Now that DVCH (the only show I watched on the network) is over, my opinion of the CBC has gone from merely ambivalent to total 'who cares'. If Haddock can pull another horseshoe out of his dark-place with 'Intelligence', I may turn back to it, but if it doesn't go beyond the ordered 13 eps, the CBC can go to a very warm place.
:(
Well, if the ads for that hideous-looking series "At the Hotel" are any indication of content, I'm gonna give the old CBC a big miss with the exception of Intelligence. Even their Olympics coverage left a lot to be desired. Who said the commentators were a lot like zombies except that zombies would have been livelier? That was pretty funny.
shareI just remembered something. The CBC is co-producing and airing the new Doctor Who. I guess I'll still have to tune in for that.
As for the Olympics coverage, don't get me started. Thank god the CTV-led partnership is taking over for the Vancouver Olympics in 2010...
And the "at The Hotel" promos did make the show look pretty pathetic. I definately agree with you there.
"I just remembered something. The CBC is co-producing and airing the new Doctor Who. I guess I'll still have to tune in for that."
Ah, true, true. Can't miss Doctor Who. Especially now he's David Tennant (has Casanova made it over here yet? It's very good). I missed the Christmas special but I was in Britain for the first (new) series. Everybody was going ape over it and deservedly so. It brought back the good old days when I was a kid watching the Tom Baker eps on channel 2 in Boston when I was visiting my grandparents.
CBC's coverage of the Olympics was pants. I dunno. I may stick around for Rick Mercer, too...
But I want Da Vinci, back, too! Is it possible to be totally torqued at a show's head writer while also wanting that show back and being totally torqued at CBC for cancelling it? I could slap Haddock silly for his total disinclination to end stories these days (if I wanted a bloody soap opera, I'd watch one) but I also want to know how it ends! And we didn't find that out tonight! It was like watching Universal's Frankenstein and ending the flick just as the villagers arrive at the old windmill with their pitchforks and torches. Not fair!
"But I want Da Vinci, back, too! Is it possible to be totally torqued at a show's head writer while also wanting that show back and being totally torqued at CBC for cancelling it? I could slap Haddock silly for his total disinclination to end stories these days (if I wanted a bloody soap opera, I'd watch one) but I also want to know how it ends! And we didn't find that out tonight! It was like watching Universal's Frankenstein and ending the flick just as the villagers arrive at the old windmill with their pitchforks and torches. Not fair!"
True, but when the eps were produced, he didn't know that the show was going to be cancelled. It should (hopefully) be resolved in the first -- or maybe second -- telemovie. I actually kind of like the basic premise of carrying over storylines in episodes. Besides, The Leary/Dubreau storyline was resolved. :P
But I am eager to see the war between Da Vinci and the Chief. It's gonna ba a doozy.
I just wish someone would torrent this show, since the odds of it going to DVD are next-to-nil.
"True, but when the eps were produced, he didn't know that the show was going to be cancelled."
Haddock has said for years that every year was a struggle getting CBC to renew the show. He had to know it was a possibility. I was okay with the idea of some storylines not getting resolved. That's a tradition on Da Vinci. But he had plenty of time left to resolve the two major ones and not only did he (and the other writers) not bother to do this, he even threw in an extra monkey wrench or three to ensure that absolutely nothing was resolved. Not a single storyline was resolved last night and yes, that makes me quite angry. It goes beyond quirky into cavalier and manipulative. I stuck through an often difficult season for a complete story and I didn't get one.
"It should (hopefully) be resolved in the first -- or maybe second -- telemovie."
Considering the total lack of resolution at the end of the Intelligence pilot and Haddock's going on record quite recently about disliking closure, I have strong doubts that he can (or even wants to) wrap things up in that projected tv-movie.
I felt like I just watched a season finale of a later season of the X-Files and that's not a good feeling.
"I actually kind of like the basic premise of carrying over storylines in episodes."
I love the basic premise of carrying over storylines in episodes--when necessary. But some storylines (that gay-bashing storyline from Hell, aiyiyi) could have been wrapped up in a single episode (two or three, at most), leaving space for the resolution of other storylines.
"Besides, The Leary/Dubreau storyline was resolved. :P"
If it was, you saw some footage that I missed. What I saw was Mick acting totally out of character and suddenly dropping a case he'd been obsessed with for months in favor of yanking his good buddy the Mayor's cajones out of the fire. Forget finding out what Mick's motivations were; we didn't even get his reaction to Dubreau's arrest! What I also saw was one suspect (Dubreau) being arrested while another one (Brian) killed yet another witness literally under the nose of the police and not only got away with it but was not mentioned ever again after the first commercial. That goes well beyond pushing traditional storytelling to the limit and into crappy writing territory. I expected this kind of writing from Enterprise or Babylon 5. I did not expect this kind of writing from Chris Haddock. It makes me very worried about any of his future projects until I see some proof that he can still write the end of a story.
The big problem this season? In a nutshell? Da Vinci's Inquest was character-driven; Da Vinci's City Hall was plot-driven. And none of us wanted to watch a plot-driven show after getting hooked on its character-driven predecessor, especially not when we were forced to watch characters we liked being distorted to fit Perils-of-Pauline cliffhangers.
"But I am eager to see the war between Da Vinci and the Chief. It's gonna ba a doozy."
See, I think that storyline sank the show. It irritated me from the get-go and I quickly grew to loathe it, simply because it was shoved in my face for thirteen episodes while storylines I really liked were shortchanged or disappeared. I was given absolutely no reason to want to watch the Bill and Charlie Revue because Haddock gave us no reason to empathize with them in any way. By all means, have it simmer on the backburner all year and explode in the last ep. But don't make it front-and-center all year long and then refuse to resolve it at the end. If there's a war coming between those two, just what, exactly, have we all been wasting our time watching all year?
Furthermore, only in Haddock's World would a police chief survive a wildcat strike by the fire department and members of his own department against him. If this were any other show, I would say that Police Chief Bill is now toast. And that's not even taking into consideration that incriminating tape (a storyline that went absolutely nowhere). If Da Vinci ever released that, Bill's job, nay, entire career, would be history. I wouldn't be baiting a guy with that kind of info on me.
But then, if Bill truly were the politician he's been played up to be, he would have fired Charlie a long time ago--probably right after the grow-op shooting to establish a "Caesar's wife must be above reproach" profile. We know he has the cojones to do it--he fired his own cousin, Dino, last season. Yet, we were given no reason why he would keep Charlie, even though he must have known Charlie was undermining him, or at least not doing the job he was supposed to do. Had I been Bill, I might have fired Charlie's butt as early as that thing with Vin Tuan at the end of last year. You are not an effective Deputy Chief if you are dumb enough to let a lowly Homicide detective pull the wool over your eyes, even if that Homicide detective is Mick Leary.
Not that I feel strongly about this, or anything.
Ok, you brought up a lot of good points, and I agree with them. This show is more plot driven -- good? bad? Definately bad. But the only people that Haddock could really develop on this show are Rita, Sam and Joe. Friedland? We already know his story. Dom? Mick? Kosmo? Thier backgrounds have been set over 7 seasons already. Brian? Look how long it took to get a quasi-resolution on him in DVI. I don't mind being left hanging on that issue because if it gets resolved too soon, he would eventually be written out of the show, and he's a character I just love to hate.
It's difficult to write a political show that is more character driven than plot driven. While I agree that there should have been more character elements, the only way they could do it was to take the focus more off of Dominic and put it on Leary or Kosmo and Finn. If they kept it on Da Vinci, he would never be in the mayor's office. He'd be out on the street (still as Mayor) getting into even more trouble.
"Besides, The Leary/Dubreau storyline was resolved. :P" (This was a more tongue-in-cheek comment) ;)
Both Da Vinci and Jacobs thought they were fighting a two sided war. What they didn't realize is that Klotchko was fighting for his own side turning the other two even further against each other for his own purposes. At least that's what I got from it.
And as for the firing of Charlie. I agree, in the real world, he would have had his ass canned a long time ago. But on TV, I guess the writers just liked having him around to stir the excrement.
We really should put a spoiler tag on this thing LOL.
Now this is definately my longest post on the IMDB bourds... :P
"Ok, you brought up a lot of good points, and I agree with them. This show is more plot driven -- good? bad? Definately bad. But the only people that Haddock could really develop on this show are Rita, Sam and Joe."
Problem was, he didn't. I never bought Sam and Rita as characters because Haddock never developed them. We hardly ever saw them outside of work. So, why were they second and third-billed after Dom? Joe was coming along rather nicely until the Sikh driveby shooting got deep-sixed. I was really looking forward to him having to make up his bad karma with Kosmo. He seemed willing. The writers weren't. Too bad.
"Friedland? We already know his story. Dom? Mick? Kosmo? Thier backgrounds have been set over 7 seasons already."
But their backgrounds were in flux at the end of last season. We never heard what was going on with them. Why was Dom suddenly so able to hold his liquor? What happened to Mick's boat? How did Kosmo get back into Homicide?
"Thier backgrounds have been set over 7 seasons already. Brian? Look how long it took to get a quasi-resolution on him in DVI. I don't mind being left hanging on that issue because if it gets resolved too soon, he would eventually be written out of the show, and he's a character I just love to hate."
I cannot stand Brian for a very simple reason--Haddock has never bothered to show us what makes him tick. Only in Twenty-Five Dollar Conversation did we get a hint of his background and that got dropped. Therefore, I find him deeply boring and my brain turns off every time he shows up. He is the Cigarette Smoking Man of Da Vinci. Whenever we see him, we know that he will: A. intimidate somebody, B. stab somebody in the back and/or C. kill somebody. There is no mystery to the guy. He's dull. Kill him off or let him ride off into the sunset, laughing maniacally, whatever--but GET RID OF HIM AND MOVE ON. Stories are about people. Eventually, you have to explain who and what those people are (like Friedland). No amount of plot device can help you if you hold back information unnecessarily just to keep characters or storylines going past their sellby date.
""Besides, The Leary/Dubreau storyline was resolved. :P" (This was a more tongue-in-cheek comment) ;)""
I know, but I was so cranky about that storyline non-resolution, I just had to say something anyway.
"And as for the firing of Charlie. I agree, in the real world, he would have had his ass canned a long time ago. But on TV, I guess the writers just liked having him around to stir the excrement."
You know what I was waiting for? I was waiting for Mick's mental health and homelessness problems to get outed by Charlie and Bill at the worst possible time for Dom. Why? Because Mick was Dom's personal pick as his successor and it would have been both a major embarrassment and a heck of a hole for Dom to get himself out of (not to mention a huge crisis in their friendship) if it became public knowledge that his successor was both a best bud (and he accuses Bill of nepotism?) and a complete fruitcake--especially if he wanted to save Mick to boot. And because Mick screwed Charlie over at the end of last season and guys like Charlie Klotchko never forget that kind of thing. Never.
Now, do I think that Mick is a complete fruitcake? No. But I could easily see Charlie and Bill making him look like one in the press. Seeing Charlie work his malign "magic" on the pretty pathetic likes of Constable Ferris, instead, was a major disappointment. From a characters' point of view, "outing" Mick's past problems worked. From a plot point of view, it was a pretty obvious step--as obvious, in fact, as Dom leaking the Bill-and-Kurtz lovefest video to the press (which also never happened). But it didn't happen. Why? Well, as far as I could determine, it was because Charlie somehow fell and hit his head and got amnesia between seasons, that's why. Or maybe he found Bobby in the shower and the shock wiped his brain of last season. In other words, there was no reason.
I think Haddock got himself into a good/bad rut. Dom, Mick, et al were the good guys and Bill, Charlie et al were the bad guys. Da Vinci at its best always had the designated bad guys sometimes being right and the designated good guys sometimes screwing up royally and most people being somewhere in between. This got lost somewhere between the middle of season seven and this one. Haddock couldn't bring himself to have his good guys get taken down by the dirty linen in their own closets, even though Dom and Mick between them had an army of still-bloody skeletons between them. So, instead, he had them beset by outside forces, which frankly, wasn't nearly as much fun.
"We really should put a spoiler tag on this thing LOL."
No fear. I already did that for my last post.
Re: "You know what I was waiting for? I was waiting for Mick's mental health and homelessness problems to get outed by Charlie and Bill at the worst possible time for Dom. Why? Because Mick was Dom's personal pick as his successor and it would have been both a major embarrassment and a heck of a hole for Dom to get himself out of (not to mention a huge crisis in their friendship) if it became public knowledge that his successor was both a best bud (and he accuses Bill of nepotism?) and a complete fruitcake--especially if he wanted to save Mick to boot. And because Mick screwed Charlie over at the end of last season and guys like Charlie Klotchko never forget that kind of thing. Never."
Sorry I'm so late replying to this. I'm bored and am re-reading old "City Hall" threads.
Something I always wondered was, how clear was it (other than to those closest to him) what Mick was going through? I got the distinct impression that Leo and Angie worked very hard to protect him and hide the fact of his homelesseness, and vulnerability on the mental health front, from others. Leo and then Angie always went to pick him up at the beach. Did they tell anyone else about that? Knowing them, and how fiercely loyal they all were to one another, I'd say not. I can't recall any of them ever mentioning it to Kurtz, though they may have. Would it have been necessary, as part of his job status, to list his current (non)residence?
I'm recalling the episode where Mick lost his gun. It looked like maybe he was going to have to report it to Kurtz, but then, luckily for him, his gun turned up, so he didn't have to face that. I don't think Leo would ever have reported him, and Leo was doing everything he could to help Mick find his gun.
So I'm thinking that unless someone was spying on Mick during this period, this whole aspect of his life was a closed book to everyone but Leo, Angie and maybe Dom. (And I'm thinking Leo may have said something to Rose about it. Can't remember for sure now.)
This got covered a bit, but it was always in passing. Kosmo knew everything, because Leo tells Rose at the beginning of season six that he has "filled her in". So, Kosmo got the story from both Leo and Mick. It's more speculative to say whether Leo knew what Mick told Kosmo--but I'd be surprised if she didn't fill him in, too. Leo certainly acted as though he was leaving Mick in capable hands with Kosmo and both he and Kosmo had covered up for Mick right after the Josie Hutchins shooting. So, I think we can assume that both Leo and Kosmo knew everything that either one had observed or been told by Mick.
Here's where it gets interesting--Leo tells Rose in the same conversation that Mick is homeless and living on his truck on the beach. Later in season seven, Mick asks Suki if she's aware that he's been living in his truck on the beaach and she says yes, she's heard it around the cop shop. Mick is hesitant, but appears to see his situation as fairly common knowledge, possibly because he was quite open about giving away his stuff before he left his apartment. This was a big surprise, because up until then, he'd acted as if it was a big secret. About the same time that Suki offers Mick an apartment, Carter asks Mick to help him coach a youth soccer team. The implication seems to be that Carter has been recruited into the help-Mick-get-back-on-his-feet campaign. So, quite a few people seem to have known and helped Leo build a big wall of silence around Mick.
However...
At the beginning of season six, a Park Service cop (I think it's the Park Service in charge there) wakes Mick up and tells him he can't park his truck where it's parked. We don't see more of this, but as Mick spent close to a year there before he bought the boat, I'd be surprised if the police in charge there were not well aware of his presence.
Also, while living on a boat may have a rakish glamour of you're Sonny Crockett undercover, it's probably a lot less appropriate for a city official like the Coroner. If someone chose to make an issue of this and dug into it, Mick's homelessness would probably come to light pretty fast. In a normal, healthy atmosphere, this might not be a big problem for Mick, just a tolerable eccentricity. But in the vicious atmosphere of DVCH, it could get ugly fast and they could throw all sorts of things at him. He has, for example, beaten up suspects in the past. What with him being involved in the Dino investigation, digging up some of them could hurt him bad. I'm sure Mona Resnick would love a chance to get a public crack at him. That's the kind of thing that could snowball. But here's the irony--if he and Jan Ferris got together, they could have a heck of a good time suing the Police Department for gaslighting them. I did keep wondering if that was where the whole Ferris thing was going, though I expected it to get wherever it was going a whole lot faster.
Finally, Kurtz did see Mick with that black eye and looking terrible in season five. Leo couldn't hide that. The fact that she chose to say nothing at the time (that we know) doesn't mean she couldn't speak up later.
I don't know if Dom knew anything. I used to think no, but now I'm wondering about the timing of his offering his job to Mick. I think Dom has an idea that Mick has been in bad shape the past few seasons and he also knew about Kurtz's attempt to spin her decision to arrest Josie back onto Mick and Leo. He certainly knows that Mick was getting very unhappy in Homicide. But if a scandal blew up over Mick, it would be very interesting to see Dom's reaction and find out how much he did know.
Good points, all. You remember a lot of stuff I'd forgotten. So yeah, this is something that could've been used against Mick, had anyone bothered to do so. Given all that you've recalled, I am surprised that it didn't come back to haunt him (and Dom). That adds to the odd vibe of narrative disconnect between "Inquest" and "City Hall."
share"A narrative disconnect" is a good way of putting it. It felt as though Haddock couldn't decide if he was doing season eight of DVI or season one of a brand new show. So, he did half-and-half and it ended up confusing everybody. It could be CBC had some responsibility for that, since Haddock has said the only way he could get a new season out of them was to go with a change in title and venue for Dom. It's possible they insisted on some changes that meant we didn't see as much of the original characters.
That said, some of the changes also appear on Intelligence (Matt Frewer's bad guy, for example, is the same kind of flat, slippery, no-visible-motivation scuzzball that we get in DVCH). Either way, I really wondered. You have Bill and Charlie who are apparently willing to do whatever it takes to destroy their enemies--yet, there's a very dangerous one right there and they don't even try to dig up any of the considerable dirt on him. It was very strange. Kinda disappointing, too.
Maybe this is the wrong place to post, since I'm still in mourning.
This show always had its ups and downs. But I still watch the reruns (and rewatch the reruns). It's the only show I care about. And the point of DVCH was not characters, it was power. If you've ever held a position of authority, the twists and turns of the plot lines felt familiar. One moment you've got an edge, next moment, you've been run over. I can't say I've ever seen a show like it. And I'm going to miss the education.
Re: "And the point of DVCH was not characters, it was power. If you've ever held a position of authority, the twists and turns of the plot lines felt familiar. One moment you've got an edge, next moment, you've been run over."
While I agree with your description of the show's central theme, for people to care about what happens, they have to care about the characters. And this is where I felt "City Hall" fell down a little bit. After all, if you watch the last couple of seasons of "Inquest," they were going down that same road, but they were also able to manage that fine balance of keeping the characters important and showing us character growth, all while giving us the education about what happens to people in positions of authority.
Like you, though, I'm still in mourning. I'm still having a hard time believing that CBC sacrified the best thing it had going in favor of . . . well, what, exactly?
Is it possible that anybody--CTV, a U.S. network, anybody--could pick it up?
Well, I think everybody already knows my opinion of the cancellation. TV just ain't much fun, period, without Da Vinci. I'm hoping that the upcoming tv-movie and the Intelligence series will help fill the gap, but still... And it's a long way until fall.
It did bother me quite a bit that the characters were so flat because I have been in a few positions of power and it's all about the characters. The people and the personalities fuel a huge amount of what goes on and how it all goes down. For example, I was surprised we got so very little sex when one of the most dangerous combinations I've encountered is The Couple. People who are joined at the hip and aligned politically because they are sleeping with each other can be a powerful albeit volatile (and often shortlived) combination. It's as if they see no reason outside of the other person--at least until they break up and that's when it gets *really* interesting. I would have thought playing out the Bill/Kurtz combo from season seven would have covered that quite nicely, but apparently not.
Just heard Fred Fuchs, CBC's new head of arts and entertainment programming, interviewed on CBC's afternoon call-in show (for this area), "Ontario Today." No real new news, but many folks who called in expressed disappointment that "Da Vinci's City Hall" was cancelled. One woman said she thought maybe the reason the number of viewers dropped off was due to "Da Vinci fatigue," that they'd grown tired of the series, but I don't think so. Otherwise, I'd think you would've seen a gradual decline in viewership over the course of "Inquest," rather than the radical drop that came with "City Hall." I think it had more to do with the drastic shift in tone of the new series, which many folks never adjusted to.
There were a lot of really good comments, which I hope Fuchs takes to heart. The main thing is that Canadians want Canadian stories, not Hollywood north. That's something "Da Vinci" did so well. Fuchs noted that Chris Haddock is continuing to do work for CBC (as we all know), with a new series in the fall (which he didn't name, but which we all know will be "Intelligence"). And, as we know, he said that a couple of "Da Vinci" movies are in the works, though he didn't offer any specifics there, either. He said the focus will be on the development of series that Canadians want to tune in to, and that the fall schedule will be coming out in five weeks (I think that's what he said). It will be interesting to see what's on it.