Ah, Chad Michael Murray. Once the toast of The WB.
Teens soaps may come and go, but the squint? The squint is forever.
In all seriousness, I have to note that he looks really good in this suit. Props to you, Lord Squint. As for why he’s featured today, well, he popped up on a red carpet and it made me realize that I have a long history with that squint. It dates back to Gilmore Girls, and then Dawson’s Creek, which was his way station while the WB waited for something permanent to offer him. That became One Tree Hill, on which he perfected the art of the Informative Coma and saying lines like, “The River Court is where I do my best healing,” and watching his father’s heart be eaten by a dog, and of course that time he and a different dog — I think — did shots together at a bar. CMM has touched three of the shows that were big parts of my TV viewing experience in this millennium. Not to mention that he was surprisingly good opposite LiLo and Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday. (Not so good: That thing where he allegedly cheated on Sophia Bush with Paris Hilton, and she filed for an annulment five months after they got married, citing fraud. #TeamSophia on that one, pal. Paris Hilton in 2004 was a walking bad idea.)
He was ALSO extremely well-cast in Agent Carter, where The Squint fit in with that certain 1940s male smugness, and strangely, also with those shortie period neckties. Now he’s in some kind of Western, which sounded SUPER jarring to me until I realized that The Squint probably looks perfect in a dusty town on the face of a man who has just pushed through a saloon’s doors and silenced the room. It would look good with a bunch of those old playing cards that only have the suits on them, and no numbers. That might be the right genre, in the end.
All of which made me curious to take a walk down Chad Michael Murray Memory Lane with the Fug Nationals who remember that whole heyday. Would you imagine him in a Western? What kind of show y’all would put him on, if he were to return to TV? Is there still plenty of Chad Michael Murray left to happen, or is he most likely to show up as someone’s dad on a CW superhero show in ten years? And most importantly, did you read that comic book he wrote? I need a report.
[Photo: Getty]
