You remember Steven Seagal, right? You know, the Whispering Aikido Walrus whose brilliantly ridiculous action films - among them Hard To Kill, Marked For Death and Under Seige - catapulted him to strange ranks of stardom in the genre, despite possessing none of the charisma, good looks or screen presence that the role generally requires. Well, Steven's got a secret - and now there's a TV show about it. And it's awesome.
Seagal has spent the last two decades moonlighting as a deputy sheriff, busting bad guys in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, but until now he's kept it to himself. The Hollywood has-been has apparently been waiting for just the right time to unveil his secret - who are we to judge the motive? Let's just be thankful, because there's never been anything quite like "Steven Seagal: Lawman".
"I'm Steven Seagal," the star nearly grunts in the opening credits. "That's right: Steven Seagal, deputy sheriff." This isn't some absolutely batshit alternate reality where a Dali-esque landscape of abstract, awesome-as-hell concepts from our childhood imaginations are playing out, totally unchecked, on television. This is real. Steven Seagal is a cop who chases down bad guys for a living - well, he doesn't so much chase them down as jog up and taser the guy that six other cops already have pinned to the ground. But what's not badass about that?
What at first feels like a spinoff of "Cops" rapidly morphs into something else altogether, sort of a hybrid between that and a School Of Seagal Methodology that finds us riding along in the squad car as the star uses the senses he's sharpened through a lifetime of martial arts training (a fact he reminds us of no less than a dozen times throughout the episode) to predict suspect behavior before anyone else can. Naturally, without effect it would just come across as the delusional ramblings of a fat old cop, so producers added a Spidey-sense effect to the moment every time Steven has a brain flare.
"As a lifelong practitioner of martial arts, I'm trained to remain calm in the face of adversity and danger," he explains, before detailing his uncanny ability to spot bad guys before they commit the crime.
Here and there, between several featured moments of civilian fawning over their very own movie star cop, we get a glimpse of how Seagal's refined ego irks his colleagues at times. During a high-speed pursuit, Seagal begins shouting directions from the passenger seat, the penultimate backseat driver.
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"Steven, let me drive," says his partner, in a tone clearly suggesting that he's made such a request before.
"Just telling you where the holes are!" insists Seagal.
Steven turns a marksmanship lesson with a fellow deputy into a lecture on Zen archery that's eerily reminiscent of his earlier films - especially Hard To Kill. As he explains to the young cop chubster who may lose his gun if he fails his annual test, you have to be one with the gun, to push the bullet forward from your body. Only then, he says, can you shoot the bullet through the same hole the last bullet left. The crazy shit is that he actually almost did it.
We're not the only ones flabbergasted by the whole thing, either. As one of the deputies admits as he watches his chief in action, "Sometimes I forget Steven's a big movie star." But as viewers, we never do. This is ridiculous, incredible television gold, and it should be savored.
