I love good guys

I recently replaced my TV (luckily, before tariff announcements). My prior TV was a decade and a half old. Its replacement, a Roku-brand TV, is fully 55" corner to corner and still blowing my mind when I rewatch familiar media on it. For example, rewatching first-season Forever Knight on the much bigger screen, I constantly see props, sets, and expressions more clearly than ever before. Mostly, it's just increased clarity/visibility from sheer size and from fiddling for optimal settings to make the old footage look its best on screens it was never meant for (so far, for '90s shows, I recommend "Movie" for DVDs and "Auto-detect" for streaming). But occasionally I see things I genuinely never knew were there.

For example, rewatching "Dark Knight" (German DVD*), I saw for the first time that Nick's TV stand is on a very low, wooden, wheeled platform, a rough hand-truck seemingly left over from when the warehouse was in use as a warehouse. And on Alyce's desk, next to her apple, which I've always seen, is a modest bran muffin that I didn't recall (FK Alyce's snacks contrast with NK Alyce's ice cream and chips; I do prefer NK's Alyce in every way, as I prefer FK's Janette in every way). In the Raven, I saw clearly for the first time the little flashlights the patrons shine on themselves and each other; before, I'd seen only the lights, not the devices. Most arrestingly, I saw, for what felt like the first time, that when Schanke and Nick go up the staircase to stop the crazed shooter in the apartment building in the Chinese neighborhood, and Schanke says, "It's just a little plasma, Knight; don't get all worked up" -- a line I believe is straight from the original Nick Knight script, where this scene happens in a health club and is pretty different -- they are not stepping around only blood on the stairs, but around a young woman's dead body. "Just a little plasma?" I know Schanke means, "Keep moving, Knight; we can't afford to get distracted now [with bonus vampire allusion]," but... perhaps that line should have been rewritten for how the scene was re-staged. Ugh.

Have you had similar experiences with old stories on new devices?

* Ages ago, when some companies maybe didn't realize the full implications of publishing factory reset codes, I unlocked a DVD player to make it region-agnostic. The FK German DVDs have all the visual footage of the initial Canadian airings, which were of course significantly the longest of the many North American cuts over the years -- plus the scenes, mostly just longer establishing shots, that are truly unique to the German cuts -- but very unfortunately the English audio track for those pivotal scenes from the initial Canadian airings is missing from the German DVDs, just as those whole scenes are missing entirely from the North American DVDs and streaming. (My ancient unlocked DVD player needed an adapter to work with the new TV. This is fine.)

Oh, wow. I just today got a joke in FK that I've been missing all these many years. One very specific joke. From the tag of s01e11 "The Hunters." You probably understood this joke the first time you saw the episode! But I don't have the most keen social insight. All this time, I've vaguely wondered what was up with that exchange; did one of the actors blow a line, or was it just written a little awkwardly? No, no, it was entirely me not getting the joke:

NICK: All I'm saying is that Anderson was right. There's more to being a good cop than picking up dead bodies. And you're a good cop.

SCHANKE: Is this a compliment? I'll try not to get a swelled head.

NICK: You want me to tell you the truth?

SCHANKE: Yeah. Yeah, I want the truth.

NICK: You lost that battle a long time ago, Doughnut.

I take some comfort in that Schanke perhaps doesn't immediately get the joke, either. He looks confused!

The joke is that "the battle" Schanke lost "a long time ago" is to "not get a swelled head." It has nothing to do with being "a good cop," which is what Schanke was fishing for. After giving Schanke several paragraphs of unusually supportive reassurance after the episode's traumatic events, Nick pivots to making fun of Schanke in their more usual dynamic.

Facepalm. How could I have never grasped this before? But I do now, and it's lovely. First-season FK. Seriously. So good! Always. :-D

What are a couple of your personally least-favorite episodes or scenes of Forever Knight? Why those?

Define "least favorite" however you like! Worst executed. Worst concept. Best try that fell flattest. The one you watched when you had food poisoning and can't think of without feeling ill again. ;-) But if a particular episode element -- a scene, a trope, an omission, a logic failure, a contradiction, a missed opportunity -- especially bugs you, that's really what I have in mind today.

I'm brainstorming for FKFicFest. I've found over the years that arguing a point is often my personal readiest spark. For example, the story I wrote last year came completely from cringing my way through a re-watch of "Trophy Girl," which I see as not just an illogical mess, but a wasted opportunity that could have been great if only it had taken its own investigation seriously and not wallowed with the irrelevant imprisoned character (Nick doesn't need anyone to tell him how serial killers think) (also, "Crazy Love" did it better) (and so did "Love You to Death"). For another example -- not mine this time -- "Be My Valentine" launched a thousand fics arguing passionately against its apparent supposition that Natalie could be hypnotized despite the evidence of "Only the Lonely" and "A More Permanent Hell" (and thus it's become deep, wide fanon that Natalie was drugged and/or faking).

I'm curious what comes to mind for you! Thank you!

When brainstorming for fkficfest converged with certain real-world events, I discovered that while I remembered that Tracy shooting someone in the line of duty was the impetus for the "Trophy Girl" plot, I did not remember whom she'd shot, or why, or what happened to that person. That was unsettling! Why couldn't I remember? I determined to re-watch "Trophy Girl."

So, after putting it off for a while, I tried -- tried! -- to re-watch "Trophy Girl" last night. Um. "Trophy Girl" is now my least-favorite episode in the entire series. Good grief. To fulfill my purpose, I did re-watch every Tracy scene. But I had to skip the scenes in the prison. And I could barely cringe through some of the other scenes. There are bits of this episode that do good things! But they are swamped by two wrongheaded tides poorly overlaid, and not helped by the conventions of '90s syndicated television and the expectations of the USA network. Ick.

You can take for granted that I find the flashback thematically hollow and aggravating. Apparently, its story purpose is to further parallel Nick -- Nick, as much or more than Lacroix -- with the present-day villains. Why? What's the point of that? A first-season episode would let Nick learn a lesson from that; this third-season episode's text offers no learning to the character, only disgust to the viewer. Sure, we can build a thematic subtext ourselves; we're very good at that! But the filmed version fails. What did Nick learn from that past event? A better story would have fit in an impact on the character.

More importantly, we have Tracy, who by the end of this episode has ended two human lives in service of the "she really is a good cop; believe us as we tell you this over and over in so many words" effort.

Having Tracy deal with the psychological impact of killing -- even in the line of duty, even as indisputable necessity in the moment to save lives -- could have been a spectacular episode, could have paralleled with Nick not wanting to kill, could have explored and built character! Did it? No. She claims killing didn't phase her. No one tells her that it should phase her, that she should need a pause for reflection. Reese or Nick should have told her that, but they didn't. Maybe her relatives or friends, but no. Instead, she throws herself into an unauthorized dangerous situation in a foolish way without backup -- attempting to prove herself, pushing back on what she mistakenly sees as a suspension, which misperception could have been a powerful pivot, more important and interesting than the prison scenes -- and then she ends up killing again. And what lesson does the character take from all of this? How does she get to grow or develop? None. She doesn't. In the end, Natalie tells us that Tracy was taken to the hospital -- off screen -- and that's that, never again do we hear about any of this. What was the story deliverable? That Tracy can shoot and is oversensitive to thinking she is being treated differently than others? We already knew those things. How was repeating them like this worth this set-up?

Oh, the person killed at the start of the episode? We learn that he was a drug dealer. We don't learn anything else about him. Not even his name. Not even the specific crime. The episode opens with Nick and Tracy chasing him and another man. Nick manages to apprehend his guy unharmed. Tracy ends up in an alley with hers. He shoots at her; she shoots back; he dies.

Something that leela_cat said made me realize for the very first time: There are no pets in all 6+ seasons of HL, but there are fairly many pets in 3 seasons of FK, for a TV show.

To be more precise, except for those with the K-immie in "Leader of the Pack," I remember no named or otherwise non-utilitarian animals in all of HL. We have many horses, of course, but the horses are strictly transportation, less thought-of than the characters' modern-day cars.

Granted that the animals in FK are also less thought-of than some of the characters' cars -- ahem, Caddy ;-) -- nevertheless, Natalie has her cat, Sidney, who appears in one episode and is referenced in 2 more (if I remember correctly). While Perry is a working dog, he is named and a character unto himself, and Nick's Ralegh is surely a pet. Tracy refers to getting a puppy as a gift for someone else. Schanke makes a joking reference to a pet dog (the line is something like, "gotta get home, kiss the wife, kick the dog").

Animals are difficult to have on set. Movies, TV shows, theaters all tend to avoid animals when not absolutely necessary to a story. And neither HL nor (much more so) FK were rolling in funding in '90s syndication. But FK's writers repeatedly referred to pets in their story universe. HL's did not.

Interesting! What do you think?