Did you miss these Good Guys? I certainly did, and they’re back to finish out their first season, starting with perhaps their biggest blunder (and our biggest enjoyment) yet. Any show that starts off with The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” is going to be awesome.
Dan is chasing a purse-snatcher through a shopping district when he gets maced by the guy, who then makes off on a scooter. Dan’s brilliant idea is to commandeer the car that nearly hits him. The resulting pursuit sees him mow over an entire block of parking meters before he hits an ice cream truck and totals the car. Jack catches the perp, but the damage is thousands of dollars, and Lieutenant Ruiz suspends both of them for a week. “You had an opportunity to strangle him before he got in the car,” she tells Jack. Dan’s response? Walk into her office door. He considers the suspension a “vacation,” much to Jack’s horror. Jack decides he’s going to stay as far away from Dan has possible.
Meanwhile, a pair of Georgians (one from the state, one from the country) are meeting with a guy at a Mexican restaurant, to try to break the latter’s Cousin Sasha out of prison. Sasha is a huge guy (played by a wrestler no less) who made short work of a few FBI agents months earlier, so needless to say this is not the kind of man anyone but them would want out of prison.
Jack is taking his frustation out on the shooting range, where he’s met by Liz. She’s having a horrible day, including a fight with her boyfriend Kyle, so she wants to hang out with Jack later. Of course, Dan can’t do anything normal like that. He goes to loudly look up Julius at his work, where we find out Julius was hit in the face by a loan shark named Castle a half hour before, for being $50,000 in debt. Julius persuades Dan to help him with his problem, and Dan’s solution is borrowing the money from the police department with the belief that he can swipe it back from the loan shark later on. Needless to say, Julius believes this plan is insane, but has no choice but to go along with it if he wants to remain in one piece.
$50,000 is the same amount of money that the Georgians need to pay to spring Sasha from prison, so you can see how it’s all going to come together. Teague, the guy they met at the Mexican restaurant, is actually the warden at the state prison, so he can probably actually get it done.
Jack and Liz meet for drinks, and she tries to tell him that he has no friends. She also vents at him about the failings of her relationship with Kyle. He convinces her to dance with him, and they share a long-awaited, much-deserved romantic moment…before his cell phone goes off. The lieutenant is calling him, looking for Dan and her missing fifty grand (“whoever took the money left an IOU on a bar napkin”); when he doesn’t know where Dan is, she dispatches him to find his partner.
Dan is following the loan shark around in hopes of busting him and getting the money back, but ends up knocking him out and stuffing him into his car. What Dan doesn’t know is that the loan shark loaned the money out to the Georgians just seconds before. Jack and Liz turn up at Dan’s trailer (“it doesn’t smell like he’s been here recently,” Jack says, while Liz notes that Dan erected a shrine to himself) to find him, which completely ruins Jack’s not-date with Liz. Dan is hanging out at the fairgrounds’ carousel with his new friend the loan shark, and Julius. (Ronreaco Lee needs a gold star for how continually awesome he is on this show. They may as well just make him a regular already.) When Jack finally finds Dan, Dan knows where the money really is. The look on Colin Hanks’ face when Jack hears the truth from Dan is priceless. Of course, Jack has no choice but to help his partner.
Dan breaks into the Georgians’ warehouse, where they’re negotiating things with Teague, to try and steal the money back. Of course, they start shooting. I think Jack and Dan get shot at almost every episode. They need hazard pay or something (although Dan in and of himself could be a hazard). The Georgians get away and the prison break is on. Jack has no choice but to explain everything to Lieutenant Ruiz, who at least is able to give them information on Cousin Sasha and his immediate “transfer.” Jack and Dan tear out in pursuit, complete with Dan’s usual aggressive driving and being chased by a pair of fellow detectives which ends badly. However, they do eventually drive right into the prison break attempt, which puts them face to face with an angry Cousin Sasha…while unarmed.
After Dan attempts an attack and is faceplanted into a fence, we get an awesome use of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” as Jack grabs the tear gas gun the Georgians used and gases everyone. In the resulting melee, Dan ends up riding Cousin Sasha like a bad horse, before Jack grabs another piece of equipment and ensnares them both in a giant net. All three Georgians end up handcuffed out in front of the Dallas Police Department, with Julius taking credit for the bust.
Our boys are back at work, even turning Castle into their cohorts’ newest CI. Liz comes to see Jack, and he gets her to agree to come out with him, right before he’s hauled back into Ruiz’s office. She tells them all the money Dan “borrowed” was marked, and they caught Teague when he tried to deposit the money after getting it from the Georgians. “You are reinstated, effective immediately,” she tells them. “God help us all. Get the hell out of my office, please.” Their vacation, as eventful as it was, is over.
It’s great to have The Good Guys back. It’s funny, it’s quirky, and there’s just nothing else even remotely like it on TV. Whether or not you love Bradley Whitford’s over the top performance as Dan Stark (and I admit it took me awhile to realize this was the same guy who won an Emmy for playing Josh Lyman on The West Wing), Colin Hanks is probably the best straight man on television. Not to mention his Jack Bailey and Jenny Wade’s Liz Traynor are an incredibly cute not-couple that you can root for. It’s certainly a refreshing hour on a Friday night, one both me and my family make time for each week.
For more Good Guys, check out my exclusive interview with Colin Hanks, and check back here next week for a recap of “Common Enemies.”
Follow Us
