Wiseguy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wiseguy is also a slang term for a member of the Mafia.
Wiseguy
Format Crime / Drama
Created by Stephen J. Cannell, Frank Lupo
Starring Ken Wahl
Jonathan Banks
Jim Byrnes
Country of origin Flag of the United States United States
No. of seasons 4
No. of episodes 75
Production
Running time 60 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel CBS
Original run September 16, 1987 – December 8, 1990
External links
IMDb profile

Wiseguy (1987-1990) was a U.S. television program about Vincent "Vinnie" Terranova, an undercover agent of the OCB (Organized Crime Bureau), a fictional division of the FBI. Produced by Stephen J. Cannell, the show differed from previous crime dramas in its use of "story arcs", and in its focusing as much on the sometimes unpleasant consequences of the protagonist's actions, as on the mechanics of the detective work.

Contents

[edit] Characters

[edit] Vincent Terranova (Ken Wahl)

Vincent Michael "Vinnie" Terranova is an undercover agent in his late 20s to mid-30s. His job is to infiltrate criminal organizations, gather evidence, and then destroy the organization and bring the guilty parties to justice. At the beginning of the show, he is estranged from his family because of several prison sentences (meant to establish his "wiseguy" credentials with the criminal underworld). His Italian-born mother, Carlotta (Elsa Raven) calls him "Vincenzo" but we are given to understand that his legal name is Vincent.
Note: there was a real-life wise guy named Vincenzo Terranova, often anglicized as "Vincent", brother of Ciro Terranova and fellow leader of the Morello crime family; he was killed in 1922.

[edit] Frank McPike (Jonathan Banks)

Frank McPike is Vinnie's superior officer, who assigns Vinnie to cases, supplies him with important information and coordinates back-up support. Since McPike is a known law enforcement official and Vinnie is deep undercover, McPike will often have Vinnie arrested on a trumped-up charge, so that he can talk to Vinnie without revealing his identity.

[edit] Daniel "Lifeguard" Burroughs (Jim Byrnes)

Lifeguard (whom Vinnie communicates with almost exclusively by telephone) is Vinnie's other contact person. Vinnie (ideally) calls him every morning with the latest updates on the case, and Lifeguard provides him with quick updates. He also, under the name of Mike Terranova, provides Vinnie with an emergency contact number (555-4958, a play on Vince's agent number), without revealing Vinnie's true identity. (The cover location is "Sailor Hardware"; the codephrase "Uncle Mike" indicates an emergency request for assistance.)

[edit] Arcs

[edit] Sonny Steelgrave

Vinnie was launched into the first arc upon his release from prison. Sonny Steelgrave (Ray Sharkey) was the leader of Atlantic City Mafia; his brother Dave assassinated Vinnie's training agent, who had been investigating the Steelgrave organization. Vinnie infiltrated Steelgrave's "family," and worked his way up to be Sonny Steelgrave's right-hand man after Dave Steelgrave's death and the apparent defection of one of Steelgrave's captains. When Vinnie finally tried to bring him to justice, Steelgrave committed suicide rather than face prison. Vinnie was never able to exorcize the guilt he felt over his betrayal of Sonny.

[edit] Mel Profitt

The Cast of Wiseguy
The Cast of Wiseguy

Vinnie, using his reputation developed as a result of infiltrating the Steelgrave crime family, made contact with a hitman/assassin named Roger LoCocco (William Russ). However, Vinnie soon discovered a much bigger target: Roger's boss, the (mentally unstable) multi-billionaire international criminal mastermind and arms dealer Mel Profitt (Kevin Spacey), and his sister Susan (Joan Severance). Mel had a heroin addiction which further contributed to his unstable emotional state. After much international intrigue involving Mel, Susan and LoCocco (who turned out to be a CIA agent, under even deeper cover than Vinnie), the entire organization was destroyed. Susan killed Mel (after he begged her to), and had a torrid affair with Vinnie, but subsequently went insane and was committed. It is worth mentioning that the arc alluded to an incestuous relationship between Mel and Susan. Roger was seemingly killed in an explosion, but he briefly appeared to Vinnie afterwards. Disgusted with his own lies and deceptions ("I've turned friendship and loyalty into a sick joke"), Vinnie attempted to quit the OCB, but McPike talked him into taking a six-month sabbatical instead.

[edit] White Supremacy

At the beginning of the second season, Vinnie had no intention of rejoining the OCB, and was trying figure out what to do with his life. When his brother Pete (Gerald Anthony) is killed by a white supremacist, however, Vinnie returned to the OCB, on the condition that he could go after his brother's killer. He quickly fell in with a supremacist group, headed by the opportunistic used car salesman and con man "Dr." Knox Pooley (Fred Thompson), and his "true believer" follower Calvin Hollis (Paul Guilfoyle). While Pooley's organization, the "Pilgrims of Promise," is both racist and anti-Semitic, the character himself is portrayed as hypocritical and amoral. Vinnie quickly brought down the organization, but the slippery Pooley escaped prosecution and was last seen in Florida, selling condominium timeshares to Jewish retirees. The story suggested Pooley was nothing but a swindler and Hollis the dangerous one.

[edit] Garment Trade

David Sternberg (Ron Silver) and his father Eli (Jerry Lewis) ran a clothing business, and were being squeezed by the fearsome gangster Rick Pinzolo (Stanley Tucci). David goes to the OCB for help, thus Vinnie is recruited to act as security for the Sternbergs. After a small-time loanshark attacked and injured Vinnie, he was temporarily replaced by retired agent John Henry Raglin (Anthony Denison). (Note: in reality, star Ken Wahl had broken his ankle in an on-set accident, and was written out while he recovered.) Raglin brought down (and killed) Pinzolo, but not in time to save Eli's business or David's life. Joan Chen appeared in one episode of this arc, as a rebellious Chinese sweatshop worker with whom the married Raglin briefly has an affair.

[edit] Dead Dog Records

Upon his recovery, Vinnie's next assignment took him into the music business, where he dealt with music impresario Isaac Twine (Paul Winfield) and his wife Amber (Patti D'Arbanville). Debbie Harry, Tim Curry, Deidre Hall and Glenn Frey also appear during this story arc. The high octane deals appear to provide something Vince craves; we get the impression, if he quits OCB for good, he'll be back.

[edit] Mafia Wars

At the beginning of the third season, Vinnie had not been assigned any recent cases, but, in usual Wiseguy fashion, a case found him. Vinnie's stepfather, Don Rudy Aiuppo (George O. Petrie) was shot and wounded, leaving Vinnie the temporary head of the local Mafia commission! Vinnie investigated the other members, including Albert Cericco (Robert Davi). Eventually, Vinnie brought down most of the commission, only to find Aiuppo had been manipulating him to exact revenge on some rivals. An enraged Vinnie angrily told Aiuppo that, stepfather or not, he wanted nothing more to do with him.

[edit] Washington, D.C. Economics

Vinnie was summoned to the Justice Department and put in charge of an investigation of Japanese Yen counterfeiting, unaware that the whole thing was a setup by certain unscrupulous government figures who sought payback for damaging fallout from the Mel Profitt case. Based on the real-life Operation Bernhard, the conspirators aim to undermine the Japanese economy by printing large amounts of counterfeit Yen, smuggling them into Japan on cargo aircraft, and then announcing it all in order to devalue the currency. After the revelation, a convenient scapegoat is supposed to take the blame, in this case, Vinnie. When the plan is foiled en route, Vinnie nevertheless becomes the focus of an investigation, and is only saved when a third party "connects the dots" for the investigating committee.

[edit] Lynchboro/Seattle

Vinnie was made a deputy of a small town in Washington State, where local strongman Mark Volchek (Steve Ryan) was essentially treating the town like his own personal dictatorship. Vinnie was on his way to adding Volchek to his list of victories when he witnessed the electrocution suicide of the town Sheriff (David Strathairn), which brought back flashbacks of Sonny Steelgrave. Unable to cope with the memories, Vinnie fled, but not before contacting Roger Lococco, who took his place, and working with McPike, brought Volchek to his senses and freed the town. (This story-arc was, in mood and setting, eerily prescient of the early episodes of the show "Twin Peaks," which debuted a few weeks after the sequence was aired.)

After the Volchek investigation had ended McPike went looking for Vinnie, who had taken a job with a Seattle company that was illegally dumping medical waste. Embroiled in the company manager's desperate attempts at covering up, Vinnie fled in repulsion from hired assassins as well as from his own burgeoning violent impulse, to find respite in a city church. Just as McPike found him in hiding there, a would-be assassin's bullet missed Vinnie and critically wounded McPike, propelling Vinnie on a final pursuit of justice.

[edit] Guzman/New York DA

When the fourth season started, McPike had (apparently) fully recovered from his gunshot wound -- so much so that while sitting shirtless in one scene, we noted the absence of scar tissue on his chest. Vinnie had been investigating the Miami mafia, and suddenly went missing. His apartment was empty, but showed signs of a struggle. McPike went down to Miami, hooked up with disbarred U.S. Attorney Michael Santana (Steven Bauer, the new series lead replacing Wahl), and soon discovered that Vinnie had been murdered by a death squad. (In reality, there had been a major dispute between star Ken Wahl and the producers, and he was no longer with the show.) Soon, McPike and Santana were infiltrating the organization of Cuban-American crime lord Armando Guzman (Maximilian Schell), and with the help of U.S. Attorney Hillary Stein (Cecil Hoffman), destroyed his organization as well.

With the Guzman investigation closed, McPike convinced Santana to become an official OCB agent, but just as he was entering the job, the entire OCB organization was eliminated due to federal budget cuts. McPike, Santana and Lifeguard were immediately hired by the New York District Attorney's office, and began to investigate the New York drug underworld, as well as its death grip on a particular inner city high school run by the hardline and humanitarian educator Jesse Hains (Billy Dee Williams). However, their investigation was cut short by Wiseguy's declining ratings and cancellation by CBS.

  • Note: There were also several stand-alone episodes between the arcs, most of which dealt with the personal lives of the main characters.

[edit] TV movie

In 1996, a reunion Wiseguy movie starring Ken Wahl aired on ABC. In the movie, Vinnie (who was still alive; as far as this movie was concerned, the fourth season had never happened) had spent several years on wiretapping duty, as punishment for being Aiuppo's dupe during Season 3's Mafia angle, and (presumably) abandoning his duty during the Volchek investigation. Vinnie is ordered to infiltrate the organization of criminal boss Paul Callendar (Ted Levine). The movie had many of the same themes as the TV show, including Vinnie's constant conflict in betraying the people he had grown to care about. While the movie was a critical success, its mediocre ratings (it aired against NBC megahits Friends (TV series) and Seinfeld) and Ken Wahl's recurrent back and neck problems seem to preclude another Wiseguy revival. The movie was rerun on Sleuth in 2008.

[edit] Awards and nominations

  • Emmy Awards
    • 1989: Nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series
    • 1990: Nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Wahl), Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Banks), Outstanding Editing for a Series - Single Camera Production, and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series
  • Golden Globe Awards
    • 1989: Nominated for Best TV-Series - Drama and Best Performance by an Actor in a TV-Series - Drama (Wahl)
    • 1990: Won for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV-Series - Drama (Wahl)
    • 1990: Nominated for Best TV-Series - Drama
  • Edgar Awards
    • 1988: Nominated for Best Television Episode Teleplay (Eric Blakeney, for "The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell")
    • 1989: Nominated for Best Television Episode Teleplay (David J. Burke and Stephen Kronish, for "Date With An Angel")
    • 1990: Won for Best Television Episode Teleplay (David J. Burke and Alfonse Ruggiero Jr., for "White Noise")

[edit] DVD Releases

Venture Distribution released the entire first season of Wiseguy on DVD in Region 1 in two 11-episode volumes.

StudioWorks Entertainment released two volume sets, one features episodes from Season 2, while the other contains episodes from Season 3.

The first season became available on iTunes on April 28, 2008.

Also, see complete list at IMDB external link below.

[edit] External links

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