Crossing Lines

Crossing Lines cast
Yes, that's Donald Sutherland on the left.

We've been watching the Crossing Lines series on Netflix lately. It's entertaining though not particularly great, too much time spent on close ups, significant looks and emotional claptrap. It's kind of like a soap opera that way. But they do have some good looking women and plenty of action. And there is an undercurrent of fancy technology that gives my inner geek something to think about.

In the episode we watched last night, Hickman (William Fichtner) is interviewing a psychoanalyst who was taken hostage during a prison escape and he tells her he knows her book. She is surprised because, I mean, who reads books on psychoanalysis? Hickman replies that "Google makes us all look smarter" and that he only knows that she has written a book, he hasn't read it. Later she comments about his injured hand and echoes his phrase about Google. However, this trips her up because she thinks the criminal responsible for his injury is still on the loose, when he was actually apprehended a couple of months ago. This means that she was researching him before then, and the only reason she would do that was that she is was in on the planning of a series jewelry heists. You're going down, lady.

Hickman's injury occurred when he was shot in the hand. This kind of injury has all kinds of ramifications. It's the kind of thing that quickly gets forgotten by everyone else except the injured party and his friends and family. After all, all the news would report was the injury was not life threatening and that he is expected to recover. Well, he didn't die, and he didn't lose his hand, but his hand is still pretty messed up. It doesn't work very well, and since it's his dominate hand, it makes him clumsy at all kinds of ordinary things. It also makes using a semi-automatic pistol problematic because he can't rack the slide. There might be a way to do that one-handed, but this is TV, so I am going to let it slide (heh). It goes to show that even 'minor' injuries can really mess up your life.

Carrie-Anne Moss as Amanda Andrews and William Fichtner as Carlton Hickman

Hickman's injury also causes him continuing pain, bad enough that he is taking morphine. That sounded a little excessive to me, but nerves are funny things. They get messed up and they might decide to just keep screaming at you, even though whatever injury you had is long gone. I can relate being as I am still taking narcotics to deal with my toothache. The troublesome molar was removed yesterday so I should be on the mend, but my jaw still hurts.

Amanda, Hickman's New York girlfriend, tells him they are doing some amazing things with prosthetics these days, which is kind of odd, as his 'Justice League' teammate Arabela points out that he still has his hand. Cutting off your hand because it is painful seems like an extreme measure, but then I suppose it kind of depends on how much pain there is and how long it goes on, but surely there are other ways to control the pain. Besides, don't amputees sometimes experience phantom pain, pain in appendages that are no longer there?

Lara Rossi as Arabela Seeger

I was going to say that all this might be a setup for Hickman getting a prosthetic hand because in an earlier episode they were fighting crime at a cutting edge prosthetic manufacturing company, but then I realized that was The Accountant, not Crossing Lines.

One last thing, what's with William Fichtner's last name? I would expect it to be spelled Fitchner, that is with the T before the CH, not after. Google returns 3,100,000 results on Fichtner, but only 101,000 for Fichtner. Weird, man.