Standing in the Shadows (No. 2): George Eads

The much-delayed second edition of Standing in the Shadows was originally going to be about Jesse Plemons, a.k.a. Landry on Friday Night Lights (he's the one who looks like a steamrolled Matt Damon). But this season, Landry's graduated from Matt's comic-relief best friend to a major player with his very own "I Can't Believe It's Not Murder!" storyline. The producers obviously realized he had untapped potential and decided they needed to give him a forum to show it off, and their risky gamble ultimately worked, though it was not without its One Tree Hill-esque moments. He's proved himself a fantastic dramatic actor who's still capable of pulling off moments of bracing gallows humor. Though why the hell is he not ever in scenes with Matt anymore? Is it the Magical Latina Care Worker who's putting him off? If so, I don't blame him.


Since Standing in the Shadows is our highly influential forum for advancing the careers of overlooked thespians we love, tonight we turn to someone more in need of our help: an incredibly likable actor named George Eads.


Eads is best-known for playing forensic scientist Nick Stokes on original-flavor CSI. In a large cast in which every character is compelling (if not always likable), Nick stands out as the guy you'd most want to hang out with. He's a truly decent man, always quick to help out his colleagues and to empathize with the victims and potential perps he comes across. He is the character who perhaps gets the most emotionally involved in cases he takes on, which makes him exceptionally intuitive but can be a hindrance when he jumps to conclusions too early in a case.

Nick is universally beloved by his colleagues, and is probably the most affable member of the team, able to get along with pretty much anyone. But he is at his best in scenes with Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan). The characters are clearly good friends, and the actors seem to be as well; they have a natural chemistry together. (In fact they are friends -- Admiral Neck just sent me a link to an article in which they say they have a "healthy man love" for each other. More on that later.) And though Eads is a fairly big guy with impressive "guns" (to use the argot of the youth of today) and the neck of a caber-tosser, he projects a sweetness and vulnerability perhaps even more endearing because he looks so much like a jock.

CSI has managed to play on that vulnerability to heart-tugging effect -- on most shows, it's usually the women who get kidnapped or otherwise end up in need of rescue; they're the most vulnerable characters and usually the most helpless. But on CSI, Nick is the one who usually ends up in trouble. He's like a big Labrador retriever; he's so sweetly guileless that he'll follow the man with the treat right into the back of a white van. And he is so vulnerable and beloved by the audience that the producers immediately have dramatic tension: no one wants to see anything bad happen to Nick. When he was trapped in a coffin during season five's excellent Quentin Tarantino-helmed finale, we were desperate to make sure he got out of there safely, which made the CSI team's race against the clock all the more dramatic. I think Admiral Neck might have snapped a tendon he was clenched so tightly the whole time Nick was in trouble. The show hasn't forgotten the lingering trauma to Nick's psyche, either -- he's still wary of going into dark, enclosed spaces and sometimes has flashbacks. When Sara was abducted earlier this season, it was only Nick who suffered as much as Grissom did.


In another endearing character quirk, whenever Nick has a gun pulled on him, he starts crying. It's only happened a few times over the years -- we're not on CSI: Miami here -- but it's the most human reaction I can recall seeing on TV (or in the movies, for that matter). I think I can confidently say that most people would lose control of their sphincters if they had a gun pulled on them, and we've become so inured to cop shows where the hero doesn't even flinch when confronted with the possibility of imminent death that we don't even mind that their reactions aren't all that realistic (unless they are Horatio Caine, obviously). But Nick doesn't carry a gun and isn't a police officer, so he reacts like anyone would: he's absolutely terrified. Apparently George Eads was the one who suggested this idea to the producers, so good on him for that.

Though CSI has the occasional Nick-centered episode, Eads is mostly just another player in an ensemble cast, and it would be great if, 45 years from now when CSI finally stops making a profit and is summarily cancelled, he got his own show. He's got leading-man looks, affability, charm, wit, and a body like a digitally enhanced Greek warrior -- he doesn't deserve to be relegated to TV movies about Evel Knieval. That's Scott Bakula territory.

While doing my internet research for this article, I found out there is apparently a raging IMDB-based debate about George Eads' sexuality. Now, obviously we have to take these arguments with a grain of salt, as the people who post on the IMDB boards have had raging, two-year-long debates about which kind of cake was served in a scene in Spider-Man 2. (I'm not making that up.) Also, they are moronic. Perhaps you got that from the cake debate. Anyway, does this man look gay to you?


At any rate, if he has healthy man love to give, I heartily approve of him giving it to Gary Dourdan. Preferably at length. And on camera.

That is all.

Standing in the Shadows (No. 1): Robert Sean Leonard

Continuing the theme of saying the odd nice thing about pop culture instead of just repeatedly saying, "that David Thewlis sure do talk funny, an' he ain't a pretty one neither," it occurs to me that certain secondary characters on TV are often overshadowed by the leads. In an attempt to rectify this unfairness, and to offer a counterpoint to the Gupta post, consider this the first in an occasional series. This week, Standing in the Shadows presents Dr. James Evan Wilson from Fox's House M.D.

Once upon a time, before Canyon and I met, we both disliked Robert Sean Leonard with much enthusiasm. Though I'm sure if I applied some effort to it I could remember my reasons, I think mostly it was just because he was wet. Critics seemed to respond to him, however, and a lot of the ladies I knew in college went on and on and on about how he was just duh-reeeeemy and it made me want to gag. Why do the critics and the ladies like the wet man, I thought? Am I missing something? I thought I had learned some things about the world, but this fixation upon his pallid boy face contradicted so much. Around that time he appeared as the doomed Neil Perry in Peter Weir's Dead Poet's Society. I do remember seeing that.

At the end I cried so hard I had to be led out of the cinema with a coat over my head so people didn't stop and gawk at me. God knows how I would have reacted if Neil Perry had been played by an actor whose appeal I actually understood.

Not long after that he appeared as Claudio in Kenny Branagh's William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing Featuring Neo With His Shirt Off, and he barely registered. Add to this the fact that his Hero was played by Kate Beckinsale, another actor who makes me energetically apathetic, if such a mental state is possible. Thankfully the presence of the eternally magnificent Emma Thompson made up for the suck generated by those two. Well, that and the casting of Denzel and Brian Blessed and the fact that MAAN is one of my favourite plays by the Bard. Towards the end RSL and Richard Briers, of all people, treat Hero with immense disrespect, pulling her hair and knocking her to the ground. To my immense exasperation, his behaviour did not in any way dent the admiration of said college ladies, most probably because of the whole, "Unlike you, they understand he's acting, you weird deluded idiot," thing. [Note from Canyon: Unlike the ladies AdmiralNeck was unfortunately acquainted with, this movie was where my hatred for RSL began. His acting is so indescribably inept and his puppy-dog faces so pathetic that even though I love him now, it still makes me angry that he was remunerated for pooping all over what was otherwise a really good movie. A friend and I did spend a great half-hour in college rewinding his worst scene over and over -- a "D'oh!" face so hammy and ineptly-acted that he made Keanu look like William H. Macy. KEANU.] After that, the buzz around him subsided, and I forgot all about him, moving my indignation to things that actually mattered, like the terrible consequences of greed, and the threat of plagues jumping species as a result of massive deforestation, and George Lucas making Greedo shoot first in the remixed Star Wars films (GAH!).

So, Canyon and I gritted our teeth when we started watching House, knowing he would piss us off. Of course, this was not to be. As the show's comforting one-plot-fits-all structure settled in, it became apparent that Chase, Foreman and Cameron existed solely to be humiliated in numerous vastly amusing ways by our anti-hero House. As for Cuddy, she merely jumped into action at the end of the second act, saying weekly variations on, "I won't let you remove that woman's heart and replace it with a candle in a tin box! It's too dangerous!" While that played out in ever more ridiculous ways, a miracle happened. Wilson went from hospital furniture to occasional font of humour to gloriously put-upon foil and conscience to the ever-more-obnoxious lead, not to mention philanderer who sleeps with his patients while his ex-wives hassle him.

Though our affection for him was grudging at first, the tipping point came in the first season episode "Kids", where House is forced to try out replacements for Cameron, who has left his posse because he doesn't wuv her enuff. Poor Camewon! After a series of feeble applicants wilt under House's barrage of pissy (and entertaining) insults, he meets his match in Dr. Petra Gilmar, played by O.C. vet Erin Foster, batting his nonsense back at him, much to the delight of Wilson. As she leaves the interview, he spins around and yells, "That's our Hitler!" As we'd just the week before seen The Producers at the Theatre Royal, we were delighted. With that, we fell for Wilson.

Though we love House too, without his companion, the show just does not work. At its best, it tantalised us with the promise of incompatible roommate shenanigans, as Wilson was forced to move in with House, but it was only for a couple of episodes. I can see why; with them living together, the focus of the show would have changed too much. Instead of a show about a loner genius, it would have become The Odd Couple with weekly agonising lumbar puncture footage. It was heartbreaking, though, as the comic possibilities were barely explored.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the mid-season-three mini-arc with David Morse as the obnoxious gum-chewing cop asshole Tritter set House and Wilson against each other, and the show became mortifyingly dull. Their relationship was so broken that the writers had no choice but to resolve the Tritter problem with a deus ex machina in a low-cut dress (Cuddy), and then act as if House hadn't nearly ruined Wilson's career as a thank you to him for saving his ass. Though I was glad they reconciled, it didn't for a second ring true. Thank god for the restoration of the funny, though. The show sorely needed it. As much as House needed his best friend Wilson! Long may that friendship thrive.