The premiere of the new A&E drama The Glades was held at Pier 66 yesterday evening. I arrived early and talked to a film director who divides his time between Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood (the other one), a woman from Romania who works in the art department of the new series (who, during the filming, is staying in this Hollywood, and had not yet discovered the Transylvania restaurant) and the sister of the main actor's stand in.
After a delicious buffet (the best breadsticks I've had outside Italy), we headed into a banquet room to watch the show. It's about a flip Chicago cop who gets sent down to a small town near the Everglades. The first shot of the Everglades contained the first inaccuracy: when the camera pulled up from the water it showed the Miami skyline as it looks from about, say, Dominoes Park.
The young man who discovers a headless body in the Everglades works, oddly, at the Don CeSar in St. Petersburg Beach. There is no mention that this is the Don CeSar, but it is. (You can't fool a travel writer.) If they'd wanted a pink hotel, why didn't they go to the Boca Resort and Club? Otherwise, the Biltmore would have worked nicely.
The Everglades is referred to as a swamp, which it isn't (the water's not stagnant but flowing) but that's a mistake many locals make. And it isn't, as far as I know, a home to caimans - though in this age of pet-dumping, who can say for sure. The presence of the animal does however provide for the opening episode's best, if politically incorrect, line. Shooting the caiman which he thinks swallowed the victim's head, the cop is told that it is one of the Everglades' most protected species.
"Then why," he asks smartly, "did I have such a clear shot?"
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