Greatest Moments in Television Interrogation

Greatest Moments in Television Interrogation
 


This is from cinescape.com. Battlestar Galactica is a great show and last week's episodes continue with the great writing. Homicide's "Three Men and Adena" is one of the best hours of drama I've seen in my life. TNG's "Chain of Command Part II" was great for Picard's "There are FOUR lights!"

http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Television&action=page&obj_id=43620


Grilled to Perfection

Dateline: Monday, February 28, 2005
By: DAVID MICHAEL WHARTON

Last week's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ep, "Flesh and Bone", not only continued the show's steady trend toward becoming one of the best-written shows on television, but it upheld the long-standing dramatic tradition of "the interrogation episode." Sometimes it's the good guys under the spotlight; other times, they're the ones asking the questions. Either way, the conceit is as simple as it can be powerful: two people (give or take) in a room, one of whom knows something, the other of whom wants that knowledge. Toss in optional elements like a ticking-clock scenario or the threat of torture and let simmer for 44 minutes.


"Flesh and Bone" had all this and more, posing questions much more far ranging than the "is there or isn't there" of the supposed nuke hidden in the fleet. Starbuck's confrontation with the Cylon raised questions of theology and morality, of destiny and free will, and even of the very nature of consciousness and the soul. Not bad for a genre that the Powers That Be so seldom take seriously.


And so, in honor of such a knock-out episode, here's a look back at some of the finest small-screen examples of this tense little dramatic niche...call it "Great Moments in Televised Interrogation."


"The Box, Part 1" - ALIAS - 2002
Over the course of its three-plus seasons, damn near every member of the cast has found themselves on the business end of a tray of interrogator's tools. Spanning everything from drowning to non-elective dental surgery, the ALIAS writers could give lessons to Vlad the Impaler. But by far one of the most memorable of the lot was this fun little exchange between uber-baddie Arvin Sloane and cheesed-off former employee McKenas Cole (guest star Quentin Tarantino). It seems that ol' king Cole has neither forgiven nor forgotten an incident when Mr. Sloane's actions resulted in the death of Cole's teammates, and now the bitch known as payback has arranged a reunion between the two old friends, complete with a box full of needles. And no, Mr. Cole does not intend a course in acupuncture. This ep lacks the mind games or larger questions posed that some of the later entries on this list sport, but it gains points merely for being one of the first times we really saw the tables turned on love-to-hate-him Sloane.


"Day 2: 7:00 P.M.- 8:00 P.M." - 24 - 2003
If there's a show that gives ALIAS a run for its money in the torture-creativity department, it's 24. This is the show that had a dude meet the business end of a belt sander, after all. But 24's most arresting interrogation wasn't it's most inventively brutal; it was when Jack Bauer murdered the children of terrorist Syed Ali right before his eyes. Granted, it let us off the hook by soon revealing that their deaths had been staged, but for several intense minutes, we were left shaken and disturbed by just how far Jack--the hero we're supposed to be rooting for--would go in order to save the lives of his countrymen. It's a question that was timely then, and has only become more so since, and by simultaneously entertaining, unnerving, and forcing us to think, it was 24 at its finest.


"Intersections in Real Time" - BABYLON 5 - 1997
John Sheridan had been through it all. He'd led Babylon 5's secession from a corrupt Earth government. He'd fought a war between gods and finally kicked the lot of them out beyond the Rim. Hell, he'd even died and come back to life. But now, for all the worlds shaken and lives ceased or sustained on the weight of his decisions, he is reduced to just one man in a room, with nothing to carry him through but willpower and, in the end, his devotion to the woman he loves. In a bitter situation made all the more painful by the knowledge that the betrayal of a friend had landed him there, Sheridan nonetheless survives his long, dark night of the soul…but just barely.


"Chain of Command, Part 2" - STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - 1992
Who can forget the line, "There…are…four lights!" Largely a two-character play between captive Picard and his Cardassian interrogator, Gul Madred, this episode was by turns disturbing and exhausting, and certainly unnaturally heady material for TREK (this was slightly before the often-darker themes of DEEP SPACE 9, after all). To be fair, the tables were stacked in its favor from the get-go: with the acting talents of Patrick Stewart and David Warner facing off across a table, they could practically have been arguing "tastes great/less filling" and it still would have made for arresting television. But it stood those talents atop a stellar script and a brilliantly simple point of contention: four lights or five?


"Three Men and Adena" - HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET - 1993
It's a peculiar truism for the writer that it's often difficult to properly describe an example of excellence, whereas explorations of the crappier end of the spectrum cause words to breed like rabbits in a Viagra factory. That being the case, there's not a damn thing I can say about this Emmy-winning episode that will come anywhere close to doing it justice. Detectives Pembleton and Bayliss have twelve hours to break the lead suspect in the murder of young Adena Watson. If they can't break him in that time, he goes free and Adena's murder goes unpunished. It's brutal, it's visceral, and, in the end, it's heartbreaking. But writer Tom Fontana had the wisdom to know that sometimes the most powerful stories are the ones without a happy ending, and he had the courage to force us to confront that terrible truth head on, wide-eyed and unflinching.