Then again, NCIS tends to win for "stupidest moments involving technology" such as the woman who had "every high score" on every MMORPG (cause, y'know, all video games have high scores, right?).
And that's not even getting into the plots of these shows. I used to watch Law & Order: SVU until they decided that every single story had to resolve the crime quickly so they could get into some kind of political drama.
"Hey, we think this person shot the victim because he's anti-abortion and she was pro-choice."
"Great, now let's discuss the woman's right to choose for forty-five minutes, because as cops we have nothing else to do."
"Wait, are you sure there isn't something in a headline somewhere we can blow up to a ridiculous extreme first?"
Plus, the crimes are often ridiculous to the point of almost being a satire of actual crime, which begs the question:
"How is it so many series about people stealing or murdering people drives me bananas, but a show about a woman who steals a multi-acre satellite dish just makes me smile in glee?"
Let's look at that as we dig into the newest episode.
The show starts with the way all shows start. We have cuts back and forth between a Tyrannosaurus Rex stalking prey in the Cretaceous Period and Carmen Sandiego driving a sports car at high speed down a similar jungle road.
It turns out Carmen is watching footage of dinosaurs on a screen in her car, and she comes to a stop in front of a small airport in Venezuela. There are two guards at the gate, and considering they're out in the middle of nowhere with nobody to talk to but themselves every day, she distracts them the best way she can.
Flash a little leg, puncture one of her own tires with a large pin, and then say "I don't know how this could have happened!" (in fluent Spanish, of course, her name is "Carmen Sandiego") when they come to help her.
This, of course, gives her goons an opportunity to drive a large truck right past the guards helping her without anybody noticing, and they go in and start to steal the entire fleet of helicopters. The two guards rush back, and it's not until one helicopter drops a cable with a hook on it that catches Carmen's car and flies off, showing the "CARMEN" license plate do the guards realize "It's Carmen Sandiego!"
...I'm starting to see how these two didn't make the beat patrol in any major cities.
We cut to Ivy and Zack as the chief contacts them, stating the choppers were last seen in India. Oh, it turns out Carmen has a henchman from India! His name is Clay Tandoori.
...wait, that can't be right.
...well, that's an unfortunate name.
Zack and Ivy hop over to Agra, India, but not until we get a general description of the cuisine, the weather, and the sights of India. Oh, and the overpopulation, of course.
Once there, they spot the four stolen helicopters passing overhead, and a local explains that in "that direction" is the Taj Mahal. He offers the two a ride on his bike-powered taxi service, and...promptly gets held up by a cow in the street. But soon he's able to take them on their way while explaining the history of the Taj Mahal.
Now, I get the fact that this guy (I think his name is "Showtunes" or something like that) claims to know all of the shortcuts, but when the camera pans over the Taj Mahal, we see open fields and a long road leading up to it that must be at least a quarter mile...and the bike somehow kept up with four helicopters? Okay, I said things on this show don't bother me, but that irks me a bit.
However, unlike so many crime dramas, I'm willing to cut it more slack because at no point does the show even pretend any of this stuff could actually happen. For instance, Carmen is using four stolen helicopters to steal the dome from the top of the Taj Mahal. It's that simple. She has a master plan, but this is a (grandiose) theft, pure and simple.
There isn't going to be any deep attempts to puzzle out her identity by identifying carpet fibers stuck to someone's shoe and then getting a list of everybody who ever bought a carpet ever. No sudden plot twists that state she should be innocent because she was molested as a child by Ghandi or anything.
It's when a show swears to be more "realistic" and then gets ridiculous that I start to take offense, because if it was even close to what we see on television, you'd hear a lot more about these kinds of crimes in the news.
Anyway, back to the show. Ivy and Zack are clinging to the side of the dome when Clay and several of Carmen's generic goons start scaling down the side to them. Rather than, oh, I don't know, risk being captured and taken right to Carmen and figuring out a way to break out later, they decide the better plan is to jump and hope they land in the river below them.
Which they don't. They land on a spice ship.
I do particularly love the fact that after they jump and fall, Clay simply shrugs and tells the others, "I just wanted to give them Carmen's next clue."
That's right, detectives, you just ran away from evidence. Not to mention you fled a crime currently in progress.
Clay, being the gentleman he is, climbs back up, crafts a miniature parachute for the small model of the Taj Mahal he was supposed to give them, and then presumably had the helicopters wait in place for a moment so he could toss it out a window and send it down to Zack and Ivy. A cross breeze, however, sends it into the hands of a nearby merchant, and Zack promptly has to haggle with him to buy the clue.
Because international detective agencies with portals obviously have no jurisdiction over anything.
Carmen's clue tells them to follow "Hillary's route to the hill" (no, Hillary Clinton wasn't running for office when this came out), and they start to think Carmen took the dome to the top of Mount Everest. Ivy kiboshes that idea, however, since the helicopters Carmen stole can't fly that high.
The Chief contacts them to say that Carmen has also stolen some notes about genetic engineering with some dinosaur research involved, leading Zack and Ivy to conclude that she actually is going to Washington D.C. See, at this time, Hillary was actually the First Lady. They could've gone with "Bill's path the the hill" which either would've been tracking down William S. Williams (not a very imaginative name) or heading to strip clubs in Little Rock.
Zack and Ivy wander through the Smithsonian, when suddenly they're attacked by... um...
...yeah.
Seriously, I have nothing. A giant lizard that pounces on people and has fangs.
Anyway, Carmen is stealing dinosaur bones in hopes of extracting DNA and growing herself a dinosaur (the dome is going to be a cage). She exits, leaving Zack and Ivy to battle a bunch of henchmen.
After the commercial break, we find that the henchmen simply tossed Zack and Ivy into a closet and locked it.
Apparently that leaping lizard (see what I did there?) was a Komodo dragon (uh-huh), and that gives Zack and Ivy the clue they need to follow, leading them to Indonesia.
On the island of Komodo, they find Carmen, an Apatosaurus skeleton (yeah, yeah, back then it was a Brontosaurus, deal with it), the dome, and a yellow envelope containing, get this, three floppy disks full of genetic research.
Zack and Ivy set loose a few Komodo dragons (which aren't actually as deadly as people believed...yeah, sorry Skyfall, they're scary, but not that scary) to scatter the guards and promptly grab...the disks. After that they jump onto a hovercraft and take off into the jungle, with Ivy yelling for Zack to get them off the island.
You know, forget the archaeological treasure and the historical landmark. You need to make sure Carmen doesn't c-c-c-copy that floppy.
...nobody? No-one else gets that?
Sigh.
You'll thank me later.
Much later.
Where was I? Man, I'm going all over the place today.
Oh, right. The bad guys fire a net at Zack and Ivy which from the looks of it either puts them over the weight limit by one ounce or gets sucked into the intake causing them to crash, the animation makes it hard to tell. Carmen corners them with some Komodo dragons on leashes (?), but before Zack and Ivy can be taken or killed or whatever, the island is suddenly "surrounded" by helicopters (we see three of them).
Carmen makes a quick exit with the help of a small personal helicopter, but when Zack points out she won't get too far, she simply smiles and pushes a button to turn it into a tiny one-person rocket. Honestly.
Carmen Sandiego has technology that would make any video game, comic, or movie science group jealous.
So, how do you step up from trying to contact aliens and create dinosaurs? Well, next time, Carmen Sandiego's going to try to steal the moon. Seriously.
It's going to be awesome.
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