On Sunday night, CBS aired the mildly anticipated episode of Battle Creek in which Patton Oswalt plays a character cheerfully inspired by former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. You may be tempted to watch it. Don’t. We’ve saved you the trouble.
What’s Battle Creek?
It’s a mid-season replacement that in Canada airs after The Good Wife on Global. It’s about an FBI agent who for reasons I don’t care enough to Google now works for a smalltown police department. His comically mismatched partner is a local officer who’s skeptical of his newfangled techno gadgetry, preferring to solve crimes with good old-fashioned gumshoe work. This is ostensibly an appealing premise for a TV show.
Where does Rob Ford come in?
In real life, the mayor of Battle Creek, Michigan, is the kindly-looking Deb Owens, whose email address listed on the city’s website is owensfamily49017@aol.com. On Battle Creek the series, the mayor is a dude named Scooter Hardy, played by Patton Oswalt in one of his non-rodent turns. At the beginning of episode six, Cereal Killer, he is nearly assassinated while pouring out the ceremonial milk at Battle Creek’s annual festival of cereal.
O… kay. How is he nearly killed?
He’s shot at from a distance. By a sniper rifle set up to be triggered remotely by a cell phone.
…
Yeah. Anyway, he soon gets kidnapped from hospital by a known drug dealer with a history of assault. Because the main characters don’t know their mayor is based on Rob Ford, they mistakenly assume that the violent criminal was his attempted killer and not, you know, his friend and dealer. The cops track them to an apartment where they discover the mayor on a couch smoking crack. There are women seated on either side of him, implied to be sex workers.
How fucked up is he when they find him?
In this universe, crack is alarmingly harmless. The episode’s highlight is Oswalt’s reading of Mayor Hardy’s feigned surprise at what he’s holding in his hand: “Oh my… oh my goodness. That’s a drug pipe!”
Are there ramifications?
Not really. Here’s a partial transcript of the ensuing exchange (with my cat’s name subbed in for those of the show’s protagonists, because life is too short to call up IMDb for this):
Turns out that’s exactly what he did, but this is barely touched on in the rest of the episode.
Seriously?
It’s understandable that finding the guy’s would-be killer is the cops’ primary concern, but they seem bizarrely indifferent to the mayor’s drug habits and criminal associations.
Is that it?
Well, the mayor has a brother, Darrel Hardy, who serves as his chief of staff.
Ah, I see where this is going…
Well, then you’re smarter than the characters. Because after following enough red herrings to justify the show’s hourlong timeslot, they eventually figure out (spoiler!) that the mayor’s brother was the culprit all along!
That sounds like the most plausible thing in the episode.
The cops chase the brother to the roof of City Hall, where he appears ready to toss himself off the edge. They try to talk him down:
Then Darrel Hardy leaps to his death?
Nah, the show is a dramedy, which apparently means keeping the death toll to a minimum. Though to pad out the running time, the mayor then has a heart attack brought on by some sort of poison that Darrel slipped in the bottle where he keeps his Oxy and Vicodin.
Wait, so Mayor Hardy is also hooked on prescription meds?
I guess so. It briefly came up earlier in the episode, for the sole apparent purpose of setting up the eventual poisoning.
He still doesn’t die?
Nope. Like the real Rob Ford, he arguably comes out stronger, waltzing into the police station to thank the officers for saving his life and career. “My Facebook page has 3000 likes,” he crows. “They’re calling me ‘Mayor Party,’ say it makes me look more human. I guess I’m your mayor for life!”
So the character will come back in future episodes?
If the show isn’t cancelled first.
What happens to Doug Darrel?
The penultimate scene depicts Scooter visiting his brother in custody, where he’s treated to a Frank Grimes-like explanation that echoes how many have felt about Ford:
Thanks to Oswalt, it’s actually more touching than it has any right to be.
Is this recap really the best use of your time?
Oh goodness no. But sometimes writing about Ford is the best way to procrastinate when you should be writing a different story about Ford.
