WISEGUY Seasons 2, 3, and 4

Jerry Lewis

WISEGUY Season 2, 3 4. 1988 - 1990.

Wiseguy continued to be a good and watchable series throughout its second season. As already noted, the "Dead Dog Records" arc was not included on the official DVD but was the highlight of the second season if not of the show itself. There were other fine story arcs in season 2, however, such as one in which Jerry Lewis and Ron Silver played father and son in the garment industry who were in conflict with a riveting Stanley Tucci as a gangster. For several of these episodes Anthony Dennison filled in for an injured Ken Wahl, and was fine. There was also a shorter arc with an excellent Fred Dalton Thompson as a politician involved with a white supremacy group. Vinnie's priest brother is murdered, and in a truly unlikely development his mother marries an old retired mafioso well-played by George Petrie (who frequently appeared on The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason). One of the best second season episodes was a stand-alone story in which Frank's wife is dying and he and Vinnie try to figure out how to get the money for an operation for her.Wahl continued to exhibit his star charisma and Jonathan Banks was superb as Frank McPike.

Wiseguy  took a real nose dive in its third season, however. It started off well enough with story arcs in which Vinnie takes his stepfather's place at the table of assorted mafioso -- surely a very strange situation -- and has to contend with assorted rivalries and resentments all the while maintaining his cover. Another story arc in which Vinnie goes to Washington D.C., uncovers all sorts of skulduggery, including a plot to ruin the Japanese economy, and winds up arrested, featured fine performances from Ray Stricklyn and especially Norman Lloyd. Wahl exhibited his versatility by playing Vinnie's father in a stand-alone flashback episode, but another single episode in which an old girlfriend turns out to be a cop and thinks Vinnie is a hood, was left dangling. Instead we got the worst story arc in the series' history, in which Vinnie goes to a small town to investigate a man who seems to hold sway over the citizens like an old time European lord. This man, Volcheck, badly played by Steve Ryan, is obsessed with the film Mr. Sardonicus, which is a hell of a lot more watchable than these truly awful episodes of Wiseguy. The unbelievable story also brought back Roger LoCocco (William Russ) in a completely contrived manner, and had Vinnie freaking out and running off in the middle of an assignment, a development which was even more implausible than the rest of the story arc. The season ended up with Eddie Bracken playing a priest and giving a poor performance that matched the general third-rateness of these episodes. We saw more of Jim Byrnes as Lifeguard, who got a girlfriend.

For the fourth and final season, Vinnie -- or rather Ken Wahl -- ran off for good and left the series. Vinnie Terranova was killed off off-screen, but as his body was not found it may have left the door open for a return which never happened. Instead the new hero of the show was Michael Santana (Steven Bauer) a former prosecutor who winds up working with Frank McPike to take down a powerful man (an excellent Maximilian Shell) who thinks of Michael as a son. These episodes weren't terrible, but it just wasn't the same show. In further changes, both Michael and McPike joined the U.S. Attorney's office when the OCB [Organized Crime Bureau] was dissolved. Yet another change occurred in the final episode which featured a dynamic Billy Dee Williams as a tough high school principal who is asked to run for mayor and wants Santana to help in his campaign. How McPike would have fit in with this, no one knows; the series was canceled and the last three episodes, including the one with Williams, were never telecast. The best fourth season episode, in which Michael's friend Hillary (Cecil Hoffman) tries to bring a company that sells defective plane parts to justice, was also never aired. Bauer, Banks and Hoffman gave very good performances, however, and there was also nice work from Michael Learned as Hillary's mother and Fredric Lehne as lawyer Winston Chambers.

Verdict: Season 2: ***1/2. Season 3: **1/2. Season 4: **1/2.

WISEGUY Season One

Ken Wahl as Vinnie Terranova

 WISEGUY Season One. 1987.

Vinnie Terranova (Ken Wahl) gets out of prison after several months and is the shame of his mother, whose other son is a priest. What Ma doesn't know -- and his brother does -- is that Vinnie only went to jail to cement his cover as an agent for the OCB (Organized Crime Bureau). His first assignment is to go to work for mob boss Sonny Steelgrave (Ray Sharkey), with whom he truly becomes friends. Wiseguy looks at the conflicted feelings of agents who have to get close to bad guys as part of their job, but who get to know them on a personal level and ultimately feel as if they are betraying them. In the first season's second story arc, Vinnie gets involved with hit man Roger LoCocco (William Russ) and his bosses, the nutty brother and sister team of Mel (Kevin Spacey, in his first major role) and Susan Profitt (Joan Severance). Wahl is perfect as Terranova, embodying the toughness he would need as an undercover hoodlum as well as the sensitivity to care not only for victims but on occasion for the bad guys as well (this gets a little sticky at times); his Brooklyn accent gets thicker as the season progresses. The other players already mentioned are also on the money, and there's fine work as well from Dennis Lipscomb as mob accountant Sidney; David Steinberg as a rogue government agent; Elsa Raven as Vinnie's mother; David Marciano as the psychotic Lorenzo; and others. Jim Byrnes is fine as "Lifeguard," an agent who answers all of Vinnie's questions and gives him information, and Jonathan Banks, a superb actor, is simply outstanding as Frank McPike, Vinnie's hard-headed but complex liaison in the agency. Joe Dallesandro is certainly interesting casting as rival mob boss, Patrice. While some of the developments in the series are not credible -- Vinnie proposing to a perfectly psychotic woman at one point -- and Vinnie is sometimes too sympathetic to the criminals (the second story arc in particular has a head-scratching wind-up) Wiseguy is entertaining and well-acted.

Verdict: Not quite a classic show but not bad and often suspenseful. ***.