BAYLISS WATCH

I'm WAYYY behind on watching my tapes from last week. Since I needed something to keep me awake all day, I decided to watch the shows I selected LAST Tuesday once I got back from work this morning. Which only made sense if I wanted to finally get around to watching the shows I picked This Tuesday.

So I had chosen 'Stand-Off' as the lead-in last week, only because there was nothing else on of any interest in that eight o'clock hour. Which isn't much in the way of a recommendation for the show.

But it was a serendipitous choice, as it gave me this great Toobworld tidbit:

The FBI teamed up with the LAPD in order to bring an end to the 30-year career of a legendary serial sniper who called himself GLA. The detective in charge of the LAPD's contribution to the task force was Captain Timothy Bayliss.

"Tim Bayliss" was also the name of a detective who worked the Homicided division in the Baltimore, Maryland, police department (as seen on 'Homicide: Life On The Street').

They weren't meant to be the same character; even with the excuse of recasting, that would be o'bvious. There was a definite end to the career of Tim Bayliss in the 'H:LOTS' reunion movie, when he was arrested for committing a murder. So there's no possible way he just packed up and moved to LA and became a captain out there.

Which, in a way, is good news, since this Tim Bayliss came to a bad end during the 'Stand-Off' episode. At least there's hope for redemption and a chance to revisit Kyle Secor's Tim Bayliss someday on some other show. (Perhaps on 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'? After all, his old partner in the Waterfront bar, John Munch, is now working on that show.)

Anyway, there should be a Toobworld splainin as to why two police detectives on opposite sides of the country should have the same name. And I believe they must be related.

It could be that they're cousins. It's not uncommon for the same name to crop up in families. I have two first cousins by the name of Peter; although, granted, they have different surnames.

These two Tim Baylisses (Bayliss's? Baylissii?) could be first cousins. Their fathers would be brothers to each other, and both of them wanted to honor their father (if his name was Timothy) by naming their sons after him. If so, perhaps they agreed to give the boys different middle names to differentiate them. And as they appear to have been raised on opposite sides of the country, it didn't seem like there would ever be much confusion over the matter save at the occasional family reunion.

Of course, if this is true, it's possible that the father of Timothy Bayliss, LA version, could have been the uncle of Tim Bayliss of Baltimore who abused him as a child (as revealed in an episode of 'H:LOTS' in season three).

This theory about the two detectives named Timothy Bayliss is the easy splainin. And Toobworld is on a simplifyin' kick But there's another splainin that has a dark attraction to it.

They're half brothers.

In this splainin, Papa Bayliss was a rolling stone. (Not to be confused with Inspector Mike Stone of 'The Streets Of San Francisco. And he couldn't have been the sire of the Bayliss boys anyway, even if they turned out to be cops as well. After all, a guy with a proboscis like Karl Malden's isn't going to turn out a couple of guys with straight beezers like Kyle Secor and Todd Tesen!)

As a travellin' man, Bayliss Senior may have had more than a mistress; he could have been a bigamist, with a family on both coasts. And both of his wives would have given birth to a son whom they felt compelled to name after the father. (Again, the father may have agreed to this, but insisted on different middle names - just in case of any possiblie complications in the future. Not that he would have been aware of this, but the Fates in the TV Universe love to have such complications come back to haunt characters. You just have to watch a few soap operas to see that!)

So, it's pozz'ble, jes' pozz'ble, that Tim Bayliss of 'Homicide: Life On The Street' and Timothy Bayliss (He seemed to prefer the full name.) of that one episode of 'Stand-Off' could be half brothers, or just first cousins.

And if there is power in names, they were fated to grow up and become police detectives. However, both of them came to bad ends - one arrested for murder, and the other murdered by a sniper.

Such are the Fates in Toobworld.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

ps:
Here's an interesting interview with Kyle Secor on the sexuality of his character Tim Bayliss.