I recently discovered this old Nickelodeon show about a teen girl detective working as an intern for the police department. Shelby Woo is sort of like Nancy Drew, only Chinese, and Pat Morita played her grandfather who runs a bed and breakfast. My family didn't have cable TV, and I was probably too old for the show in the 1990s anyway; the first few seasons seem more sitcommy, geared toward young kids, around the age of Encyclopedia Brown. The last season, set in Boston, has better production values, with no more shaky single-cam, and the acting is less slapsticky and exaggerated. It's as if the show grew up and got better with her.
I do like that the Chinese girl is the star, solving crimes with her sidekick friends Cindy and Noah. The local police detective tries to discourage her from investigating cases, but she never listens, even when she gets into life-threatening danger. Each case plays out as if they're videos on her computer screen, and after the usual formula of gathering clues on 3 suspects, she finally solves the case and gets the police to arrest the culprit. I like the variety of cases, like robbery, fraud, kidnapping, assault, etc. Too many detective shows are snobby, acting as though a mystery isn't really intriguing or important unless it has a murder in it. Anyway, it was sad when Shelby had to move to Boston with her grandfather, but at least she got to say goodbye to her Florida friends before making new sidekick friends Angie and Vince. I'm not finished with all the DVDs yet, but I'm getting close.
Meanwhile, I had to find time to finish Lupin on Netflix too. It's been so long since Part 1 that I forgot who Dumont was, but I figured it out once I saw him in context as a police commissioner. The first episode of Part 2 really depressed me, so I had to go seek out spoilers to assure myself that the show really didn't suddenly get dark and horrible. After that fakeout, the show went back to charming heists, and Lupin's revenge on Pellegrini. I enjoyed it.
Batwoman brought back the awful Safiyah again and her stupid quest for more Desert Rose. Plus it was stuffed into an episode with Kate Kane, and Luke's crisis about wanting to die. There just seemed to be way too many things going on at the same time, and it looks like major stuff going into the season finale too. I mean, I get why the writers have to get rid of the Desert Rose plant, so that there's no easy way to cheat death again. I won't miss Ocean either, but I wish the Coryana stuff could have been offscreen so that Kate and Alice could have more time together. We'll see if Alice can pull Kate back next week, I hope, or things are going to get a lot more messy.
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