He must be the most inept detective ever. A murder or two every episode, he gets nowhere, in comes his dad, a DOCTOR, who then solves the murders with the help of his other medical workers.
And in whats with Steves hair its gone from dark brown to blonde
Great show though ;)
I think it is one of those questions that are better left unanswered. It's right up there with "Why the heck did a brilliant man like Columbo only remain a lieutenant all those years?"
share"Why the heck did a brilliant man like Columbo only remain a lieutenant all those years?"
There is an explanation for that. I'm familiar with law enforcement and police departments. A good explanation is that once he goes from Lieutenant to Captain, he would go from an investigator to an administrator. Police Captains rarely, if ever, get directly involved in an investigation. As a Lieutenant, he can lead other investigators as well as interview suspects. As a Captain, he'd be stuck in his office all day.
I think it is one of those questions that are better left unanswered. It's right up there with "Why the heck did a brilliant man like Columbo only remain a lieutenant all those years?"
Indeed, when it comes to a work of fiction, there are always some things that can never be explained to anyone's satisfaction (if it could be explained at all). I guess the situation with Steve Sloan indicates that sometimes the best explanation is no explanation.
You're absolutely right, it's the same thing I've said about Murder, She Wrote. The cops are incompetent, but her comes Good Old Jessica to solve the mystery. Personally I think Jessica was a serial killer but that's a whole other story.
shareQuote - How does Steve keep his job ?
How does Barry keep up the pretence of being an actor ?
The cops are always incompetent in these shows, it's part of the fun. Steve in DM almost always gets it wrong and it's down to his amateur sleuth Dad to catch the real criminal, Jessica Fletcher is the same-she solves the crimes after the professionals make fools of themselves. Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes also had incompetent policemen to deal with-Japp and Lestrade.
Personally I think Jessica was a serial killer but that's a whole other story.
I've said this about Jessica, as well. :)
She's always on the scene of every murder, sometimes even discovers the body. Does she ever have an alibi? Nobody ever checks! The cops always let her wander all around the crime scene, who knows what evidence she might be altering? And then she always writes a bestselling novel about the murders, it's how she makes her living!
Why haven't the cops noticed this pattern, anyway? Maybe she doesn't commit all the murders, but why is the murder rate always so high when Jessica Fletcher is around, hmmmm?
*serious nod*
she's guilty!
“Can't go wrong with taupe."- Wynn Duffy
LOL the way you put that about Jessica is hilarious. I've always had the same thought. No matter where in the world she goes, a murder always happens. I was thinking that she must either be doing some of those killings herself or she's just really bad luck for others. The cops should be more wary of her, knowing her writing career depends on these murders.
shareLMAO, VelvetTigress. Interesting theory. That actually would have been the ultimate plot of the series finale. Finding out that all along Jessica was a psychopath maniac doing all these killings all along.
shareI always thought that would have made a good series finale as well--Jessica is revealed as a serial killer, with her nephew Grady as an accomplis.
http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?HuckleberryBeej.
Steve is a moron but next to detective brock in the perry mason movies, he´s a genious :D
How do you like your brandy, sir?
In a glass.
The simple answer is because it's a TV show! I've often wondered the same thing, though.
I also wonder why they allow the doctor onto the scene of crimes, or why he's allowed to go along on investigations without him or Steve getting into trouble. So many things that they do are illegal, or at the very least strongly against procedure.
"So many things that they do are illegal, or at the very least strongly against procedure."
I admit to feeling a cringe factor with all the errors, incompetence, and borderline criminal acts on the part of cops in amateur detective shows, but to that, I'll share--for myself and all the rest of us in this thread--lighten up! They are TV shows, fantasy. What else can we do about them, except stop watching? And I don't know about you, but I can't make myself do that!
And speaking of "lightening" up, it occurred to me that Steve's hair got blonder as Barry Van Dyke got older and probably grayer. It's easier to color gray hair in lighter, softer tones, rather than darker ones. It's all fake!
In peace,
Debbie Jordan
Author: THE WORLD I IMAGINE; LION'S PRIDE; Peace Blogger
This series has NOT aged well. First time I'm watching it in years, now that Encore's running marathons of it. I remember it being a really fun, quirky show back in the 90s. Now I'm finding it dull and SO hard to deal with the smoking in the hospital, the medical files left out in plain sight unattended... I don't know. Maybe I'm a dud myself. Hope they get better than this one is (this one I'm watching tonight is called 'Amnesia'). And I'm a HUGE fan of Columbo, Murder, She Wrote and Matlock - all the classic goofy 'detective' shows of yore! :)
shareI totally agree, jennifermolk! As an ex-smoker for 40+ years and having had to deal with medical issues most of my life, it's hard to watch such sloppy behavior that was so common in the past. Worse, when they show those things in the present, unless there's some context, especially having to answer for it in some satisfying way. Ah, well!
Oh, and I love those same old series too! Can't not watch Jessica on Hallmark Movie Channel, and Columbo whenever I can find him! Matlock's fun, sometimes more than others, but I always love seeing old folks (like me!) showing everybody else they've still got it!
In peace,
Debbie Jordan
Author: THE WORLD I IMAGINE; LION'S PRIDE; Peace Blogger
Well, I started recording these DM eps since they started showing it on Encore for my mother who always loved the show and I thought I'd be bored out of my skull having to watch them. At first I was bored but now I'm hooked on it and can't wait to record the next episode after work. It's a very simple kind of show but that has turned out to be the thing I like the most about it. It's the likable characters that drew me in.
"You think you know, what you are, what's to come--You haven't even begun." BtVS
SO hard to deal with the smoking in the hospital,
Yeah, that really annoyed me the smoking in the hospital on "Amnesia" but people used to smoke in hospitals. I can remember as a child going into the hospital to visit sick relatives or whatever and people smoked in the hallways and even in the patient's rooms. Hell, I can remember patients smoking too. Now it just seems insane but back then it was pretty normal.
"Wait a minute. You know that scum? He licked my window!" --Amanda (Diagnosis Murder)
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Being a little hard on Steve here though. Since I just started watching this on Encore and they have been skipping episodes, I've seen some from probably almost all the seasons and it looks like at first Steve was kinda lame as far as his involvement in solving the murders but that's because it's DVD's show and it revolves around him as the main character doing most of the sleuthing but in watching later season eps, it looks like they noticed the flaw in that with Steve kinda looking incompetent almost. I think towards later seasons they became better at involving Steve more along with the rest of the cast and it's more of all of them participating equally in the solving of the murders while still maintaining the original premise of Dr. Sloan as the leader of the sleuthing. It was a fine line in balancing them out that they handled very well as the show progressed.
"Wait a minute. You know that scum? He licked my window!" --Amanda (Diagnosis Murder)
If you think Steve can be inept, the feds there are a lot more inept. If you notice that Steve and his dad do all the work. And the feds or other law enforcement get all the credit and glory!
November Sweet!
Mark is a medical liaison to the police department which gets him on the crime scene. Amanda is a medical examiner, so she has access. It's Jack/Jesse that are the amateurs.
Lol, I always thought Steve was a more subtle version of Frank Dreblin from The Naked Gun.
shareHaha I agree!
shareI think that they should have a show with a bunch of cops that perform open heart surgury after work and on weekends.
shareI don't know, I tend to see it as both Dick and Barry's show as they're both great actors and make a great father son team. That's just my point of view. It's an awesome show no matter what! I've been watching it on the Hallmark movie channel lately.
Let's get dangerous!
Ask yourself this. What don't I see between episodes? Diagnosis Murder was a weekly show when it was on the air back in the '90s and early '00s, but the way episodes ran you could have one weeks episode start a few seconds after the end of the previous week's episode or it might be weeks or even longer after the previous week's episode. In a single season we might only see an average of 22 of Steve's cases (over the course of eight seasons there were 178 episodes, that's not counting the made for TV movies and at least one of the last two movies was really just two episodes combined). It's heavily implied during the series, especially during later seasons, that Steve has more than 22 cases in a year and that better than half the time he doesn't have to have Mark solve the case.
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