Sunday, August 24, 2008

BRAITHWAITE'S FOR NO PULLMAN

Gaaagh. That pun was exceptionally painful!

The concept of "identical cousins" from 'The Patty Duke Show' has come in handy all through Toobworld in splainin' away how so many characters can look alike and yet not have similar names. (O'Bviously the concept of casting the same actor over and over again can't enter into it!)

Now that I'm back from vacation, I'm catching up on those shows I couldn't watch from my holiday haven. And that includes 'New Tricks', the police procedural from England which has been airing since 2003. In charge of these older cops working on cold cases is Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman. And she's the spitting image of several other British women in Toobworld: Viv Meadows ('To Have And To Hold'), Janet Deasey ('Demob'), Debbie Ryan ('Hope & Glory'), and Alison Braithwaite ('At Home With The Braithwaites').

It's Mrs. Braithwaite on whom we'll be focusing.

It could be that Alison and Sandra are cousins with different family surnames. (I'm not sure what Alison's maiden name is; something about the name of the trust she established with her lottery winnings makes me think it could be Crowther.)

What's interesting about this pozz'bility (as Mushrat might say) is that if they are related, then during the investigation into the GS "Bank Robbery", Sandra might have mentioned one of Alison's in-laws. In discussing the case from 1987, she brought up the chief investigating detective on the case, DCI Braithwaite. (We never got to see him during the "Bank Robbery" episode because he died since the case faded into the cold case file.)

By the way, I don't know if we ever saw Alison's upper left arm during 'At Home With The Braithwaites', but we did see Sandra's in that episode "Bank Robbery". When the actress Amanda Redman was almost two years old, she scalded herself by pulling a pot off the stove which accounts for that horrible scarring. Not every character she plays has to be considered as having that scarred tissue, so long as we don't see it.
It would be like Peter Falk and his glass eye - Lt. Columbo has one now in his later years, thanks to a tossed-off comment in the 25th anniversary movie. But his portrayal of lawyer Daniel J. O'Brien might as well have had two real eyes in 'The Trials Of O'Brien' for all that they were mentioned on the show.

But if it has been visible in her many other series, it raises a question as to how so many women in Toobworld who look exactly alike could have the same scar?

I'm not ready to tackle that one and I'm open to hear of any pozz'ble theories......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

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