Season 1, Episode 8--"I'd Die For You"

"Rain on me, 'till your pour/like a wave I'll carry you to shore . . ."

 SYNOPSIS

 So hey, Mindi Lake's murder is finally getting the electric chair and all of Bay City is hella excited about this, as it's been about five years in the making and it was a big case that shook the city to its foundations, because Mini was this beloved tragic icon, and naturally, we're only hearing about it now, because continuity is something for other, lesser, shows than Cobra. However, people are upset about it as the prison has a group of people chanting somewhat tone-deaf slogans and outside the jail.

 Mindi became "famous" for a song called "I'd Die For You," (NOTE: if you take a drink every time that song plays or when someone asks another person if they loved someone so much they'd die for them, you will be puke-drunk before the second act break) which you will hear bits of sprinkled through the episode. Given the quality of the song, it is somewhat reasonable to assume that the citizens of Bay City are pretty starved for culture. Mindi apparently was lifted up from obscurity into superstardom which led to some set of tragic drug-laden existence shot through with the pressures of superstardom, but we're spared the details for the most part because this episode is not about that. What it IS about is the man condemned to die, Jack Beyer, Mindi's ex-husband, a nice enough guy (for a convicted murderer) who seems at peace with the whole mercy seat thing even if he maintains his innocence the whole time.

 The prison warden decides to call in Cobra who were are told "are feared in the cell block" (why? For being so easy to break into?) and Scandal and Danielle (who is rocking some serious linebacker shoulder pads this week) listen to Beyer's heartfelt "I didn't kill my wife, it was the one-armed man on the grassy knoll" but Dallas overrules them. He was one of the agents who investigated Mindi's murder (apparently Mindi's producer was involved in a money-laundering case and since Mindi was a federal witness, her murder became a federal case) and he's having a bit of a sulk today. It's not until his ex-partner, Hal, shoots himself that he decides to join Scandal and Dani in trying to get Beyer exonerated.

 Problem is, they have less than a day before Beyer's executed. To help with this, Dallas contacts the DA who was on the case, Blake Devaroe, and he pledges to help them. It's obvious they're on to something, because soon after, Mindi's producer's (who's named RUDY FINK, for God's sake . . .)hired thugs (all record producers have hired thugs, right?) brace Scandal and Dallas so we can have an action sequence in amongst all of this procedural action. Thankfully, Fink is a terrible criminal mastermind, as he leaves the thugs to get on with it, which removes their Plot Immunity and allows Scandal to kung-fu 'em and Dallas to go all Hacksaw Jim Duggan with a 2 x 4, because that's how Dallas rolls. 

 Thanks to the somewhat elastic nature of time on this show (somewhere, Sophocles is crying into his ambrosia) the gang is able to track down a series of leads that help them get to the truth: Fink arranged a sex date for Devaroe with Mindi, which he filmed covertly for blackmail purposes. Things got out of hand and Devaroe bashed her head in with a statue (like you do when dates go bad? I don't like what this episode is implying . . .) so instead of a sex film, he had a snuff film, and Devaroe was in Fink's pocket in perpetuity. But thankfully. Fink is terrible at follow-through and not ONLY failed to collect the van he used to develop the film from the police impound yard (for FIVE YEARS, mind you) but left the film in there, which means they at last have hard evidence to exonerate Beyer.

 Naturally, this means Fink and Devaroe break into Cobra's headquarters and burn the film, then leave killing our heroes to the same thugs that failed to kill Scandal and Dallas two acts earlier. Naturally, they fail AGAIN and with literal seconds left on the clock (and a bluff I remember seeing in Midnight Run) they force Devaroe to confess (given his temperament to date, we're lucky he didn't start smashing someone's brains in with a statue) and Beyer is free at last, though what the hell prospects a formerly condemned man has after all of this is left for the viewer to speculate because it's time to watch Mindi cavort in her underwear and sing this drippy ballad like it's 1994 and these are the opening credits to One Life To Live or something . . .

 ANALYSIS
 Mindi's song has all this stuff in the song about how she'd help someone weather the storm and lead her to dry land, and yet I'm dubious, because all she does in the video is writhe around on a bed in her underwear. I'm pretty sure for some of that you have to get up and get dressed a little earlier than usual.

 "I'd Die For You," by the way is a rather lugubrious ballad in the Belinda Carlisle mode, full of vaguely sexy yet also alarmingly co-dependent lyrics and I wouldn't spend so much time thinking about the more unsavory aspects of it, were it not played through 25% of the episode running time.

 Look, I know we're supposed to feel sympathetic for Beyer's plight and true love and all of that, but your FIRST thought when you see your beloved lying dead on the floor is to grab the phone and all the police (good) and also to grab the murder weapon (BAD!) I mean, the guy's kind of an idiot.

 Mindi's kind of a bit of a cipher here, isn't she? I mean, we're all supposed to be terribly upset that she died, but the real circumstances of how much she was loved or how tragic her downfall was is sorta sketched in. There was, perhaps, another, darker episode that might be made from this--I mean, a corrupt record producer pimping out a singer to romance DA's to make them forget payola investigations (and man, payola really has gotten complicated. Back in the day on WKRP, all you needed for payola was a record album full of cocaine) but Cobra is not interested in making that show, as it would involve less chances for people to get spin-kicked in the face and also for Mindi to write around on a bed in her lacy underthings. There are some very distressing questions about women being remote objects of lust and/or possession that the episode mercifully doesn't ask out loud, but don't take a lot of polishing to bring out. 

 Cobra takes a LOTTA pages from the Axel Foley Playbook in this episode to get the plot moving. Dallas masquerades as a FBI agent and a doctor in an insane asylum and Scandal wears the cleanest straightjacket in the history of mental health systems (but, it is assumed, not Quiet Riot's Metal Heath system) and it is wonderful that Bay City is located in a weird parallel universe where all this stuff works.

 I also love that the bad guy is called Rudy Fink. That is just . . .wow. Thumbs up Cobra, for not even bothering to give a crap. 

 It's probably good that Dallas carries the episode, as he's the best actor on the show and James Tolkan's natural charisma keeps the episode moving and papers over the bits that don't make sense or only barely make sense.

 In the long awaited return of our "Hey! It's THAT guy," feature, Devaroe is played by Eric McCormack, who most people know from Will & Grace, but I know as Mark from Free Enterprise. All things being equal, life was probably easier later when he was trying to convince Shatner not to do that musical version of Julius Caesar. 

 In fact, that completely daft TV logic is one of the reasons why this episode is one of my favorites of the whole run--it wants to be this gritty drama but it's not because it's too damn silly, it wants to be silly but it shouldn't, and it wants to be romantic but isn't, and he resultant melange is so damned odd that it becomes endearing in a wholly weird sort of way. This is not the only time during this series run when we'll be dealing in this weird halfword wherein a genre drama TV series reaches for something a bit too lofty and comes up with a lot of weird all over it's hands.

 DAD WISDOM/THE QUOTABLE COBRA

 "The Mindi Lake Murder was the most open and shut case since Ruby Shot Oswald"

 "And if you folks thing I'm singing off-key, just take a gander at the rest of the song."

 "Yeah, but it's long-expired--Not worth the dirt on Hoover's grave."

 "That's the problem with this country--everyone watches TV, no one's getting anything done."

 "Dammit! I'm trapped in a glass room and Hal took the key with him!"

 "Look at this man's straightjacket--it's spotless, which means he's a new transfer!"

 "And it never occurred to you that little Fink here would film it to blackmail you?"

 "And you lost it! Bashed her head in with a statuette. You never DID know how to handle women, did you?"

 "Can we get on with this, please?! I've got an execution to attend!"


 NEXT WEEK
 A terrorist commits a daring hijacking and escapes D.B. Cooper-style into the same Not-Canadian Woods that Danielle and Scandal have, in a moment of intense mutual personal stupidity, decided to go on a wilderness trek. What will become of them? Why can the terrorist say the word "Mossad" properly?  And just what in the HELL is the Mephisto Fallacy of Sociopathic Behaviour, anyways? All of these questions will probably not be answered in seven days when we look at out next episode, "Something In The Air." See you then!