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By D. K. Holm
Special to MSN Entertainment
When Kari Matchett made her belated arrival during the middle of this season's "24," she patched up a season-long crack, a palpable lack in the series. As Lisa Miller, the assistant to Vice President Noah Daniels (played by Powers Boothe), Matchett made her first appearance in Episode 12 (aka "5 p.m. to 6 p.m."). Daniels soon stepped in as acting president, and Miller emerged as his Lady Macbeth, at first quietly observing, but soon willing to do anything for her boss, including perjure herself to advance his career. Miller was the necessary addition that all prime-time programs seem to require these days: She was a network blonde.
A network blonde is different from a regular blonde. In history, blond hair was an evolutionary mutation, a decrease in dark pigment levels that appears to have been introduced into the genetic soup around 3000 B.C., in -- counterintuitively -- Lithuania. Statistically, only 1.8 percent of humanity is truly blond. Culturally, blond hair has divided the public. In "Presence of the Present," a magnificent analysis of Victorian literature and society, author Richard D. Altick notes the rise of "chestnut" (read: blond) hair on female characters in novels of the mid-1800s as it supplants "auburn," (read: red) hair as indicative of moral corruption. In modern times, from Jean Harlow to Marilyn Monroe, blond hair and its variations marked a woman as fun-loving -- and dumb. The dumb blonde joke emerged in the late 1970s as a new variant in a long history of discriminatory gags.
But the dumb blonde of barroom humor is not the network blonde. In her slim hands, the blonde has been rehabilitated, turned from a Suzanne Somers sitcom nutcase to an icily efficient machine of corporate orthodoxy -- a Hitchcock blonde by way of Darren Star.
Just as most sitcoms demand the presence of a goofy neighbor and most crime films require either an unsocialized brainiac or a female computer nerd (or sometimes both), your typical prime-time team-oriented action drama needs to include at least one blonde.
"24" didn't have the help of a prime blonde since the end of the previous season, when Kim Raver's hyper-thin Audrey stood outside a hanger, bleeding from various wounds, while Jack Bauer was kidnapped by a squad of peeved Red Chinese commandos. And in fact, Matchett, a 37-year-old Canadian actress, already had a dry run as a network blonde in the short-lived CBS sci-fi serial "Invasion," where she played Dr. Mariel Underlay, an ER doctor who was body-snatched by the show's water-born aliens.
Like most major cultural shifts, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment the network blonde became de rigueur. In the past, cop-show sidekicks tended to be brunet, like Stepfanie Kramer's Det. Sgt. Dee Dee McCall on "Hunter." Back then, blondes predominantly populated prime-time soaps such as "Knot's Landing." "Baywatch" and its host of nubile, patchily clad beauties may have whetted the national appetite for blondes. Young men of a certain age may recall Peggy Lipton in "The Mod Squad," while slightly younger viewers will remember the aggressively coifed Farrah Fawcett in "Charlie's Angels." Maybe it was Calista Flockhart's Ally McBeal or Susan Dey on "L.A. Law" who got the trend rolling. The plateau may have been Marg Helgenberger's strawberry blonde ex-stripper-cum-forensic scientist on "CSI." But in the end it was probably the long-running show "Law & Order" that acclimated viewers to a strong-willed blonde, offered up in various characters, but most notably in Assistant D.A. Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm).
"Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" has a bottle-blond prosecutor (played by Diane Neal), and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" has an almost self-effacing detective in Eames (Kathryn Erbe), for even a network blonde can't compete with the twitchy screen hogging of Vincent D'Onofrio. In the background at "Criminal Minds" is A.J. Cook's JJ Jareau. "CSI: Miami" features the gun-toting Emily Procter and "Lost" has its Emilie de Ravin and Elizabeth Mitchell. Kyra Sedgwick is the blonde in "The Closer," but she might not count because she IS the team, rather than just another team member. The blonde works better in an ensemble, where she can set off and be set off against her compadres, a shiny Betty to a mass of dusky Veronicas.
The premiere crime-show network blonde of the moment is Poppy Montgomery from "Without a Trace." Cleverly named Samantha Spade in unacknowledged homage to Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," Montgomery's character is a mass of confusions, her competence as an FBI Missing Persons cop challenged by messy interoffice romances and, as we learned in a recent episode, dark activities from her past. Montgomery is fascinating to watch. She has a twisting, unpredictable mouth like a young Ellen Barkin, and her voice bears the wear and tear of a constant battle with her native Australian accent. High-definition television reveals a face highly susceptible to heat changes and blemishes, which gives her an added layer of vulnerability in a competitive world where real men are at a premium. She's the heart of the show: self-conscious, self-destructive, yet sincere.
Not all prime-time shows feel the need to feature a blonde, however. "NCIS," for example, is a
blonde-free zone. And there are signs that the network blonde may have had her
day. The new trend is toward the reign of the network Latina, with the
Bambi-eyed Eva LaRue ("CSI: Miami"), Roselyn Sanchez ("Without a Trace"),
Michelle Rodriguez ("Lost" ) and the exotic Sofía Vergara ("The Knights of Prosperity")
proving highly popular (if photo spreads in British lads' magazines such as
Maxim are any indication). No matter. Till now, the blondes had more
fun.
D. K. Holm contributes to QuickStopEntertainment.com, Green Cine
Daily, and The Screengrab, and has written books on Robert Crumb, Quentin
Tarantino, and as aspect of film noir called film
soleil.
