TV: Wiseguy, Knox Pooley

Wiseguy begins its second season with Vinnie quit of the OCB. The second season at large seemed cursed with misfortunes, but there's little jinx involved in the first arc. It's small-scale to make the show a little more realistic after the Profitt arc, but the unfortunate center of the arc is Vinnie's protection of Ritchie "from the neighborhood" Stramm, and Tim Guinee is, frankly, awful. Hard to believe, but it's apparently not the easiest thing in the world to play a guy in over his head.

And without further ado..


Episode 23: Going Home

Following his mixed success with senate testimony, Vinnie has resigned from the OCB. He returns to his mother's house and sulks broodily in his old room while listening to blasted Bob Seger on huge, old, pre-1980 headphones and wearing a dirty wifebeater. Ironically, this is what he does to cure his aching head.

Speaking of the OCB, we cut to six months since Vinnie cranked up the freedom rock. Regional Director Darryl Exposition's never before seen boss is also leaving the bureau. This bumps Exposition into what is eventually an ill-fated turn in the top spot, and makes Frank an RD. It would also make Vinnie a field supervisor...If he were still with the bureau. Frank finally admits that he treated Vinnie's resignation as a six-month leave, but now it's been six months and he hasn't been seen. It's time to get him back in the fold or cut bait.

In the minor character department, we're introduced to Mark Surmac, who starts a long stint as the recurring junior underboss of the OCB.

For the very maximum of shock value, Vinnie's post-6-month-sabbatical appearance is withheld for a long moment for Pete to exposit. When Vinnie finally reaches the breakfast table, oh, the humanity. He's given up shaving, except for that little bit in the middle of his eyebrow. He's still sporting the wifebeater. At Pete's insistence he puts on an outer layer: a muscle tee from Fordham, which implies the hood is, in fact, the Bronx. But it doesn't stay there.

Utilizing none of his more marketable skills, he's working at a local gas station as a mechanic, quite likely at near-minimum wage. What did Vinnie do before he joined the FBI? What is his job experience? What made him become a fed? How did that happen? These are questions the series never came around to answering, so start writing that fanfic.

At any rate, he's gone so far native that when Frank eventually tracks him down at the gas station, he notes that another month and he'll be able to infiltrate the Hell's Angels. Vinnie tells him those days are through, but Frank warns him that a true resignation means he'll need a debriefing back at HQ. Vinnie considers this for a moment, then turns up his walkman and resumes ignoring.

Just as Frank leaves in disgust, two japanese men arrive and serve papers to Vince's boss, Tony. They're taking over his business, and offering him a compensatory minimum-wage job. He feels doubly betrayed, as a connected guy like Vinnie should be protecting the Italian interests.

In plot B, the Good but Dim Neighborhood Kid Richie Stramm, who also works at the station, wants a hook-up. Specifically, he wants a hook-up with Angela, widow of Terranova cousin Danny Tessio (from last season's "The Birthday Surprise"). Vince sells her on a meet and date with Richie, and the two hit it off well enough to make a second date for the shore.

Vinnie misses the action though, as Tony, drunk primarily on 160-proof self-pity, causes a scene at the bar (small world..) and Vince takes it upon himself to be the designated driver. And suffer through both Japanese and Jewish caricatures as Tony spouts hate-group talking points.

The brand of hate in particular is Dr. Knox Pooley, who leads a white-power movement called the Pilgrims of Promise. Given television's touchy nature about hate speech, their primary target is the TLA "ZOG;" or Zionist Occupied Government. Sometimes they discuss "the mud people," a.k.a. you know, anyone with brown skin.

One of his old adherents is Richie Stramm, and now Tony's been targeted for assimilation. A day or two after receiving Pooley's $400 starter kit (8 cassettes!), reading the white power newsletter, and listening to talk radio, Tony goes out on a job with the Pilgrims and they trash a synagogue. He's got no stomach for it, though, and confesses the business to Vince.

The next day, Father Pete's on the news, talking about the vandals and noting the similarities between their faith and his. His performance gets rave reviews from the Terranova household; but beyond the house... He tells Mom and Vince that working to restore the synagogue, he felt a spiritual reawakening; it's so profound that he declares that if he were to go out tonight and be hit by a truck he'd die fulfilled. Be careful what you wish for, Pete...

Despite himself, Vince finds himself conducting a half-assed investigation of the Pilgrims, even calling the Lifeguard to get some background. He's rebuffed, and the call triggers a visit from both Frank and Darryl, which is the first time he and Vinnie have been in the same room since the pilot. Darryl plays it light and considers giving Vinnie the information he wanted if Vince returns to duty.

While mulling the offer, Vinnie uses his Fed skills to follow Richie to his PoP initiation, which is very similar to the mob opening the books (oath, secrecy, blood mixing, etc) -- except the Pilgrims wear green satin (can't infringe!) KKK hoods and don't serve a good dinner afterward.

Later, Vince and Pete are talking about the case so far while shooting hoops. Vinnie notes all the racial and ethnic differences in the 'hood, but says, finally, that it's not bad, it's just change. Equal time doctrine in effect? Pete chides him for setting Angie up with neo-nazi Richie, and asks that Vinnie send Richie over to Pete's church for guidance.

Unfortunately, Pete is in no position to do any guiding. First, the local monsignor chews him out for speaking honestly about the synagogue vandalism. Then, a speeding truck has circled his church for who knows how long until he was jogging out and further they clearly expected him to be dressed in gray sweats instead of his priestly garb. And they ID'd him within seconds.


Like the similarly doomed Mel Profitt, he wears his necklace outside of his sweatshirt in order for the audience to know it'll be important later. Then the truck careens into the parking lot and levels him. How conveeeeeenient

Since he's the relative of an agent, Frank and Lifeguard are waiting at the house when Vinnie returns. Given the mourning period, Frank offers to finally just let him resign. But now Vinnie's not so eager...

We cut to Pete's funeral as Vince eulogizes his brother. Again they hold off showing Vinnie; hmm, wonder why! Oh, he cut his hair and got a shave. No Hell's Angels here.

Clearly, the way to motivate agent 4587 is to kill someone close to him. Next time he burns out, Mom's gotta go.

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Pros: Carlotta Terranova's "I hope you listened to the surgeon general" in response to Vinnie's being out overnight with neighborhood floozies.

Cons: Ultra-contrived revenge motivation.

Then: B-
Now: C

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Episode 24: School of Hard Knox

While Darryl is unhappy with Vince's investigating the people who killed his brother, he reluctantly allows Frank to brief him on Knox Pooley's organization. Scenes like this would be common through the remainder of the series. Pooley himself is a failed car salesman and mail-order supplier, played by past Nixon counselor and later GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson. His second in command, Calvin Hollis, son of a serial child-molester who killed himself when the family farm was seized by a conglomerate (thanks again, Sonny...). Calvin's a thoroughly unstable man rejected from all four branches of the armed forces. Darryl still thinks they're a waste of resources. Frank tries, wanly, to explain the threat they pose; Mark is quick to chime in about their First Amendment rights.

Equally unhappily, Vinnie attends a Pooley speech with Richie. The crowd eats up the sloganeering, though Vinnie, walking the fine line between TV Hero and Disaffected Youth, is reticent while everyone else is chanting mindlessly. After, Calvin tries to buy a bunch of uzis (irony!) from Vinnie, but is so short of cash that Vinnie refuses flatly. This leads the Pilgrims to knock over an armored truck, with Ritchie as the wheel man (using Vince's car, no less).

Are the pilgrims all local, or does Knox travel? The latter is implied, but half of Calvin's lieutenants are "from the neighborhood." This is never made clear. While Ritchie's starting to have second thoughts, Angela and Vinnie have a one-night stand. Ah, grief.

Ritchie's, guilt-ridden about the car job, is having a crisis of confidence, and wants to leave the Pilgrims. But then Knox himself shows up at his house and offers him a "scholarship" that he'd probably have trouble transferring the credits from to NYU.  With approval from his fawning mother, Ritchie goes to the "seminar." Which turns out to be an armed camp where Calvin's dropping believable lines such as favorably comparing Pooley to Hitler, and using racial epithets stronger than "ZOG." In the command tent, Calvin and the PoP's elite drop exposition bombs while Ritchie overhears choice tidbits like killing the "spade" and a little purge of the inner circle.

At OCB, Darryl is not about to release 50 uzis to Vinnie for sale to Calvin. Frank does, though, and Vinnie's even wearing a wire for the delivery. Except Calvin brings Ritchie, and through some contrived, tortured logic, Vinnie stops the bust -- reasoning somehow that arresting them will lead to Ritchie's being executed for killing the armed car guard, who as it turns out is an off-duty cop. Since he witnessed it and knows a lot more besides, it seems ludicrous that Ritchie'd do time, much less get the gas chamber that Vinnie's fretting over. This is pure artifice, and it's one of the weakest scenes in the entire series. Frank is furious, but as usual takes no action against the star of the show.

Vince, in turn, compounds his stupidity by revealing his agent status to Ritchie. At this point the arc feels so written into a corner we'll need this to keep some reason to keep going. Further, he makes his peace with Peter's death, closing the book on his personal investigation. It takes no genius to ascertain that a break in that case will be happening next episode....
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Pros: Mildly well-handled morning-after scene.
Cons: Vinnie's adoption of Ritchie while pushing away Angela. Ritchie's terrible acting. Calvin's even-worse awkward/psycho acting.

Then: C+
Now: D

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Episode 25: Revenge of the Mud People

Another opening-scene infodump. We again hear the same things from last week, repackaged. We again hear Darryl's objections to the investigation, slightly paraphrased. Giving up for the moment on definitely stating Vinnie's hometown, Ritchie Stramm is identified simply as "from the neighborhood." Mark oversteps a little by disclosing further tests from Pete's body have revealed a partial plate of the truck that hit him. We never hear a thing about any consequences of Frank's releasing the uzis last week.

But quickly the cops arrive and drag Vinnie to the station. In a callback to the pilot, he has Angie call his Uncle Mike -- the problem being that she's family and knows he doesn't have an Uncle Mike. The leader of the rank-and-file blues, Dirty Sanchez, has a bad NY accent that sounds like it came from the Lorenzo Steelgrave School for the Arts.

Having made his car as the wheel in the murder of their friend and colleague, they took a look at his cover and swarmed. None of them are much willing to give him the benefit of the doubt -- why would a mobster let someone use his car in a job? How stupid must they be to do that?

Each season, it became progressively more difficult for Frank to walk into a precinct, wave his fed badge and get Vinnie released. In this case, with him as a suspected cop killer, even Darryl's unable to get Vince out quickly. Eventually they provide Vince an alibi for the night of the shooting, though the cops are far from pacified.

The first thing Vinnie does, naturally, is go to rough Calvin up for using his car on a job. Calvin, true to form, withers quickly when attacked. Calvin squirms his way out, promising that as the Pilgrims grow they'll keep buying arms from Vinnie.

Calvin invites him to a major rally to prove how big an operation it's become; this rally is in a choice locale: near the pancake house on Route 280. The rally has about a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred. Pooley retires early, giving the stage to Calvin and his stammering, nervous tics quickly turn into cross-burning fervor. One good heckler and he'd collapse, but this crowd couldn't even manage a single "Free bird!"

While Calvin tries to orate, Vinnie crawls around the lot writing down license plates. He soon finds a truck with the matching partial plate #, one that happens to have a fist-sized hole in the grille (which hitting someone, according to modern forensics shows, wouldn't make) that happens to have Pete's St. Christopher Medal of foreshadowing stuck inside. Then Vince is discovered by Stan Corker, who owns the truck and, presumably offed Pete. Vince covers his activities with some lame excuses, and Stan's dim enough to buy them. Calvin torches a cross while Vinnie retches from the shock of his discovery. Stan volunteers to take Vinnie home, and during the trip the two make tentative moves to shooting each other, yet back off.

Vinnie visits Pete's grave, telling him what's happened; Angie arrives and presses Vinnie again to tell her what's up with the alleged Mike Terranova. But he won't, no matter how much she loves him. He can only tell one person per arc, and he's already blown it on Ritchie.

Lou is nervous, and wants to kill Vinnie. He okays it with Calvin, and then springs the trap at an alleged gun buy at a cabin upstate. Luckily, Junior Detective Ritchie Stramm is there to turn the tables. Unluckily, Ritchie's terrible at that, too, and Stan almost has the drop on him. Luckily, Frank, who's definitely getting a bust this time, takes the meet down. The only problem is there's no Calvin. But it does get them Stan, which takes the NYPD off Vinnie's back. Dirty Sanchez is ecstatic, and when the mud people take their titular revenge for their fallen brother, Stan takes the coward's way out.

He will not stand trial for the cop or for Pete.

Vinnie is again disillusioned with the system.  Will mom have to die?


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Pros: Good handling of cops out for revenge.
Cons: Calvin's a bit too cuckoo bananas to be a real menace here.

Then: B-
Now: C

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Episode 26: Last of the True Believers

Enter Paul Beckstead, new Director of the OCB. I guess the writers figured if they were going to repeat the same information for three weeks in a row, they'd at least have a different audience. Director Darryl Exposition is gone, having been removed between episodes for placing obscene phone calls from safe phones in OCB. Beckstead and McPike have some history from their days back in Minneapolis, so Frank is hardly upset with the change of boss.

Calvin's not amused that he's lost a loyal lieutenant, but he has no solid proof that Ritchie's dirty. And so Mr. Stramm remains in Pooley's inner circle. Perhaps too far; he still espouses white-first views, and even has the temerity suggest that Vinnie's just visiting, and doesn't belong in the neighborhood anymore. And then he breaks down suddenly, seeing visions of dead cops and purged inner-circle members when he's not paying attention. Yet for all this, he remains sure that Knox isn't really an evil white-power spokesman, and decides to warn him about Calvin.

Knox is going to appear on TV: a pre-Springer and not-quite Morton Downey Jr talk show. He's being set up for conflict, with rabbi and a civil rights leader already on the panel. They bait him into a fight so the host can please the audience by throwing Pooley off the show. Calvin's outraged, but Knox is philosophical: more publicity means more money. He, perhaps unadvisedly, tells Calvin to give the host of the show a "piece of his mind." Calvin interprets this as "cave in the man's skull in the restroom," and promptly does so. For extra dramatic effect, the murder weapon is a humanitarian award given by one his more tractable panelists.


Frank, understandably, is furious. And it gets worse when Vinnie admits he's blown his cover (again). Frank even asks, seriously, if Vinnie's trying to get fired. Now the entire arc comes down to Vinnie waiting around to see if Ritchie will betray him or not. Frank gets some measure of satisfaction while Vinnie stews over Ritchie's absence; Vince has finally seen the world from Frank's point of view.

Ritchie's gone to warn Knox about Calvin. And Ritchie hems and haws enough to delay saying Calvin's name until the man himself arrives, hearing his entry cue of Pooley asking who the "cancer" in his midst is. Ritchie can't even mug well enough to indicate Calvin.

Knox sends Ritchie on an errand to the next room, where he finds the bagged, bloody award, while Calvin warns Knox about someone, too: Vinnie. Pooley is not happy, and less so when Calvin starts talking about buying guns and security. Then they hear Ritchie's exit (amateurishly loud) and Calvin discovers that he took the murder weapon. This really infuriates Knox, who slaps the hell out of Calvin, which reduces Cal to "Don't hit me, daddy," mode.

Calvin flees, taking some boys over to the house of the talk-show civil rights activist. He lets the wife and kids go, though shoots one of his goons for a moment of faintheartedness. The man falls over a hot stove and lays there immediately forgotten, just like Chekhov would've wanted. In the space of an ad break, Calvin's taped a shotgun his hostage, watched the house catch fire, and rants into a phone with police negotiators that he wants to speak only to Knox.

Eventually, they put Pooley on, and Knox quickly finishes disowning the deranged Calvin. Ritchie hears the whole thing and at last, at last! loses faith in the Pilgrims. Pooley gives a corn-pone stump speech about selling... anything ... has been his calling, since he was a little boy.

Meanwhile, Calvin kills his hostage in what may be an accident, or a fake accident -- the scene is too badly composed to be sure. While Calvin is standing over the body, horrorstruck (or remorseful), the the burning house collapses with a long whimper.

Ritchie is going to prison, and promises to take a mechanic's class and possibly learn to read while he's in.

Pooley, who has no hard link to Calvin's activities, escapes prosecution. He provides the tag for the arc, now selling condos to retiring Jews in Miami. Nice way for the show to atone for four episodes of stereotyping!

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Pros: It's over!
Cons: Calvin's lame melt-down, Ritchie's horrible acting, clumsy wrap-this-up wrap-up.

Then: B-
Now: C
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The series would try to get back into gear with the following arc, but fate steps in....