tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14216393.post112120522819760366..comments2023-10-29T07:44:05.971-07:00Comments on Stealing Cable: The Box: On The Greatest Episode of All TimeFazerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00809337498145949457noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14216393.post-1127989402192870402005-09-29T03:23:00.000-07:002005-09-29T03:23:00.000-07:00The term is "arabber." The man who played Risley T...The term is "arabber." <BR/>The man who played Risley Tucker was Moses Gunn. It was one of his last acting roles.<BR/><BR/>I agree with you. This is simply the best hour (or 45 minutes) of TV I've ever seen. No matter how good HBO shows like "The Wire" or God knows what else might offer, this was simply the best, most wrenching, most incredible thing I've ever seen. If anything trumps it in the future, I will be dumbfounded.<BR/><BR/>My quibble with your post is this: you assume Tucker is the killer. But that's where it should hurt the most: Bayliss and Pembleton *wanted* him to be the killer, but really all they had to assume that was circumstantial stuff. Tucker could have been innocent. In fact, there's nothing to say he WASN'T.<BR/><BR/>THAT is where "Three Men and Adena" is so gut-wrenchingly awful, wonderful and masterful: because we side with the detectives and eat away at this man and want to scour his brain and soul for a confession. We want him to be burnt away so much that he has no choice BUT to say he did it.<BR/><BR/>Yet he doesn't.<BR/><BR/>Instead, he is brought to tears speaking of the dead child. A cynic says that Tuckers's a guilty pedophile. Another man says Tucker's a pedophile who never acted on his own desires and regrets that he'll never have the child for his own. And yet another man says that Tucker's a sad lonely old man who's only connection to the world was his love for a girl he knew was too young to love, that his heartbreak was finding that one person, too small, too young, too away from himself. And THAT might be why he weeps, because he had nothing else. Because, poor bastard, he DID love that girl more than he loved his empty life, and that emotion was something someone wanted to jail him for.<BR/><BR/>That's why "Three Men and Adena" is in the absolute pantheon of television shows. Moses Gunn sold that episode. Braugher and Secor were fantastic, but only Gunn could make you sympathize. In the end, he made me doubt and he made me believe that maybe he loved. If we could walk away KNOWING he was guilty, it wouldn't be a great episode. We'd have that clucking assurance that "we got the bad guy." But if you watch that episode again and again, you can't know who the bad guy is. The arabber isn't the automatic bad guy. He's more of a human being than Pembleton. He's not as terrified to care as Bayliss. He's just a sad, sad old man.<BR/><BR/>You, me, anyone, *we* get to choose if he's the bad guy. And the best thing about that episode is that who we choose as the hero/villain speaks as much about us as it does the characters.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14216393.post-1122125815672703502005-07-23T06:36:00.000-07:002005-07-23T06:36:00.000-07:00Brendan got our first comment? You're fired.Brendan got our first comment? You're fired.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com