Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- An Introduction to the Philosophy of TV Noir -- From Film Noir to TV Noir -- The Through-Line of Film Noir -- Realism and Relativism -- An Unreasoning Annihilation -- Alienation and Moral Ambiguity -- Sunshine Noir -- Existentialism, Crisis, and Revolt -- Nihilism, Noir, and The Sopranos -- Postmodernism and Crime Story -- Paranoia, Detection, and Crime Scene Investigation -- Espionage, Science Fiction, and Realism -- The Ambiguous Perspective on Life -- Notes -- Part 1: Realism, Relativism, and Moral Ambiguity -- Dragnet, Film Noir, and Postwar Realism -- Realism and Documentary in the Film Noir -- He Walked by Night -- Dragnet: A Different Kind of Realism -- "The Story You Are about to See Is True" -- Notes -- Naked City: The Relativist Turn in TV Noir -- The Relativist Turn -- Relativism of Morality and Normality -- Cultural Relativism -- Problems with Cultural Relativism -- Individual Relativism -- Notes -- John Drake in Greeneland: Noir Themes in Secret Agent -- Why Drake Is Not Bond -- The Influence of Graham Greene -- Noir Themes in Secret Agent -- Notes -- Action and Integrity in The Fugitive -- Duty and Motivation -- Angels Travel on Lonely Roads -- The White Knight -- Never Stop Running -- Notes -- Part 2: Existentialism, Nihilism, and the Meaning of Life -- Noir et Blanc in Color: Existentialism and Miami Vice -- Amphetamine Theatre -- Points on a Compass of Cultural Reference -- Life Lessons and Death Sentences -- Existential Errors -- Miami Masquerade -- An "I" Exam Is Existential -- Two Existentialist Approaches -- Out of Whose Past? -- New Hope for the Living -- Notes -- 24 and the Existential Man of Revolt -- 24 and Noir -- Jack Bauer: Noir Protagonist -- Camus' "Man of Revolt" -- Jack Bauer: Existential Hero -- Notes.

Carnivale Knowledge: Give Me That Old-time Noir Religion -- Carnivale and Religious Film Noir -- Graham Greene's Whiskey Priest -- Brother Justin's "Fear and Trembling" -- Notes -- The Sopranos, Film Noir, and Nihilism -- Nihilism and Film Noir -- God and Gary Cooper Are Dead -- "It's All a Big Nothing" -- Animals and Animosity -- The Sad Clown -- Notes -- Part 3: Crime Scene Investigation and the Logic of Detection -- CSI and the Art of Forensic Detection -- The Corrupt City and CSI Storylines -- CSI as Procedural Noir -- The Investigative Team -- Case Studies -- Notes -- Detection and the Logic of Abduction in The X-Files -- Alien Noir -- The X-Files Mythology -- Mulder and Scully as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson -- Mulder and Scully as Noir Detectives -- Mulder and Scully and Clifford and James -- The Logic of Abduction-the Other "Abduction" -- Detective Semiotics and the "Absence Sign" -- Mulder Thinks Outside the Paradigm -- Return to the "Will to Believe" -- Scully and Mulder as One Mind -- Notes -- Part 4: Autonomy, Selfhood, and Interpretation -- Kingdom of Darkness: Autonomy and Conspiracy in The X-Files and Millennium -- Mr. (and Ms.) Noir -- G-Men -- "Trust No One" -- The Carceral Archipelago and the Panoptical Regime -- Fugitives -- Coda: A Noir World Order -- Notes -- The Prisoner and Self-Imprisonment -- Know Thyself -- "Be Seeing You" -- "I Am Not a Number! I Am a Free Man!" -- The Authentic Number 6 -- "Six of One" -- "Half a Dozen of the Other" -- Across the Landscape of Selfhood -- Notes -- Twin Peaks, Noir, and Open Interpretation -- Shades of Noir -- Why Not Noir? -- The Reification of BOB -- Open Interpretation -- The Omissive Aesthetic -- Notes -- List of Contributors -- Index.