Okay, you must be thinking, "Lamberson, are you crazy covering WISEGUY on Fear Zone? Wasn't that a crime drama back in the 80s?" Well, yes, it was. And I admit to stretching the rip cord just a bit to include a feature on my favorite crime drama of the 1980s, one which paved the way for THE SOPRANOS. But as you'll see, Agent 4587, Vincent Terranova, has a special place... in the Fear Zone.

CBS TV broadcast WISEGUY at 10 pm on Wednesday nights from 1987 - 1990. It aired opposite such other critically acclaimed shows as THIRTYSOMETHING, QUANTUM LEAP and CHINA BEACH, the result being that the audience for quality entertainment was split and none of the shows quite achieved the success they deserved, though WISEGUY'S competetors went out as strongly as they came in, somnething that cannot be said for poor Vinnie.

The series was created by Stephen J. Cannell (ROCKFORD FILES, 21 JUMP STREET and THE A-TEAM) and Frank Lupo (WEREWOLF, HUNTER, THE MISADVENTURES OF SHERIFF LOBO) and concerned Vinnie Terranova, a Brooklyn born FBI agent who sepends 18 months in the slammer just to set his cover as a mafia thug so he can infiltrate crime families. Terranova was played by Ken Wahl, who had made a strong impression in Philip Kaufman's THE WANDERERS (itself a non-horror flick with strong horror elements). Tall, handsome and affable, Wahl was perfectly cut out to be a leading man on TV. In his adventures, Vinnie is aided by his curmudgeonly handler Frank McPike (the wonderful Jonathan Banks) and his "lifeline," Lifeguard (Jim Burnes, bound to a wheelchair).

The pilot, written by Cannell and Lupo, contains the usual elements you might expect from these two gentlemen: strong characterizations, improbable situations, and a lot of action. But from the start it was clear that WISEGUY was different - special. Vinnie goes undercover in the Steelgrave crime family, where he quickly develops a "Butch & Sundance" friendship with Sonny Steelgrave (Ray Sharkey in the role of his life). The conflict is there from the outset: as Vinnie gets deeper undercover, he also grows closer to Sonny, whom he must one day betray. As soon as the show went to series, writers David J. Burke and Stephen Kronish were appointed head writers and supervising producers, and the show evolved into not just one of the top crime dramas ever, but one of the top dramas.

One of the things that set the show apart at the time was its serialized format. It took Vinnie the 2-hour pilot, eight one hour episodes, and a two-hour climax to take down Sonny, with tragic results, and then another episode to deal with the repercussions (although Vinnie's personal demons over his first case would haunt him until the end of the show). In the second arc of the first season, Vinnie took on incestuous twin arms-and-drug dealers Mel and Susan Profitt, played by Kevin Spacey, in a career making role, and the beautiful Joan Severance. Vinnie went international in this story, and Mel and Susan would have been right at home in an edgy James Bond flick. This arc also introduced fan favorite Roger Lococo, played by the amazing William Russ. Lococo was Vinnie's opposite number, a deep undercover CIA agent - and deadly assassin - hoping to use the Profitt's wealth to take over a Caribbean island in the name of democracy.

The Profitt saga introduced the supernatural to the crime drama for the first time, but not the last. Lococo's plan begins to come together, then hits a rough patch when Mel becomes frightened by "Macumba," a voodo-inspired religion that runs rampant on Isle Pavot, the island the CIA wants Mel to buy. "That stuff only works if you believe in it," Vinnie tells Mel. "I KNOW that," Mel responds. "The problem is, I believe it!" Vinnie finds himself in an odd tug-of-war between Carribbean death squads, voodoo priests and priestesses, and Mel's desire to save himself and his soul. Lococo recognizes that Mel is now useless to him and uses Mel's belief in voodoo to destroy him. In the following episode, Lococo turns his attention to Susan, driving her insane in true GASLIGHT fashion so he can control the Profitt Empire... and he's one of the good guys!

The first season of WISEGUY, embodying the Steelgrave and Profitt storylines, was a rarity: a perfect season. It was released on DVD in two expensive sets by Ventura Distribution, but Mill Creek Entertainment has just released the entire season today for the extraordinarily low price of $9.99! This is a must have for... everyone! Ironically, THIRTYSOMETHING Season One was also released today.

Despite charging outrageous prices, Ventura never completed WISEGUY'S run: they released most of Season Two, except for the music industry arc starring Tim Curry, Deborah Harry and Glenn Fry, and then the first half of Season Three, featuring the Don Aiuppo mafia arc (Vinnie must take down his stepfather, the godfather!) and the Washington, D.C. arc, in which powerful government forces seek vengeance against Vinnie for foiling Lococo's Season One Isle Pavot scheme. They never released the second half of Season Three - the bizarre Lynchboro arc, which brought the show to it's strange conclusion, or wisely aborted Season Four, which attempted to prolong the show with Steven Bauer replacing Wahl. The music industry arc wasn't released, despite all of its guest star power, because of music rights, and it should be noted that neither the Ventura release of Season One nor the new Mill Creek edition feature "Whites in Night Satin," the Moody Blues song that defined Vinnie and Sonny's friendship, Vinnie's haunted guilt, and the show itself. I really want to support Mill Creek on this venture, because they've promised to release the entire series, but I simply cannot condone the omission of this song.

Season Two included a very strange episode called "White Noise" which straddled the supernatural. Due to a leg injury (Wahl hurt himself on the Season Two Garment industry arc which co-starred Jerry Lewis, political turncoat Ron Silver, and Stanley Tucci, requiring Anthony Dennison to sub for him for four episodes), Vinnie becomes dependent on painkillers. McPike sends him to a clinic, where a vengeful ex-boss arranges for him to be wrongly confined for pshcological evaluation. Doped up, Vinnie hallucinates that he encounters Sonny in hell, and the two have a second confrontation. The episode plays very much like a sequel to A NIGZHTMARE ON ELM STREET, with Vinnie seeming to conquer his demons.

But the series took its strangest and most horror influenced turn in Season Three, with the Lynchboro arc - the storyline that ultimately doomed the show. The Washington, D.C. arc, which ran for four episodes, was supposed to end with Vinnie being stripped of his badge. Burke and Kronish then intended for Lococo to resurface from hiding, and he and Vinnie would team up to take down the corrupt government forces behind Vinnie's ouster. Either CBS or Cannell balked at this; they wanted shorter arcs, not longer ones. So Vinnie got to keep his badge, General Masters (Norman Lloyd) conveniently went insane, and the writers needed a new reason to bring back Lococo. Wahl wasn't happy, Burke wasn't happy, and Kronish wasn't happy.

Which brings us, and Vinnie, to Lynchboro. TWIN PEAKS was hot at the time, and someone had the not at all brilliant idea of paying tribute to David Lynch's creation (thus, Lynchboro). A journalist tips off the FBI that Lynchboro is a Medieval styled fiefdom run by the wealthy Mark Volchek (Steven Ryan). Vinnie is dispatched to Lynchboro to become a deputy in the sheriff's department and he meets Volchek, a lost soul with a curious obsession with the 1961 William Castle horror film MR. SARDONICUS! At the same time, a serial killer stalks the hamlet, and this killer turns out to be Sheriff Matthew Stemkowski (David Straitharn). The dye was cast for Vinnie to replace Stemkowski as Volchek's right hand man, but Wahl decided he wanted nothing to do with a story that revolved around MR. SARDONICUS, cryogenics, and a mysterious severed leg. So Stemchowski, exposed as the serial killer, commits suicide by electrocution and Vinnie - flashing back to Sonny's suicide - hastily flips out and jumps ship. In a development that makes no sense, Vinnie calls in Lococo to finish the case, and Lococo comes up with the exceedingly bizarre plan of forcing Volchek - who is not a villain at all, just a misguided rich person - to confront his psyche... by re-enacting MR. SARDONICUS! It was a low point for the series, a disappointing return for Lococo, one of the strangest stories ever on network TV, and the beginning of the end for Wahl. It simply must be seen to be believed! One of my favorite scenes features McPike pitching Lococo's hairbained scheme to hsi FBI bosses: to sell the idea, he brings in movie reviewer Jeffrey Lyons to explain the "intricacies" and psychological underpinnings of MR. SARDONICUS!

After all this, Agent 4587 still wasn't finished with the supernatural: in a very cool development, Vinnie - on the run - turns vigilante and kills some gangsters in Seattle. His friends at the OCB (Organized Crime Bureau)hunt him down before he gets himself killed, and McPike takes a bullet for him. While McPikes lays at death's door, dreaming about the dog he had as a child, the villain of the piece holes up in a church belfry... where he is apparently confronted by the ghost of McPike's dog, which causes his death! Vinnie is ultimately saved, but it is clear that the bonkers agent would never be allowed undercover again.

Cannell decided that Vinnie had become "too sophisticated" an undercover agent to continue as the series lead, and made the call to replace him with Steven Bauer as disgraced attorney Michael Santana, who had a tenuous connection to Vinnie. The latin flavored WISEGUY was as much a third rate version of MIAMI VICE as it was a third rate version of WISEGUY, but it did manage one episode which matched the quality of the original series, and the climax of its sole arc, featuring villainous Amado Guzman (Maximilian Schell) mustered some energy, but it was all too little, too late. Three stand alone episodes never aired, and a second arc in which Billy Dee Williams was cast was never produced. In 1996, Vinnie Terranova was resurrected from the dead (his apparent, but inconclusive, demise provided the transition for Bauer's character) for a TV movie. It was good to see Vinnie, Frank and Lifeguard back in action, but the teleflick failed to recapture the dramatic tension or chemisty of the series in its heyday. Perhaps it needed some supernatural elements!

Kudos to Mill Creek Entertainment for its plans to release the entire series on DVD. Hopefully the sets will be successful enough to warrant a "special edition" featuring "Nights in White Satin."