Mark's "character"...not the character of Mark.

[Coyote Queen]

Call me stupid or a just a bad H&M fan, but there's one thing I still don't get:

Mark always claimed he was "just taking back his car from his girlfriend". Apparently he put it in her name for a good reason.
So was he re-possessing cars or not?

In some episodes he alludes to a mischievous past. In other's he kind of denies it. Add to that, he has all the hardware for breaking and entering.

Am I missing something here?

P.S. I noticed something while researching links for the main site: You can always tell when a "reviewer" hasn't watched the show. They refer to Mark as a "hardened" or "dangerous" ex-con!

[craftymom62]

I always wondered about that too, he did seem to be able to break into places very easily and his father had a talent for cracking safes so maybe that was part of it. I guess in repossessing cars he had to break into garages and the like to get the cars back.

[cheride]

admin said:

Call me stupid or a just a bad H&M fan, but there's one thing I still don't get:

Mark always claimed he was "just taking back his car from his girlfriend". Apparently he put it in her name for a good reason.
So was he re-possessing cars or not?

In some episodes he alludes to a mischievous past. In other's he kind of denies it. Add to that, he has all the hardware for breaking and entering.

Am I missing something here?

Well, my take has always been this: in terms of the Porsche, he really was just sort of a victim of circumstance. But, there's no getting around the fact that he not only possesses various criminal tools, but also various criminal skills. And, of course, jumbled as the continuity can be, there is the reference to prior conviction, and even Mark is probably not unlucky enough to be unjustly concvicted twice. I think we can safely assume that there is some actual criminal activity in his past. Nothing huge, and I firmly believe nothing violent, and, I really do think it's a fairly distant past, but I'm sure it's there.

[lmlewis]

cheride said:

admin said:

Call me stupid or a just a bad H&M fan, but there's one thing I still don't get:

Mark always claimed he was "just taking back his car from his girlfriend". Apparently he put it in her name for a good reason.
So was he re-possessing cars or not?

In some episodes he alludes to a mischievous past. In other's he kind of denies it. Add to that, he has all the hardware for breaking and entering.

Am I missing something here?

Well, my take has always been this: in terms of the Porsche, he really was just sort of a victim of circumstance. But, there's no getting around the fact that he not only possesses various criminal tools, but also various criminal skills. And, of course, jumbled as the continuity can be, there is the reference to prior conviction, and even Mark is probably not unlucky enough to be unjustly convicted twice. I think we can safely assume that there is some actual criminal activity in his past. Nothing huge, and I firmly believe nothing violent, and, I really do think it's a fairly distant past, but I'm sure it's there.

Yup, there's a couple of references in Rolling Thunder (which was written by the producers and I figure, therefore, was the official mindset). In that episode Mark admits he had two convictions. Also, somewhere along the way (I think in 'Ties'), he says he went from 'washing cars, to stealing them' as a teenager (and I think it's in Rolling Thunder', too, that Hardcastle says some of Mark's juvenile record has been sealed by the court back in NJ--but this last part I may be hallucinating about, sometimes the line between what I've actually heard, and what I've written myself, gets mighty blurry ;-)).

So, like Cheri, I've always figured he had a car-theft related juvenile record, then tried to go legit down in Florida, but may have, from time-to-time, had lapses of good judgment and done 'repossessions' that were gray enough to qualify as thefts.

My back-story is that, as a young person, he would have been an easy 'mark' for anyone who would have been halfway decent to him. In a way, this trait fits perfectly with his ability to forgive Hardcastle and go to work for him.

[lmlewis]

Oh, and in the California criminal code, if I remember right, two years is the sentence for auto theft when there has been a prior conviction.

And then there's the matter of the visit to the other prison, where everybody, from the gate guards on down, knows Mark. Some people explain it off as him being moved from place-to-place during the single two-year stint, but I swear Marks says, on more than one occasion, that Hardcastle 'sent' him to San Quentin (though the judge, technically, doesn't pick the place of incarceration), and all this prison familiarity is much more easily explained as a second incarceration in California (oh, okay, and maybe by the exigencies of the plot-of-the-week ;-).

[lmlewis]

And we aren't even going to discuss the goofy epilogue to 'Killer B's', in which a fellow resturant patron recognizes Mark, and then says he knows him from their days back in 'Joliet Prison'. There's no way I can bend things to fit in a conviction and imprisonment in an Illinois facility.

We'll just have to invoke the 'epilogue rule', in which 'nothing that occurs after the last commercial break is required to be accepted as canon' .;-).

[skidfan]

As someone who actually worked briefly in a juvenile/adult (16-22 year old boys/men) facility...the one thing you learn real quick is that they all consider themselves innocent. They easily justify their actions. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I would imagine most incarcerated adults would feel that way too. The thing I always liked about Mark's character was that he didn't do something that knowingly would hurt someone and that he knew right from wrong, but given the circumstances, he could see his way clear to do something wrong if it meant something good would come of it. The idea that Hardcastle spotted that 'character trait' and sought to polish it and refine it...just makes it all the more interesting.

[mchmcfan]

I found this confusing as well. He was innocent of "stealing" his car then he mentioned earlier crimes.

[owlcroft]

At least one of the earlier "legal problems", though, was involved with repossessing a car, but the paperwork lagged and he was arrested then freed without charges. At least, I _think_ that was it. All car-related issues for our boy McC, but then he's also referred to as a "second-story man" and an excellent safecracker!