10 years ago, my favorite TV show of all time got nixed from the ABC lineup. The show was
High Incident and it ran for 1-and-a-half seasons before it went away in the summer of 1997. I was pissed. I guess even after 10 years, I can still write a rave about the show…
The show was a police drama about regular patrol officers working in a fictional Southern California town called El Camino. Though it was fictional, anybody from from here could tell you that the show was about a town in the LA basin that is a nicer place to live, yet inherits some of the problems that Los Angeles has. For all you know, El Camino could just as easily have been Torrance, Pasadena, Alhambra or any of those suburb cities. It was very well cast and quite arguably, one of the most accurate portrayals of police officers on TV. Ever character-driven, each one on the cast was very well drawn up. Although at times you could see that a character was compromised and flawed, you still cheered for them, being that they identified easily with just any regular person. It was very human, each being very dimensional.
In police parlance, a "Code-2 High Incident" is kind of call that could be anything from a neighborly dispute to a small traffic accident. This is in contrast to a Code-3 emergency (full lights and sirens) where matters of life and death hang in the commodity of mere seconds. As you can imagine, the former happens much more frequently than that of the latter. It may sound mundane, but it tells a story reflecting reality. The calls that they found themselves in were sometimes humorous, sometimes depressing, sometimes thought-provoking, and sometimes made little sense at all. To some it may sound random. But to me, it sounds an awful lot like this thing we call life. Life that is filled with intermittent themes both interesting and mundane at the same time.
I felt that season one stayed very true to this style of character portayal. I was instantly impressed by this mid-season replacement in 1996. Although it wasn't a ratings stealer, it won cult appeal from its fans. However, season 2 came around being more "eye candy-ish", bringing in a shootout or a chase in each episode. A slight detour from its original path of plain vanilla realism. Nonetheless, it was still a good show to watch. Humorously, I remember someone calling this show "E.R. with guns".
I found some of the clips from the show (including the intros) on youTube and I'm very thankful someone put them there. Although I was thinking of buying the recent DVD box set, I don't think I'll get it since it's so expensive for just 1.5 seasons.
I have yet to find a show like one of this caliber. Very few shows have come close.
Labels: TV Rave
