"I watched _What Ever Happened to Mr Garibaldi_ last night and was struck
by the scene where Mr. G was being questioned by the disembodied voice.
That scene was very similar to the style of another one of my favorite
shows _Homicide: Life on the Streets_. I'm just wondering if that was an
intentional nod to that show."

This is kind of embarrassing, but...see, I don't watch much TV anymore. I
don't have time. I think I've seen maybe two episodes of Homicide, total.
So we were in with the editor to do our producer's cut of 402, and I was
trying to describe what I wanted...jarring, disorienting cuts, don't worry
if it matches, use conflicting takes or overlaps of takes...and finally
the editor said, "Oh, you mean the Homicide look." And it'd been so long
that I asked them to explain to me what that meant, and John got into it,
me with him, and ended up with what we've got. I've got to start watching
TV again, beyond X-Files, 60 Minutes and Simpsons. (Well, I've added
Millennium, so that helps.)

"Second question. Last year on ABC the show _Murder One_ tried having one
main story, like an arc, through the whole season. It was following a
single
trial (I assume you know this). That show basically got a "that's nice"
from the crowd and not much else. Do you think that the concept of an
ongoing story works better in a science fiction show than say a cop show?
Was it more the execution of _Murder One_ that did in the idea of one
trial per season? I would be curious to hear your thoughts."

No, I don't really think it's genre specific. Frankly, I think the
viewing audience was *so* sick to death of the OJ trial that the idea of
watching ANOTHER homicide trial take a week was just too much for them.


jms