Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Keen Eddie: “Pilot”

Best known as the TV series actor Mark Valley starred in before he moved on to Boston Legal and Human Target, Keen Eddie showed a lot of potential in its first episode but unfortunately, it had a lot of dubious humor as well. (For example, a running gag involved the title character's pet dog having forced sex with his roommate's cat. Classy.)

The plot involved a New York City police detective (the Keen Eddie of the title) who screwed up the bust of an international drug ring when he allowed himself to be lured onto a false trail by a mysterious femme fatale. In order to atone for his mistake, he was sent to London and assigned to work with Scotland Yard to track down the British side of said drug ring. He was forced to share his apartment with a young British college student (played by Sienna Miller) and his pet pit bull -- an animal he tried to leave behind in New York but did not quite succeed.

It would undoubtedly surprise few veteran cop show fans to note that Eddie did succeed in redeeming himself in the eyes of his transatlantic colleagues in this episode but not until after a series of amusing culture clashes. The result was the start of a promising series which would have liked to seem sophisticated but more often came across as sophomoric. For every scene which was undeniably clever, there was yet another scene which was -- ahem -- dumb. And the use of annoyingly repeated scenes to emphasize humor on this show was a technique which got old really fast.

On the plus side, the show did provide work for a lot of talented British actors who rarely get seen by American TV viewers. Plus Valley proved with this series that he had a lot more flair for comedy than he ever got to show when he was playing straight man to James Spader on Boston Legal.

Too bad the scripts for this show were not as good. Now that would have been keen.