Why have all the good TV car shows crashed and

[EdwardKnoxII 0]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...DGN68O7FF19.DTL

 

Why have all the good TV car shows crashed and burned? Back in the '80s, 'Dukes'-style driving stunts ruled the day.

 

Peter Hartlaub

 

"The Dukes of Hazzard" was a program with two hot guys who walked around bare-chested, a pinup girl so desirable that her ratty denim shorts ended up in the Smithsonian, and wizened old moonshiner Uncle Jesse -- the white-trash Yoda of his time.

 

All that talent, and a battered old car called the General Lee still received more than half of the show's fan mail.

 

Sure, there were a few famous actors in the mid-1980s, but the humans in programs such as "The Dukes of Hazzard," "Magnum, P.I." and "Knight Rider" were frequently overshadowed by the real stars: a 1983 Pontiac Trans-Am, a 1979 Ferrari GTS and a 1969 Dodge Charger.

 

In 2004, two decades after the peak of car-crash television, there are 17 reality shows on the fall television schedule and seven dramas with the words "Law & Order" or "CSI" in the title, but there isn't a single program that features weekly driving stunts. Last year's cancellation of "Fastlane" may have seemed like a blessing, but it left only reruns for viewers who want a serious dose of vehicular mayhem.

 

No wonder most 12-year-olds would rather play video games than watch TV. The expense of complicated stunts is part of what drove the networks away from car-themed shows, but perhaps studio decisionmakers have forgotten how much fun it was to watch 2 tons of American steel jump over a creekbed. Whether you were watching a couple of good ol' boys, a crack commando unit sent to prison for a crime it didn't commit or the unknown stuntman who makes Eastwood look so fine, the fall of 1984 was a wondrous time for connoisseurs of mindless television.

 

Of 72 shows on three networks in prime time, at least 13 featured weekly car crashes. There were shows about police ("T.J. Hooker," "CHiPs" and "Miami Vice"), outlaws ("The A-Team," "Hot Pursuit" and "The Dukes of Hazzard") and even a series that celebrated the stuntmen who made the whole thing possible ("The Fall Guy"). In most cases, at least one vehicle was so prominent it was practically a member of the cast -- whether it was Mr. T's van in "The A- Team," the Ferrari Daytona Spider in "Miami Vice" or the Coyote X in "Hardcastle and McCormick."

 

This season there are more than 120 programs on six networks, plus several dozen more on cable. Although shows such as "24," "Alias" and HBO's "The Wire" include the occasional car chase, the only series with the potential to match the vehicular carnage of a 1980s action drama such as "Hunter" is the newcomer cop show "Hawaii" on NBC.

 

Maybe it's mostly about the money -- car chases still thrive in movies -- but the lack of stunts on television also says a lot about the direction our Prius-buying, muscle-car-fearing society is headed in. TV police used to investigate crimes by barreling their Crown Victorias into the concrete bottom of the Los Angeles River and chasing a potential suspect until the whole thing ended in a ball of fiery mayhem. Now they use microscopes to solve cases. It may be good for ratings, but it can only mean bad things for the world supply of testosterone.

 

Whatever the reasons against producing another "Knight Rider," they are outweighed by the argument for studios to rush a talking car back on the small screen, pronto. Add a good vehicle to the cast, and your television show is walkout-proof. When the two biggest human stars on "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "CHiPs" temporarily left their shows in separate financial disagreements, the shows continued because enough viewers stuck around -- presumably to watch the stunts.

 

For now, the golden age of guilty-pleasure television can be rediscovered on DVD, where the producers of the "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Knight Rider" box sets have shown the good sense to give stunt coordinators equal billing in the bonus materials.

 

"Dukes" stunt-coordinating genius Paul Baxley reveals that there were 309 General Lees used during the seven-year life of the show (most ended up on the scrap heap).

 

"We got different kinds of cars to do different things," stunt coordinator Jack Gill explains in a "Knight Rider: Season One" bonus feature. "One would do 160 miles per hour and one was zero to 60 in 3 seconds. I had a car that would jump long distances and a car that would jump small distances and cars that were set up for dirt and cars that would do burnouts really well. We had a car with a big engine and a nitrous system in it so I could take off just like that."

 

If it were the mid-1980s, and you were a prepubescent male, chances were good that one of Gill's airborne cars was plastered on your lunchbox. Is there a single prime-time TV show that's Thermos-worthy today?

 

E-mail Peter Hartlaub at [email protected].

[Placebo Effect 0]

What kind of fucknut decides that he should write an article about television shows with cars?

 

And his insult of Fastlane doesn't exactly make me happy.

 

And I only count six shows with CSI or Law & Order in its title. Maybe they made a new L&O, that being one of those bland legit investigation shows.

[Guest El Satanico]

What's the problem with doing an article about car TV shows?

 

There's three CSI's and I could've swore there were 4 Law and Order's, but hell who can tell the difference between Law and Order and the other similar shows.