NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU WON’T

You had to look fast to see that something was missing from the rapid-fire opening montage-credit sequence for NBC’s new Tuesday night series, “Stingray.”

Still, the producer was caught off guard by our suspicion that there was something anatomically incorrect with the famed Vitruvian man (see adjoining; the figure drawn by Leonar do da Vinci and proportioned in a circle and a square by the Roman architect Vitruvius) which, uh, flashes by in the opening.

“You mean, something’s missing?” asked Edward Vaughan. There was a pause. “Is this a joke phone call?”

He was assured of the sincerity of the query. He said, “It hadn’t dawned on me. . . . Let me call you back.”

He did--after running a tape of the sequence in slow motion.

“You’re right--it’s not there! It appears that whoever tampered with that drawing (the opening had been sub-contracted to a small production company) gave the man a kind of papyrus covering over the area in question.”