Thursday, September 24, 2015

I fought the law and the law won. - The Clash cover version.



I love a good cop show.
I think it started when I used to watch reruns of Adam 12, Hawaii 5-0, and The Streets of San Francisco on Channel 13, during summer vacations.
Once I was in high school I (of course) watched 21 Jumpstreet, (uh-hem) Alien Nation, and Miami Vice. My palate still craved the cop show, but with a twist. All of these shows had something different to offer from the Hill Street, NYPD blues, which I did not have as much interest in…
 Hill Street Blues really upset me because James B. Sikking rarely got the good story lines. Yeah, yeah Renko and Hill were great and it was super sad when Joe was killed, but at the time I did not want as much of a “real life” kind of cop show.
No offense to Miami Vice of course.
In my early twenties I became a fan of “Forever Knight,” a vampire cop show. Was it the most highbrow show? What do you think?

For some reason I totally missed the boat with “The Shield” and I did not delve into “Homicide” until I got into grad school and discovered that I love David Simon.

But before “Homicide,” and “The Wire,” there was “Law and Order.”

Brisco is probably one of my favorite television cops of all time. I will be super nerdy and rank my top 5 detectives of L&O.

1.     Lenny Brisco
2.     Max Greevey
3.     Mike Logan
4.     Rey Curtis
5.     Ed Green

With an honorable mention of Det. Kevin Bernard; his character had some Brisco kind of lines.

When I went back to school, I needed TV to decompress. A friend of mine suggested “The Wire.” Not to sound like everyone else who thinks that it is the best show ever, but I loved it. Because of the “The Wire,” I watched David Simon’s 2 part miniseries “The Corner,” “Generation Kill,” and “Treme.” They are all good, but “The Wire,” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” are my favorites. After my husband and I caught up with the current season of “The Wire,” via Netflix we were both jonesing for more. Once the final season was done, we were adrift. So it was natural for us to move seamlessly into “Homicide.”
Pembleton, Munch, Beau, Meldrick, Bayless, Falsone, Howard, Bolander, Crocetti, Giardello, and Kellerman (and others whose names I can’t remember) were my new people. Even though the show had been off the air almost a decade, the character study of these cops along with some awesome crime fighting sucked us in for a couple of months as we watched 122 episodes (and the not-so-great television movie).
Since then I watched “Southland,” which was a decent show (Ryan from the OC, he is a great eye and forehead actor) and “Detroit 187.” It is a shame that “Detroit” only lasted a season, it was pretty good.
Besides the ones mentioned the cop show had been integrated with specialty like the NCIS brand, or cops played a secondary role to the forensic folks (see the CSI family), or if I must the Hawaii 5-0 reboot. Yes, I watched it, but to me it is a little too fluffy. It does look amazing in HD.
This whole thought process was started because I was thinking about my new current cop show. Longmire.
The show takes place in Wyoming and Lou Diamond Phillips, and Starbuck (Katee Sackoff) are the costars to Australian born actor, Robert Taylor. According to his Wikipedia page, he has played a lot of detective roles and I think he is great as cowboy sheriff Walt Longmire.  LDP has always been one of my favorites. I mean, hello! “Stand and Deliver,” “LaBamba,” and of course he was Chavez in “Young Guns and YGII.” There are some Native American storylines and how the local communities deal with big business. A few storylines that have traveled through the 4 seasons of the show involve law enforcement on the local reservation and how it interacts with the sheriff’s department and so on. Yes, I realize that it is fiction, but it draws me in to a place that is pretty to look at it and has the same kinds of crime, but often the writers of the show use different means to an end. When the station they were on dropped it, I was sad. I would once again be forced to search out a new cop show. Another service picked it up and I think it is coming back for a 5th season.
I don’t watch a lot of television, but I really like having my cop show.  


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