Steven Seagal, Lawman

If you did not heed my call and watch Steven Seagal, Lawman tonight then I don't know what to say. You punished yourself. No amount of disappointment on my part would add to that. It has already become a must-watch show for me. Here's what you missed if you didn't see it:

• Seagal, now 57 and with a good amount of extra weight, has been a deputy sherriff (I gather an honorary one at first, but now for real) with a police department in New Orleans for the last twenty years. This show is like Cops, but following his patrols, interspersed with him teaching his fellow officers lessons about martial arts.
• The thing he apparently most prides himself on is his ability to see small things that tip him off as to how someone is about to act. They show this by essentially giving him super-vision (or Seagal-vision), slowing down the film and highlighting a person while playing a neat sound effect. This happens often and always with great unintentional humor.
• He likes to remind everyone that he knows martial arts. Often. There's no doubt that he is legitimately a great master, but he keeps saying it over and over. And as quick as he is, he gets out of breath quickly when he's chasing down a criminal.
• He likes to impart wisdom to everyone he comes across. Wisdom about guns, about martial arts, about Zen Buddhism, about drunk people, and so on.
• One might think the show could have also been called Steven Seagal Accosts Black People, because while the vast majority of the people in his area are black (and, therefore, the vast majority of the criminals), he and his team made a boo-boo that looked bad racially. Seagal-vision showed that a car the patrol passed most likely had a drunk driver. So they proceeded to pull all of the guys out of the car, yell at them, find a gun and take it, yell some more, and even threaten a little. Of course, the car, with all black people in it, is not in fact stolen, nobody in it is drunk, and the gun was perfectly legal. Whoops!
• Seagal not only takes himself very seriously, which adds to the comedy, but he speaks with a heavy Lousiana patois throughout. He's from Michigan.
• One of the police officers at one point says that he sometimes forgets that Seagal was a big movie star. Amen, brother. Well, if he ever really was one in the first place.
• The key crime moment of the two episodes that aired tonight was when, after breaking up a huge fight, the cops threw a big guy into the back of a police cruiser. The guy, cuffed and angry, kicked out the window. So the cops tasered the s*** out of him. Good times.
• But it's really all about a quote towards the end of the episode, one that can inform the rest of our lives. Some new recruits come in to learn self defense at the hands of the aikido master and Seagal really is quick. It's pretty cool. As they all sit there, smiling, the star of the show says this: "You can say, 'wow, that's Steven Seagal the movie star," or you can get that s*** out of your head and say, 'Steven Seagal can save my life.'" Yes.

Bonus Video:

This is freaking fantastic.