How is Blade stacking up against other television detectives? Let�s take a moment to reflect.
Batman: Blade has obviously patterned himself after Batman. His use of equipment, a crime fighting cave (or basement), the attempt at a snazzy car and the faux acrobatics are all attempts to act upon his Batman roots. However, because Blade is only about half as smart, dirt poor and otherwise afflicted with ADHD he falls painfully short of Batman status. Blade has about as much in common with Batman as he does with a claw hammer. That is to say both Blade and a claw hammer can drive a nail with their heads and both probably have tried it at least once. In a Blade vs. Batman contest, Batman would win without breaking a sweat.
Sherlock Holmes: Blade pays homage to Sherlock Holmes in that Blade attempts to pick up clues and use them to solve crimes. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, Blade is incapable of telling the difference between a clue and cannoli. Sherlock Holmes has a magnifying glass and can play the violin badly. Blade has a broken flashlight and does everything badly. Sherlock would merely have to outthink Blade by using his powers of literacy. In fact, Sherlock could win a contest against Blade by merely printing false information in a newspaper and leaving it laying around for Blade�s real estate agent to find.
Sam Spade: Sam Spade is one of the original �hard boiled� detectives. Establishing the pattern for an entire genre of detectives and the standard by which all future gumshoes would be judged, Sam Spade didn�t mind being as much of a menace to society as those he sought. Blade tries his utmost be every bit as hard-boiled, but comes off as slightly overdone. Sam remembers to ask the bad guy questions before he beats him up. Blade can�t remember which case he is working on. Sam at least cleans up the loose ends when his partner gets killed. Blade seems to be the number one cause of partner deaths. Blade would probably punch Sam Spade into next week, but would most likely forget why in the process. Advantage goes to Sam.
Mike Hammer: Mike Hammer is Sam Spade with morals. This basically means that Blade has the same problem. It�s hard to be a badass when you have ADHD. If you can�t remember what case you�re working on, it just isn�t productive to run around beating people up. Mike stands a good chance of tricking Blade by mentioning that Blade�s shoes are untied. In the end, Mike Hammer gets the holy crap kicked out of him, but still can solve the case. Blade will just get confused. Besides, Mike Hammer slams down cheap Scotch like it was water. Blade has that Gatorade looking Blade Juice stuff.
Charlie Chan: Charlie Chan solves crime by not looking important. He was like the Predator but without all the beheadings, invisibility, and Governors Ventura and Schwarzenegger. People just start jabbering like a bunch of idiots because they don�t notice him. When the going gets rough, he sends his son in to take care of things. If you ask me, that�s pretty darn good thinking. Anyone that Blade sends to do anything gets killed so fast you would think they had on red shirts and were dropped into a bullfighting convention. Blade treats his assistants like canaries in a coalmine, Charlie treats them like family. Advantage: Charlie.
The Green Hornet: If Charlie Chan was a sharp cookie, this guy was just one step short of a freaking genius. He fought crime, wore a mask and generally tried to fit the �middle-class� Batman role. The difference was he went out and hired quality help. This guy didn�t just go out and hire any stooge, no he hired Bruce �I�ll kick your ass just by thinking about it� Lee. In the world of superhero detectives this is like having a dozen sidekicks and a marine platoon. Most villains just confessed instead of getting a taste of a real roundhouse kick and a dozen karate chops. Don�t even bother trying to shoot him. By the time you pull the trigger, Bruce Lee will have jammed the gun up your backside twice, leaped off the ceiling, made some screeching noises to break your eardrums and stopped for a cool pose. In a battle with the Green Hornet, Blade would get the tar knocked out of him by the sidekick and the Green Hornet would stand around sipping martinis. The crazy sounds Bruce Lee made were more than enough to make most villains soil their pants. Blade makes sounds as if he has extreme constipation or acute paper cuts.
Quincy: For a crime fighter, Quincy took a unique approach. Instead of solving the crimes while the victim might still be alive, he took the low road and waited until their bloated corpse washed ashore then went to work. That eliminated the majority of the danger factor. Skilled at finding the most unusual clues from the most bizarre microscopic locations, Quincy never met a corpse he couldn�t help. Blade would have no problem beating the stuffing out of Quincy and his entire staff. Since Blade�s gun turns all his interrogations into cat litter, there are no clues. Quincy could probably tell you what the atmospheric pressure was 300 miles away by the dispersion pattern of the cat litter, Blade can�t reliably spell cat. Provided Quincy was smart enough not to publish his plans on the cover of a magazine where Blade could find them, Quincy would probably be able to stay far enough away to avoid a confrontation. Advantage: Quincy.
Emeril Lagasse: Emeril �BAM!� Lagasse is not a crime fighter but he could be. Imagine if you will that instead of his ill-fated television series, Emeril instead played a no-nonsense gumshoe who just happened to be a forensic gastroenterologist. Not dissimilar to Quincy, Emeril would be able to tell you how the corpse attained flat line status based upon the contents of their digestive tracts. In a contest, Blade would have little trouble finding Emeril just by following the sounds of the �BAM!� and the trail of paprika. That being said, Emeril could easily use a small personal peppermill to induce a sneezing fit in Blade that would allow him to escape. Advantage: Emeril.
Knight Rider: Both the car and the do-gooder Michael Knight would be capable of outwitting, out driving and generally outeverythinging Blade. The car is faster, smarter, more durable and generally superior in every way. Michael Knight would at least be able to make a good decoy while the car finished kicking the crap out of Blade and the Blademobile. More importantly, neither of them needs weapons other than their razor sharp wit and a wristwatch to keep the world safe. For a victory dance, the car would drive through Blade�s basement, do a huge donut and burn enough rubber to make the place smell like a smoldering tire fire for a month, then explode through the ceiling and disappear as the debris buried Blade�s real estate agent. No contest.
Barnaby Jones: Barnaby Jones was just Quincy�s next customer waiting on his appointment. However, he had a knack for finding oil in the front yard and finding the stupid bad guys. Every case he found a villain and then tricked them into confessing with some of Granny�s moonshine. He was a lot tougher than he looked and could most likely drink Blade under the table if Blade were to catch up with him. Having no hope of surviving a physical confrontation, Barnaby�s best hope was his renowned �liver of steel� and his incessantly boring stories about �back in the day� and stuff like that. This one could go either way depending on what mood Blade was in at the time.
Kojak: Kojak invented the shaved head that Blade now sports. Making it cool decades before a young Bladeling got his first pocketknife, Kojak has what it takes to fight crime all day and party all night. In a head-to-head match up Kojak would get more than a few good licks in but would probably end up needing some backup. Blade would probably end up wearing his hands out before Kojak went unconscious. Light advantage to Kojak for the fight, huge advantage in the �cool� department.
Magnum PI: Magnum PI was one of the sharpest detectives around. He didn�t own anything, didn�t pay any bills, and didn�t seem to do much of anything. However he always seemed to have helicopters, sports cars, mansions, yachts, attack dogs and a cranky mathematician at his beck and call. He was just a quick shave from being James Bond. Blade has three broken crash test dummies, a mountain of cardboard boxes and the rust bucket he calls the Blademobile. Blade wouldn�t get the chance to fight Magnum PI since the helicopters and stuff would be following him around in his easy-to-spot giant black Blademobile. Advantage: Magnum.
Perry Mason: Perry Mason was a detective in a wheelchair. He was like a modern day Stephen Hawking except that Perry Mason had a huge unibrow. This accoutrement and Perry�s lack of a social life led him to be unusually successful at crime fighting. Perry was also a lawyer so he knew exactly which of your civil liberties he was violating as he ran over your fingers with his wheelchair. 4th amendment or not, you probably told Perry what he wanted to know. Blade would have no problem rolling Perry to a flight of stairs and giving him flying lessons but Perry would be able to sue Blade and leave him without his Blademobile. Given the circumstances, Blade would probably say something menacing and wait to catch Perry in a dark alley. Tie.
Harry Callahan: The Bladegun is nothing if not impressive. It may look like something that Blade swiped off an arcade version of Time Cop, but it can turn a 300-pound former rap star into a bag of cat litter faster than you can yell �not on my new carpet.� Blade seems to have pretty good luck with the Bladegun if you give him enough time. Harry Callahan, on the other hand, doesn�t need the extra time. Equipped with his .44 Magnum, Harry doesn�t even bother to count how many shots he has taken. He just doesn�t need to. Advantage: Harry Callahan.
Charlie�s Angels: Three at once is definitely not Blade�s game. Blade can barely keep track of one thing at a time. If Blade worked as an air traffic controller, we would all be dead within minutes as he mistakes the blinky thing in front of him for a game of Missile Command. Forgetting who was doing what, Blade would not just get his ass kicked once, but three times. Advantage: Charlie�s Angels.
Shaft: Shaft would just walk up and beat the crap out of Blade for no good reason. Advantage: Shaft.
MacGyver: MacGyver would probably die laughing at the Blade-a-rang and never get around to hooking together two paperclips to form a lightning rod that would render Blade unconscious long enough MacGyver to escape. He�d probably fill the Blade Juice canisters with Dawn dishwashing liquid for good measure. Advantage: Totally MacGyver.
Your Tally:
1 Tie (Against a wheelchair-bound lawyer with a unibrow)
2 Maybe scenarios against Kojak and Barnaby Jones
13 No contests including one television chef
Blade better hang on to his hired help a littler better given the odds he seems to be facing. Now then, back to the show.
Jayna wakes up dressed in some black evening gown that looks like it came from the Cruella DeVille collection. Obviously surprised that she has changed clothes she seems totally confused and downright upset that bad guy seems to have her prisoner. Maybe it just reminds her of the time she spent a month in Solomon Grundy's basement while he kept repeating that line from Silence of the Lambs except that Solomon Grundy never brought the lotion. Bad guy keeps trying to stare up her dress and she really gets the creeps.
Blade, now realizing that he is up the creek, finds the dude that Jayna tried to bluff and roughs him up. He finally finds someone to tell him a clue before he kills them. Maybe he did learn something after all.
Now bad guy and posse are cruising into a meat packing plant for a quick drink? What?!? Vampires!!! What in the name of heaven is this crap? Where did this giant sphincter of a plot twist come from? How in the name of The Rockford Files can you foul up a perfectly good detective show with this reject from Sunnydale garbage? What�s next � Martians? Oh that's it I freaking quit. I don�t mind a good plot twist, but this is so far out it borders on random. There is not enough beer under the heavens to make this plot passable. Call Kolchak, I no longer care.
Rating: Negative two stars. I, nor my liver, can take any more.
Larry D. Yablow is a florist by day and avid watcher of all things televised by night. He enjoys nothing more than the opportunity to tell others about his experiences in his characteristically bold and occasionally confused style. Neither sleet, nor rain, nor lack of a hearing aid battery will keep Larry from his appointed rounds. See some of Larry's custom design work at