Tequila and Bonetti (1992) User Reviews

Perfect

[bastonealberto · 10/10 · 6 March 2024]

One of the best tv series ever of 90's and still today.

The Hollywood and journalists have been not fair and... not understood the real meaning of this serie.

The good message and it's incredible they have criticized the scripts... but did they really ever see the series ? Mmm I don't think so.

Each episode is a message of life of good teaching and Mr Bellisario was great. In Italy we were advantaged by our Voice of the Dog, but it could be a famous series, shame on who blocked it.

Locations, dresses, dialogues, story, photography, screenplays, messages, ironic, funny stuff and not only violence or sex like in all other American tv series, these are the best of this tv series.

My annoying self, my pretty partner and the cute annoying voice-over dog

[leomoviecritic · 3/10 · 21 June 2010]

I really wanted to like this cop show. But for me the 3-way partnership of Detective Nick Bonetti (Jack Scalia) and his delightful partner Angela Garcia (Mariska Hargitay) and that annoying "talking", and I do mean every voice-over thought that could be culled out of that dog, got to be too much.

The dog is cute enough but the constant voice-overs of his every thought just became too much of the tale. Just a few clever thoughts voiced per episode would have worked better. You really don't want to be beating him to his lines.

Making the dog the 3rd partner put him front and center to the episodes and, for me got in the way of any kind of gripping action and interplay of the 2 human partners. Nobody seemed to be having that much fun nor really working their performances, except maybe that annoying dog, LOL. I might have enjoyed that canine a whole lot more if he only had the occasional clever punch line. He really is an adorable dog, don't get me wrong.

So for me, this comedic cop drama fell flat. Bonetti himself had his own annoying quirks. His character was the Hollywood depiction of a typical Italian machismo Brooklyn cop as a fish-out-of-water cop in L.A. The back story of his accidental fatal shooting of a 12-year-old girl gave us some sympathy for his mental anguish-tortured soul as shown to some, i.e. the ex-wife but not to others. such as his boss. as in his 'I'm over it" false bravado. Bonetti is an accomplished pianist as we see him at the keyboards in all three of the first episodes. So we see he has a bit of a cultured, hip side to his cop persona.

Created by Donald P. Bellisario who is also top writing credit for the episodes of this one-season show as well as executive producer. His amazing and prolific talent is so many classic shows such as NCIS, Magnum, P.I., Quantum Leap, JAG, Airwolf and Black Sheep Squadron, and the list goes on, really had me hopeful for a show I'd missed in 1992-1993.

The first three episodes was it for me, I just couldn't stomach any more of Bonetti himself or the abundant voice-over thoughts of that cute but annoying dog. It was pretty clear to me I wanted to ax this after the 1st episode, and by the 3rd episode, reaching for that ax had become an obsession. I succumbed.