I have a theory and I think it’s a pretty decent one – that
Tom Selleck would not be as good an actor were it not for his mustache. Not
that he’s a great actor or anything.
I’ve been watching the TV show Blue Bloods and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s to see what Tom’s
perfectly trimmed mustache does every week. The show is good if you can get
past the self-righteous right wing aspect of a family that thinks it’s better
than everyone else.
Each week Tom Selleck uses the same acting technique, which
is to sigh a lot regardless of the situation. As Frank Reagan, the family
patriarch, Tom is a sad man with a big mustache and it must be weighing heavy
on his upper lip. Sometimes when he gets bad news on the show, he blows air
into his upper lip to make the mustache poke out like a wooly caterpillar
before he lets loose with a sigh. Other times he lets his face go slack like the caterpillar took
a nap draped over a tree limb. And better still is when angered he purses his
lips to make it look like the caterpillar might crawl right off his face. If it
did, I’d be afraid to look at that big empty expanse. I don’t even want to
imagine it.
I remember when Tom was Magnum P.I. His character was
upbeat, carefree and the mustache added to his facial features, it wasn’t the
focal point of his acting. Secretly I think his chest hair was. Those were the
good old days when a man could use his chest hair to enhance his acting as
opposed to his mustachioed upper lip. “Hey ladies, my eyes are up here.”
