WISEGUY: THE WISEST GUYS AND GALS IN TELEVISION HISTORY

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This is an homage to Stephen J. Cannell and to Ken Wahl, aka Vinnie Terranova.

I started watching television in 1988, when I was 34 years old. My mother had been strict about limiting the amount of television her four children watched. She permitted us to watch Walt Disney’s "The Wonderful World of Color" (and what a wonderful world color truly is) on Sunday nights. During the afternoons of my childhood, I would watch the horror/soap opera "Dark Shadows" until I heard the noise of her station wagon pulling into the driveway as she came home from work. Then I would rush to turn off the set. At college, I became an "intellectual snob" and dissed television along with my classmates and professors. I grew up without watching a single episode of "Leave it to Beaver", "The Love Boat", "The Waltons", "The Brady Bunch", "The Partridge Family", etc. Which is why the trend (most recently perpetrated by Amy Sohn, who couldn’t even maintain her columnist gig at the illustrious "New York Post") of journalists constantly making "Brady Bunch" references entirely eludes me. Frankly, I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about…nor do I particularly care to find out. Thanks, Mom!!!

In 1988, while recovering from a compression fracture of a vertebrae of my spine, I began watching re-runs of "The Streets of San Francisco" nightly/daily? on Channel 11(WPIX) in N.Y.C. at 4 a.m. Not only did it reasonate with my own experiences as a true crime-writer, and with the many surreal but true stories cops and feds had told me, but it was an incredibly well-written and acted hip drama, starring Karl Malden and the talented, hot, young, sexy Michael Douglas. ("Please, someone somewhere in Television Network Programming, re-broadcast the episode "Hiding Behind a Shield" starring Mariette Hartley and written by the amazing Dorothy Fontana (no relation to Tom Fontana--I asked him))!!!

Then, WPIX began re-broadcasting what I consider to be the greatest dramatic series in television history, "Wiseguy", in the early 90’s, when I was already hooked on "Miami Vice", "Crime Story", "Unsub" , "The Equalizer", "Hunter" and "21 Jump Street". Thank you, Court-TV, for currently airing re-runs every Saturday and Sunday nights from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. This is my belated valentine to Stephen J. Cannell, who created the series, and to its star, Ken Wahl, aka Vinnie Terranova, who was born on Valentine’s Day.

"Wiseguy" lovers know about Cannell’s amazingly uncanny and creative casting–along with main players Ken Wahl, Jonathan Banks, Jim Byrnes, Elsa Raven–Cannell utilized (not in alphabetical order or in order of greatness or hipness): Ray Sharkey, Joe Dallesandro, Kevin Spacey, Joan Severance, William Russ, Melanie Chartoff, Tim Guinee, Senator Fred Thompson, Paul Guilfoyle, Jerry Lewis, Ron Silver, Stanley Tucci, Anthony Denison, Patricia Charbonneau, Tim Curry, Patti D’Arbanville, Glenn Frey, Debbie Harry, Paul McCrane, Paul Winfield, Robert Davi, Michale Chiklis, Anne DeSalvo,, Chazz Palmienteri, Norman Lloyd, Kim Greist, Georgann Johnson, Steve Ryan, David Straithairn, Darlanne Fluegel, Eddie Bracken, Bonnie Bartlett, Jon Polito, Traci Lords, Joan Chen, Jessica Harper, Mick Fleetwood, David Schramm, Cathy Moriarty, Holland Taylor, Xander Berkeley, James Rebhorn, Michael Learned, Eric Christmas, Richard Sargent, Oliver Platt, Billy Dee Williams, Wayne Tippit, Martika, David Marciano, David Spielberg, Mariska Hargitay, Leo Gordon, James Baldwin (yes, THE James Baldwin) and Maximillian Schell. Among others. Not to mention that Stephen J. Cannell also "discovered" Johnny Depp when he cast him on "21 Jump Street".

Now that "Wiseguy" is finally being re-broadcast every weekend on Court-TV, I have the pleasure of looking at the young, angelic, beautiful, sweet face of Ken Wahl, with his black uni-brow and his luminous azure eyes, long before he became an overweight alcoholic and married one of the Barbi Twins. A screenwriter friend in L.A. tells me that Ken Wahl keeps "trying" to get work. Why won’t someone hire and cast him??? He won a Golden Globe in 1990…he’s golden!!!

Kevin Spacey, then unknown, now a multiple Oscar winner, gave a genius-calibre performance in the each of his 10 arcs as the sociopathic, schizophrenic, incestuous, evil, off-the-charts I.Q. billionaire arms dealer Mel Profitt (Stephen J. Cannell said in an interview that the inspiration for his character was Adolph Hitler, since he had always wondered how a man who was so clearly insane could obtain so much power); as did Ray Sharkey, Jerry Lewis and so many other brilliant actors (one wonders whether the roles were written for them, or whether they were cast for the roles), but for me, watching "Wiseguy" will always be about watching Ken Wahl play Vinnie Terranova, the impulsive, street-wise, witty, deeply-emotional crusader for moral justice who is never short on clever and incisive repartee, yet who finds himself in endless situations where his loyalty, his ethics, his behavior are challenged. The irony is that Vinnie Terranova (he is ever creating a TerraNova, a New Land--one in which is heritage can be glorified, not tarnished) is Italian, making him the perfect pick to impersonate a criminal-- the real criminals on the show expect him to be "mobbed-up", and are all the more shocked to discover how he loathes the sick values they stand for. Unlike salon.com's politically-correct televison critic Joyce Millman, who wrote about the "glamour" of the overstuffed men in tight suits who commit mass murder, Vinnie Terranova and his mother Carlotta, along with his brother Pete the Priest, know that the Mafia is anything but "glamorous". Tim Guinee, playing Richie Stramm, a kid from Terranova’s hood in the "Knox Pooley" storyline (I interviewed Tim Guinee about five years ago when he was rehearsing for "Pompadour of Love" and I called him up recently to ask him about "Wiseguy". He recalls the experience as being one of "the greatest peaks" of his career) was sensational as the tormented, gullible, unstable boy/man, desperate for an ideology to cling to. "Richie Stramm" started believing Knox Pooley's (Senator Fred Dalton Thompson) racist ravings about mud-people, too young and vulnerable to figure out that the former used-car salesman was just worshipping the almighty dollar. Vinnie had to make the decision to "out" himself as a fed to Stramm. Predictably, Terranova’s "Organized Crime Bureau"--a fictitious branch of the F.B.I.--Supervisor Frank McPike got angry, but Vinnie’s response: "Frank, this kid is walking a tightrope balanced between right and wrong, and when he falls, I want to make sure he falls on the right side" could well have been said about Vinnie himself. It is his mother, Carlotta (Elsa Raven), as well as McPike (Jonathan Banks) and the Lifeguard (Jim Byrnes) who remind Vinnie of adhering to his own moral code at every turn. When Carlotta visits her husband at the hospital, Don Aiuppo (George Petrie), as he is recovering from "lead poisoning" delivered to him from a fellow Mafioso, she plays coy and cutesy, "Is my dress too loud?" Once in the Don's hospital room, she kisses him on the forehead, and as his eyes open with delight, Carlotta hisses, "Three evil men kissed my son’s hand in this hospital. I was a foolish old woman to believe that you could ever change your ways. But you will not die until you have gotten my son, Vincenzo, out of this 'family' of yours." Back in the hallway, she cheerily announces, "He will get better now." (What a great undercover cop Carlotta would make--now we know where Vinnie gets it from.) On "Wiseguy", you never know what anyone will say or do next or how the plot will turn. I’ve seen every episode 18 times and they still surprise me.

In fact, on "Wiseguy", the women tend to be smarter and savvier than the men–there are the Machiavellian Machinators like Harriet Weiss (Bonnie Bramlett); Gina Grosset (Anne DeSalvo), Senator Getzloff (Georgann Johnson) , Carole Sternberg (Patricia Charbonneau) and then there are the kind, understanding women: the super-competent and confident Amber Twine (Patti D’Arbanville) who utters the immortal phrase, "McPikus Interruptus", Then there is the beautiful and brave compromised cop Lacey Marseille (Darlanne Fluegel), the unpredictable Jenny McPike (Jessica Harper), the traumatized union actvist with poetry n her soul, Maxine Tzu (Joan Chen), the neurotic but fascinating Kay Gallagher (Kim Greist) whose mother was a suicidal best-selling novelist, Monique (Traci Lords), with Lords in her first non-porn star role playing a hooker who is actually a...I don't want to give it away...and the cool, brilliant women feds played by Lora Zane and Melanie Chartoff.

Let us not forget all those women writers. In what must be every gal’s favorite nod-to-Hitchock scene, Vinnie proposes to Amber and says, "There's something I have to tell you." Amber expects him to be yet another man who can’t make a commitment, responding,"Great, here it comes…" "Amber, sit down. What I haven’t told you about me is--I'm a federal agent." When Amber's actress girlfriend Zoe advises her about love, commitment, self-sufficiency and making the correct "emotional choices" as she prepares for her upcoming auditions, you know a woman writer was at the helm.

Nonetheless, this "Wiseguy"Rant is an homage to Vinnie Terranova. Happy Belated Birthday/Valentine's Day, Ken Wahl. We all love you, and we love Stephen Cannell, too.

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