"The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife. 48th Rule of Acquisition"

THIS Chick Is Going to Play a Tough NYC Homicide Detective?

Posted by Superheidi | Fri, February 17 2012

I mean, I understand that you need to be hot to be an actress, but can we have some semblance of realism in our casting, please?

I first knew there was something seriously wrong with the world when, in the gay 90s on the TV series Star Trek: Voyager, a former BORG captive named Seven-of-Nine also happened to be a 6-foot-tall Victoria's Secret-lookin' model. I mean, what are the odds?

THEN, the TV series House (which I adore) decides that 8/10 doctors on the show need to be 23 and SUPER HOT (as if really hot people become doctors. AND as if you can be finished with medical school, finished with your internship, and have passed your board exams by the age of 23 BUT you were also the hottest girl in school. Ha!).

Well, the world is at it again. THIS time, it's the casting for the new TV series Beauty and the Beast (you know, because TV executives are all, "That Fairy Tale Shit Is Really Popular Right Now, What With The Twilight Things") that's completely wrong and off and embarrassing. Actress Kristin Kreuk (she was Lana Lang on Smallville) will play

"Catherine, a tough-minded NYPD homicide detective haunted by witnessing her mother’s murder nine years ago and the killers’ quick demise at the hands of a Beast. After years of searching, Catherine finally finds the Beast, Vincent Koslow, the survivor of a military experiment that went disastrously wrong, and becomes the protector of his secret life as a superhero."

So, why exactly would this chick (pictured below) become a NYPD homicide detective?

Yes, this is a recent picture

Okay, here's a picture of her looking slightly more rugged:

Still not fucking believable.

I mean, if you were born on the hard streets of, oh, say, like, The Bronx, and you looked like that, wouldn't you become RICH AND FAMOUS and an actress instead of some hard-nosed, hard-bitten, walled-up, savvy street cop? I mean, you might be from The Bronx and then, because you're hot, end up on TV and then PLAY a NYPD detective, but you wouldn't really be one:

She's just Jenny from the block

We've all seen how hard reality TV has to struggle to find hot chicks for their documentary and reality TV series: historians, doctors, scientists (especially physicists), animal control offciers, and cops are Rarely Hot. I'm not going to make any real social judgements here (except that if you're a woman and you're hot, people will give you money because they don't value anything else about women [what brains, who cares? So what if you invented a new cure for cancer? Angelina Jolie is still hotter than you. She gets 20 Million Dollars and you get your meager paycheck and the disdain of men everywhere because of that wart on your face, bitch]) but all I know is that I have never seen a cop this hot (well, I mean, outside of Los Angeles, that is) and I just can't take a character seriously if she's too young and too hot for the shitty job she has in our (enter your own adjective here) society.

I just have a few final things to say on the casting of Beauty and the Beast:

I are doctor!

I am archeolomologist!

AND

"I play a 32-year-old mom of an 18-year-old child who looks just like a model but who also went to medical school full time while having two more children and have been the top in my field for 25 years. I know, it's stupid, right? I'm just an actress though, so I don't have anything to do with the writing on Terra Nova."

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Fri, 02/17/2012 - 16:28

Thomas Duke

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The two examples that stand out to me are:

Taking Lives, where the Montreal detectives are intellectually and scientifically unequipped to catch a serial killer, so they farm in Angelina Jolie from the FBI, an expert in forensics and the greatest profiler the world has ever seen.

Deep Blue Sea, where Michael Rappaport is the scientist that explains all the sciency stuff.

However, it seems like every dumb Hollywood or network action/mystery movie or show does this. Besides casting people who are hot and vacuous for smart characters, they are also too young to have whatever job they have. No 22 year old is the greatest in their scientific or medical or law enforcement field because they'd still be in school or in training.

Screenwriters actually think they can get around this by having a character point at the hot 22 year old brain surgeon and say "see her over there? She's the best in her field!", and then have the actress walk as confidentally as possible into the operating room. Really really smart people aren't that confident.

As a side note, Angelina Jolie kinda grosses me out. I don't quite get how she's the benchmark for hotness. Then again, I'm a weirdo. I'd take a youngish Shelly Duvall over Jolie without a moment's hesitation.

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Fri, 02/17/2012 - 16:32

Thomas Duke

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Oh yeah, and the Amityville Horror remake, where Reynolds and George are in their late 20's, but they have a 15 year old son. Nice.

P.S. My comment is in italics for some reason. I didn't do it.

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Fri, 02/17/2012 - 16:42

Chris McMillan

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Oh come on. They made Tara Ried wear glasses, the universal movie sign of intelligence. Isn't that enough to convince you?

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Fri, 02/17/2012 - 16:52

Cash Bailey

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It seems like the only thing the remake of PRIME SUSPECT did right was cast Maria Bello, who was both a strong actress and age-appropriate for the role. Neither of which can be said about Kristen Kreuk.

I guess, inevitably, they're going for the goddamn TWILIGHT angle. I can't wait to see which blandly good-looking beefcake they hire to brood and pout his way as the other half of this creative dynamo.

Fri, 02/17/2012 - 18:41

Private J.V. Vasquez

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Or the "Nightmare on Elm Street" remake all these kids are so sleep deprived they still have great make up, hair is not a mess, and just some bags under the eyes. Not too much though! Can't make them less hot to people! That's what we need in this movie! Although Rooney Mara I guess almost looked like a regular person, but that chick who plays the character based on "Tina" for a min I thought she was a model oh that's right she use to be one. Apparently that qualifies you more to be in the movies, than someone who actually does much more varied roles. Again I haven't seen what all Katie Cassidy has done. I just know that I really didn't buy her role or any actors/actresses really roles either. I also took back what I said about Rooney Mara, she can act I liked her in "The Social Network" and "The Girl With The Dragon tattoo." Apparently she was just as sorry to be in that remake as the people who watched it and hated it.

Ok wait a min is this a "reboot" of the series that stared Linda Hamilton and Ron Peralman?

http://www.ontheredcarpet.com/Kristin-Kreuk-of-Smallville-to-star-in-Beauty-and-the-Beast-reboot/8548298

Wow guess it is....

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Fri, 02/17/2012 - 23:50

Tristan Sinns

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Thomas Duke wrote:

P.S. My comment is in italics for some reason. I didn't do it.

It was due to hazardous HTML on the Heidi's part.

Italicized text, as most know, is made by putting type markup code around a string, such as i are italicized!

However, if you write an article, and for some reason only have a , but do not close it with a , then all following text in all comments everywhere will be italicized, and then the world will die and it will be your fault.

I fixed the article so things are no longer perma-italicized.

On a separate note, I like House.

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Sat, 02/18/2012 - 00:52

Superheidi

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Thomas Duke wrote:

Oh yeah, and the Amityville Horror remake, where Reynolds and George are in their late 20's, but they have a 15 year old son. Nice.

I fucking hated that. Would it have killed them to cast 40-year-olds, at least?

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Sat, 02/18/2012 - 06:49

Thomas Duke

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Tristan Sinns wrote:

the Heidi

Is that what we're calling her now?

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Sat, 02/18/2012 - 06:59

Thomwade

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Chris McMillan wrote:

Oh come on. They made Tara Ried wear glasses, the universal movie sign of intelligence. Isn't that enough to convince you?

Glasses alone are not enough. The hair is also pulled back. I had this idea for a comic book that was a satire of many things... The big one was the glut of autobiographical comics. I was fighting aliens and monsters with a crack team of movie stereotypes. There was the philosophical Asian guy who was an expert in martial arts(all of them), the giant imposing black guy who is a teddy bear, the hotshot black cop/pilot who played by his own rules, the hot girl of uncertain ethnic origin and finally...the smoking hot super scientist, that nobody noticed was hot as long as her hair was pulled back and she was wearing glasses.

It is not impossible for a you g person to be one of the best in their field. They are called prodigies and they are exceedingly rare.

Sat, 02/18/2012 - 07:10

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Thomwade

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Superheidi wrote:

Thomas Duke wrote:

Oh yeah, and the Amityville Horror remake, where Reynolds and George are in their late 20's, but they have a 15 year old son. Nice.

I fucking hated that. Would it have killed them to cast 40-year-olds, at least?

Thirties would have been plausible. I know couples in their early thirties with a mid teen kid. Technically, I do not recall an age being established...both George and Renolds were 29 at the time, and could have been playing thirties.

I also wonder... Why are we presuming the age of the actor equals character age? Certainly, there are cases where actors just look to young...but still... Why do we assume the mom on Terra Nova is 32?

Mon, 02/20/2012 - 12:43

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Superheidi

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Thomwade wrote:

Well, I guess because she looks 32. Since we have no other way of gauging her character's age, I assume we're supposed to base it on an estimate of how she looks. I think the actress is actually 34, if I remember correctly.

I mean, I do know 32 year olds and 34 year olds with 18 year old kids. They just also never went to college because they spent their entire teen years and 20s taking care of a kid, which is a monumental amount of work and prevents people, especially women, from doing things like "spend 10-12 years in school becoming a pediatrician."

I'm not saying it never happens, or that there aren't prodigies out there, and that no hot person can ever be a doctor/scientist, because of course that's not true. Those things do exist. But on a TV show wherein the family is supposed to be regular and normal, and they never say, "You know, kid? Your mom went to medical school at age 16! she's a genius!" or "Your mom had you when she was 15, did you know? Aren't you proud of her for becoming a nuclear physicist even tough she had to hold down two jobs while going to grad school because she was raising you, too?" then I assume those things didn't happen. Especially if they act like there's nothing extraordinary about their family or that there's anything extraordinary about the way mom (or dad) look.

Like, that mom from Terra Nova - in the real world, wouldn't everyone she met, anywhere, say, "Oh my god, you're gorgeous!"? They would. I know, because I was hot once. They never do. They go, "Oh, hello" and act like she looks like everyone else. She doesn't. She's way hotter. People would totally marvel, in real life, at how hot she was for a doctor. On Terra Nova it's just 'eh, normal' and therefore totally unbelievable to me.

At least on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine they had the forethought, in season one, to have everyone tell Jadzia Dax how hot she was for a science officer, and to have her say, "I'm just enjoying the attention!"

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Mon, 02/20/2012 - 13:55

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Thomwade

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I never mention or marvel how a woman looks to her face...mainly because I figure as a I am a non-hot person it will just be awkward for her.

I tend to not really recognize an age beyond "early thirties", "late thirties" and so on. And really, some people in their early twenties look pretty much the same in their late twenties. Unless a specific age is given on a show (which is not usually the case) I just go with the vague thirties or twenties... Or the rare forties. Unless your show is about a man...then forties and up is pretty much all over the place.

I get what you are saying..I did double check the age of the mother and son on the River...and it actually works out as somewhat plausible. I guess there were so many other things that annoyed me with Terra Nova...I just never get to the age part. Seriously, the angry and rebellious child angry at Mom and Dad is so beyond tired.