This "In Plain Sight" performance highlighted one difference between cable and broadcast network drama

In the episode "Second Crime Around," Mary had to deal with her least favorite kind of witness, a con man -- meet Ronnie McIntire (Maury Sterling).

by Ken

Phew! Sorry, folks, I tried to find a little clip, like even a preview, to show you an actor new to me, Maury Sterling, as con man Ronnie McIntire on Episode 5, "Second Crime Around," of the current season of USA's In Plain Sight, but I just couldn't find it. Hey, I had a tough enough time finding the names of the character and the actor! (You'd think that would be the absolutely most basic information you could find on a website, or at any rate I would, but uh-uh. Is the moronic crap you find on most TV-show websites really what fans want to find there? (Don't answer that. I don't want to know.)

Anyway, the reason I hoped to show you a bit of Maury Sterling as con man Ronnie is that his performance struck me as a delicious example of what the good cable drama shows -- and, come to think of it, even some of the cable comedies -- are doing so much better these days than most network shows: casting really good actors and allowing them, maybe even encouraging them (but I'll settle for allowing) to really make their characters vivid and believable. A crucial part of the premise of this episode is that there's nothing Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) hates worse than a con man, of which the Witness Protection Program unfortunately absorbs its scoundrel-y share. And the writers created a really loathsome specimen, a man who utterly without remorse, in fact with a great deal of gusto (this is a man who loves his "work"), scams old folks out of their life's savings.

None of which would have counted for much if the producers hadn't found an actor to really fill the role. Enter Maury. He gave us, without sentimentality or apology (and certainly without a mitigation) a con man who really loves his "work" -- an utterly vile and unreservedly loathsome being brought vividly to life without softening or caricature. This is something it seems to me you just don't see so much on the big-budget broadcast-network dramas, where the obsession with Q-ratings and bland prettiness tends to reduce characters like Ronnie to labels. Which we accept, by and large, because we're used to the game. Oh yes, that one is The Villain, boo! Yawn.

It's when you see performances like Maury's -- or, for that matter, like everyone in the cast of AMC's Mad Men or Breaking Bad that you realize how different things can be when the producers and writers have more freedom to just concentrate on the work, not satisfying the network suits. I assume that the cable networks have suits too. They don't seem to have quite the clout of their broadcast-network counterparts. At least not yet!

And this month and next a whole slew of my favorite cable dramas are having season premieres -- we're definitely past the era when summer TV meant the doldrums.

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