In Praise of Tom Selleck

Barely recognizable as TS

On Tuesday afternoons I generally start to dread whatever interval workout I have planned for the day.  I half hope that the track team will be using the track so that I will have an excuse to run something else.  But when I'm doing intervals, I never hate them as much as I fear I will and in fact I tend to enjoy them.  Today I did 3x1600 and 1x3200, with 200 jog in between each (5:39, 5:39, 5:35, 11:17). 

On the advice of interval maven Tammi I kept the recovery short.  She says, for short intervals have a long recovery.  Have a short recovery for long intervals.  The reason for this is because when you're working on aerobic/threshold capacity you want to keep the pressure on.  When you're working on speed and strength with the shorter stuff you want enough recovery so that you're body is charged and fully explosive. 

It's true about running that you never feel worse for having done it, and it was true today despite my inclination to bail on the workout.

You know who would never bail on a workout?  Tom Selleck.  In every role he plays Selleck represents rectitude, authority, and probity.  He is a stable, unwavering 6'4" oak of justice who can be counted on to do the right thing, whether as detective Thomas Magnum; as one of a trio of surprised, hapless, but ultimately caring dads in Three Men and a Baby; as Eisenhower in a fictionalized representation of D-Day; or as Commissioner Frank Regan in his latest vehicle, cop drama Blue Bloods. 

Selleck can be counted on to deliver one convincing performance after another in the episodic (as opposed to serial) TV dramas that have become his specialty as an actor: crime dramas and other shows where each week's plot turns on a central masculine authority figure.   Genres such as the cop drama and the western (recall Quigley Down Under) convert Selleck's limited seemingly expressive range (I emphasize the "seemingly") into the impassivity that characteristically befits the unimpeachable authority of lawmen and cowboys. 

Thomas Magnum

Selleck does not emote.  He rarely even gets convincingly angry.  But this would-be limitation as an actor turns him into a force of stability around which a plot can take shape.  Throughout the course of his long career, directors, producers, and casting agents have year by year whittled Selleck down to a type, but he works expertly in the mold.  Selleck will serve more as a structural support in the plot of a show than as a character whose turmoil captivates the viewer.  To put it another way, he doesn't play characters--he plays plots.  Once Selleck gets involved the plot can get going, the case begin to be solved, because he radiates rectitude and the knowledge of when and how and why to do the right thing.  These are the qualities that set a good cop show in motion.  They don't belong to the actors; they belong to the architecture of the genre.

To be fair, we cannot know from the body of his work that Selleck does not in fact possess a mine of emotional range left lying untapped deep beneath the bristles of his famous moustache  However, a look at his early work in Magnum PI gives us some indication of his strengths and weaknesses as an actor.  This is because as originally written, the character of Thomas Magnum is not actually that well matched to Tom Selleck the actor.  As the series progresses Selleck makes the character his own, but in the early episodes, Selleck seems almost uncomfortable in Magnum's Hawaiian shirt and too-cool-for-school manner, uneasy being the easygoing, worry-free surfer-detective that is the Thomas Magnum character.  Viewing the early episodes, it becomes clear that Thomas Magnum was a character probably written more for an actor like the guy who played Murdoch in the A-Team.  But Selleck launched his career by making Thomas Magnum his own, taking the role and tailoring it to his own strengths.

A still from Blue Bloods

The current show Blue Bloods exploits Selleck's talents in their full flower.  The show is about a family of Irish Catholic cops in New York. Selleck is the reigning patriarch, but he's watched over by his own retired cop-father, the patriarch emeritus.  They sit at the heads of the table at the Sunday family dinners that comprise a regular part of each episode.  (The show is family on steroids with four generations involved.)  Donnie Wahlberg--who shares his brother's expressive brow and is a subtle craftsman in his own right--plays the older of Selleck's two cop sons, one of who has traded a career as a Harvard-trained lawyer to stand in the filial line of blue uniforms. Selleck's daughter plays a rising DA's assistant.

Whatever happens in Blue Bloods, Selleck knows how to handle it.  In the last episode some affluent young developers beat to death a homeless Iraq vet.  Donnie Wahlberg was on the case, incensed because like him (and like all the men in the family except the Harvard lawyer) he's a Marine combat vet.  When it appears that Wahlberg might be on the verge of crossing the line with the suspect, Selleck steps in and counsels his hotheaded son against compromising the case and imperiling justice.

Selleck puts his talents to use in steady TV work, but one wonders what would've happened if he had become a leading move actor.  Had Selleck turned to movies, his resume would probably boast higher highs but would also be saddled with lower lows than one finds upon review of the steady stream of TV shows that comprise his career.  With years left in his career Selleck may yet find additional range as an actor, but one has to admire him for finding a niche and doing something right time after time.  As a figure who can telegraph stalwart authority to an audience in one reliable performance after another, he is irreplaceable.  No one does it better.