Lethal Weapon

IanT

Anyone else enjoying the Lethal Weapon TV series?

Back in the day I was a proper Lethal Weapon film fan. Had the Riggs mullet, cowboy boots and everything. I decided to watch the TV series with some trepidation, expecting it to be a serialisation of the films.

By the end of the first episode I was hooked. I love the little nods to the films but it has really become an entity in its own right with some great casting.

I decided to re watch the films recently and I'm leaning more towards the TV series being my favourite.

Oh, and American cousins, no spoilers please...

Thunderpussy

I too enjoy the series, mainly because of Damon Wayans who's a highly talented actor and
Comedian.

IanT

Thunderpussy wrote:

I too enjoy the series, mainly because of Damon Wayans who's a highly talented actor and
Comedian.

And lesser known as the slightly camp waiter who gives Eddie Murphy the bananas to stick in the exhaust pipe of Billy and Taggart's car in Beverley Hills Cop.

Napoleon Plural

I've caught some episodes, and it's good. It's interesting, because they are not blatantly imitating the Riggs and Murtaph of the movies. The dynamic is altered a bit. In the 1980s it was a new thing in movies to have a black and white guy as buddies. Not unheard of, I think Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr did something in the 60s, right? But at that time, it was unusual to have the white guy as the basket case and the black guy as the staid, respectable middle class older guy. To put it in context, you simply couldn't have had a young black guy as the basket case palled up with the older respectable white guy back then, and maybe even now, but at the time this dynamic was progress. (I know you had Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 48 hrs, but Murphy's dude wasn't off his rocker in that, or about to go into meltdown.) Now, it seems perhaps a bit off because it falls into the dynamic where the young white guy is real cool and single and sexy while the black guy kind of a scaredy cat, not so cool.

The new series did seem to address that a bit. It's interesting to see how it changes, v gradually. Murtaph's wife is really hot, for instance, so more covetable. And Riggs seems less enviable, not quite so cool. I'm not sure our OP, IanT, would want to imitate his outfit, for instance, after watching this - I too remember thinking about getting Gibson's Riggs check shirt! The new Riggs is more like Craig's Bond, a bit of a screw up but interesting nonethless.

The whole thing is a reworking rather than an imitation. It maybe helps not having the Clapton guitar going on the whole time in the background.

IanT

I think that they address the Murtagh scaredy cat thing by explaining that he recently had a heart attack and it's thinking that he had a quiet run up to retirement, a new baby, family responsibilities that keeps him on the side of caution. Although, he does seem to be pushing the envelope more and more as he tries to imitate Riggs.

As for imitating new Riggs - I actually prefer some of his style than the Riggs style. Probably because I couldn't get away with a mullet anymore!