"Carter": Would You Really Watch Jerry O'Connell In Anything?

99% of viewers will tune in to the Canadian tv series Carter (2018-2020) to see Jerry O'Connell, the mega-hunk of the 1990s, star of Sliders (1995-2000) and a lot of horndog movies that you rented just so see him with shirt off (Joe's Apartment, Tomcats, Buying the Cow, Kangaroo Jack).  What does he look like at the ripe middle age of 44?  (Granted, he's been working constantly, but he hasn't taken his shirt off on screen since 2001).

Carter helpfully obliges with a shirtless Jerry on the beach,first thing.

Jerry plays Harley Carter, a famous tv detective who attacks a guy on the red carpet and finds himself persona non grata in Hollywood.  So he returns to his home town in Ontario to clear his head.  The problem is, the quirky small town residents confuse him with his tv detective character, and keep asking him to solve cases for them:

Not a problem: he wants to be a detective, and the town needs one (a lot of murders going on),  so Carter takes a job as consulting detective under the watchful supevision of The Girl, Sam (Sydney Tamia Potier).  His Huggy Bear is Dave (Kristian Bruun), who runs the local food truck.

I watched an episode because I didn't realize that Sam was a girl, so i thought there would be some gay-subtext buddy-bonding going on.  And because -- Jerry O'Connell...

Scene 1:  Carter and Sam are flirting at a town festival. Dave (right) does something funny.   They see a man in a trenchcoat yelling at a man in a suit,, who was responsible for the mining disaster  (this is important).  He opens the trenchcoat, revealing a bomb that explodes confetti.  Psych -- they're a theatrical troupe advertising their upcoming performance!

Scene 2: Carter and Sam go to work, flirting while nvestigating yet another murder in the small town: a man stabbed to death in a car in a credit union parking lot.   The manager says that he was Dennis, a loan officer until a week ago, when he was fired due to poor work performance.

Scene 3: They flirt/ investigate his house, which is suspiciously neat and tidy, and contains way too much great literature for a loan officer. (Carter reads off the names while looking at an encyclopedia).

Scene 4: At the lab, they flirt/discover that Dennis was killed with a replica medieval dagger, and there was a lot of hair on the passenger side of the car.

Scene 5: Sam interviews some of Dennis's coworkers.  Hey, when Carter's not around and she can think about something other than ripping his clothes off,  she's actually a competent detective.  Angelica, the boss, had it in for Dennis.  She was constantly making fun of him, calling him Pig-Man-Lion...no, Pygmalion!

Scene 6: Carter, relatively competent when he doesn't have an erection, asks "ancient Chinese secret" Koji to hack into Dennis's computer.  They find something shocking.

Scene 7:  Whoops, Carter and Sam are back to "Are you as turned on as I am...um, I mean what clues did you find?"  Dennis's laptop is full of sexy photos of bank manager Angelica!  Also, the hair found on the car seat belongs to her!

Scene 8: They flirt/confront Angelica about the photos.  Did she kill him because he was threatening to reveal their affair to her husband?  Of course not -- even while aroused, Carter can tell a red herring when he sees one.  

Carter sneaks back into to the interrogation room to get Angelica's story.  Plot dump: Dennis took out $350,000 in loans for fake clients, and asked Angelica to fire him so she wouldn't take the fall.  Then he felt guilty and wanted to give the money back.  That's why they met in his car that morning. 

Scene 9:  Carter sneaks back into Dennis's house and checks out his great book collection.  Plays, including Pygmalion -- inscribed by Angelica.  Way to keep your affair secret, dude. And a photo of Dennis and Craig, the theater troupe leader.

Scene 10:  Carter asks Dave (the food truck guy, remember) about the theater troupe.  They used to perform in the park, but now they have their own theater downtown.  Where did they get the money?  The plot sickens.

More sickening after the break

Scene 11: Carter and Sam flirt/sit in on a rehearsal.  Craig (Scott McCord) is imperious, aggressive, bullying one of his performers, Cyndee.  Carter interviews her; she is apparently in an abusive relationship with him. (Cyndee, Carter, Craig -- there are other letters of the alphabet, you know).

Meanwhile, Sam interviews the belligerent Craig (split up -- good idea.  You do better detective work when you're not thinking about Carter's butt).

A few days ago, Dennis brought him a gift to celebrate the opening of the theater.  Three daggers.  One is missing.  The murder weapon!    Of course he didn't do it.  I'm betting on the actress.

Scene 12: Carter and Sam flirt/interview Cyndee, the actress.  She shows them how to use the bomb jacket, and recounts an argument Craig and Dennis had about "returning the money" on the morning of Dennis's death. Craig still didn't do it.  Why stab someone with a knife that can be easily traced back to you?

Scene 13:  Carter interrogates Craig the Artiste, trying to bond with him over "we're both actors."  Dennis wanted the troupe to perform classics, like Macbeth, but Carter wanted to do his own play, "it is going to be Brechtian in its scope and power."  And by the way, Angelica -- remember her -- is the driving force behind the troupe.  Whoa.

Scene 14:  Carter and Sam flirt/interrogate Angelica again.  She confesses that it was her idea to embezzle the money for the theater troupe, but they both wanted to give the money back.  She had all the forms ready to process to close the fake accounts. And by the way, when she saw Dennis that morning, there was a girl standing in the street -- Cyndee! (Did you just remember that essential clue?)

Scene 15: Cyndee has vanished, and that's not her real name.  Carter and Sam flirt/track down her estranged mother. Cyndee had a full scholarship paid for by the...um...mining company, but she dropped out of college to run off with that Craig fella. Oh, and Mom was trapped for four days in the mining disaster.  Oh, and she has a big supply of ammonium nitrate, used for blasting.

Scene 16:  The cops burst in during dress rehearsal and tell Craig to stand perfectly still: Cyndee has laced the bomb jacket with real explosives, which she will blow up on opening night, when two rows full of mining company executives will be there.

Flashback recreation of what happened:  Angelica says goodbye to Dennis and gets out of the car.  Cyndee jumps into the car and stabs him.  Why would she kill him?  I guess so he wouldn't give the money back, so the show would go on and she could blow up the mining company executives?

Scene 17: Carter goes home.  Cyndee accosts him with a gun.  She's going to make him wear the bomb jacket and get blown up to make a political statement.  Fortunately, Carter was on the phone to Dave, so Dave heard everything, and arrives in the nick of time to save him.

Hmm..Sam didn't save Carter?  Is there some rule that a woman can't save a man?

Not to worry, Sam arrives a moment later for:

Scene 18: Flirting.

My Verdict:  I was surprisingly ok with the story.  Of course, I rarely watch whodunits, so the plot seemed relatively fresh, and I would watch Jerry O'Connell in anything.  I didn't even find the heterosexism annoying, since it was so over-the-top ("Ok, in this scene, you are completely turned on by each other, and you discuss the clues.").  I could see this as something you would watch on a Saturday night when you're too old to go out to the bars.