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Last Sunday, after I caught up with The Colbert Report, I was flipping through the channels and came upon the first segment of the SpikeTV mini-series “The Kill Point.” It caught my eye because it was a group of five guys about to rob a bank. The first ten minutes however, had to be the worst ten minutes in television history.

At least, the worst ten minutes I’ve ever seen. I had never heard of this series and hadn’t been seeking it out, but I later I read that basically it’s a nine-hour hostage drama. Yawn. Like that’s never been done on television before?

The first ten minutes of this thing was so full of “Gee, didn’t see THAT one coming!” moments it was laughable. These five guys, I find out later, are Iraq War vets. What the @#%*!& possessed them to rob a bank I don’t know but they did and it goes awry real quick.

What caught my eye, of course, was the bank. Whoever wrote this script either never worked in a bank or worked at one that had really crappy procedures. This bank had just received a large armored car shipment. There’s this guy who I assume is the branch manager, who looks like he’s permanently constipated, who’s all nerved up about this shipment. Apparently this guy hasn’t been in banking very long.

The money is stacked on a table in the vault and counted by two people, a man and a woman. I’m not sure if they were employees or if they were auditors or what, but once they finished counting the money and had both arrived at the same figure, the branch manager gives them a ten minute break. They go off, find a closet and proceed to commence some nookie.

No foolin’. Or…rather, yeah, foolin’ around. Ahem. Anyway.

The money, by the way, is still on the table. The vault door is wide open, but there’s a rather cheapie looking gate before it that’s closed. The money is a LOT. Easily upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Our five rejects from the auditions of the New A-Team show up in a nice new Chevy Suburban…or maybe it’s a Tahoe, park across the street from the bank and four of the men head on over, all of them dressed to “Kill Point” in shirts and ties and suits and wearing long over coats.

Banking Robbery Tip #1: If a group of men enter your bank wearing long over coats on a day that really doesn’t require long over coats please take note.

They don their black masks and remove from under their coats more fire power than was in Fallujah in November 2004. In fact, you may recall a story in the news about some 20,000 (or is 200,000?) weapons that are missing from Iraq? I think these dudes had some of them.

They announce their intent of the robbery. People scream. And scream. And scream. The poor maintenance kid gets his ass kicked, literally, because he doesn’t move fast enough off the ladder he’s on. Everybody’s screaming, down on the floor, their poor little heads in their hands. Screaming and crying.

The bank robbers spread out, one covering the customers in the lobby, another covering the bank employees behind the teller line, which includes the branch manager, who’s cowering under the teller line, looking like he’s about to discover a cure for his permanent constipation. The other two men demand keys, go unlock the el cheapo gate, walk into the already open vault, find ALL THAT MONEY fresh for the picking on the table and pack it up in their bag.

But wait! There’s a customer in the lobby, down near the check writer, out of sight of the robbers who text messages his wife that the bank is being robbed. “Call 911!”

Frikkin’ brilliant.

Outside, our wheelman over hears the radio of the meter maid (how convenient!!) that the cops are two minutes away. He whips out his cell phone, calls his buds in the bank tells them they got “a solid two.”

It’s about the only solid thing they have. So they pack up the money and out the door they go. Calmly start to walk back to their nice Chevy Suburban/Tahoe.

Inside the bank, a woman gets up off the floor, takes a concealed gun from her holster, walks out the front door and starts shooting at these guys.

WAIT A FREAKIN’ MINUTE HERE!! Who the hell is this chick?!?! I don’t know if she was a customer or a bank employee, but if she’s a customer I’d like to know why she was carrying a concealed weapon INTO a bank, and if she’s an employee I wanna know why she’s packing heat?! Must be a damn tough neighborhood!

Bank Robbery Tip #2: There is no need to bleed over money. Really. There isn’t. Kids, don’t ever try this at home.

Well now things really get ridiculous. A shootout ensues…Gee! Didn’t see THAT one coming! The cops start to show up. Even the meter maid gets involved, sorta. Meanwhile, the armored car guys are on their way back because one of them dropped his cell phone earlier when they made the cash delivery. SHEESH! How much more friggin’ ridiculous is this going to get?

A lot more. The armored car guys get into the shootout. There’s bullets flying everywhere! There’s more shooting going on here than in the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. And in all that shooting only ONE of the bank robbers gets shot.

The Chevy, by the way, is pretty much shot to hell.

The woman who started all the shooting gets hit in the leg. She retreats back into the bank. If I had been in that lobby, I woulda bitch slapped her.

Our amateur bank robbers meanwhile, are under fire from all directions and, oh did I mention only one of them gets hit? They “fall back” and somehow…SOMEHOW….manage to get back across the street to the bank again, all the while dodging more bullets than in the shoot out scene of Sondra Locke’s house in the Clint Eastwood movie The Gauntlet.

Our chick with the gun, aims to shoot one of them. They hit her first, in the neck. Doesn’t kill her but she ain’t having a good time breathing.

From there, things really get @#$%ed up. The robber that got hit got hit in the chest and it looked to be about three inches above his heart…is still standing! WTF?!

Our bank robbers, seeing the wounded woman on the floor are now all concerned. Huh? Cripes. A moment of human compassion. Where the hell did this come from?

So they perform a good deed and do an emergency trach on her using one of the pens from the writing desk. Somebody’s been watching MASH reruns it would appear.

And at the point we close Act I and go to commercial. Blaugh. The trach thing was bad enough (although good special effect) and I had no desire to stick around for the rest of the show. I eventually found a Dukes of Hazzard rerun on CMT.

The only good thing about the entire thing (bizarre as this is going to sound) was that one of the bank robbers was dressed to “Kill Point” in a three piece suit…

I have a certain cop-muse who has a fondness for three piece suits too. Tho’ he has no desire to be robbing any banks!