"There was no difference between what I was doing and what the villains were doing."

In Mixed Doubles, Doyle says the following about his reasons for leaving the police and joining CI5:

"The line was getting too narrow, what I was doing. There was no difference between what I was doing and what the villains were doing. In the blue corner--right; in the red corner--wrong."

What does this actually mean? What was he doing in the police that he doesn't do in CI5?

I would think that CI5 has more in common with the villains, given its "by any means necessary" brief. We see Bodie and Doyle threatening people with various kinds of harm, breaking into houses and cars, smashing up a restaurant, press-ganging a random (drug-carrying) guy into participating in one of Cowley's schemes, stealing fruit. The police, at least in theory, have limits on their behavior. I realize those were pretty elastic at the time, but they do exist in the world of the show, else there would be no point in creating an organization without such limits.

So, what do you make of that piece of dialog?

A Sad Day for the Big Old Playlist

Today I went to update The Professionals Fanvid Collection, my big old YouTube playlist of Pros vids, only to find that YouTube no longer allows users to sort search results by upload date. This totally breaks my workflow, and I doubt I'll be able to keep the playlist current in the future. I'll add whatever comes to my attention, but I can't comb through uploaded videos as I have been doing for the past six years.

Sympathy for the Baddies

I was watching Killer With a Long Arm tonight, and I began wondering if the writers had Georgi shoot the golfer to make sure we knew the dissidents were the bad guys. Looking it up, though, I see that Greece was (newly) democratic in 1977, so there probably wasn't danger of the dissidents being sympathetic to the audience as opponents of the military dictatorship. Also, they had already shot the innocent traffic cop.

Are there any baddies in the series that you find sympathetic?

Lawson and Quinn are supposed to be, I think. Geraldine Mather isn't exactly a baddie, but she's an antagonist. I've heard other fans point out that she's probably the one we'd be rooting for in real life, which I think is accurate. No others come to mind for me right now, but I haven't gone through the episode list.