YOU know how Las Vegas was never the same after the Corleone family showed up? Well, “Las Vegas” just ain’t the same since Sonny left, either.
I’m talking about the departure of James Caan from NBC’s over-the-top “Las Vegas,” which has always been as true-to-reality as a boob job on a Vegas stripper.
James Caan’s character, Ed Deline, the ex-CIA officer who was president of the famed (and fictional) Montecito Casino, recently became an on-the-lam murder-suspect and the shiny show has kinda lost its luster.
Apparently what happens in Vegas may stay there – but the characters don’t.
Caan left “to pursue other opportunities,” the producers said. But that phrase is as used as often as the “Wheel of Fortune” slot machine at the Mirage. It usually has other meanings which they are too embarrassed to admit.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Tom Selleck, who has come on board as Montecito’s new owner. But he just doesn’t have that scary-sleazy side that you know was always lurking beneath the loving-husband/protective-father/good-boss thing that Caan patented as Deline.
I mean, the man was not just a former director of counter intelligence for the freaking CIA – but he was once Sonny Corleone, pool cue-swinging killer and mobster!
“Las Vegas” is still watchable on some level, although not as watchable.
The Vegas in the show is as fake as Vegas is in real life. And as filled with fantasy. It’s just that Caan made it real. Somehow, the fake TV Vegas which is full of gorgeous thin people who wear sparkly cocktail dresses to the casino – as if they were in a James Bond movie, circa 1966 – doesn’t wash as well.Where are the wide loads yearning to be winning? Where are the depressed, morbidly obese families waiting on three-hour buffet lines to pile their plates up so high they qualify as the balancing act at Cirque de Soleil?
Where are the scary, banged-up hookers? And mostly, where are the tourists clad in horrifying sweat suits who work up a sweat only when moving from the slots to the roulette wheel? Caan made me look the other way. I just always figured a casino boss like that would allow only the fit, the fab and the fantastic into his joint.