None of us talked about growing up to be a private investigator.  Guidance counselors never suggested it as a viable career path.  That’s odd because TV in the 70’s and 80’s was full of private investigator TV shows.

 

There was Banacek, Shaft, Rockford Files, Ellery Queen,  Charlie’s Angels, Vega$, Hart to Hart, Magnum P.I., Remington Steele, The A-Team, and Moonlighting.  Those are just the major shows that lasted.

That doesn’t include failed efforts like Partners in Crime.  That featured Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter, two sex symbols a little past their peak.  Police detectives, attorneys or medical examiners are also left off the list.

Private investigators were cool, competent, sexy and making good money, and yet that didn’t convince teenagers to consider that as a career.

The private detectives of the 50’s and 60’s were all skinny ties, juke joints and clipped banter.  They were even cooler, but worked in LA or New York.  Even a teenager could see they were all going to die of syphilis, lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver.

We watched those TV shows, but nobody I know ever became a private investigator.

Sparky doesn’t agree.  He believes TV shows can be very influential.  Sparky said that he got this Crime Dog coat because of the Hong Kong Fuey TV show.

Yeah, I know, almost everything in that sentence is wrong.  Hong Kong Fuey wore a karate gi.  McGruff was the crime dog, and that isn’t a McGruff coat.  I gave Sparky that Inspector Gadget coat, and sewed buckles on it because he looks so much like Matthew Broderick.

Sparky is an unreliable narrator, but he’s got a point.  TV can bump the needle.

My first year as an instructor for Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth, they were starting a forensic science course.   That is the first I’d heard that forensic science was becoming a popular career aspiration.  My students started mentioning that as a possible career interest.  I asked our guidance counselors and DARE officer if forensics was a good career and what students should take in college to pursue that career.

The interest in forensic science seems to have come from the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation TV show.  It’s weird that one show would have so much influence.  Or maybe it’s not weird considering how many spin-offs that show produced.