Word: bakersfield
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...proves. Barich starts at the Oregon border and works his way south through the failed fishing and lumber towns of the north coast. What he finds there, and virtually everyplace else in the great coastal kingdom -- on through Yuba City, Copperopolis, San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, the Salton Sea, San Isidro -- is the hunkered down, fearful middle-aged and the resentful, nihilistic youth who see no future and no present worth the trouble. Prisons are the state's sole growth industry. "More prisons were being built in California," Barich writes, "than anywhere else in the world. Frequently, they were...
Television: It's no hit, but Bakersfield P.D. charms...
Executive producer Larry Levin, a former writer for It's Garry Shandling's Show and creator of last season's cop spoof Arresting Behavior, concedes that even in the best circumstances, Bakersfield P.D. is unlikely to become a Top 10 hit. "I'm asking viewers to look sideways at stuff instead of dead-on, and it throws most people," he says. "My feet are firmly planted in sand. Nothing is black and white...
Certainly not the sensitive subject of black-and-white relations. Bakersfield P.D. focuses on Paul Gigante (Giancarlo Esposito), a black police detective newly transplanted from Washington. His race makes him a curiosity in Bakersfield's white-bread station house, and his new colleagues are naive enough to say what's on their mind. His TV-obsessed partner (Ron Eldard) admits to feeling "a little gypped" that the first black man he has worked with is so lacking in flash. In a sting operation to nab a call-girl ring, Gigante is picked to go undercover as a pimp. He bristles...
...Does Bakersfield P.D. have a future? The show is probably too gentle and unassertive to inspire the sort of grass-roots campaign that saved or extended shows like Brooklyn Bridge and Cagney & Lacey. Levin thinks the subject matter makes it a tough sell. "Nobody wants to see ineffective cops," he theorizes. "In the days of Car 54, Where Are You? people didn't have to lock their doors or their car. Today there's violence and fear and crime everywhere, and nobody wants to see a cop who can't make a decision." Maybe not, but who says every show...