Hollywood is Incestuous, and Can Sure Birth Some Cool Babies

The only television cop show worth watching was The Wire. I loved that program. It was the only remotely accurate television portrayal of a police department and the lives of its officers, warts and all. The characterizations were fantastic. I ate it up.

One character's starting story was lifted from the department I work for. This officer called an emergency, fired into his own vehicle, and then discarded the weapon and tried to act as if he had been shot at. A glory hound and more than a little crazy. He ended the final season as a teacher in an agonizing story arc that truly changed the character.

I watch Fringe. The agent that runs the ad-hoc unit investigating Fringe events played a Liuetenant on The Wire. He plays a great intense, no-nonsense guy. His participation was one of the reasons I started watching the program. That, and in the first episode, the FBI agent is chasing a guy across the roof and totally wipes out, thumping to the ground and failing to catch her man. That kind of realistic stuff is hard to come by in cop fiction, let alone prime-time television.

Tonight, the actor from The Wire that played Prezbolewski, the character based off one from my department, had a bit part on Fringe. He died horribly in a Lovecraftian-type collision of realities; multiple limbs, head in chest and all.

Damn, but sometimes I love the incestuous relationship of actors, writers, and producers in Hollywood. When it works, it really works.