What did we expect from Johnny Depp? When he first started appearing on our television screens regularly in 1987, looking impossibly pretty as undercover policeman Tom Hanson in 21 Jump Street, who imagined him as a future Oscar nominee, or as one of Hollywood’s preeminent weirdoes? Who saw him as anything other than an unusually soft-featured and soft-spoken model of young American masculinity? Who, that is, besides Depp? Back in ’87, Johnny Depp was a 23-year-old nobody: a high school dropout and unemployed rock guitarist who’d made a minor impression in the movies A Nightmare On Elm Street and Private Resort, but hadn’t shown any of the intensity, charisma, or restless intelligence that he’d bring to TV. 21 Jump Street became one of the first real hits for the then-fledgling Fox network, winning over a teenage audience that at the time was largely underserved by ABC, CBS, and NBC in primetime. Depp was at the center of the sensation, beloved by the show’s fans not just for his boyish good looks, but because his Officer Hanson displayed a sensitivity and moral authority that made him a dependable hero. Depp was a heartthrob, a role model, and a spokesperson for social…