The Nightman Cometh

Today in awesome, we'll be paying tribune to the gods of cheesy basic cable programming. Where low budgets, apathy, and rubber costumes impossibly collided and split atoms, creating solid gold. If you're a fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you know of Charlie Day's epic play, The Nightman Cometh. It was in searching for this that I stumbled upon something vastly more profound.

It was, of course, 1997's Nightman on WGN.

I asked for one and received the other. Proof of a loving god or a wrathful one. It's hard to tell.

1997's Nightman is the story of Johnny Domino, just an average saxophone superstar and expert martial artist who is struck by lightning, giving him the ability to read minds- but only evil ones- and is then accidentally involved in a government conspiracy to sell weapons of the future to ambiguously evil organizations (or just ambiguously evil ethnic groups- I'm not really sure).

"Be careful with the anti-gravity belt, the mechanism that
operates it is strikingly similar to a saxophone,
and there are few who have mastered anything that complex."

Teaming up with the guy who invented the future stuff, who is being brutally hunted by federal agents and terrorists alike, Domino decides to use his gear to solve crimes. If you're not following along here, that's like Edward Snowden taking a break from being the target of an international manhunt to help the Epic Sax Guy use PRISM to solve cold cases. Except Epic Sax Guy knows kung fu and can read minds.

Also, sci fi weapon inventor guy never actually teaches Johnny Domino how to use any of the gear. He just sort of wings it.

"Sorry, pops. I don't have time to teach cops karate,
what with my tight schedule,
tighter abs, and wicked sax skills.
Ladies."

Yet another of one of the many facets of what makes this show so brilliant in it's execution is the ten-car-pileup that is all of the different plot lines. There's a policeman who's name is seriously Lieutenant Dann (sadly, he has legs) trying to keep Johnny Domino's retired cop dad from wandering all over crime scenes like he has dementia, but still keeping him around for sound grandfatherly advice. Then there's a plot line where Johnny's dad is trying to convince Johnny to join the police so he can teach the cops karate or some bullshit, but Johnny is much happier being a successful saxophonist (I'm not sure either of these are real things). And then there's Johnny's ex-lover who is a singer that he has to perform with, while the audience struggles to understand why the nightclub owner lady's actress was credited in the opening sequence, when she only has one line per episode. And theeeeeen there's the subplot about the shady government guys (one of whom is inexplicably a German lady) trying to murder some scientists, steal their future gear, and sell it off to evil folks, talking real Skorzenies here- the Chinese guy invented a robot disguised as a spider that poisons people. Why did it have to be a robot if it looks exactly like a regular tarantula? What, because tarantula's aren't already poisonous? That's too far fetched for this show, a poisonous tarantula? No, I'll tell you why it had to be a robot, because robots are just that extra layer of insanity, nay, the amount of balls that TV programming lacks today.

I salute you, Nightman.
Poisonous fucking robot tarantulas.

You know what else TV needs today? Protagonists that are fucking psychopaths. There's shows about serial killers that only kill for very strict reasons, there's shows about quirky detectives with OCD, but never have I seen a show with a main character with such a lack of value for human life as Nightman. He seriously gives no fucks. He kills people in elaborate and sadistic ways while cracking square jawed one-liners. He tricks guards into executing their own men by way of vaporization. He kicks a guy into a random snakepit. He choke slams a dude through a window and off of a cliff just for saying he had a nice cape. He disintegrates two guys with a future rifle without a second thought, then tosses it gently into the bay where any hobo or kid or malevolent dolphin might find it and wreak havoc. There's even an episode where he goes out of his way to use his laser eye to lobotomize a couple of thugs for no other reason than to watch the van they were driving careen off the road in downtown traffic and explode.

So far, though the real icing on the whole bipolar cheesecake is what happens at the end of the second episode. SPOILER ALERT. Can you call spoiler alert on something from 1997? Eh...

"All of my thoughts look like this.
They burn the back of my eyes."

So the evil German lady/shady US government arms dealer has just had all of her minions exploded, vaporized, snake eaten, and choke slammed. She decides to break in to Johnny Domino's apartment, dress all sexy, and murder him. Johnny comes home and sees a bare leg on his couch and a blowing curl of luxurious 90's hair, and assumes its one of the many beautiful women who end up sneaking into his house to bang him, so he immediately goes to the kitchen to crack some wine. Just before she shoots him, she accidentally triggers the poisonous robot tarantula that was already hidden in his apartment. She gets poisoned and dies on his couch before he actually sees the spider. So now there's a dead supervillain on his couch. Then the woman that actually did come over to bang him walks in and asks why there's a dead woman on his couch. He calmly laughs it off and says he can explain everything. Wait, no he can't. The baffling part is when she believes him. They joke around and set a date for tomorrow and laugh the whole thing away. While there is a dead woman on his couch.

This is never properly addressed. So many questions are left unanswered. How did he get rid of the body? Did he eat her? Does this kind of thing happen a lot to him? Is the robot spider still on his fucking coffee table? Did the girl ever ask about the dead woman on his couch?

Ladies, if a man ever laughs around and tries to set a date with you while a scantily clad woman is gathering flies on his couch, it would seem like common sense to run. I'm here to remind you that yes, you should definitely run.

Unless it's Nightman.