Over the years, I have promoted SBIG-TV, television so bad that it is good. Best of show, ever, in this highly competitive category was CBS's short-lived teen drama, "Wolf Lake," about a mysterious town where the teenagers were turning into wolves.
The WB's "Roswell" ranked a close second. Named after the famous New Mexico town that witnessed an alien landing in 1947, "Roswell" 's teenagers had problems, too. They couldn't get into good universities because the College Board never asked questions about their home galaxy, PXR-1079. CBS has brewed up another SBIG-TV winner, as in loser: "Cane," a "Dynasty"-moves-to-Miami drama about the tribulations of the Cuban-American Duque family. Refugees from Fidel's dictatorship, the Duques now own Florida sugar plantations and distill a premium rum. "Cane" is purportedly a play on words, emphasizing the sibling struggle between Jimmy Smits, the Duques's take-no-prisoners son-in-law and patriarch Pancho Duque's natural children.
You can just imagine the pitch meeting at CBS. "It's 'Dallas' on Univision! The Hispanic viewers will come flocking!" In moments of stress, the cast even breaks into Spanish, e.g., "Give me a mojito!" CBS helpfully provides subtitles. It's like watching a Pedro Almodóvar movie, if he had a brain transplant from Michael Bay.
On the plus side, "Cane" is a full-employment program for Hispanic actors. Smits, last seen measuring the drapes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as president-elect Matthew Santos in "The West Wing," teams up with Rita Moreno, Hector Elizondo from "Chicago Hope," and Nestor Carbonell from "Lost." (How did Edward James Olmos miss this gravy train?, one wonders.) None of them is remotely Cuban. Hola! Fidel! Send us some actors, please.
The main plot axis concerns an Anglo-Cuban sugar war, pitting the Duques against unscrupulous robber baron Joseph Samuels, played by a supersized Ken Howard doing a convincing Jabba the Hut imitation. Let's just say that Moreno hasn't lost many steps from her 1961 star turn in "West Side Story," while Howard looks like he'd drop dead if one of the Carver High School kids from "The White Shadow" tried to take him to the hoop.
The Samuels are evil and will stop at nothing to bring down the Duques. They have even hired Ned Vaughn, the treacherous fighter pilot who shot down Air Force One in "24" to mess with Jimmy Smits's family. Talk about hitting below the belt. Daughter Ellis Samuels is romancing one of the Duques. While she sleeps with the enemy, her father has arranged for her to face Helms-Burton Act charges for trading with the enemy, i.e. Cuba. Yessirree, if you haven't read the Federal Register, good luck keeping up with this show!
You know that Brazil gets double the ethanol yield on its sugar acreage, right? Well, you better know, because the sugar-ethanol play is another of "Cane" 's key subplots. I don't want to give too much away, but Joseph Samuels has even suborned honest Canadians into his web of intrigue. Who said NAFTA didn't have dramatic potential?
More ridiculous subplots abound. Smits's son Jaime joins the Army instead of going to MIT and then elopes with his white-bread girlfriend to get married in a Georgia wedding chapel. Bad idea; family matriarch Moreno wants a big Cuban wedding. One brother-in-law, Frank, is a gambling addict who thinks he should be running the family business. But he is a complete idiot; he takes the Miami Dolphins and the points, the ultimate bad idea.
The other brother-in-law, Henry, is mobbed up with an Israeli gangster, who is dealing Ecstasy from the VIP room of Henry's hip South Beach nightclub. Bad idea, for the Israeli gangster, that is. Smits seeks out the genial Cuban mob boss in his modest Little Havana hideaway. The two men play dominoes, sip coffee, offer a toast - "To a free Cuba!" - and, poof! the Israeli mobster gets an offer he can't refuse. Then there is the other guy they feed to the crocs. Never a dull moment with the Duques!
"Cane" is, in fact, CBS's top-rated show among Hispanic viewers, but "Boston Legal" and "Law & Order: SVU" are murdering it in the Tuesday 10 p.m. time slot. CBS has lured mega-stars like Alicia Keys and will.i.Am - I ironize for effect - to the "Cane" set to boost ratings, so far in vain. My advice: catch it before CBS cuts it down.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, Alex Beam's column in yesterday's Living/Arts section implied that none of the cast members of the CBS drama "Cane" is Cuban American. Nestor Carbonell is.
