TiVo Lady

Boomer Cop Ladies

If you are on TNT, and you are a Boomer, and you are a Lady Cop, here is what you have to do:  walk around in your underwear, looking quite fab;  be extremely sexual;  solve mysteries real easy;  suffer  secretly;  have no children or husband;  have long, blonde hair and skinny little legs.

This seems to sum up the lives of Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson, played by Kyra Sedgwick, age 43, on The Closer, and Grace Hanadarko, played by Holly Hunter, age 50, on Saving Grace.  (You can even purchase Brenda's lovely black tote bag, snagging a bit of her Boomer magic for yourself!)  Both shows aired their second episodes of the season this week, and both seem to be operating on screenplay autopilot.  

Each one solves difficult mysteries, each one has a handsome/younger boyfriend who's passion is unquestioned.  Brenda suffers from Southern girl insecurity, but she's actually smarter than everybody else around her.  And Grace suffers from priest abuse (boo hoo), plus, she's a Murrah Federal Building survivor/rescuer.  Apparently, it's not enough that she has a Guardian Angel--literally, a guy angel who watches over her and occasionally takes her on instant, international trips.  Nope, now she needs survivor sympathy, like New York survivors of 9/11, only in Oklahoma City, they got there first, in 1995.

I enjoy watching these shows, but I'm getting much less pleasure out of them than I did in their first season, when it was a thrill to watch an older woman star as a successful, semi-ruthless cop.  Now, that's all old hat--and they've been tricked out with Younger-Girl sexual charms and tics, to the point at which they've become interchangeable with any CSI tech or Bones anthropologist or Law & Order lawyer. 

The ho-hum-ness is depressing.

Saving Grace, Disproving Theory

Remember my theory about premieres?  And how they are full of naive hope and charm?  Well, fuggedaboudit.  I just watched my TiVo of Saving Grace, which has successfully disproved that theory. It stars Holly Hunter, in full Cute-though-Cantakerous Mode, and it's hugely annoying.  Maybe TNT shoud rename itself -- The Female Cop Network, Boomer Division -- what with Boomer Hunter playing a dissolute cop in this show, and Kyra Sedgwick doing cop duty on The Closer.

  Don't get me wrong:  I'm thrilled that there's a network show starring a clearly-aging, bona fide Boomer, born in 1958, although she's as skinny as a 12-year-old, and her thinning blonde hair is constantly blowing in a freakish, imaginary wind.  I just resent that they're trying so hard to make her seem way way younger than she really is... (Foolish me!)

We know from the opening moment of the show that Grace really needs to be saved:  she's screwing a married man;  even worse, she smokes!  Then she pops some pills.  She swigs an alcoholic beverage.  She belches!  She's got a slobbery bulldog.  Finally, in case we didn't recognize her acute level of badness, she exposes herself to the drooling peeping-Tom geezer next door.  To top it all off, she gets drunk, drives home -- even though she's a cop -- and runs over a guy before plowing into a sign.  Staggering out of the car, she discovers that the guy is dead.  Next thing we know, a tobacco-chewing Guardian Angel named Earl appears out of nowhere, offering her a chance at redemption.

Um, okay, this will be a Lady Cop Supernatural show?  Or a Bad Girl Turns Good show?  Or what?  See, Earl undoes the whole drunk-driving-murder thing, as if it never happened.  Grace figures that she dreamed all this up, but, being a cop, she discovers blood on her shirt button that's not hers, plus there's sand from the Grand Canyan in her boots, even though she lives in Oklahoma City.  See, Earl manifested them both to a peak in the Grand Canyon, just to prove that he had serious celestial influence.  Grace confronts her brother, who is, quite conveniently, a priest, to find out if a miracle like this could have happened to her.  Um, "No," says the priest.  Apparently, he hasn't watched enough prime time TV on TNT.

On a completely different note, I saw this today, in my neighborhood.

People really are obsessed, aren't they??

(On the other hand, most authors I know would sell their soul--or rat out a guy like Earl--to get just a tiny fraction of the attention that the author of the Book-That-Will-Not-Be-Named gets.)

You could also go here, to make me happy:

www.WhoDoesMore.com