The Sentinel - TV show, USA, 1996-1999

Summary: The Sentinel is a four seasons TV show of 65 episodes about Jim Ellison, a cop and former ranger, who developped enhanced sensitivity after a year long stay in the peruvian jungle. When he comes back to north-american city Cascade, he meets Blair Sandburg, and anthropology student who decides to use him as his thesis subject as well as helping him figure his new abilities, acting as a spiritual "guide". Together they start solving crime in a very hollywoodian manner. 

The plot doesn't goes round a whole season, but episode per episode, so we can't see any character evolution, even though the Sentinel / Guide relashionship gets a little more background through the series. Basically, an episode contents:

1. Oh my Gosh! Murder. And apparently north-american towns can't pass the day without an explosive gun fight ("Is it just me or is Cascade the most dangerous city in America?" - Jim to Simon, Dead Drop).
2. Oh my Gosh! Funny Blair jokes. And other jokes. And nice puns. Yes, some quite nice puns indeed.
3. At least one sexy lady. Often useless or in danger, she almost always ends up feeling attracted to either Jim or Blair. Or both, in Cassie's case, but it's cool, and so is she.
4. Lots of cop show clichés sentences told in the north american I-know-better-and-I'm-the-alpha-male angry way. It seems like nothing is in the USA but a power stuggle.
5. Jim uses his gifts as a Sentinel / refuses to use his gift as a Sentinel, but ends up using it eitherway. Funnily enough, he only uses it once in a while; of course, if he used it always, as intended, there would be no investigation, right?
6. The sexy lady / Blair / a poor chap / at times Simon even Jim, is taken hostage (up to three -sorry, four times per episode for Blair). That's normal; there aren't much other cops or even main characters in the show to kidnap.
7. A car/motocycle/helicopter/horse/peruvian indian/boat race. Maybe an explosion or two.
8. The hostage is saved thanks to Jim's buldging muscles and Blair's heartwarming good will. 
9. The criminal is punished and yeah for happy endings! (often concluded with a joke from either Jim or Blair).

Commentary: I watched the show because of a fanfiction, "Chameleon" by velvet-mace: I wanted to learn about Sentinels and Guides. Then I watched the show for Blair, because he looks totally innocent and clueless, and that is fascinating. But actually, I never really watched the show; I always had something else to do on the side, it was my background noise for drawing and stuff... And thank God for that, because I would have died of boredom and ghost-sued this show for it. 

I mean, no wits, no real investigation, everything's so easily decided and done, and all for the sake of manly men and a race chase (with aged special effects). Jim's character is the typical north-american superman, the rightful guy who never does the wrong (according to north-american standards) and often looses his shirt.

So basically... I started watching the show because Blair was cute (even his way of beating up villains is. I wonder.). Then I watched the rest of it because it wasn't intellectually demanding and that works fine as background sound.
So yeah, it's enjoyable, I suppose. Just certainly not one of my top-noch series.

- Here's a website dedicated to this TV show
- And a Sentinel episode guide.
- And a critique en français, plutôt complète à mon avis.

EDIT

Okay, I confess, I wasn't being totally honest, and I did quite enjoy the show. And my main reason for watching it was not that I thought Blair was adorable (even though he is). Actually, I watched The Sentinel because I thought it might be about hypersensitive people, for which the Sentinel myth could be a metaphorical image. And the reason why I'm not happy about the series, it's because it's SO DAMN NOT LOGICAL.

I'll explain.

I'm not even sure hypersensitive people have enhanced senses. Maybe they have normal senses but, contrarily to most people, they do use them. Maybe they really do feel things with more intensity. The common factor to those theories is that hypersensitive persons are more in touch with their perception than most people.

I'll give you a for instance -six to be precise.

• Touch: I always feel like there is burning lava running my veins and that there's a needle piercing each and every single cell of mine. When people touch my bare skin it feels like burning, unless I'd got time to prepare myself for it and block it out. In spring, when the trees and mother nature wake up, I feel exhilarated; and when they're awake, it's almost like earing them whisper. When the sun strokes my skin I can feel pleasure bloom instantly from its warmth and cries of delight raising from my cells.
• Sight: My sight is really blur. But when I'm wearing glasses or lenses, I see so many details at the same time I usually can't focus on the bigger picture. I almost never remember a new face or how people are dressed, but I'll remember the way the sun shined though they ear, the dazzling patterns of hair on a hand, the turned out inside of a pocket and the faint traces of gum still sticking to it. And it fascinates me. In museums, I could stay hours looking at an artwork, focusing on each single stroke of paint or every other tiny detail  -or maybe on a crack in the wall. 
• Earing: Loud noises make me cry. I get panicked and confused when there are too much things going around at the same time, such as a bunch of people having distinct conversations in a kitchen while making diner. When I go out, I'm almost always plugged to my Ipod so I don't get scared. I've trouble sleeping in a noisy environement, mainly because when I hear a sound my brain has to analyse its cause and thus, keeps me awake. The vibrations of instruments during concerts or when someone plays the guitar make me fall in love; I can feel my body releasing bunchs of love, pleasure, well-being -I didn't understand it at first, but I've come across a scientific article explaining that those vibrations tended to do that, which explains both the groupie factor and my condition.
• Smell: I smell things like a dog. Not as well as a dog, but as a dog, yes. I smell food before I buy or eat it, I usually raise my nose to get a lead on some scent that caught my attention -some smells get me so hooked up and even horny at times I almost act crazy on it, trying to figure out where they come from, why they do smell so delicious to me- I almost lose it, it's fun. And nasty smells make me wanna run away.
• Taste: I need subtlety. I can't stand spicy food, or food that's too sugary, too salty, too something. And I usually feel the kind of thing my body needs me to eat next -meat, vegetables, sugar, water- too bad I don't comply. And I often feel compelled to lick stuff to know them better, but apparently licking people is not tagged as sane.
• Psychic abilities: No kidding. Or, yes kidding, because they're not psychic at all, actually, they're just logical consequences of what is summed up upside. Thanks to all the data collected by my senses, I'm quite a good judge of situations -even though that doesn't mean I don't make mistakes (gosh, I hate being wrong). Sometimes I can even map out the outcome of my relashionship with someone for at least the year to come. Of course, clever people can do that too, but maybe not just through  a "hunch".

Now, if you've seen The Sentinel, you'll get that they are some look alikes between hypersitive people (or at least, my type of hypersensitivity) and the "Sentinel" person; and you'll maybe get why I was so exited to watch this show. 

 

WHAT. A. JOKE. 

Let's put aside the differences between Sentinels and hypersensitive people - Sentinels are a fictional myth. Let's just look at Jim as a Sentinel. I can't speak for every hyper of course, but it doesn't seem logical to me that someone whose senses are that sensitive acts as Jim does. He doesn't act as if he's in tune with his senses. Of course, that's supposed to be the reason why he needs a Guide. Still.

JIM - Basically, if you're a cop, and a Cascade cop at that, Cascade being apparently the most dangerous fictionnal town ever, you'll have to do the chases, and the shooting, and the shouting!, and all that stuff that's so noisy and hurtfull it makes you want to quit -allright, allright, Jim thought about quitting in S1E1. But he chose the hell of an intense job to begin with.
HYPERs - When everything is so damn intense, you don't usually want it to get worse. So you might chose a calmer job, like, paintor, or, cloud-maker in a bubble factory. If you're an adrenaline junky, thief. Alex has a logical job: all smooth and shadows.


JIM - He barges in buildings like a raging bull. Of course, breaking a door is worldly reknowned as so damn noiseless, as well as guns, explosions, cars, boats, choppers and all these stuff they use for their blue-screen chases. Of course breaking a door doesn't hurt, 'cause it just hurts the door, not the body you've used to bang it through. And you don't feel the bang spreading from your skin to your insides -well, of course you don't, if you're not an hyper.
HYPERs - Not against a nice chase once in a while, but only if they've calculated that their chance of survival is at the very least existent. Like, they might not grab the leg of their ennemy's chopper when it's ascending. (At least Jim did a sensible thing there -he handcuffed his hand to it: this way, he'd be a hindrance for his ennemies even dead, bwahaha. Nicely played, Jim.)

JIM - He always stands in the center of a room. I know it's for the cameras and all, and that he's a superhuman supersoldier, but that drives me crazy!
HYPERs - When an hyper walks into a room, they instantly analyse it: strategic standing spot (usually the one they use, where they can watch the whole room, preferably back to a safe wall or corner, near an exit), strategic cover spot (in case all hell breaks lose), entries (doors, windows, trapdoors, eventual secret doors through unusual furniture), potential shields (bar, table, laptop), potential weapons (everything is a potential weapon). Persons: potential ennemies (and closeness range to potential weaponry, shields, strategic spots), potential allies (same as for ennemis). An hyper detects potential ennemies and allies in a room full of strangers by scanning their body language -hypers can be a hell of a lie detector. I've read that hypersensitive animals (it's not a humans only club thing) usually live longer than others -I wonder where scientists get that, we all probably die of stress.

The touchy thingy thing with Blair is okay though, because touching people you trust and love is so delightful, it feels like discussing with them on a deeper level, body whispering secrets to another body, cells exchanging information and tips and maybe even phone numbers -normal people should feel this, it's electrifying, like gold-making alchemy in-between skins, like making love without the funny sticky sex part. It makes you feel at peace and calms the burn inside.

To conclude, I'll say that Jim being a Sentinel is like ice being fire, it just doesn't match. Being conscious of your sorroundings doesn't turn you into a wild beast -it turns you into a very self-conscious beast. A beast who's very aware of everything, and of everyone. Not a simplified panther -panthers don't just hunt and hump. Only average humans would think that. 
At least we had the weird psychic part going on, a very poor but very true symbol of how tuned up to the universe, or "god", hypers can be.

So yeah, I was disappointed, because I thought The Sentinel was about my people, while it was about "manly" hunts and rightful cops. Still, it also looks like a kind of cavern painting, or a fairy tale to me: average people depicting what they don't really get with symbols -and natural beings like hypersensitive people suddenly turn into magical "Sentinels".
Which makes that show very interesting to watch... from an anthropological point of view. Aaand we go back to me liking Blair.

But look at that here's so cute. Me just wanna hug.