barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (01/11/84)
There is a new show on NBC called "Riptide". It is from the creators of "The A-Team", and I think it is even better, although it is not without a serious flaw. The main characters are Nick and Cody, "two struggling Southern California gumshoes ... working out of a cabin cruiser," and Murray (Boz) Bozinski, "an eccentric electronics genius." The three of them are old buddies from their Navy (I think) days, when Nick and Cody helped Boz escape when they were supposed to be taking him to the stockades or something; instead, they took him drinking, got him into a barroom brawl, and got him his first girl. Now they have teemed up into a detective agency. In addition to the above cabin cruiser (the Riptide of the title) they also have a big pink helicopter with a face painted on the front; it is falling apart, and you have to bang on the control panels to get it going. The main thing I like about this show is the characterization. Most of the characters are very likable and real. Nick and Cody vie for every pretty girl they meet, and they also have a running contest to see who has had more broken noses since they have known each other. Their next boat neighbors are a bunch of beuatiful women on a large sailing yacht called Contessa; however, the skipper, Mama Jo (played well by Anne Francis), makes sure that they all stay untouched, especially by these two. Those of you out there who like to admire the male body will probably find Nick and Cody admirable, although I am no great judge on such matters. Next comes "the Boz." Unfortunately, he is the archetypical stereotype of the electronics genius. Most of his utterences are just jargon and buzzwords, and sometimes they almost make sense if you know what the words mean, which the writers obviously don't. He makes the Whiz Kids look like football players (no offense to football players intended). Actually, he is better off when he is spewing random jargon, because when he isn't he has a big mouth (like talking back to a crime boss). He can hook his terminal into any computer system, of course, and he has a cute robot named Roboz which can understand spoken English, and usually plays a pivotal role in solving the case or saving everyones' lives, although it has some bugs (in tonight's episode it kept trying to give people a glass of water, only to end up spilling it on the person). Actually, Boz differs from the standard stereotype in one way: in the pilot episode he managed to get the girl that Nick and Cody were after (although in the end he talks her into taking a position on the Contessa so that they can be neighbors, not realizing that this will make her off limits). He also claimed that when he entered MIT at 15 he wan't able to make friends; from my MIT experience (I graduated from the 'Tute last spring) I can say that even a gnurd like him should have been able to make friends pretty easily, so these writers clearly could have done some more research. All in all, it is quite enjoyable. The characters don't take themselves too seriously, and they are easy to relate to (except for Boz). I hope this lasts, as I think it is one of the best new shows in the 83-84 season, and one of the best detective shows in years. By the way, the plots aren't too bad; lots of twists, although I picked the surprise bad guy in the pilot pretty early on (it was a lucky guess, as I didn't know what he might have done or why, he just seemed like the kind of character that is only introduced so that they ignore him for twenty minutes and then figure out that he's a bad guy), and good action (although too much gunfire, especially considering that no one seems to get hit). -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar