I’m not really sure what happened in the 1990s. Not just specifically with Frank Ashmore’s screen career but just generally. I blame post-modernism. I’m casting about looking for someone else to blame here, but in all honesty this was my decade. Being a cynical, slacker Gen Xer the 90s was all Linklater, Tarantino and Danny Boyle for me. I was the demographic that was too cool for your tv show/movie/band. I didn’t even watch television for six years. Maybe it was me! Maybe it was my fault!
Looking at Ashmore’s stage career I think there were a lot of theatre appearances in this period, which is not very useful for those of us not based in L.A. From reviews I’m assured Ashmore is an excellent theatre actor and you can see that sensibility crop up on the small screen. I would have loved to have seen him on stage in the 90s.
There’s not much to reflect on in screen this decade, but hang in there, he gets busy again in the 21st century.
Pensacola: Wings of Gold S02 E03 Solo Flight
At first glance this show looks like some terrible mash up of Baywatch and Top Gun but, don’t worry, it quickly settles into a great little procedural showing the fortunes of a group of young naval recruits led by James Brolin. In this episode the recruits are flying solo for the first time (surprise!) and all goes well until heroine Ice has an engine flame out and has to use all her skills to land safely. Corporal Williams who was the engineer responsible for the plane takes the news hard, gets himself into a scrap and lands himself in a spot of bother with the local sheriff played by Ashmore.
Oh he’s just a big softy after all. Yay. Corporal Williams is recognised all round as a good egg and this little outburst is out of character. Given a firm steer from Brolin he may make officer after all.
I understand Ashmore served in the Navy before taking up acting so I do like the line about the sheriff also having served although he said he was in the Marines but would have been roughly contemporaneous. It’s a nice parallel.
The Practice S03 E08 and 09 Swearing In and State of Mind
Following in the tradition of L.A. Law as a show more focused on law than courtroom drama. This was in fact said to be a counter to L.A.Law which creator Dave E Kelley said was too romanticised.
When I read the synopsis for the episodes of The Practice starring Ashmore, I had to steel myself as these episodes concern a case where a woman Evelyn Mayfield (played by Kathy Baker of Picket Fences fame) is accused of shaking a baby. It’s unclear if she is innocent, it’s left up to the viewer to decide – I think so. Things take a turn for the worse when it looks like the jury thinks she’s guilty but she willfully puts her faith in God over taking a plea for something she didn’t do. Baker is great in this role, it really is her show. Frank plays her distraught husband trying hopelessly to convince his wife to take a plea. It’s all terrifically sad.
Touched by an Angel S05 E17 The Man Upstairs
Highway to Heaven for the 1990s. Which in turn was Kenneth Johnson’s Incredible Hulk for the Bible Belt. I once tried to convince my conservative Methodist grandmother that Highway to Heaven was a worthy tv show because it featured an angel, so therefore was “religious”. (So ok it wasn’t Songs of Praise, sure) I didn’t understand how completely blasphemous it was that there was a television show about an angel, least of all one starring Little Joe from Bonanza as the angel! Don’t get the wrong idea, Grandma was a sweetie and she did give me the politest and gentlest of rebuttals to my clearly ill-founded case. (She was after all – right.) In retrospect I would have had a better chance getting her to watch The Incredible Hulk.
Methodist grandmothers notwithstanding Touched by an Angel was a tragically uncool guilty pleasure that I watched on rerun in the early 00s when I finally broke and bought a television again. In this episode Roma Downey’s angel Monica is trying to help out a man, Gus who is a good man in danger of losing his soul. Gus is played by Michael Jeter, a character actor of the “it’s him Ive seen him in x” variety. I recognise Jeter from Tales of the City as the unctuous Carson Callas, but he’s been in so much stuff.
Ashmore is the eponymous man upstairs, Mac, who is to be sold the annual rain making insurance policy which will pay Gus’ hefty medical bills for his chronically ill wife. But Mac is nowhere to be found and Gus starts to despair and consider other more dire options. Spoiler – we do finally catch up with the man upstairs who says “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had” to our poor Gus who really has just been through hell.
Hypothetical question
Would you watch a television show called Touched by an Angle about a young equilateral triangle that is naive but has a good heart? The triangle would travel from town to town teaching primary school students the principles of Euclidian geometry whenever they stare at their phones too long and start believing 2+2=5. Frank Ashmore would play a grouchy but fatherly singing scalene triangle who lovingly keeps our rambunctious young triangle on the straight and narrow.
No?
What if the equilateral triangle were played by Mickey Jones?
Think on it some.
V Convention 2000
Now for some proper cheering up.
This is not so much a television show but a great little excerpt from a fantastic video of the V Convention in 2000. The quality of the video is very poor unfortunately, but the content is worth it. At the convention Mickey Jones (rest in peace) was given the microphone and went round and conducted interviews with various members of the cast. It is really obvious what a very cool and lovely guy Jones was, he’s so sweet with everyone and an excellent choice as a front man for this.
I love that in this video they both mention recently working with Michael Jeter who was in the above episode of Touched by an Angel.
Credit for the full video must go to ‘V’ Collectors Group, but here is the interview with Frank Ashmore, where Jones and Ashmore fondly recall their characters Chris Farber and Martin being antagonists even though the two were friends.
When Martin Died 