24 January 1999: Crosetti

Sunday, 24 January 1999:

Crosetti

Woke up this morning and went to the monthly WisCon meeting, which was sparsely attended for some reason. (Well, okay, a couple of people were at Potlatch.) I haven't seen the SF3 folks in a couple of weeks, so it was nice to hang out with them for a bit. Planning for this year's WisCon seems to be proceeding normally, which is good.

I made a run by 20th Century Books, the local SF specialty store, afterwards and grabbed a book and a couple of comics collections (including the revamped first volume of Castle Waiting: "The Curse of Brambly Hedge"), and then came home and watched a bunch of TV.

The Homicide episode "Crosetti", from the third season, I think is the best one I've seen yet. Lewis' partner Crosetti - who was "on vacation" for the season's inaugural three-parter - turns up dead. Bolander, the primary, thinks Crosetti committed suicide, while Lewis can't believe it of his partner. It has some terrific scenes between Bolander and Giardello, Lewis and Bolander, and the final scene with Pembleton (with a lovely, mournful sax piece playing over the video). A really terrific story about the people on this homicide squad.

I find that many of the best stories revolve around a particular "family" of characters reacting - well or poorly - to a particular event. This episode is a prime example, as is the "Death of Phoenix" storyline in the X-Men comic circa 1980. When the characters are well-drawn, have history behind them, and their actions are instantly understandable by the audience in the context of that history, a story just works, on levels that other stories can't quite get to. Sometimes the audience's reaction is "At least they're there for each other", other times it's "How did things ever get to this point?", or something else, but any of these reactions is strong. It's what makes fiction worth following in the first place.

In a similar vein, I watched the second episode of the new animated series Batman Beyond today, having missed the first episode last week. It takes place forty or so years in the future, and involves a young man taking up Bruce Wayne's mantle as the Batman. It wasn't a great story, but I admired the fact that the writers (who have shown themselves to know what they're doing on The New Batman/Superman Adventures) showed us Bruce Wayne instantly rather than the tired tactic of "The hero disappeared years ago and no one knows what happened to him." Now we know what happened to him, but not why, and we don't know what happened to the other leading characters (save that Barbara Gordon - the one-time Batgirl - is now police commissioner).

When carried off well, I love "future shock" stories like this, in part because it taps into the "How did our favorite family ever get to this point?" feeling that I alluded to earlier. Most such stories handle it only in the most superficial manner; hopefully this series will be better.

(This was one reason I enjoyed the Fantastic Four Annual I read last month, other than it also being a basically clever story.)

Oh, and I decided to bake cookies while watching all this TV.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)