Detective Angie Harmon

A month or two ago, I picked up an abandoned book in our stairwell where people regularly put things that they don't need anymore out for other people who might find some use out of them. It's a great thing. So I picked up James Patterson's 8th Confession and then got all the others in the series and finished all of them in record time. They are all part of the Women's Murder Club series about Detective Lindsay Boxer and her friends who take jobs as Medical Examiner, Assistant District Attorney and Crime Desk Reporter to join hands and solve murder cases together. It was a good read since the chapters are all 2-3 pages long and I can stop anytime when I get too tired and can't keep my eyes open anymore.



So instead of waiting for the 10th installation, I went on the net and downloaded the first and only season of the TV series based on the Patterson books called Women's Murder Club starring Angie Harmon as blond detective Lindsay Boxer. The series was canceled after one season because of the writer's strike of 2007, which was the single cause of death for a lot of good shows and ideas. I didn't expect a lot from it but the more I watch, the more I grew to enjoy the show.

There's certain charm to all the characters, actually all four women are very likable. Of course, I have been to San Francisco so I'm faintly familiar with the city and the scenery and I like the city so I feel good watching it. The cast tries to incorporate minorities in the script even though the Asian characters in the show was either a bitch, a corrupt racist, or dead. For Latinos the portrayal is not any better, they are either illegal, a bruja, villain killers or dead. I guess in a detective show it's hard to create any positive role models. I finished the TV series too in a short amount of time and left with a good but regrettable feeling knowing that there wouldn't be a second season, wouldn't you know it when I turn on the TV and saw Angie Harmon playing a detective in a brand new show?



No, even though it's like a continuation of the previous series I wasn't excited. It's only two years ago that she played a toyboy-ish detective that loves her job so much that she couldn't manage to find a boyfriend who's best friend is a medical examiner and here she is again with the same personality playing a character with a different name based on another book series. The number of minority in this show shrunk into one black guy who puke whenever he sees a dead body. That reminds me that Angie Harmon was accused of being a racist herself because she made a comment about Obama which Whoopi defended here with the same line she defended Mel Gibson. At least Lorraine Brocco from Sopranos changed her looks and adopted an accent to play her mother but Angie Harmon's Detective Jane Rizzoli remained the very same. At least this time her hair color matched the original character written by Asian American writer Tess Gerritsen, unlike Sasha Alexander who turned a goth princess into someone more booji to fit her looks. Though I'm sure those things happens all the time.

So they set the story around Boston, I'm still a little peeved about the unoriginality of having the same actress acting on two different characters with a similar story lines that looks practically the same but I figure I can get into it. Despite the relatively long modeling and acting career, does she really know how to act or is she playing the same person over and over again? I've already picked up one of the books in the Rizzoli/Isles series. My requirements on detective books seemed to be quite low so I might be able to get hooked to it if I let it.