Ladies and gentlemen, the word is in.

Well, this should be no particular surprise, but it seems the new Ironside is failing. Badly. I haven’t had a look at it yet, but the more I learn about it, the more I don’t think I even want to bother with it. It sounds like a complete atrocity and slur on the name of the original series.

This review is interesting, and I love how it gets into mentioning the original version: http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/22592/tv-review-nbcs-ironside-is-worst-new-drama-of-2013

But this review really digs deeper and reveals the appalling behavior of the new Robert Ironside and his staff: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2013/10/01/ironside-review/2903185/

Beating up suspects? Entering homes without warrants? Raymond’s Ironside would roll over in his grave. So he was always a bit of a maverick, but he was always very firm about the rules of procedure. He only ever bent them when encountering extenuating circumstances in the form of feeling like someone deserved another chance, and it was a very rare thing. He scolded Mark Sanger in one episode for going into an apartment and removing evidence. And he would never dream of beating up a suspect, unless possibly the crime was either particularly gruesome or it involved his friends and team members (or both), the suspect was someone he really, firmly believed was guilty (or knew was guilty and just couldn’t prove it), and he was pushed to the absolute limit of his endurance.

I can’t say I’m terribly pleased by the sound of the new Ironside being more sexually charged, either. Don’t we see enough of that sort of thing on just about every other series currently running new episodes on television? Yawn. For some reason, people still seem to think that such a thing makes a character really cool and unique. By now it’s so commonplace on television series that it’s boring as heck, predictable, repulsive, and makes my general opinion of the characters involved go way down.

All in all, everything I’m hearing makes me think of that “remake” of Rear Window featuring Christopher Reeve, and honestly, that thing was an atrocity and an abomination that never should have bore the name and vague resemblance to Hitchcock’s masterpiece.

Just reading about this new Ironside series makes me feel a little ill inside. I need to watch an episode of the classic series to bleach my brain of the travesty.

That is a perfect example of a remake gone totally wrong, and one reason why a new Perry Mason television series would likely never happen (and probably shouldn’t). As much as I believe Perry is not, and doesn’t have to be, a period piece, I have hope that Robert Downey Jr.’s period piece movie has a far better chance of being something decent than a new television series, considering the tripe we’re being fed on television these days in almost every current series.

A while back I made a post musing on the feeling that some Perry episodes are depressing. I mentioned that I might not like the death or certain other elements, but I didn’t think I had ever encountered an episode that depressed me all the way through.

I still feel that way. But one episode where the death is certainly depressing that I failed to mention in the previous entry is The Madcap Modiste. I can’t think of anything much more depressing than the victim’s friend being so upset thinking her friend’s husband is having an affair with that one model that she then tries to kill said model . . . only to have her friend end up suffering the fate instead.

Well, I ended up deciding that I just wasn’t up to seeing the episode this week, so I watched the local station’s episode instead (The Lazy Lover). Hence, I didn’t get an analysis of Deputy D.A. Linn. So I’ll have to check it out at some other point when I’m feeling up to seeing it.

 

The Lazy Lover, incidentally, is one of my favorite season 1 ventures. I am familiar with a lot of the guest-stars, so seeing them pop up is fun. A cute dog is present. German Shepherds are one of my favorite breeds, and I like seeing Perry bend down and interact with this one. And once again, the murderer is a character played by the actor who played the murderer in The Frantic Flyer.

I was surprised when the murdered man was not the supposed amnesiac played by Harry Townes, but the step-father portrayed by Neil Hamilton. It's interesting to see how the amnesiac fits into the whole mystery. And of course, this is the episode boasting the infamous, amusing scene where Della plays the wife of said amnesiac to get him out of the cabin and to where he can be questioned. That scene is one of the few times Della ever stepped out of her usual role as the quiet, demure secretary. Watching her embrace a bewildered Bob and smother him with kisses is both amusing and brain-breaking all at once.