Word: kojak
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THAT SPRING, Long John and Bentley spent a great deal of time watching Kojak. They had plenty of opportunity: every other day, it seemed, the listings in the Globe announced another Telly Savalas rerun on late night TV. So they would seat themselves in Bentley's Tower room and wait. At the end of the news at eleven, Jack Cole (a neo-Byronic hero himself, with his own three-piece suits and tough guy act) would make some off-hand comment about the man with the lollipops and then Kojak would appear on the screen...
Sure, they were seniors. Sure, the mid-winter grind of producing a thesis they had lost faith in demanded some respite. Sure, the post-thesis partum depression also required therapy. But Kojak? It made sense, convoluted sense, to Long John. It was his (and Bentley's, as well, he suspected) life-line. Everyone needed one that spring. One friend, Mac the Knife, occupied his evenings setting endurance records at local bars, jumping over parking meters and scheming up wild fiscal take-overs of global publishing companies. (The consensus was that Mac had gone crazy.) Or take Harpo: his spring...
Long John enjoyed Kojak for its simple, uncluttered black and white structure. No complexity, no troubling questions of historical perspectives or methodological approaches. Simple. Bad guys versus good guys. Black and white. Each episode opened with a violent crime. Kojak would be called in--the bald, wise-cracking New York cop specializing in homicide and a professional hater of a) crooks, b) rich crooks and c) the rich, who probably were crooks anyway or they wouldn't have so much money. Kojak would eventually solve the case in his alloted hour or so and dispatch the criminal by bullet...
...weeks working with very little research and a very shaky theoretical knowledge. Bentley was against nuclear power and for gun control. But for all of his ACLU Nader's Raiders sensibilities. Bentley--reclining in comfort on his waterbed, propped up by cushions--would grin in agreement as Kojak violated civil liberties right and left. To his amazement. Long John discovered Bentley applauding a particularly artistic gun battle one night. Kojak's appeal cut across political lines that spring...
...This phenomenal shaking of the money tree also underscores the growing trend among once decorous publishers to ape the methods of Broadway and Hollywood. A handful of people are gambling with a lot of money up front that they know what the public will buy-that instead of watching Kojak reruns all summer, people will bury themselves in a long saga of life on an Australian sheep station...