Remington Steele 2x05 - "Steele Framed"
Dec. 2nd, 2012 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quarter_to_five"Never try to leave me for my own good again!"
OMG that. And OMG Laura's red hat.
But nevermind that, they send an email and later the day is saved with SCIENCE!
It's another one of those zany plots, but with a bit of a dark edge. Ice cream trucks and bank robberies and villains with Rube Goldbergesque revenge plans and tubs of bubbling acid that just sort of stand around there, unguarded in any way, in the middle of the countryside.
Really an excellent villain, come to think of it - batty but competent and nicely motivated. (and he spends the episode one step ahead, for the most part. And gets away with it too. I wonder if he'll come back? No, really, I wonder. It's the 80's, plot-arcs are in the future.)
Lets be honest, it's not a show i'm watching primarily for the plots, but they really do have pretty good ones quite often. The best ones have this kind of over-the-top almost farcical (I love farce) thing going, with lots of multiple identities and people running around and past each other and layers and layers of deceptions and so on.
Anyways, this episode is all about pretenses (even more than usual) and people who are more than what they seem - a cop pretends to be a doofus but he's perfectly competent, and the cops at the sting are all in costume, not just undercover, including the least convincing punk in history. Mildred pretends to be a shrinking violet but cows a bank teller into submission (who I think is like the...maybe fourth person of color with dialogue in the show ever) with her IRS mojo. Even Laura pretends to sell out Steele for a while.
And of course - the villain spends the episode in a series of masks. But the villain isn't acting on his own behalf - he's a front for a dead woman, and he doesn't know that the person he's attacking is a front too. (Interesting gender aside, I guess, two men replaying a conflict that was initially waged between two women.)
Steele is wearing his mask, but for once - it's against his will. He shirks away from broadening his horizons at computer class, but when he does go off to play the detective, he has his horizons broadened when he thinks he's killed a man - and he doesn't like it. (and later he has to use a computer to get back in touch with Laura anyway. Heh. 1980's computers - so adorkable.) The villain drags him through this ordeal - running about in the desert and tubs of acid and all that - that really belongs to someone else: Laura. He could walk away - was already walking away - but he goes through it anyway.
I don't know whether it's for her or because he's punishing himself because he thinks he killed that guy...but the whole episode is surprisingly emotionally raw on Steele in places. I love that he's not super polished all the time, but usually where that polish cracks is when he's goofy or smarmy or a screwup in some capacity. Here he's actually frantic and guilty. It's one of those things that actually could have been done very glamorously, all Manpain mystique, but instead he's mostly really desperate and out of his depth. Hugz!
OMG that. And OMG Laura's red hat.
But nevermind that, they send an email and later the day is saved with SCIENCE!
It's another one of those zany plots, but with a bit of a dark edge. Ice cream trucks and bank robberies and villains with Rube Goldbergesque revenge plans and tubs of bubbling acid that just sort of stand around there, unguarded in any way, in the middle of the countryside.
Really an excellent villain, come to think of it - batty but competent and nicely motivated. (and he spends the episode one step ahead, for the most part. And gets away with it too. I wonder if he'll come back? No, really, I wonder. It's the 80's, plot-arcs are in the future.)
Lets be honest, it's not a show i'm watching primarily for the plots, but they really do have pretty good ones quite often. The best ones have this kind of over-the-top almost farcical (I love farce) thing going, with lots of multiple identities and people running around and past each other and layers and layers of deceptions and so on.
Anyways, this episode is all about pretenses (even more than usual) and people who are more than what they seem - a cop pretends to be a doofus but he's perfectly competent, and the cops at the sting are all in costume, not just undercover, including the least convincing punk in history. Mildred pretends to be a shrinking violet but cows a bank teller into submission (who I think is like the...maybe fourth person of color with dialogue in the show ever) with her IRS mojo. Even Laura pretends to sell out Steele for a while.
And of course - the villain spends the episode in a series of masks. But the villain isn't acting on his own behalf - he's a front for a dead woman, and he doesn't know that the person he's attacking is a front too. (Interesting gender aside, I guess, two men replaying a conflict that was initially waged between two women.)
Steele is wearing his mask, but for once - it's against his will. He shirks away from broadening his horizons at computer class, but when he does go off to play the detective, he has his horizons broadened when he thinks he's killed a man - and he doesn't like it. (and later he has to use a computer to get back in touch with Laura anyway. Heh. 1980's computers - so adorkable.) The villain drags him through this ordeal - running about in the desert and tubs of acid and all that - that really belongs to someone else: Laura. He could walk away - was already walking away - but he goes through it anyway.
I don't know whether it's for her or because he's punishing himself because he thinks he killed that guy...but the whole episode is surprisingly emotionally raw on Steele in places. I love that he's not super polished all the time, but usually where that polish cracks is when he's goofy or smarmy or a screwup in some capacity. Here he's actually frantic and guilty. It's one of those things that actually could have been done very glamorously, all Manpain mystique, but instead he's mostly really desperate and out of his depth. Hugz!
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Date: 2012-12-03 03:57 pm (UTC)