golden" which is plaguing Cascade. The cops want to find who is making and distributing this stuff. Jim poses as someone with connections to the big drug kingpin, but, for some stupid reason, accidentally sniffs some Golden, which totally screws up his senses and makes him near-blind. His vision is reduced to this bright yellow and orange light like he is staring directly at the sun. At one point, he meets with the distributors, and it looks like he drove to meet these people in his truck! Don't ask me how he did this, his ability to get around, perhaps using his other senses, seems to be kind of a pick-and-choose thing depending on the writers' mood. Jim's efforts are screwed up by the father of the suicidal girl at the beginning of the show who doesn't realize that Jim is a cop. Blair eats a pizza which the baddies have sent to the cops "in appreciation" which is totally laced with Golden. As a result, he goes beserk in the police garage but Jim manages to calm him down. At the end, the bad guys' warehouse is surrounded and they are busted. Jim's senses miraculously are almost back to normal when he makes the final arrest.
By the way, I have to mention that the music in this show is at times unbelievably bad. It is the worst kind of synthesized garbage, used over and over.
As well, it is amazing in how many of the recent shows I have seen it is raining, sometimes like hell ... well, it IS Vancouver!Added: December 12 2017 03:42:04 PM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaYep I remember the Leigh Taylor Young episode and the car jacking ring. I agree that it’s a pretty forgettable episode, especially since the car jacking story becomes almost secondary to the whole thing with Blair’s hot momma.
Added: December 12 2017 01:20:13 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverThe Sentinel - S02E09 - Spare Parts
This episode is stupid. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it inspired the writers of Five-Zero, since it is a two-for-one show with a crime of the week as well as some "family" baloney.
The COTW has to do with some car-jackers who are stealing luxury vehicles like a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce. Jim and Blair become part of this "team" which already consists of a leggy blonde (the default babe) and some hothead.
BUT ... the plot is complicated by the presence of Blair's MOTHER Naomi, played by Leigh Taylor-Young, who can give Blondie a major run for the money in the "babe" department, since she is a real "hot momma." Jim gets goo-goo eyes over her, telling Blair that his mother is a "very attractive woman" which prompts Blair to tell him to take a cold shower.
Mommy Dearest is described as "one of the original hippies [who] lived with Timothy Leary," and she is on her way to a spiritual retreat (no doubt on Saltspring Island -- this is an in-joke for people in Vancouver, where the show was filmed). She crashes at Jim's place where her son also lives, which causes Jim some concern, because he likes being able to belch and throw his underwear on the floor without someone getting excited.
Trying to accept Naomi as a New Age type is almost impossible, because instead of being a stereotypical amorphous granola-chomping pot-smoking woman with grey hair in a ponytail who wears granny glasses, a lumberjack shirt and jeans, she is a totally gorgeous ditzy socialite type.
The writers try very hard to make her a child of the sixties, throwing in expressions like "harmonic convergence" and "negative energy," having her do yoga for up to five hours and saying she used to be "demonstrating against the tyranny of the pigs [i.e., the cops]," not to mention burning sage to get of bad vibes at Jim's place, but none of it works!
As if this isn't bad enough, Naomi meddles in the car-jacking investigation and joins with her son and Jim to help take down the bad guys.
I see by looking at IMDb that she will be appearing twice more on the show. I thought it was bad enough that in one of the previous shows I have seen so far, Blair had a pet monkey which trashed Jim's place, though the monkey was not seen. I am dreading seeing this monkey in person in a future episode, as well as Naomi.Added: December 12 2017 09:37:11 AM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaSpeaking of Udo Kier again, I think they missed a bet by not casting him on “24” which had some fantastic villains!! He could have easily played some type of foreign evil mastermind. Cochran, Gordon, Surnow, Loceff really knew what made their show tick (no pun intended).
Added: December 11 2017 06:07:33 PM
Submitted by: Janet
From: CaliforniaHi.
This is about Streets, Once a con.I lived in both SF and near Camino. Camino is a small town, known for apples.
That prison where Walter was, is very obviously fictitious. Many great shows do this, a way to mention or honor, a person or town.
No way they drove a prisoner that far, every night.
About Jackie, yes, we all thought that.
I could see it a mile away. Of course, it was lesbian. No possible way otherwise.
Interesting how Streets is doing this, twice in one season.Added: December 11 2017 02:52:29 PM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaI don’t remember the others but I recall the one with Udo Kier, just because he’s such a sinister looking dude!
Added: December 11 2017 11:05:35 AM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverMore Sentinel!
S02E05 - Payback - A gang war between bikers and the local Yakuza is imminent. The cops get the two groups together for a "summit meeting" which doesn't go well when one of the bikers dies from a poisoned drink. The episode's babe is Mia Korf playing Akiko Keno, the lawyer for Kenji Kadama, the Yakuza boss. Jim is disturbed to discover that she is actually an FBI undercover agent who sleeps with Kenji as part of her cover.
S02E06 - True Crime - Jim and Blair have to put up with an annoying reality TV show with the same name as the title of the episode, which is following them around while they are working on a string of bank robberies and interfering with what they are doing. The reporter for this show is Wendy Hawthorne (Elizabeth Mitchell, a babe), who makes a lot of noise about freedom of the press and similar issues. One of the crooks is played by Walton Goggins. Wendy's cameraman Connor (Scott Clevendon) gets over his head with the other bad guys after he finds a phone which Goggins dropped at the scene of a crime as he was being arrested.
S02E07 - Ice Man - I couldn't follow this show too easily, mainly because a lot of it takes place in discos where the music is mixed so loudly you can hardly hear the dialogue. A German-accented hitman played by the sinister Udo Kier is hunting down some guy and the only way he can access this guy is via a prostitute (Amber, played by Meredith Salenger, a babe) who has this guy as a regular customer. Amber is simultaneously studying medicine at university, which makes her of interest to Blair.
S02E08 - The Rig - After a worker on an oil rig (Carlos Rota, Chloe's husband Morris on "24") off the coast of Washington is killed, Jim and Blair are asked to investigate. (Such a locale is extremely unlikely; according to a 2010 newspaper article, "Washington state sits on no known oil reserves, and no oil rigs dot its coast.") They arrive in a helicopter piloted by Maggie Bryce (Stephanie Niznik) just as a huge storm is about to hit the place. Jim and Blair have a tough time with the tight-knit group of workers on the rig, and the boss of the place, Ben Crilly (Tim Thomerson) is trying to cover up the discovery of a shipload of chemical weapons at the bottom of the ocean which he and others intend to sell to the highest bidder. Maggie is a babe, but she turns into a villain, since she is working in cahoots with Crilly. Football star Bo Jackson stars as a former convinct who Jim busted; he helps Jim out in a pinch. The Coast Guard arrives to save the day at the end of the show thanks to some radio calls Blair made which he thought did not get through.Added: December 10 2017 08:52:50 PM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: Philadelphia“Reunion” is definitely one that stands out from those 4 and is one of the best of season 2 (aside from “Dead Drop”). Always loved the “small-town crooked sheriff/chief” storyline in so many of these shows. Banks being framed for murder and trapped in a building ratchets up the tension.
I have very vague memories of the other 3, though I recall “Flight” more than the other 2. Jim is back in the jungles of Peru and Kai Wulff as I recall plays the bad guy. He always played German baddies (including twice on KNIGHT RIDER).Added: December 10 2017 08:10:08 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverSentinel viewing continues:
S02E01 - Flight - Jim and Blair accompany Simon, their boss, on a trip to Peru, where he will take part in an anti-drug conference. On their day off, Simon and his son are off to do some fishing, when their helicopter is destroyed by guerrillas and they are captured. Jim and Blair have to parachute out of a plane into the primeval forest where they manage to track down their pals and deal with their captors, who are enslaving the local indigeous types to work in a cocaine-producing lab under the guise of being a forestry company. The babe quotient is fulfilled by a woman who is studying the natives that they run into in the middle of the jungle. Some of this show is stupid. Jim has his typical North American clothes on, then he suddenly reverts to using his magical powers and he is running around with a headband, camouflage-like makeup and the kind of clothing he wore in the jungle years ago with no explanation.
S02E02 - Out of the Past - A 30ish female pop star, perhaps modelled on Tina Turner, is being stalked by a psycho who recently escaped from a prison van which crashed. This psycho is obsessed by the singer and was actually involved romantically with her in the past. He also has contact with the singer's young daughter. Jim and Blair are assigned to watch over the two of them, but things get complicated when the singer thinks that her former nutbar boyfriend wants to re-establish a "family." The psycho meets a particularly appropriate end.
S02E03 - Deep Water - Jim has to look into the case of his partner from a few years back who went missing under mysterious circumstances with the implication that Jim profited big time from this. There are some flashback scenes which show Richard Burgi sporting a John Beck-like moustache. Back then, Jim was "doing it" with his partner's wife (hot babe #1) and he doesn't want to expose this part of her life in his current testimony. (There are some steamy flashback scenes with the two of them.) Jim has to deal with Internal Affairs where the lead investigator is a harsh bitch (hot babe #2).
S02E04 - Reunion - Jim and Blair are off on another trip with Simon, this time to his high school reunion. The police chief in the town is a nasty bastard who moonlights for the local mill which is suspected of environmental contamination. A woman that Simon was chummy with back then (default cute babe) is a whistlerblower regarding this, and the local chief sets Simon up to make it look like he murdered her. Jim and Blair are supposed to be off kayaking in the nearby wilderness, but they return to town to investigate, which is made difficult not only by the local chief but also his minions. When Simon hides in the heating vents of the hotel where he is trying to escape, the local cops' solution is to increase the temperature. When that doesn't work, they start to burn the place down! I was surprised that the nasty cops didn't try to make an issue of the fact that Simon is black and his old girl friend was white, but maybe attitudes are kind of liberal because, after all, this takes place in Washington State.Added: December 10 2017 09:24:22 AM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaVIPER was a good show to pass the time but I wasn’t exactly crazy about it. So I definitely won’t be jumping to get it. THE SENTINEL was a better show and I’m not even looking to own that one. But I always did love that Dodge Viper!! Snazzy car!! Ultimately it seemed like the show was trying to be a KNIGHT RIDER for the 90s (or at least that’s how I viewed it), but it just lacked the charm and novelty of KR which was my favorite show at the time. I own all 4 seasons of KR which I don’t watch all that much - it’s pretty cheesy, though my little nieces love it lol, of course (they love KITT).
Added: December 09 2017 04:46:43 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverRingfire, you may be interested to learn that Viper (the complete series plus the pilot episode) was released YESTERDAY, December 8th. It isn't showing up on amazon.com or .ca yet, though.
You could order it from the company who make it, who are based in Canada, actually: https://www.visualentertainment.tv/
But the shipping charges to the USA are ridiculous, and the ones within Canada are not particularly cheap either.
I dunno if I want to get interested in this show, it sounds like the premise would be even harder to take than that of The Sentinel.
It was partially filmed in Canada. The first season was done in Southern California, the second in Calgary, and the final two seasons were done in Vancouver.Added: December 09 2017 02:35:20 PM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaI can’t recall the rest of those episodes but I do remember “Vow of Silence” with the monks. Lawrence Pressman (Why Wait Till Uncle Kevin Dies?) guest stars in that one. Along with John Pleshette (cousin of Suzanne) and Brandon Maggart (Garrett’s father).
I’m aware of the Bruce and Danny Bilson connection. They both also worked on the 90s car-of-the-future action show VIPER (probably also shot in Canada), the star of which was Jeff Kaake (a guest in one of the SENTINELs you just reviewed). Danny Bilson also has a daughter actress Rachel Bilson.Added: December 08 2017 08:50:03 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverFinishing season one of The Sentinel...
S01E09 - Attraction - While investigating a series of diamond robberies, Jim gets serious hot pants for a woman named Laura who is actually one of the robbers. Her pheromones interfere with his "special powers." Some of the scenes are kind of steamy, suggesting they "do it like monkeys," though Laura keeps her bra and panties on throughout -- after all, this is 1996.
S01E10 - Vow of Silence - Jim and Blair go to a monastery for a relaxing vacation, but Jim cannot adjust to living without his cel phone (a 1990s style flip phone with antenna, by the way), his Walkman and his gun. One of the other people at the monastery is a guy who was using the place sort of like the Witness Protection Program. Unfortunately, another person there is a hitman who is after him. After a couple of the monks are knocked off, Jim overrides the Father Superior boss and starts investigating.
By the way, one of the co-creators of this show is Danny Bilson, who is the son of Bruce Bilson, who directed several episodes of Five-O ... and also directed 11 episodes of The Sentinel, when he was around 70 years old. The Five-O shows he did were:
The Young Assassins
A Gun for McGarrett
Small Witness, Large Crime
McGarrett is Missing
Sing a Song of Suspense
Retire in Sunny Hawaii -- Forever
Legacy of Terror
Heads, You're Dead
Yes, My Deadly DaughterAdded: December 08 2017 05:34:47 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverMore Sentinel stuff:
S01E03 - Killers - Jim identifies this guy who killed a fellow cop by seeing him from 200 yards away (this guy has an Irish accent but looks kind of Chinese). Of course, when they bust this guy and the case goes to court, Jim is ridiculed that he can identify someone at such a distance and the case is thrown out. They eventually bust the guy using other means.
S01E04 - The Debt - This episode had something to do with black gangs. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to it. Considering the show was made about 20 years ago, I had a good laugh. I figured since they were trying to make Vancouver look like a typical American city with a ghetto, they must have hired just about every black person who was living in Vancouver at the time to be extras.
S01E05 - Cypher - A serial killer murders people and assumes their identities, including that of Blair!! Not only that, this killer infiltrates the police department and sits in on meetings that Jim, Blair and the Chief are having. Since one of the killer's victims was a woman, some sleazy news reporter suggests that the killer might be "a transvestite." Kelly Hu, who got "blowed up real good" on Five-Zero, plays Blair's hot Asian girl friend in this show.
S01E06 - Night Train - A convict who is making a deal to testify (then go into Witness Protection, etc.) has to be brought to Cascade by train because if he flies, his ear condition will make his life a living hell. This is kind of a wacky premise for a show, but not as wacky as what happens when Jim, who is assigned to guard this guy, is thrown out a window on the moving train and manages to hang on to the stuff under the train and eventually get to the last car where he pulls himself up and gets back into action. The prisoner is accompanied by his lawyer, a woman who is mega-hot; the actress later became the wife of Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo who was on an early episode of Five-Zero.
S01E07 - Rogue - Some ex-CIA dude spreads deadly gas into one of Blair's anthropology classes to distract university security from him stealing a vial of Ebola virus from a medical building. He uses this virus to blackmail people so he can get the services of Jim to help him steal this super-secret airplane.
S01E08 - Love and Guns - This show has a "Central American" connection with some bad guy who is a gunrunner. Blair falls in love with this guy's cute daughter, which makes things very complicated.
One thing that is interesting about The Sentinel is that pretty well each show stars some babe who is very good looking; even Jim's ex-wife isn't a sore sight for the eyes!Added: December 08 2017 09:15:13 AM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaMike, I’m glad you’re enjoying these. I haven’t seen those 2 episodes in ages but remember both being excellent, especially “The Siege” at the police station. That’s probably the best one from season 1. You’re right about the action - it’s excellent, like watching a mini-action movie on a weekly basis. The production values are very good, for 90s TV. Richard Burgi also does a very good job in the role. I was never a big fantasy/sci-fi guy so it’s all the better that the show focuses more on crime-solving and action and less on various paranormal or sci-fi stuff that you might have expected from a show like this. The “heightened senses” gimmick is about as far as it goes into sci-fi territory. The remainder is just good old fashioned police work. Just the way I like it! Yes Molly Parker was the first baddie on the show (a woman!) and I’ve seen her more recently on Netflix’s HOUSE OF CARDS where she plays the cold b!tchy type quite well.
Added: December 07 2017 06:28:08 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverI watched the first two Sentinel shows yesterday. I thought that the gimmick in the show -- Jim Ellison has these supernatural powers which he picked up living in the jungles of Peru -- would be problematic, but it was not. What appealed to me was the mindless action in these shows.
In the first one, the pilot, there is a huge explosion caused by this mad bomber (actually a woman) who is upset because her father was one of the US military types who were stranded in the jungle with Ellison. The father died, and she figures he was responsible for the old man's death in some way.
The bomber is played by Molly Parker, who was one of the stars of Deadwood and has been in a lot of other films and TV shows. Not only that, she was born in the same Canadian town where I grew up when I was a kid!
There is another incredible explosion near the end of the show which takes a very large piece out of the Granville Street Bridge in Vancouver, a major local thoroughfare (all done with CGI).
In the second show, this group of paramilitary types led by some paramilitary crackpot invade the police station and take it over, sending many of the cops on a false alarm to a plane crash which never happened. The people that remain are taken hostage, including the son of the police chief, who is one of the show's major characters.
There are several mind-boggling stunts during this show, like when Ellison is holding on to a helicopter containing the bad guys' leader who is trying to escape. It flies all over Vancouver (or the fictional city of Cascade, Washington) with at one point Mr. Bad Guy hanging on to Ellison's pant leg.
I hope that Ellison will eventually learn to use his mysterious powers more carefully. In one scene he cranks up his hearing so he can listen to something that is happening in the police building where everyone is under siege, and a guy honks his horn quite close by which almost causes Ellison's head to explode!Added: December 06 2017 03:25:13 PM
Submitted by: Jason C.
From: La Verne, CAI agree with Mike that the First Day of Forever and 45 Minutes from Home are good shows. I always thought Loren Graham's leg injury healed awfully quick in the "First Day of Forever". For having been hit by a car at the start of the show he was sure able to move up the stairs with Keller in close pursuit very well! LOL. Still, these are two strong first season shows. Glad to see Mike went back to rate the 1st season!
Added: December 05 2017 09:30:19 AM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaI like THE SENTINEL title sequence just fine. It gives a quick rundown of what the show is about. “In the jungles of Peru the fight for survival heightened his senses... seeing before others can, sensing what others can’t”. The music isn’t like Predator because, well, this isn’t Predator lol. BTW I like Predator too, as well as Silvestri’s score. It’s even better than some of Maurice Jarre’s scores :p
A favorite episode of mine is from season 2 called “Dead Drop”. Rex Smith (TV’s “Street Hawk”) plays this extortionist who rigs an elevator filled with people to drop so many floors unless his money demands are met. Yes my guess is they got this idea from the opening of 1994’s SPEED (a favorite of mine).Added: December 04 2017 09:49:34 AM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverI watched the pilot episode of Cannon yesterday.
It starts out with this incomprehensible sequence of events which basically tells us "some guy got killed." This guy is a Korean war buddy of Cannon, and his wife, played by Vera Miles, writes to Cannon, who reads her message when he gets back into the country after being away for a couple of months.
He comes to see her, where she runs a motel in this rinky-dink town in New Mexico which sounds like the legendary Phenix City on the border of Alabama and Georgia, once a cesspool of vice and corruption. The cops in this town are mostly assholes, with the exception of the sheriff, played by J.D. Cannon (sic), who is sort of OK, but has issues, and Barry Sullivan, who is the honest lone wolf among the other cops who are just as sleazy as the townspeople, including those played by Earl Holliman and Norman Alden.
Cannon has to deal with the usual cowboy redneck types who consider him to be the worst kind of "stranger" in town and who have already condemned Vera for being the prime suspect in the murder of her husband. Lynda Day George is J.D. Cannon's wife. Near the end when Cannon comes to her house, she calls her sheriff husband, rips off her clothes and smashes up some things with the intention of giving the impression of being raped, which J.D. will not take to kindly to, being the very jealous type.
I couldn't figure out the logic of "who did it" in this show at all, at least with one viewing, and I don't intend to make another one. Someone at IMDb reviewing the show also had words to the effect that the plot was "confusing."
I thought maybe I would have better luck with the next episode, which is a goddamn RODEO episode (Cannon looks into why some money was stolen from the rodeo, according to the IMDb description). While the locale of this show seems a little more intelligent than other rodeo episodes I have seen like those in San Francisco and Hawaii, I said no thanks to this one!
Maybe I will try a couple of other Cannon episodes later...
The music in this pilot and the rodeo show is by John Parker, who scored a lot of episodes of Dallas, and Trapper John M.D. The continual use of the tuba playing Cannon's theme gets kind of annoying after a while (remember the kids' piece called "Tubby the Tuba"?). Since Cannon is a Quinn Martin production, some of the other episodes are scored by people like Patrick Williams, Tom Scott, Robert Drasnin, Duane Tatro, etc.
I liked the car which Cannon drove in this show, which is bigger than Cannon's appetite. But it gets all smashed up at the beginning of the episode! Cannon's efforts to defend himself from a crowd of rednecks in a bar is pretty amusing. Unfortunately, they seem to use dreaded process shots when people are driving in some scenes.Added: December 04 2017 09:46:01 AM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverI am NOT going to do a page for The Sentinel, I will just binge-watch it. The main title for this show strikes me as VERY lame. It starts out with a scene of Burgi in the jungle, which brought to mind Predator, a favorite movie. I was expecting this scene to have some dynamic thunka-thunka music like Alan Silvestri's score for the film, but instead the music is VERY low-key and the announcer gives us the basic facts about Burgi's "condition" in this really subdued way. And they used this main title for every episode of the show!
Added: December 03 2017 11:45:27 AM
Submitted by: ringfire211
From: PhiladelphiaI used to watch THE SENTINEL back in the 90s when it was on. It really was one of the best shows of the 90s. I was in high school back then and I used to watch WALKER and SENTINEL religiously. I recently caught an episode on a local channel (it’s also on Dailymotion) and was surprised by how well it still holds up. It’s a great show! You should definitely check it out. Richard Burgi was in another short-lived show during that time (actually just before THE SENTINEL) with Cheryl Ladd called ONE WEST WAIKIKI. She was an M.E. and he was a cop and as far as I know it was filmed in Hawaii. Though perhaps not entirely. Not sure. It only ran one season and I only caught one or two episodes.
Another excellent 90s show was COBRA, with Michael Dudikoff as the crime fighter in his cool red Shelby Cobra and James Tolkan as his bald-headed boss and head of the “Cobra” organization. That was an awesome show with a killer opening theme. You can find it on YouTube. It only ran for one season 1993-1994 and was also filmed in Canada I believe. 24 and Five-Zero director Brad Turner directed a number of episodes. It’s actually available on DVD and a few years back I rented the DVDs from Netflix and watched all the episodes. It was a great nostalgia kick!Added: December 01 2017 11:35:49 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverI have reviewed the SOSF pilot episode:
http://thestreetsofsanfrancisco.info/sosf-pilot.htmAdded: December 01 2017 02:16:12 PM
Submitted by: Mr. Mike
From: VancouverDon't laugh, I was in the library downtown the other day looking through the TV DVD section. They seem to have purchased the entire series of Cannon. The packaging for this show has horrible puns like "Tipping the scales of justice, one case at a time" and I'm sure there are others like "Throwing his weight around." Anyway, I got the first season, so I can at least watch some of these episodes, which I don't consciously recall ever seeing before. But don't put any money on my doing a site for this series, even though I don't know if there already is one (I think not).
There was another show there that piqued my interest. It is called The Sentinel. It starts Richard Burgi, who played rogue Federal Agent Novak in S04E22 of Five-Zero where the plot was "Cyber-criminal Ian Wright holds Grover's daughter hostage and demands that Grover help him out with a multi-million dollar heist. Meanwhile, Wo Fat escapes from maximum security in Colorado." (This was an extremely bad episode.)
This series lasted from 1996 to 1999 and after its third season, when it was supposed to be cancelled, there was a huge outpouring of fan response, so much so that they made a fourth season of only 8 episodes to provide the show with some closure.
According to Wikipedia, this is what the show is about:
Jim Ellison was a US Army Ranger who spent 18 months in the Peruvian jungle after the rest of his unit was killed. He developed hyperacute senses from surviving in the wild, but repressed them when he returned to civilization. His sensory abilities re-manifested five years later, while conducting an extended stakeout in the forest as a detective in the Major Crimes Unit of the Cascade, Washington, police department. He went to a hospital for an examination where he met Blair Sandburg, an anthropologist from Rainier University, whom Ellison initially mistook for a physician. Upon hearing Ellison's story, Sandburg declares that Ellison is a "Sentinel": in ancient tribes, Sentinels used their enhanced senses to protect their village. For Jim, Cascade is his village. Blair had been studying Sentinel mythology for years. While he found many individuals with one or two hyperactive senses, he had never before found a person with all five senses enhanced, a "true" Sentinel. Blair helps Jim control his senses and joins Jim as a police observer. Their unlikely partnership works, and together they fight crime in the streets of Cascade. The only person aside from Sandburg who knows Jim's secret is his captain and friend, Simon Banks.
Like about 90% of the shows on TV these days, this one was made here in VANCOUVER. Not only that, my wife was an extra in 2 or 3 episodes, as I recall.
I am intrigued by this show, because it has been sporadically available on DVD prior to its official release. But I dunno if I seriously want to be interested in it, because the premise of it is "purty dumb," to say the least. I sure as hell am not going to do "ratings" for the show. Instead, I will just do paragraph summaries like I did with Peter Gunn -- assuming I do it at all.Added: December 01 2017 09:06:23 AM
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