Detectives v. Magicians: Nature's Deadliest Rivalry
Cat vs Dog. Snake vs Mongoose. Detective vs Magician.
Let me begin by making an admission: I love super-duper dumb detective shows. True Detective, HBO’s Perry Mason, The Fall - all of these high-minded and dark dramas have their place and I enjoyed all of them immensely. But at the end of the day, I want my TV detectives to be utter and complete goofballs - quirky, strange weirdos who are at least as funny as they are impressive - outcasts from society in a fun way rather than outcasts from society in a sad way. Rust Cohl has “oh no” mental health issues, Adrian Monk has “lol” mental health issues. And when offered those choices - give me Monk, give me Shawn Spencer, give me Columbo.
The greatest thing about the “silly detective” genre is that it so naturally lends itself to the episodic format. True Detective has to spend a whole season going after one weird sister-fucking redneck (again, one of the best seasons of television of all time, please do not kill my family), while a single season of Monk will see the defective detective facing off against astronauts, rap executives and shock-jocks on a weekly basis. With as many as twenty-eight episodes a season, these gumshoes need to have a genuine rogues gallery of bad guys - and in these episodics, the best villains are born. Enter: The Magician.
The Magician occupies a strange and unique place in American culture - you can attend a high-end magic show with the greatest magician in the world and walk away from it feeling truly amazed - but the next day you will wake up and go right back to thinking magicians are the goddamn lamest thing on earth - utter disrespect and disdain in your bones. No woman on earth is excited to bring a man home to meet her family and announce that he is a magician. When someone at a bar offers to do a card trick, reasonable people can groan and assume that this person is a “pickup artist” (sex criminal). Magicians are at both a true mainstay of our society and a source of deep cultural shame for us all. Even when watching fun and lighthearted “magician-led” films like Now You See Me, I find myself rooting for the authorities to grab Jesse Eisenberg by his annoying little dick and shotput toss him into Gitmo. Magic is fun! But magicians are the worst.
TV detectives are, by and large, a class unto themselves. You would never, ever, associate someone like Jessica Fletcher or Richard Castle with the stereotypical understanding of a “cop”. ACAB does not apply to the duo from Psych. These are simply fun-loving gumshoes who have a penchant for solving mysteries, after all. What could be more endearing? Columbo would never choke a black suspect to death, he doesn’t even carry a gun! He simply says “I got ya, sir”, and they march off to jail, victims of the detective’s otherworldly charisma.
So now we have the ideal dynamic laid out before us - on one hand, society’s most likable character (the disarmingly charming detective) and on the other, society’s most vile and hated minority (the magician). The magician is instinctively inclined to enact the most convoluted and twee murder plot imaginable - reliably involving stupid fucking disguises and unnecessarily complicated twists. But most importantly, the magician is a clown. This is not an ISIS cell or the Unibomber - this is a cornball in a velveteen suit named “The Great Pasquini” or something. The entire exercise is, by its very nature, farcical and clownish. And "farcical and clownish” is perhaps the most fertile soil for a truly excellent episode of a detective show to grow.
One thing that makes the magician such an detestable foe is their sneering self-satisfaction and self-importance in the face of a detective WE KNOW is going to lock their ass up. When a magician commits a murder, he doesn’t just kill someone, he leaves absurdly obvious clues, signatures, and gimmicks to demonstrate his superior intelligence - a sign of how confident he is that he will get away with his misdeeds. In “Mr. Monk and the Magician”, The Great Torini literally writes out a full confession onto a piece of paper for Monk, only to have the paper erupt into flames the moment it hits his hand. The utter balls on this guy. Do you know who you are up against here? Adrian Monk will fucking end you. You stand zero chance. None. You are the most screwed anyone has ever been. He simply does not miss.
In the end, there are never enough of these things. If you love a kind of TV enough, eventually you will run out of episodes - it doesn’t matter if there are 6 episodes a season (like those perverts over in the UK do) or a full 28, eventually the playlist will come to an end. There are many great installments that pit a silly detective against a loathsome magician, but there can always be more. If you’re reading this, please reach out to your favorite television executive, congressperson, or church leader and let them know that you are a lover of detective vs magician episodes of tv, and you vote. The USA Network needs to be pushed in the right direction. Our nation’s most beloved character actors need to be woo’d. We need a groundswell of support for television that will heal our nation and save our future (watching stupid shows where a detective tries to catch a magician who murdered someone). God bless.
Literally watched Columbo magician episode last night. Awesome article, awesome show.