Blast from the Fannish Past

[shipperx]

My office is in the process of moving so today we don't have to go to work because the movers are transporting everything. This allowed me to sleep in, laze around, and watch TV. While flipping through the channels I happened to run across the final episode of Remington Steele.

I have to explain that as a teen I was in full fannish obsession with the show. I totally shipped Remington Steele and Laura Holt. And even looking at it today, wow, a young Pierce Brosnan was gorgeous! No wonder my adolescent self was in total fannish love with him, and, quite frankly, his character. My kinks were apparently established early because though I didn't watch the entire episode (and I remember it anyway, and I remember hating Antony Scalia and his entire role on the show) I can easily see what exactly attracted me. I mean, again, young Pierce Brosnan was freaking gorgeous and stands up to the test of time. But in the last five minutes of the episode covered the territory that made me also love his character.

I mean, a somewhat amoral con-man/jewel/art thief ("bad" but just bad enough to be an intriguing, yet lovable "bad boy") and a female detective who, because of sexism in her industry, invented a fictional boss for herself. Con artist discovered that "Remington Steele" of the Remington Steele Detective Agency was a complete fiction so, taking advantage, he assumes the role of Remington Steele, much to the female detective's consternation. Of course banter, sexual tension, and Scooby-Doo mystery solving follows while, over the years, we discovered the con-artist's angsty, Dickensian childhood. Ah, how that appeals to the teen love of angst.

Last five minutes of the episode, Remington Steele discovers that his con-artist mentor, Daniel Chalmers was in fact his real father, which left him in the strange position of resenting his father for having abandoned him as a child but also realizing that the father who had abandoned him was in fact the father-figure who had raised him (From his teens, at least. I missed and have forgotten the explanation for exactly why this occurred, though I had remembered that con-artist Daniel was shown to be his father in the end. ) Anyway, I tuned in today just in time to see a young, handsome Pierce Brosnan brooding by an Irish (location shoot!) lake. It was enough to make me remember my fifteen year old self and squee. There was much silliness in the last few minutes of the episode, but I think that the point was finally discovering who his father (and his father's subsequent death) was intended as the catharsis needed to put the past in the past and finally (FINALLY!) hook up with Laura so that they could go solve mysteries together forever.

Anyway, it was a blast from the past, and I must say for a fannish teen crush, Brosnan and Remington hold up well.

ETA: Squee! More fannish glee, Sci-Fi is replaying the X-Files episode "Bad Blood." Awesome episode. Vampires... in Texas... with buck teeth (well, not really). And the most hilarious autopsies evah! Hee! Love Scully.

Scully: Well it's obviously not a vampire.
Mulder: Why?
Scully: Because vampires don't exist. [duh] ...and it's not that Mexican goatsucker thing either.

(I still occasionally have the urge to say "and it's not that Mexican goatsucker thing either," but outside the XF fandom no one ever gets the joke).

Comments

[jamalov29.livejournal.com]

I shipped R.Steel and L.Holt as well. I always liked Pierce Brosnan.

[kellyhk.livejournal.com]

Bad Blood is my all-time favorite Xfiles episode. So funny. And you're right, it's not that Mexican goatsucker thing, either!

[wenchsenior.livejournal.com]

I was a rabid RS fan as a kid, and a few years ago I Netflixed the first season to see how it held up. And it's so damn charming! Tons of silliness and style and great, snappy, stylized dialogue. And Laura's fantastic hats! I'd forgotten a lot of stuff, like how they used to use the farce-type in-and-out-of-the red-office-doors motif; also, I'd forgotten how bluntly and how early the two characters addressed the fact that they were dying to jump each other. And man, Brosnan was gorgeous even then. If you want to really see baby Brosnan in an Irish soaper, you need to rent "Manions of America". He was unbearably cute in that, too.

[cy-girl.livejournal.com]

Ditto on both!

[cordykitten]

Ah good times :) Loved this series and these two :))

[queenofattolia.livejournal.com]

I would have totally gotten the joke. "Bad Blood" is probably my favorite of the "funny" stand-alone episodes. Luke Wilson is just adorable in it, and it has Duchovny and Anderson's best comic performances (the scene outside Skinner's office when she attempts to adjust his tie always makes me laugh out loud).

The Fug Girls are fond of it too - I shouted with glee when one of them complained in an entry that she "only had half of a cream cheese bagel this morning and it wasn't even real cream cheese, it was light cream cheese." Great minds, etc.

ETA: I loved Remington Steele too, what I can remember of it. Unfortunately I tend to conflate it a bit with its successor Moonlighting.

[rahirah]

Sadly, I missed seeing Remington Steele when it aired (can't remember why; probably it conflictred with something else I watched), and it's a show I've always thought I would have liked.

[spikewriter]

I was working at a TV rep firm selling ad time for various stations around the country and the NBC rep brought in a preview tape from the upfronts. Included was maybe 15 minutes from Remington Steele. I fell in love immediately.

We just got the first season on DVD and it has totally become my new comfort food. I so shipped Steele and Holt -- and still do.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I loved Remington Steele so much! I totally shipped Steel and Laura, though I had no idea at the time. I have to admit it's one of the those shows I'd be tempted to netflix, but I've worried that it won't hold up. Too many of my childhood favorites are really kind of lame. Er, I might have watched an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard recently...

I love the funny X-files episodes! I need to watch that one again too!

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

I loved Remington Steele! I bought it all on DVD but have yet to rewatch. ::goes off in search of that Mexican goatsucker thing::

[thedabara-cds.livejournal.com]

I loved Remington Steele! I've always been a big fan of old movies, and I adored how at about the halfway mark of many episodes Steele would suddenly have an Aha! moment and solve the crime by referencing some obsure old black & white mystery movie. They used to do that on both Remington Steele and Moonlighting.