MickeySledge Hammer!
We've all seem (at least) one: The renegade, rogue lone-wolf cop who manages to save the day by breaking the rules- not just civil laws, but the laws of common sense, physics and so on. The supercop in film and TV has a long history, but it was the steady rise in film budgets during the late 70s and eighties that allowed super special effects budgets to really take the genre over the top.
By the late 80s it was ready to be taken back down. Of course too many attempts were tripped up by their own attention to plot, characterization and so on, but in 1986 we finally got one that worked: Sledge Hammer! Played to perfection by David Rasche, Sledge Hammer! was the ultimate over-the-top gonzo gun-happy cop. For Sledge, the violent solution wasn't just the best solution to any given problem, it was the only one.
While Sledge Hammer! was a perfect send-up of the hyper-violent cop genre (Only Police Squad was as good- it was reborn into the movies as The Naked Gun) they didn't stop there. They riffed pop culture (jokes about the shows on opposite Sledge!), they parodied the sci fi 'man rebuilt as cyborg' bit from The Six Million Dollar Man and Robocop, in the "Hammeroid" episode. It was one of those fun shows where they never let continuity and plot get in the way of a good joke.
Yes, Sledge Hammer! was a misogynistic male chauvinist. Yes, he violated every civil rights law ever passed- including the original Bill Of. Yes, he was a danger to himself, his co-workers, passers-by, people living or working blocks away... that was the point of it. He was all that, and more, taken to such a ridiculous extreme that he could offend practically everyone... if we weren't too busy laughing at him.
By the late 80s it was ready to be taken back down. Of course too many attempts were tripped up by their own attention to plot, characterization and so on, but in 1986 we finally got one that worked: Sledge Hammer! Played to perfection by David Rasche, Sledge Hammer! was the ultimate over-the-top gonzo gun-happy cop. For Sledge, the violent solution wasn't just the best solution to any given problem, it was the only one.
While Sledge Hammer! was a perfect send-up of the hyper-violent cop genre (Only Police Squad was as good- it was reborn into the movies as The Naked Gun) they didn't stop there. They riffed pop culture (jokes about the shows on opposite Sledge!), they parodied the sci fi 'man rebuilt as cyborg' bit from The Six Million Dollar Man and Robocop, in the "Hammeroid" episode. It was one of those fun shows where they never let continuity and plot get in the way of a good joke.
Yes, Sledge Hammer! was a misogynistic male chauvinist. Yes, he violated every civil rights law ever passed- including the original Bill Of. Yes, he was a danger to himself, his co-workers, passers-by, people living or working blocks away... that was the point of it. He was all that, and more, taken to such a ridiculous extreme that he could offend practically everyone... if we weren't too busy laughing at him.
