An old psychology professor of mine used to say that typically, while women preferred to have heart-to-heart conversations face-to-face, men preferred to avoid eye contact at all costs. The best place to start a serious conversation with a man--she advised-- was in a car, and sure enough we see this time and again in buddy comedies as men end up revealing perhaps more than they would’ve if they’d been getting together for a slice of pie and cup of coffee.
CBS’s popular program Nash Bridges was no exception and the writers had great fun comprising sometimes near episode-long situations that occurred in and around the vehicle. Moreover, one writer informed viewers on the DVD for Nash Bridges—The First Season that later into the series, every single episode began in the car. Dubbed “the moving confessional” by the writers involved in the “Nash Bridges Writers Roundtable Season 1” extra on the DVD, they still marvel about the way that star Don Johnson was able to drive at speeds nearing forty miles an hour, carry on a conversation, sometimes shoot a gun, and more all behind the wheel of the series iconic bright yellow 1971 Plymouth Barracuda convertible. And despite the fact that several websites dispute the reference that it was in fact a 1971 Barracuda with others charging it was a Hemi-Cuda, some stating it was a 1970 and in Nash's first episode “Genesis,” it’s referred to as a 1970 model in a line where only fourteen were made-- the bottom line is for its time, it was hands-down the coolest vehicular male-bonding set on network TV.
While typically in television and film, all driving scenes are faked as vehicles are towed along by expert drivers and rigged cameramen, the frequent usage of the Barracuda and the attention to detail of filming directly on the streets of San Francisco, employing hundreds of local workers in the roughly two million dollar per episode budget, set Nash Bridges apart from other police shows of the late '90s. Admittedly, the writers did note that in the first season, they were still finding their footing as the tone of the show changed from one episode to the next as some were filled with comical misadventures and others underworld dramas. And it's definitely evident in the eight-episode run to viewers watching the DVD as it’s obvious that the air-dates were mixed around as some storylines seem out of sync from how they may have originally been intended to appear. Still, despite this, it's a far better show than I would’ve assumed.
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