My TV Musings

I didn’t see this coming.  I knew I liked the general concept of a guy, a New York cop no less, who was immortal, but I never thought it would be so interesting.

First, the previews mention something like “watch to find out the secrets in his life” and I can’t imagine anything would surprise me.  I mean, I’ve watch vampire series, like Angel and Blood Ties; oh yeah, and Dark Shadows, and I think I understand the ramifications of immortality, right?  Wrong!

This guy is a really nice guy, not a vampire, but he cannot die.  Not after being stabbed or shot many times and, in the pilot actually, he suffers a massive coronary and actually dies.  At least long enough to be toe-tagged and put into the morgue before he comes to and gets out of there as fast as he can, even while wearing nothing but a hospital gown!

So we understand he’s had many wives and girlfriends and lovers and so many dogs he just numbers them, but the first episode involves his getting evidence via the help of an old woman with alzheimer’s who swears she was a former lover of his and, of course, her son is embarrassed, saying that mom has these delusions from time to time.

But a recent episode really brought it home to me just how frustrating being immortal must be: John is close friends with a sweet, old, grizzled black barkeep, Omar, who watches his back, keeping his secret of mortality and giving John a place to hang out.  Well,  Omar goes to visit his mother’s grave, putting flowers out, when John approaches the grave.  Omar is a bit upset with John because John is starting to become obsessed with the fact that he has become attuned to a certain someone who could possibly be “The One” who is foretold to be his one true soulmate whom, after meeting, will cause him to become mortal again.  So Omar blurts out to John, “Perhaps my mother didn’t mean as much to you and I thought.  Maybe she should just be a number to you like your dog.”  To which John says something like, “You know I loved your mother and you should be more respectful to me since I am your father.”

So that totally blew my mind as the episode continued, showing flashbacks to the relationship John had with Omar’s mom, Lily Mae, explaining how they split before she found out she was pregnant and he joined the Army, returning to visit Lily Mae in the hospital after giving birth.  We knew from the headstone that she died in 1943, so their relationship was short-lived and, from the present-day scenes we knew he was a secret to Omar’s family because Omar’s daughter and her son don’t even know John.  I’m guessing they’ll get to know him better as Omar had John babysitting his 10-year-old great-grandson!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 11:32 pm and is filed under New Shows, New Amsterdam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.