Who's That Guy: Michael Esper

     I have been catching up on two of my recent new favorite shows and I discovered they share someone in common. Michael Esper is on ABC's new drama The Family as Adam's alleged kidnapper (the hole-faced man), and he also plays IA cop Donnie in the Jennifer Lopez-led NBC drama Shades of Blue. In both shows, he plays a total creeper.

The Family
     We're almost a month into ABC's story of the Warren family. Their 8-year-old son Adam was kidnapped and recently appears after ten years. Adam was captured by Esper's Doug, described by Adam as the hole-faced man. Adam's mother Claire (Joan Allen) was running for city council at the time of the kidnapping and may have used her lost child as a way to get her political career started. Claire announces her campaign for governor upon Adam's resurfacing. The Warrens' neighbor Hank (Andrew McCarthy, also a director on the project) was convicted of kidnapping and killing Adam with little evidence and prior crime involving children. Now Hank is free and looking to take out revenge on Claire and her clan. Estranged husband John (Rupert Graves) has been seeing the lead detective on the case for almost ten years while Adam's  grown siblings Willa and Danny both dealt with losing their brother in destructive ways, becoming an ultra conservative campaign aide to mom and becoming an alcoholic, as they were last responsible for Adam.

     The FBI and local police are trying to track down Doug, but were derailed in the last episode. Meanwhile, Esper's Doug has a wife and a baby on the way! Clearly his wife had no idea he was keeping a little boy in a bunker for all those years. The real question comes from Danny's friend, blogger Bridey, who is investigating if Adam is really who he says he is. For the record, this boy is not Adam. It's been alluded that Adam's genetic test might have been faked and Claire has received donations from a genetics lab. Also Willa planted Adam's toy in Hank's house to ensure an arrest.  Is this all a political scam? Will the show conclude with all questions resolved? Only time will tell.

Photo from TVGeekTalk.com

Shades of Blue
     This photo shocked SOB fans when it was discovered that Internal Affairs investigator Donnie Pomp (Esper) was having a secret, years-long affair with the closeted and married Lt. Wozniak. Donnie Pomp was first introduced as investigating Wozniak's (Ray Liotta's) crew and making sure their illegal activities were overlooked by the department. Wozniak's group collects payments from businesses in order to keep the peace in their Brooklyn precinct. Jennifer Lopez's Harlee is caught by the FBI and (the short story) forced to inform on the crew who have become a family to her, with 'Woz' as the power-hungry papa. Harlee wears a wire to protect her daughter Christina and get immunity in all of her crimes. FBI special agent Stahl (Warren Kole) tortures Harlee on her quest to get dirt on Woz.

      Donnie is the first person to reveal to Woz there is a mole in the crew. Woz goes crazy on Harlee, almost killing her, and almost killing other members of the crew. Finally, Woz kills Detective Saperstein for being picked up by the FBI for questioning. Harlee vows to get enough information to send Woz to jail for life. After leaving a bug in Woz's office, Harlee and Shatl discover Woz and Pomp's relationship and Pomp's introduction into a job that will be the group's final big score. This score will also bring down Woz's crew. I am playing catch-up with the show, but all will be resolved in tonight's season finale.

     I must congratulate Esper for playing two equally creepy baddies. What will become of his two tortured villains? I'll keep checking with the FBI...

Hawaii 5-0: A Carte Blance Police Force

     TV cops have a long standing reputation of closing cases in 45 minutes (except for the O.J. case). How they go about it can sometimes be a stretch, and you know they have to cut some corners to do it. If today's media attention toward police screw-ups in any indication  If the judge is on the golf course, someone better contact his caddy to get that warrant, right? After a while I believe there's a fine line between defending justice and infringing on the rights of others. Maybe there's something powerful that draws the audience to situations like that. We love the thrill of the cat-and-mouse game, and nothing is more satisfying than capturing someone who really did something bad. But what if that person is supposed to be preserving the law?

     Some of my favorite moments in cop dramas have been about breaking the law. There's a memorable part of the Blue Bloods pilot where Det. Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) flushes a perp's face in a toilet to get information, which definitely falls under police brutality. Blue Bloods has long addressed issues of police conduct (and misconduct) and Police Commissioner Reagan (Tom Selleck) always supports his officers and policies until given reason to believe they are harmful to the public. There was at least one episode of Bones where Dr. Brennan (Emily Deschanel) an anthropologist partnered to an FBI agent, shot a perp. This happened in the pilot episode for chrissake! Her husband Booth (David Boranez) has shot multiple people over the years, and he shot a clown on top of an ice cream truck, which landed him in therapy. The first episode of Jennifer Lopez's Shades of Blue has J-Lo's Harley covering up her partner's shooting of an unarmed man that was playing single-shooter video games. Clearly, TV cops need some more regulation.

Image from Pintrest

    There is a much more corrupt group of cops on TV! What happens when you have a free-for-all police task force that is presided over by the Governor of the state? Then you have the Hawaii 5-0 and all hell breaks loose. These people are cops, but they have the worst luck when it comes to dating and getting people kidnapped. This police squad of misfits operates on their own with no oversight, and they have broken numerous laws to close cases. I also wonder how legal their desktop comoputer is. It's a computer screen the size of a desk that can search databases and find licenses in a matter of seconds.

     In this current season, Chi McBride's Lt.Grover, desperate to prove his old partner's guilt in murdering his wife, kidnaps his friend and holds him at gunpoint and threatens the guy's new girlfriend until he confesses. Don't sweat the small stuff, right? Grace Park's Kono married a reformed Japanese mob (Yakuza) kingpin at the end of last season, and by their honeymoon he is kidnapped, murdered innocent people in his escape, and is now in prison.  Last month, her cousin Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim) has a shootout with his deceased wife's brother. Chin gets a little wild and shoots the guy through a window of an abandoned building and he falls a few stories and lands on a car. Important to note, he is missing when the come to check on the body, so it's only an attempted murder. Was this a concerning turn of events for anyone else? Not so much. They were much more worried about Danno and Commander Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) going to some partner training. When they arrived at the training session, they found out it was a couples' retreat and their witty banter really shown through as Danno suffered through a broken ankle in a three-legged race exercise. I'm not going to blame her, but even McGarrett's girlfriend Catherine saw 5-0 was a toxic environment. Catherine returned for Kono's wedding and just as McGarrett was about to propose, she packed her bags and left for a humanitarian mission (or maybe not, as we discovered last week that she is on a  classified mission in Nepal).
   
     Elsewhere, the FBI took aside Danno (Scott Caan) to investigate what happened to a half-million dollars his brother had in his possession before he was murdered. Somehow his mother got access to the money and the FBI thinks Danny knowingly helped his brother hide the stolen money as an accessory. If this is the FBI's in-road, they need to think again about their priorities. People near to the 5-0 are getting murdered left and right. Plus the group makes their own rules of what constitutes torture for their perps in the windowless interrogation room.  If anyone remembers, the first Governor of Hawaii who created the 5-0 (Jean Smart) got murdered and 5-0 leader McGarrett was framed for it, because who wouldn't believe the leader of a no-rules task force would eliminate the one person standing in his way. Now McGarrett is a pretty decent guy, but let's not forget his mother, renowned criminal Doris (and long thought to be dead) got away with tons of bad stuff because Steve failed to bring her to jail,  and she is still out there and is a hired assassin.

     Now with the FBI on their heels, the 5-0 is going to need to accept responsibility for their errors in judgment and reckless behavior. Inspector Abby Dunn,  (Julie Benz) a recent visitor to 5-0 from San Francisco has come to observe how the group works so she can start her own task force. So naturally with more eyes watching, the group should be making a good impression. But since she has been here, several bad things have happened (See Chin-Ho and the brother-in-law shooting). So imagine my surprise when Abby lied about a trip to San Francisco a few weeks ago, and then she turned up on the other side of Danno's police interrogation. Now, we found out she is an FBI plant to help disband 5-0. No why would anyone want to disband the 5-0 (aside from the above mentioned misconduct)? Of course, the lead investigator's brother was murdered and he has investigated 5-0 last season, so that's all we need in terms of a motive for this show. The reason I find this plot so amusing is that on the beloved 90's alien drama Roswell, Benz also played an FBI agent. Pretending to be the school guidance counselor, agent Topolsky got a little to close to the aliens and she died in a mysterious fire. Hopefully the same fate does not await her in Hawaii.