MY FRIENDS IN TOOBWORLD: SILENT PHILL

My friend Philip Escobedo is facing a serious medical procedure in the coming days.  By all accounts, there is optimism that everything will go smoothly - Phil is in good spirits about it all and - speaking from experience - that goes a long way towards recovery.

Hopefully today's post will give him a boost in that regard.  Humor is supposed to be good medicine.  Can't hurt, anyway.....

Every so often I like to take a look at my friends' lives on Earth Prime and imagine what their fictional televersions must be like living on Earth Prime-Time.  We all have a televersion, thanks to home movies shared on YouTube.  Some become more pronounced because those then end up on shows like 'America's Funniest Home Videos'.  (My televersion has even been inducted into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  But then, that was on a milestone birthday and I am, after all, the Curator.)

For Phil Escobedo, his televersion is similar to one of my Toobworld characters, Wayde Arngrim, in that he's a computer whiz kid.  In the TV Universe, Phil has a nickname - Silent Phill.  The reason there is because he doesn't talk very much (hardly an exact copy of the original!)  That's okay, because his partner in life and business, Michael "Loudon" Cleary, more than makes up for that with his verbosity. Sort of a Toody and Muldoon dynamic.

In Toobworld, Silent Phill employs his skills in creating computerized scenarios as a consultant to the NYPD, down in the Village at the new 12th Precinct.  (The old 12th is now a museum dedicated to the Police Commissioner career of Teddy Roosevelt,)  But he and his partner Michael Cleary also have a side business for themselves in which those skills come in handy - they fight crime!  As private detectives, they help their clients find justice.

Silent Phil recreates crime scenes and plays out the variations on what might have happened.  Somewhat like Nero Wolfe, he doesn't even have to leave their apartment to do so.  In that regard, Cleary proves most indispensable as the "legman" in the investigation.  (And legman is right!  The guy's a very lanky beanpole!)  A former actor and something of a con artist, Cleary would rather be puttering about in his gourmet kitchen and sampling fine wines.  But during a case, he's all business as he takes on a variety of dramatis personae to tail the true criminal.

This picture is a good example of Loudon Cleary and Silent Phill at work. Here they are meeting one of their clients, Merle Jeeter, former mayor of Fernwood, Ohio.  No stranger himself to being on the shady side of the Law, Mayor Jeeter finds that for once he is innocent of the charges against him.  And only the boys can help prove his innocence.

A detective show needs a good title.  The name of the private eye is usually good enough to be the choice.  But I don't want to give prominence to one over the other when it comes to billing.  So I'm thinking along the lines of.....

"A COUPLE OF DICKS"

That is a slang reference to them being private detectives, you understand.  But even so, I think this show could only be on a cabler or even a premium channel.....

All the best, Phil.  I hope you enjoyed this little bit o' Toobworld imagineering on my part.

SHOWS CITED:

• 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman'
• 'Fernwood Tonight'
• 'Barney Miller'
• 'Car 54, Where Are You?'
• 'Nero Wolfe'

BCnU!