T and T - Season 2

 

There is yet more to say about this stupid show! This is a continuation from Part 1.

Season 2 - The Movie!

Searching on imdb for "T and T" yields "Craig T. Nelson" as its first result. But if you make it past that, you'll find there's an entry for a TV show AND a movie called "Straight Line" with its own thumbnail and plot, etc. but with a cast that's eerily similar to "T and T."

The reason is that "T and T" Season 2 starts out with a 4-part episode that apparently originally aired as a made-for-TV movie. And the name of the 4-parter is "Straight Line." I have to say right off the bat that I have never heard of a 4-part episode of television anywhere else in my life. I could be wrong but I can't think of one. Can you?

You might recall from Part 1 that one of my main complaints about the show is how it took itself too seriously to be the fun series I was hoping for. Well, starting out with this made-for-TV movie, the series reaches the grittiest, darkest and most depressing point of the show's history.

You see, a black man is running for Mayor of "the city" and, if elected, he will be the first black mayor in the history of "the city." Meanwhile there is a gang of leather-clad white supremacists who are stoking racial division. During a rally, a bomb goes off and kills a woman. The woman happens to be the mother of one of the troubled teens in the gang. So the boy, out of shame, doesn't even bother to check whether his mother is alive but instead runs to the nearest bridge to commit suicide. Having fun yet? And his mother IS dead so good guess! Turner talks him down off the ledge and gets on the case to fight the charge that the boy killed his own mother with a bomb. Oh yeah, and the black candidate is later killed by an assassin's bullet while giving a speech at his church.

There's actually way more to the plot than that, it goes into other areas but it's all depressing and the less said the better. From my notes, I caught a couple highlights to convey the extremes: a white supremacist actually calls Turner the N-word and Turner chokes a man with a pool cue. At the end, the main villain is (inadvertently) hanged by a chain around his neck.

Needless to say, this is the absolute lowest point of the series for me. It's dark, it's depressing, it's completely unpleasant to watch. If they were really tackling hard issues, I could be interested but I don't think they're even doing that. And it's such a jarring shift from anything that's happened before in the series, it just seems like a huge misstep.

The Formulas

Despite the fact that nothing before or since will be like the first 4 episodes of Season 2, it does seem like the creators of the show attempted to make Season 2 darker and more serious that Season 1. The clothes-changing montages are gone, in fact Turner's suits are gone, the courthouse scenes are minimized. In this Season, Turner has an office at the gym and people come to his office looking for a detective (private investigator) like it's a 40s style film noir.

Also in this season, Turner wears informal 80s clothes. Like I said, the suits are gone. I don't know why I'm talking about this except that Season 1 made such a big deal about his clothes it seems that this must be important somehow; like some seismic shift has taken place right under us.

The Theme (Updated)

In Part 1, I noted the humorous aspect of the opening theme that it was a bit like "Too Many Cooks" in that it introduced a large cast of characters that would mostly never be seen in the episode. Well in Season 2 the theme remains unchanged even though all those characters are gone for good (with 1 exception). Whereas in Season 1 you would be introduced to characters rarely making an appearance, now in Season 2 you get introduce to characters who NEVER make an appearance. 

Thinking of the Children

Do you remember the kid who Turner rescued from the "gang" in the Season 2 "movie"? No, and you shouldn't. But he exists. And in Season 2 he becomes a new somewhat regular character who shows up in many episodes... but not all... nothing about this show is ever consistent. T becomes a mentor/father figure to him and his character is that of the plucky kid who always hangs around T and wants to be involved in the dangerous crime fighting. T tells him it's too dangerous and doesn't let him come but he comes anyway and does things.

 To me, the addition of his character looks like an obvious ploy to get more kids watching the show. With a kid in the show, there's someone kids can identify with, they vicariously get to hang around Mr. T. This is a natural connection - kids love T and so the show should naturally be aimed at kids.

There's only one problem with this of course - do you remember how the show is trying to be dark and gritty? Yeah, that kind of conflicts with trying to attract children, it even conflicts with having a kid in the cast. So it just becomes a mess - some episodes become light and innocent but then the next week they're dealing with something heavy and adult. Again, nothing about this show is consistent from season to season or even from episode to episode. If you ever think you understand it, you don't.

The Most 80s Episode - Season 2

Oh boy, speaking of "not for kids"...

The most 80s episode of Season 1 had The Fat Boys guesting, and funnily enough, in Season 2 we have Prince protege Vanity. In Season 2 Episode 6, Vanity guest stars as a reporter who goes undercover to work in a mud wrestling club.

When mud wrestling was a fad in the 80s I remember being aware of it but not really understanding it. Now that I'm an adult, I obviously understand more but I still don't think I really understand it. Suffice to say that it was a fad of that time and so Vanity + mud wrestling + Mr. T is pure 80s... They're not wrestling together, mind you, just saying that they're both in the episode.

And on the subject of the 80s, Season 2 is where Turner first uses a car phone. No explanation of it, no comment necessary, he has a car phone now, so what?

This Thumbnail

Here's imdb's thumbnail for Season 2 Episode "The Contender." Enjoy:

Soak it in, boys. See it in your dreams, see it in your nightmares. This character's name happens to be Kevin Hart. Not that anything can be very interesting after that picture.

Amy Taler

So far in this rambling, incoherent think piece, I've only talked about the Mr. T half of "T and T" but there is another T - Amy Taler played by Alexandra Amini. This is because there isn't much to say - the character is businesslike and efficient and cares about people. She's very bland and one-dimensional. She shows one quirk in Season 1 where she cares too much about her car but it's only for that episode.  Her and T have the slightest suggestion of a "will they, won't they?" relationship for brief moments but it's not really a big focus. 

One of the things they do in Season 2, however, is give her an antagonist to contrast against in the character of the hard Detective Hargrove. And, although it's inconsistent - like everything else about the show - it's occasionally funny. They have scenes where Hargrove will say "Of course he's guilty, he has tattoos!" and then in another episode it's "Of course he killed the guy, look at his long hair!". And that allows Amy to come back with "Just because people dress a certain way or listen to certain music, it doesn't mean they're bad people." And what a great life lesson it is for us all.

Conclusion - Season 2

Alright, that's it for Season 2. I didn't even get to Mr. T being a substitute teacher for an episode, or the flashback episode where we flashback to the sweet clothes-changing of Season 1 (do you remember the clothes changing?), but this "review" is already too long. In short, this season has the series' low point and it tends to emphasize everything I disliked about Season 1. And just as Season 2 made drastic changes from Season 1, Season 3 is about to make even more drastic changes. It's almost as if they're inconsistent or desperate or something! 

Continued in Part 3...