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Rich, Chocolately... Murder
I’m not one to criticize corporate sponsorships — hey, if it keeps my favorite stories on the airwaves, keep the checks coming — but when advertisers interefere with the shows themselves, something needs to be said. I’m speaking, of course, about Ovaltine and its sponsorship of Miami Crime Stories with Horatio Caine, the wonderful chapter play about the exploits of South Florida’s craftiest crime buster.
As you are doubtlessly aware, the writing on Miami Crime Stories is top notch — perhaps the best on the radio. Each week, the caper begins with Caine discovering another dead body and firing off one of his trademark witticisms. Let’s say Caine comes across a man impaled on a pair of garden shears — he’ll say something along the lines of, “Looks like his green thumb… has been replaced by a red one.” Or pretend for a moment that Detective Caine uncovers a woman who has met with some foul play at the dinner table. “I guess the final course on her prix fixe meal… was murder,” Caine will say.
It is delightful. Often, I find myself chucking at Caine’s bon mot all the way through the theme song played by Roger Daltrey and His Crime Time Orchestra.
But ever since Ovaltine signed on as the sponsor of Miami Crime Stories, the writing has fallen off dramatically. Two episodes ago, Caine was called to a bowling alley where some poor unfortunate had been bludgeoned to death with the 7-pin. What on earth, I wondered, will Caine’s pithy comment on the tragic hilarity of murder be this week? “Looks like someone managed to… pick up the spare?” “That 7-10 split is always… murder?” Or something even more wonderful.
It was nothing of the sort. Instead, we heard Caine survey the murder scene, breathe a heavy sigh and say, “Looks like he drank his last glass… of Ovaltine.” Which isn’t very witty at all.
The problem only got worse this past week. Standing at an aquarium where a man had been pushed into the piranha tank, all Caine could be heard to muse was, “Boy, am I thirsty… for a nice, tall glass of rich, chocolatey ovaltine.”
This is not the first time that sponsors have wreaked havoc with the Crime Stories franchise. A year or so ago, when the Pringles Corporation began sponsoring Las Vegas Crime Stories, that once proud series featured entire scenes where main character Gil Grissom did nothing but devour Pringles and enthuse about how tasty the chips were. Soon, you couldn’t hear the other characters’ speaking lines over all the munching and slurping.
Look, Ovaltine brings a lot to the table as the sponsor of Miami Crime Stories. The Ovaltine Decoder Ring is a delight, thanks to its graphic depictions of the many brutal murders described in each episode. And I have been known to tip back a glass during Miami Crime Stories or Las Vegas Crime Stories or Tales of Female Mutilation That Are Eventually Avenged or any other of the dozen similarly-themed programs on the CBS Radio Network. All I’m asking is that the Ovaltine sponsors back off and let the fine writers on the show do their jobs.
Anything less… would be a crime.