"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Lawman: Port of Call Phoenix

tn_seagalpaintedI don’t know how I missed this one, because it’s a good one. Entertainments Weekly reported several days ago that A&E has unexpectedly picked up STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN for season 3… but it’s a total reboot. After being chased out of Jefferson Parish by false allegations Chief Seagal has been transferred to Phoenix, Arizona. This is not so much a Seagal type plot but it’s a common cop movie trope, the fish-out-of-water like NYPD’s John McClane or Detroit’s Axel Foley navigating the douchey Californian terrain.The new setting will create some interesting twists. I’m gonna assume we’ll have to leave behind the familiar characters like Johnny and Lawrence, unless they find a contrived way to bring one of them to Arizona. But it’s not like Erika Eleniak was in UNDER SIEGE 2, so I find that unlikely. I’ll miss the Squad, but it’s a good way to shake things up. It’s like how the first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie he has that whole team but then bam, they get taken from him. Now what? This is how true heroes are forged.

Also gone will be Seagal’s New Orleans accent and ebonics. But we’ll have a whole new and culturally explosive form of racial discomfort if Seagal runs into any illegal immigrants, or especially if anybody falsely accuses somebody of being an illegal immigrant. They have that controversial law there, and it will be Seagal’s job to enforce it. Oh shit.

I wasn’t expecting another season and I kind of thought that was for the best. I was still enjoying the show, but it had pretty much done what it was gonna do, and seemed to have informed his movies a little bit in the case of BORN TO RAISE HELL. But since the new season will have this change in setting (like going from aircraft carrier to train) it actually might be worth doing. I just hope he doesn’t turn Chuck Norris on us and get into the anti-immigrant paranoia.

But I don’t think he will. Seagal always tries to be understanding and empathetic, he loves sharing between cultures, he especially loves unnecessarily busting out the correct Spanish pronunciations, and hasn’t had the kind of traumatic run-ins with immigrants that Norris has.

I would like to correct one error in the article. It says, “Last year, Seagal learned nobody is above the law when he was accused of sex trafficking by a personal assistant.” Obviously this is incorrect because Seagal already knew that nobody was above the law. EW is repeating a common misconception, that Seagal’s character of Nico Toscani was meant to be “above the law” himself. Those of us familiar with the movie of course remember that in fact he’s the one arguing all along that nobody is above the law.

To be fair that is a frequent mistake, like people calling the monster “Frankenstein” instead of the doctor. Still, let’s get some fact-checking here, journalists.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 21st, 2011 at 1:51 am and is filed under Blog Post (short for weblog), Seagal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

26 Responses to “Lawman: Port of Call Phoenix”

  1. haha, classic link to norris’ immigrant troubles, vern! you got me with that one…

  2. Last paragraph killed me. Worth the wait to get your take on this fantastic news.

  3. I don’t know — I think it’s pretty clear Nico *does* think he’s above the law. “You guys think you’re above the law, but you ain’t above mine.” His law is higher, so he himself is higher.

    As in, above. The law.

    Note how, when he wakes up as John Hatcher a few movies later, he feels guilty about his tactics and admits that he has “done whatever it takes.” He knows he’s been giving himself an exemption. And then he even goes above *international* law to follow and kill Screwface overseas.

    When he says “No one is above the law,” he is implicitly leaving himself out, like when he says, “Nobody move!”

  4. AGH I wish we had this show over here so I could see an episode or two of it. :(

    For about the four hundred and fiftieth time you’ve made me laugh out loud, Vern. Thanks very much!

  5. I watched the first season on Netflix and found it largely enjoyable. I liked how they interwove Seagal’s personal interests into most episodes, like when he takes his fellow officer to an acupuncturist to help out his back. The show fit seamlessly into Seagal’s oeuvre. And despite the hilariously cheesy opener, it didn’t feel like the producers were trading in on any irony surrounding the show’s star.

  6. As a lifelong practitioner of the lawman arts, I approve this move. Seagal’s gonna hit Phoenix and fuck shit up.

    DocZ makes good points, but I’m inclined to agree more with Vern. He may not have been above the law, but he represented the very top of what one is allowed to do as an enforcer of the law. That’s why he doesn’t have to hide his badge when he dominates bars & poolhalls. He’s above most of the law. And yet there’s nothing else above Seagal; that’s a netherzone. But he himself is not above The Law.

  7. Under Siege was set in a battleship, not an aircraft carrier. For shame, Vern. For shame!

  8. Sorry, I don’t know my boat terminology. I had the same fact checkers as EW and they didn’t catch that one.

  9. Seagal being deputised in Arizona was actually mentioned in the UK documentary that was on last week. I hope that means they’ll be chance to see more of Seagal home life as his new mansion is out in the middle of the Arizona desert.

  10. Heh, no problem. I was beginning to think you’ve started slipping. Getting the very fundamentals of Seagalogy wrong. Inconceivable.

    I mean, next thing you’re going to tell us you don’t what it takes to change the essence of a man.

    False prophet!

  11. this is a bad sign since its probably related to his buddying up with americas worst sheriff, joe arpaio, who is both a publicity hound fame seeker and a fascist piece of garbage that is the living embodiment of all the horrible excesses of law enforcement. its highly likely that the show will involve kissing the ass of this piece of human garbage.

  12. They should make another “Under Siege” sequel about terrorists who take over an aircraft carrier. Let’s take a look.

    – It would have to feature at least ten Gary Buseys or equivalent (one hundred and twelve Michael Rapaports, twenty-two Sean Beans, or one Basil Wallace playing septuplets).
    – Seagal would fight an army of four hundred remorseless terrorists, aided by six family members / helpful strippers, eleven wacky minority comic relief sidekicks, and thirty-eight faceless marine sidekicks (who will all end up dying tragically).
    – He will sink sixteen and a half submarines (the “half” is because the last one won’t be fully submerged due to resting on the top of a giant pile of sixteen other submarines) and shoot down sixty-seven US fighter planes that have been commandeered by terrorist pilots.
    – The lead villain will utter the phrase “But he’s only a fucking cook!” a total of seventy-three times throughout the movie’s ten-hour running time.

    Well I’d pay to see it, wouldn’t you?

  13. Needs more tits.

  14. Technically isn’t Norris an immigrant in that video too, since he’s an american fighting a chinese opponent in Italy?
    As for the show, couldn’t they have done it as a seperate spinoff, CSI style? Then eventually they could do a crossover episode where in Steven Seagal Lawman: Jefferson Parish, he starts chasing a guy down, and eventually captures him after a cross-country chase in Steven Seagal Lawman: Phoenix. They could then do a Kill Switch twist revealing Seagal has a seperate family and other life in Phoenix.

  15. Looking forward to S3 of Lawman – as well as True Justice, which, from the clips shown on the SS doc last week, looks like the fictional version of what Steven gets up to in real life.

    Or is his real-life imitating the show? I can’t decide.

    And that Chuck Norris link made me gasp. Did Chuck see all those parodies of himself and just think, fuck it, I’ll top ’em ALL.

  16. Holy crap Mouth. Who’s the avatar? She looks vaguely familiar (although if she turns out to be a softcore porn actress or something, I’d like to point out that familiarity can be explained by strong resemblances to Barbera Streisand / Arnold Schwartzenegger.) Tell me that’s not the girl you hooked up with back on New Year’s. And if it IS the girl you hooked up with back on New Year’s… DAMN dude.

    And after seeing that avatar, I’m inclined to agree. Let’s up the stripper count to nine. Hell, it’s a ship the size of Luxembourg, it can probably take a few more strippers.

  17. What a delightful opportunity for another Port of Call reference. Sweet!

  18. Just some chick who likes to Guitar Hero. New Year’s girl wasn’t as busty; she was more pretty but less sexy. She hula hooped into my bedroom and then high heeled out of my heart before we ever got hot & heavy. Sigh.

    I encourage all to go to Gravatar and upload your own pictures.

  19. Shit. Re-testing.

  20. Ah, yes, the “And now we play the waiting game” buttons close-up. Nicely played, Stu.

    Hey, I wonder why there are so few ladies in these parts.

  21. I really want an episode with special guest deputy Anderson Silva if only to somehow inch my impossible dream of a Blackhouse movie forward.

  22. I hope he takes down Arpaio in the finale

  23. stu, naaah, if we’re gonna get technical, i would assume that both chuck and bruce were on tourist visas in italy, so they would count simply as tourists, not immigrants. back home in the USA, chuck would be a REAL, red-blooded amurrrkin, and bruce would be a dirty, job-stealing immigrant.

  24. I’m just excited to see if like always, Seagal will absorb the local culture and start talking the lingo. You know, calling people “puto” and “pendejo”.

    Any word on what’s up with True Justice? The first welded-together-from-two-episodes DTV movie was a pretty awesome Steven Seagal take on the cop show genre. I’m interested to see more.

  25. Seagal defeated IBM supercomputer Watson simply by asking it “What does it take to change the nature of a man?”

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