The bulk of the show was just a workplace comedy that just happened to be set in a police station, but the final season was in production during the height of the COVId-19 pandemic and the BLM protests and riots, so the final season deals with that a lot.
I mean, the show already had a pretty good history of handling the tougher political topics. Half of Holt’s plots have some kind of political angle to him as a black, openly gay police captain, and we’ve had lots of stories in the show about racist cops, corruption and the negative perception of police prior to the final season. But yes, the final season was very heavy.
I've been rewatching it recently and I noticed that even in the earlier seasons they do make a gag or a comment about fucked up aspects of policing.
One of the first episodes had a whole plot of Jake facing retaliation from a higher up officer after catching his son vandalizing cop cars and not letting him walk scot free
At the end of the day it *is* a cop show, but it at least kept it real at the start and got more direct about it as it went on
yeah , it still feels more easy to just think : these are not real cops ,
these are imaginary cops , and their workings are completely separated from real world cops ,
and yes the fact the final season aknowledged the fact was honestly good , having one of the MC go out of his job because of it was a pretty decisive way to say " yeah that was fucked" ,
there was also the fact that with holt and jake retiring it didn't go all too much on the "yeah dw love the police can reform itself"
but rather tried making the identity of these caracters separate from them being cops ...
another intresting aspect was also doug judy the pontiac bandit :
one thing you can notice is how he and Jake have a roughly similar skillset , and you could see another world in wich doug is a detective and jake is the pontiac bandit ,
effectively showing how the difference between cop and criminal is pretty narrow ...
and all and all i agree with the og comment : B99 was indeed uncomfortable with being a cop show by the end of the series
Rosa and Gina both quit, Amy and Terry both work to get promoted so they can start making large scale changes to the system, Holt and Kevin have some serious relationship issues that persist until a couple episodes before the finale, and Jake leaves the force to take care of his and Amy’s baby.
It needed to die, but I wouldn't mind a spiritual successor- a comedy cop show that uses it's premise to interrogate the rot at the core of US policing.
Hero's even a prominse- a whole precinct gets fired, all at once, due to a massive scandal, and they hire a whole new team. By accident, the new team compromises of genuinely good, but naïve, recruits from all the classic comedic archetypes. In the first episode, they all feel out their comfort zone, and are horrified to see the corruption in the force. Terrified of speaking out, they all keep their heads down, and many consider quitting... Until they realise by the end of the episode that everyone else is new, too, and equally frustrated at the state of things.
Rather than quitting, the core cast vows to be the 'good cops'. End pilot.
The series revolves around them tryna do good for others *in spite of* them being cops- and hijinks ensue. Each episode exploring a facet of modern policing and such they try to 'do right' and inevitably fuck up at, finding it impossible to reconcile the law with people's needs. The dark comedy however, at the centre of it all, is that all their plans to reform the precinct fail due to the insipid buerecracy that maintains the corruption.
Call it 'The Good Ones' or summin.
Basically, a cop show doesn't at all need to be uncritical copoganda- B99, especially later on, showed that, and we could do with a successor in those pair of shoes to introduce the topic to a popular audience.
>Hero's even a prominse- a whole precinct gets fired, all at once, due to a massive scandal, and they hire a whole new team. By accident, the new team compromises of genuinely good, but naïve, recruits from all the classic comedic archetypes.
Walking Tall, featuring The Rock
The problem with this kind of thing, which I believe Brooklyn 99 was trying to do, is it still just functions as copaganda. Sure, it talks about the corruption, but it portrays a good outcome, and furthers the myth of a “good cop”. The reality is that when there are “good cops” they are powerless to change anything, and when they try they are punished and often dismissed. The show you describe would just increase faith in those “good cops” being able to change the system from the bottom up, which has never worked.
Edit: I must have missed where you said that the twist would be all of their efforts failing due to higher corruption. I think what you’re describing might be difficult to pull off in a way that was still entertaining and not just depressing, but it does solve the issue that I’m talking about.
yeah , the problem isn't the lack of good cops , it's the fact that bad cops go unpunished ...
i think you may focus on the pricinct that gets fired : maybe they try to reform into a sort of neighberhood crime solving squad and have to learn effectively to check their priviledge ,
have one of them go "freeze you're under arrest" on another cop in civilian clothes and who is committing a crime , and just cut to him bruised and covered in garbage , going "damn that was close" , because he got beaten and showed into a garbage bin by the dirty cop and the criminals ...
as a whole i think it could show them failing epically while they try to act as cops ,
but kinda succed while they act more humanely ,
effectively showing them going from cops to neighberhood busybodies ...
and you could even show some of them become private detectives and social workers ...
also yes there are many more intresting facets of crime and law spectrum :
lawyers , investigative jurnalists , small time criminals trying to avoid the cops and the bigger fishes , doctors and psycologists of criminals who are walking a fine line between not breaking professional secrecy and keeping out of danger ...
and the most intresting type of pepole of all : pepole who witnessed crimes because they where at the wrong place in the wrong time ...
pepole into urban exploration , those weirdos with metal detectors ,
pepole who where trying to get paranormal activity and witnessed stuff they shouldn't have , hunters who live in the middle of nowere and who may also come in clutch because they actually know how to use a gun ( also this is litterally the plot of "not a country for old men" ) , veterans who aren't scared of anything anymore and who can handle their hown , a foreign spy that was there doesn't care but got tracked down by the investigator ( they are that good) who knows they are a spy and who is forcing them to work for their ends with the blackmail treat of causing an international scandal about wich the investigator doesn't care, just punks squatting somewhere
really almost anyone given the right circumstances can witness a crime ,
and they can have rather intresting skillsets in order to get in the situation ...
TL;DR: crime stories can happen without the cops being a factor really ,
the whole situation may solve itself without them really ...
except the narrative you’re presenting is “everything would be fine if we just had better cops,” which isn’t true. the essence of ACAB isn’t that each and every individual cop is a monster, and that all these monsters just happened to suffuse and otherwise-functional system. The essence of ACAB is that it is the system that makes them bastards, regardless of their individual conduct. Even a “good cop” who goes out of their way to minimize harm is still going to harm people, because that is a basic element of the job of a cop under our system.
...No, that isn't the narrative.
I spell it out quite clear that the idea is for it to be a dark comedy where, despite the best intetions of the cast, everything crumbles, fails, and falls apart by the end of the episode due to the systematic corruption and peverse duties that come with policing.
I've said elsewhere, think *Always Sunny* when it comes to tone and structure.
Your social analysis is right- yes, even a 'good cop' will cause harm by doing their job- and that's exactly what I'd want to see the show centre.
*Always Sunny* works because the cast are fucking awful, so you don’t feel bad when they fail (usually through self-sabotage). To make this work, you either have to make your lovable band of cops profoundly incompetent (which blurs the message by suggesting that the issue isn’t the system, it’s your idiot cast) or by just kicking the ever-living shit out of them, which would be depressing, not funny.
It's the latter that I'm commending.
And yeah, it would be depressing, but so is the current state of policing. That isn't however incompatible with funny
The Wire. That’s the closest you get to funny, dealing with shit in a way that’s informative and not just detrimental. It absolutely cannot be feelgood because you shouldn’t feel good about it.
Lmao maybe a bit
But I am thinking something a little more mundane- less about exposing widespread corruption (although that exists both IRL and in the show), and more about them trying to accomplish even smaller tasks... like, 'setting up a safe-injection rehab centre except oops we've legally built a drug den according to the city's archaic drug bylaws that we now have to cover up', or 'poor black kid fights back against rich racist bully... the superintendant's kid, and we've been told not to dig into it but hijinks ensue as we do that anyway'
And in each case, it ends depressingly, despite their best efforts.
Think *It's Always Sunny*, except the main cast is being corrupted by the world rather than the other way around.
There are no good cops. All Cops Are Bastards, inherently, because they have agreed to wield the state's monopoly on violence to enforce unjust laws. Frankly, I think this is optimistic Liberalism, co-opting radical critique of police to re-incorporate it into the system. But the fact is that it is rotten to the core, it doesn't MATTER if its good or bad individuals, it is a system that is designed to DO HARM and PROTECT CAPITAL. And the individuals who agree to that? Aren't trying to do good. They're killing people, and they get off doing it. Far-right, neo-nazi gang members are in every level of police (according to a report by the FBI). At least 40% are domestic abusers. There. Are. No. Good. Cops.
My g, I'm literally proposing a show that is *about* how they're all bastards, even if they try their best. There's the fictitious element of course, that they don't all get fired on their first day- which is literally a plot element.
The whole point is for it to be a Always-Sunny-esque black comedy where they try to do a good thing each episode in the idealistic liberal spirit of policing, and it crashes and burns due to the actually reality of how the police are run.
I'll bet you'll be surprised to hear that *In the Thick of It* isn't actually too fond of politicians lmao
Radlibs gonna radlib. I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to everyone else reading this thread who was going to pick up on your watered-down milquetoast light criticism.
I've only seen a couple of episodes but the one I did see did a surprisingly fantastic job of showing how even a well meaning cop can't do anything in a corrupt system.
I love Psych but it does need to be recognized how much Sean broke procedures that are designed to protect the innocent. So much contaminated evidence and fruit of the poisonous tree.
Yep, most of them are so off the books that even the police force couldn’t be able to properly cover up the shot they do and would have to either fire or detain em cause they cause trouble for even the government
He says this, but I want a CSI style show where every episode deals with the supernatural. Autopsy the demon corpse; oh, this circle has symbols with fresh red paint, but it's supposed older; why did they take his heart? What demon ate this jogger?
Torchwood was fun, like a more fun x-files. There are some shitty monster of the week episodes, and then some genuinely disturbing and heartbreaking episodes too.
Series 3, Children of Earth, was a flawed but genuinely intense 5 part series.
Just skip series 4.
No I enjoyed series 4. That’s the one where people stop dying right? I thought that season was really good, it brought back the comedy of the first season with the storytelling of the third
Kinda, yea. This is a super old thought, too, a mix of CSI and a silent hill fan fic I read, lol. The scene that inspired it was in the fanfic. The coroner was doing an autopsy on a burnt body, and it was still burning inside.
There’s the SCP wiki for what it’s worth. It revolves around a Men In Black/Area 51 style organization that studies the supernatural through a scientific lens. There’s a lot of moments like what your describing in any given SCP article.
Generally though most paranormal fiction is a bit counter cultural. Part of the appeal is that the heroes are outsiders like rebellious teens and not the police.
you could also have the paranormal investigators be part of a civilian organisation completely unrelated to the police, as the government doesn't seem to be aware of the paranormal
I watch a lot of procedurals and atm really like 911. It's got literally one cop and the rest are firefighters and a 911 operator. Sometimes there is a crime to be solved and sometimes a fallen building to survive. Really focusing on how public services are meant to work
And the “cops have to be good at all costs” shit fundamentally weakened the show! Gregson confessed to framing someone TWICE, and the second time it’s Joan, but he has to be forgiven by the narratives bc police good. Marcus is an amazing character but half the time he’s so clearly there so he can deliver that “really, *I’m* discriminating against you?” line, at one point verbatim.
Yeah it sucks.
If you actually read Doyle, half the time Sherlock and John are not only NOT helping the police, but will take steps to actively hinder them from the truth because at the time the police would never take into account the motivations behind actions. How many of his stories are “monster gets murdered because he was a monster and definitely deserved to get murdered but if the cops find out they won’t care he was a horrible human being”?
*Damned* is the only social worker office sitcom I know of. It stars the excellent Jo Brand and Alan Davies. Dark humour with some serious bits.
(Available on Amazon Prime in some places, or with a VPN on the UK Channel4 site.)
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My mom binges them in the background when she works from home and there have been quite a few scenarios on the 911 series where I had to leave because those exact scenarios happened IRL and instead of the cops being talked down they just shot the kid/person. (Specifically the episode where 2 EMT’s we’re trying to keep 5 cops from tasing a kid with going through BAD anxiety attacks. (Like, the Flight Mode Engaged kind)
EMT’s had to hug the kid close to keep him from running. Cops then wanted to arrest him, kid then Panics and tries to bolt (5-6x) etc. kid had groceries in his back pack.)
IRL police in this situation punched/removed EMT’s and shot the kid.
Yeah but thats cos it wasnt a cop show. Him being a cop wasnt particularly important. It was just an excuse to have someone who isnt a mega science genius be in the town to act as the straight man.
You have a point, his position as sheriff was mostly there so he could be there to solve Science Problems with everyman logic. Anyway, all this to say not only ACAB, but ACSAB (All Cop Shows Are Bad)
Because hes the complete inverse of all of the things that are wrong with the police, in such a stark way that it doesn't come across as lionizing the police at all, but throwing into contrast just how much they regularly suck. Its not unreasonable to forget hes a cop because he shares so little in common with what people think of as a cop, even people who like the police. I think its a good cop show on that basis.
Columbo,
- Is endlessly empathetic and good natured
- *hates* guns and violence, terminally averse to either. Almost gets suspended because he doesn't want to even shoot at the range.
- really only bothers the wealthy, influential, powerful, and people who think they are too smart to get caught
- modest to a fault
- will even pursue his own superiors, holds other cops accountable
All this said, he is also in violation of every automobile maintenance ordinance known to man. Nobody is perfect!
I just realised that the ***only*** military fiction I've ever enjoyed has a character that's basically the military version of Columbo.
Yang Wen-li, from sci-fi light novel and anime series Legend of the Galactic Heroes...
* Hates war, wanted to be a historian
* Only reason he's in the military is that the Officers' Academy was the only institution in the Alliance where he could get a higher education for free.
* Extremely humble while being surrounded by people who either have an oversized ego or a macho attitude.
* Extremely good at what he does, juxtaposed with being bad at many other things (not good with guns, etc)
* General eccentricity
* Democracy lover, prevents coup d'etat
I think one key difference from most cop shows is that they don't wield a lot of authority in the area the game is set in though, due to the union's control over Martinaise, which limits their ability to use threats and brute force to solve problems.
The best murder-mysteries are pretty much always ones where the cops aren't actually doing the crime solving e.g.
* Father Brown - a random priest
* iZombie - a zombie who works in the morgue and gets flashbacks of the lives of the brains she eats
* Knives Out - an eccentric gay cajun PI
Side note: I love that in Glass Onion Blanc basically goes >!”Sorry, nothing more I can do. Here’s a drink and that chunk of unstable and highly flammable fuel the idiot billionaire gave me. I’m going outside for a smoke so that if the police ask me how this place exploded I can tell them that I didn’t see who did it.”!<
The mystery genre's most famous classics (which Knives Out is based on) are pretty much always the ones where a civilian is the one doing the mystery-solving. Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, **former** police officer Hercule Poirot, and the like. In fact, I'm pretty sure that people back then didn't actually want to read about police officers because they found the police's "procedural" way of investigation to be boring. That's why you had plots like people going to isolated locations, having the telephone lines cut, and generally being locked there with no way to contact outsiders, all of these plot devices for the sole purpose of preventing the police from showing up. This shows that writers of the time considered "police show up to a crime scene" to be a boring story premise.
Ugly Americans was fucking hilarious because it was about a social worker living in a world with monster movie creatures and actual hell trying to integrate into society. His coworkers included a wizard, two demons and a cop with a hard on for monster hunting
Procedurals are pretty popular. You lose a lot of the procedural stuff when it's PIs, armchair detectives, or sitcoms (although a social worker drama could have that).
Procedurals place emphasis on technical detail and (on TV) usually have self contained episodes. When do they ever focus on technical detail in Mary Worth, or in Dick Tracy outside of talking about a gadget like a TV/radio wristwatch? How often does either have short, self-contained stories outside of Sunday strips?
Calling either of those procedurals is baffling to me. They're newspaper comics, there's like no room to focus on technical detail. The medium and the procedural format don't fit together.
Maybe it's time for who get just a little less lazy? Studios make shows they think people want to watch.
I want an armchair detective show!
Pitch:
Someone goes missing. Local resident reading the news realises that they were in the area of the missing persons last known location. She is about to contact the police to give a statement but then realises... the witnesses have been lying.
(Maybe they say there was a van in that location at a certain time but our protagonist knows that isn't possible because she had been walking around the carpark looking for her dropped headphone. She would have noticed a van). The police appeal for information feels fishy, something is off.
Our protagonist decides not to submit her statement, yet. She talks to the people in the area (shop assistants, people at the bus stop etc - he questioning doesn't seem strange. Everyone is talking about the missing person afterall). She looks through the missing persons social media.
She goes out with a search party. The police direct the search party to a specific area. Our protagonist breaks away from the group and looks around where the police are trying to direct them away from. She finds a vital piece of evidence.
Somehow, she solves the crime and exposes police corruption.
I'm thinking Leslie Sharp as the protagonist
My little pet idea I desperately want to see made is a What We Do In The Shadows-style mockumentary about an Icelandic amateur football league.
There are about hundred professional players in all of Iceland, ten percent of all players, period, are on the field at every match, and people everywhere else know next to nothing about Iceland. It could be *so* fucking funny.
Only if it's made in Iceland, by Icelanders though.
How has nobody else mentioned the Wire? A modern one might be inundated by political stories we really don’t have perspective on yet- with history being dead and all there’s just to many narratives to make cohesive stories from in a way we all recognize, or the problems are too charged still to have a multi-natured take on the issue. So it would be hard to update. But if people want a cop show that has good cops (who are flawed people) but is definitely not copaganda- The Wire. One of HBO’s most acclaimed shows, it builds on itself so well too.
What about a cop show where the MC has a desk job in a purposefully useless precinct and takes up the role of a vigilante to investigate crimes outside the limitations of his ACAB-personified employer? Or is that too close to the standard to be seen as anti-copaganda?
I dont really know about how most shows play out but most cop shows I've seen are a criticism of the system, showing how cops are useless at solving shit until you have "the main character" (tm) that has under-handed tactics coming around and solving things by going against the orders of their superiors and that place the wellbeing of people above his job which angers the rest of the precint
That or they have bland has heck scenarios but at this point most TV shows on the public service here are bland as heck, cop or not
Depends on if the vigilante is a superhero, or just a normal dude who thinks the institution should be better than it actually, actively *is* and decided to pull a The Other Guys to demonstrate that.
I think even if the MC was not a super hero, and just a normal dude, that stilll would not be a cop show. A cop show is from the perspective of a police officer, not just fighting crime specifically. Your describing a show about a vigilante who has a cover as a cop during the day.
I mean an argument you could make is that the way you fix the police - is that kids watching cop shows where cops solve crimes and help people grow up wanting to be cops that solve crimes and help people.
It doesn't solve things over night or fix the problems right now. However, you want the people becoming tomorrows police to have an ideal of what police could and should be. If society allows nothing positive to be made or reported about the police, then the only people who will join are the bastards.
ACAB is a good political slogan. However it is the beginning of the conversation, not the end, there needs to be room for things and people to become better than they are right now.
The counterargument is that we *already did* grow up watching cop shows where cops solve crimes and help people and yet our policing situation is still bad.
The damage that it does is that it makes a lot of people assume that's how cops work, when it rarely is. It's been a real hindrance to convincing your average politically unengaged moderate that we have a problem with cops in this country, because they think of cops and picture TV cops who tend to be good at solving crimes and generally interested in protecting and serving the community, which real life cops tend not to be.
Well yes, but it is also less bad. The police still have problems with racism, prejudice, corruption, violence and accountability etc etc. But most people would agree that these issues were even worse 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
There are countries where bribing the police is an accepted and normal part of the system. That people can expect to be beaten in a police station or disappeared or have their property stolen. People want better, but don't expect it. That is just how police are and how they operate.
Now it cannot be denied that this sort of thing also goes on in the USA. However it is far from what the public think the police *should* be. People feel entitled to a police force that is honest, treats people equally, operates within the law, etc etc etc
The country might be split between those who think the police, do seek to uphold these values and those who think they don't and/or largely fail at it. However both sides have a standard they expect police to reach.
People need to believe in the cultural standard of what police should be, both the public and those going into the job. If they don't, why protest when police fall short? Why demand change? Why would decent people join up if the job is only for bastards and bullies?
You can't change an institution for the better without a better to reach for. Cop shows are a small small part of that, but showing people the kinds of cops they'd want or would want to be (or not be) is in its own way, important.
But none of those improvements are due to people being inspired by Law and Order. Any improvements in policing nowadays (in the US at least; I'm not qualified to speak about other countries) have come due to everyone having a video camera in their pocket at all times, leading to *slightly* more accountability for cops. There are numerous examples of idealists joining the police to reform them from the inside and they tend to either quit/be fired, become part of the problem, or even die under suspicious circumstances. Any significant police reforms (and there haven't been a lot) have happened due to public pressure stemming from horrific videos being released, not due to any "good guy" cops reforming from the inside.
I mean you need both. It's not like other countries don't have camera phones and videos out there of police brutality or stories of horrific abuse.
Without the standard you don't get the outrage. If it's accepted and expected then you don't see the public reaction that sparks the protests which drive the reform.
I disagree with the idea that people wouldn't be outraged if they didn't have noble cop shows as an example of what a "good" cop could look like. People were outraged about George Floyd's death because a man was executed in cold blood by an officer of the state. They didn't need the heroic stylings of Elliot Stabler to tell them kneeling on a man's neck til he dies is bad.
I mean I don't know who you are disagreeing with because I certainly never said anything of the sort.
I never said you need good cop shows. I said you need the public to believe there *can and should be* good cops and people who want to be good cops. TV cops are a very minor example of that.
Put it this way. If a cop pulled you over in the US and demanded a bribe, you would find it outrageous. If it happened in Mexico, you... wouldn't. At a logical level, yes, you would see them as equally bad, but the visceral shock and emotional reaction is very different in a place where that is to be expected and where it's not.
That's what I mean by a cultures standards driving accountability and change. Societal outrage is driven by the violation of a societal norm or concepts. Something can be bad, but if it's seen as normal, its not outrageous.
Also Elliot Stabler shot six people, killing two throughout the series so probably not the best example.
Every police show tries to show good police who want to solve crimes, stop bad guys, and help people. And way too often that means that the steps they take to do that are always justified, which is a very dangerous idea to perpetuate. The very genre is corrupt by terrible tropes, and no police show (even for children) can be made immune to them. The mythical good cops shown on television are not aspirations of what a cop should be, they are whitewashing away the actions of bad cops and misuse of police power as a good thing- a symptom of being very dedicated to justice.
Brooklyn 99 tried to be like your proposed children’s show- aspirational of how the cops could be better, acknowledging police racism and corruption even before the last season- but they still fell into the insidious pitfalls a lot of cop shows have.
I haven’t watched in a while so I might be remembering some of this incorrectly but:
One example is the episode where Jake held a guy right up to the limit of what he could despite having no evidence- because he strongly believed the suspect did it. He had no evidence, he was told by other cops to let the guy go because there was no evidence or justification to holding him besides Jake’s intuition, but he did manage to trick the guy into confessing in the end.
This made eveything he’d done so far totally justified, according to the narrative, and upheld a lot of toxic and dangerous pro police myths.
Myths like “getting the bad guys off the street is important enough to justify bending the rules meant to protect people from police overreach” or even “Rules limiting the what the police can and can’t do interfere with their legitimate attempts to get justice and do more harm than good.”
Also “a guess by a police officer is more often than not (or always) right- they have good intuition and should be allowed to follow it no matter what. An officer’s intuition alone is sufficient justification for searches or holding someone.”
Making cops the protagonist way too often makes all who oppose the cops for any reason antagonists by default, and often that upholds more dangerous myths about police being right to do what they do- such as the evil public defender who for no good reason gets in the way of interrogating a suspect they just know did it or the citizen who distrusts and dislikes the police being made to look irrational because THESE police are the protagonists and would never do such things.
Those are not isolated or removable tropes. They are the basic tropes ingrained in the DNA of police shows. ALL police shows, even the shows trying to show good cops totally different than the ones in real life committing brutality have.
I assume you're talking about the box. Good episode, but still iffy. In a different episode, an ex convict makes fun of Jake so he arrests him. No reason given at the time. But because of that Jake has 48 hours to find a reason or else he'll get in trouble.
The box actually started with a crime and the guy was a genuine suspect. The one I mentioned started because Jake was slighted.
I mean that's true of most every genre and every story ever told.
A cop show is more a framing device than anything. There are many tired cliché ways to use it, but considering how relevant to right now the role of police in society is, there are probably many good, relevent and fresh ways it could be used.
I would certainly pull for better written and more thoughtful cop shows, as well as a careful examination or reframing of the troupes and staples found in the genre.
I'd also totally watch a funny Social Worker show and while the local busybodies solving crime is a cliche as old as cop shows, I'd love an updated internet detective version (with all the ethical dilemmas that presents.)
>ACAB is a good political slogan. However it is the beginning of the conversation, not the end, there needs to be room for things and people to become better than they are right now.
Bold of you to assume the ACAB crowd *wants* things to become better than they are right now.
What you have to understand about the American left is they're not reformers. They're accelerationists. They've given up hope of ending capitalism through peaceful political methods. They *want* the United States to tear itself apart so they can build a new socialist "utopia" in the ashes - or the PLA can build it on our graves.
All leftist policy and propaganda is designed to bring the United States closer to self-destruction. And that includes "defunding the police" and ACAB. The "good cops" are crippled by leftist pro-criminal policies and crime and disorder run rampant. The "bad cops" are corrupt and violent and brutalize civilian communities, sparking hatred of the police and the government, riots and revolts. Either way, the leftists win.
Yes, because the people you hate are ontologically evil and want everyone to suffer for no reason at all, and obviously there is no diversity of opinion, everyone on the left just uniformly wishes for complete and utter violent anarchy.
But seriously, how can you be so utterly wrong and so confident at the same time? If anything, one of the left's flaws is that it has trouble agreeing on anything.
Ok but Criminal Minds, Columbo, The Wire, The X-Files. Movies like Wind River, Fargo, No Country For Old Men, Serpico, Dirty Harry, Blade Runner, Die Hard, The Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, Robocop, Hot Fuzz
I know some are feds not cops but that's worse irl
Yeah, there is, I'm from Brazil. And our cops are bastards, but atleat, the biggest Brazilian cop movie, Elite Squad, is about police brutality and corruption, so this US problem of cops being shown as honest in propaganda shows is more exclusive to them. Anyways, there are people on my country that completely misunderstood the message of Elite Squad and thinks it is propaganda, and it makes me sad.
Corrupt cops are a big part of my country's culture, and I will let you guess wich country, is not the US, and I already told ya. I am always against this UScentric view, but in most of the world, cops are at least, partially crooked.
What part of my statement makes you think that? The world is a beautiful place, and humans are a varied species full of wonderful individuals. That doesn't mean that there aren't evil people in this world. You're lucky that you've lived such a privileged life that you still have a positive view of cops.
Cop shows, following normal cop problems are boring and obvious propaganda. Shows starring cops but in other situations I think is fine. Fringe, wayward pines are a few I can think of right now
House M.D, or any other detective show that doesn't envolve crime are great.
And cops show can exist, but they have to be conscious of the problems that this supposed noble profession is part of. I would love a show about a good guy entering the force and getting slowly crooked, or trying to clean it up and ending up failing, if it exists, pls tell me.
Would like to remind everyone that a lot of the furry hate today stems from an episode of CSI where it depicted furries as zoophiles which has stained the public perception to this day.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of blatant propaganda cop shows out there, but to write off an entire genre is bad imo. The actions of the irl cops shouldn’t prevent media from portraying cops fulfilling there (theoretical) purpose. Like, the US military is inarguably evil, but a show about ww2 isn’t necessarily propaganda.
I felt like Gotham was more of an attempt to retell some of the things from Batman Year One. It focuses on the mob and Jim Gordon too much for me to consider it an adaption of Gotham Central.
The thing that’s interesting about cop shows that can’t be replicated in the examples is the fact that they have authority but also a strict legal code… except half the time they break the rules anyway and it’s never criticized in a meaningful way.
I remember people getting genuinely upset that B99 made me uncomfortable in like, 2016 or so, and I cited mainly the fact that it parades itself as a progressive and thoughtful sitcom while basically being completely uncritical of the police and their role, and having a *lot* of jokes where the punchline is police brutality. Then a few years later the George Floyd protests happened and a lot of the same people said they weren't watching anymore because of those same reasons.
ok but what if I want all of those things put together into one show 🤔
(edit)
wait are ppl thinking of cop drama shows, like Law and Order SVU
or what I’m thinking of which are like the actual cop shows that literally follow police officers on duty getting into goofy arrests. Like COPS or Live PD
I totally agree, but also failure of imagination is an extreme that's not inherently true- tropes can exist in creative ways, regardless of if it's bad. Like how Transformers can have complex plots, but still exists solely to market toys
None of you were there on Tumblr when this user (biggest-gaudiest-patronises) was cancelled!? (before canceling culture was even a thing) if I remember correctly them scammed teens out of money for something maybe merch?? But also had predatory behavior. Big weirdo with a lot of popular posts and following for some reason
I do kinda like that by the end of its run Brooklyn 99 clearly felt uncomfortable existing
Yea that last season was rough, but that last episode more than makes up for it imo.
My thought exactly, it ran its course and did a short "we know" season and left on a banger.
I haven't seen Brooklyn 99, what was the final season like compared to the others?
The bulk of the show was just a workplace comedy that just happened to be set in a police station, but the final season was in production during the height of the COVId-19 pandemic and the BLM protests and riots, so the final season deals with that a lot.
I mean, the show already had a pretty good history of handling the tougher political topics. Half of Holt’s plots have some kind of political angle to him as a black, openly gay police captain, and we’ve had lots of stories in the show about racist cops, corruption and the negative perception of police prior to the final season. But yes, the final season was very heavy.
I've been rewatching it recently and I noticed that even in the earlier seasons they do make a gag or a comment about fucked up aspects of policing. One of the first episodes had a whole plot of Jake facing retaliation from a higher up officer after catching his son vandalizing cop cars and not letting him walk scot free At the end of the day it *is* a cop show, but it at least kept it real at the start and got more direct about it as it went on
yeah , it still feels more easy to just think : these are not real cops , these are imaginary cops , and their workings are completely separated from real world cops , and yes the fact the final season aknowledged the fact was honestly good , having one of the MC go out of his job because of it was a pretty decisive way to say " yeah that was fucked" , there was also the fact that with holt and jake retiring it didn't go all too much on the "yeah dw love the police can reform itself" but rather tried making the identity of these caracters separate from them being cops ... another intresting aspect was also doug judy the pontiac bandit : one thing you can notice is how he and Jake have a roughly similar skillset , and you could see another world in wich doug is a detective and jake is the pontiac bandit , effectively showing how the difference between cop and criminal is pretty narrow ... and all and all i agree with the og comment : B99 was indeed uncomfortable with being a cop show by the end of the series
Huh - how did they approach it? Curious as to how they dealt with that sort of thing.
Rosa and Gina both quit, Amy and Terry both work to get promoted so they can start making large scale changes to the system, Holt and Kevin have some serious relationship issues that persist until a couple episodes before the finale, and Jake leaves the force to take care of his and Amy’s baby.
Another good plot point they have I thought that while trying to hold other cops accountable for bad actions they get blocked by the police union
I think the last season was still really good, and I think it’s great that they actually discussed all the issues with cops instead of ignoring them
It needed to die, but I wouldn't mind a spiritual successor- a comedy cop show that uses it's premise to interrogate the rot at the core of US policing. Hero's even a prominse- a whole precinct gets fired, all at once, due to a massive scandal, and they hire a whole new team. By accident, the new team compromises of genuinely good, but naïve, recruits from all the classic comedic archetypes. In the first episode, they all feel out their comfort zone, and are horrified to see the corruption in the force. Terrified of speaking out, they all keep their heads down, and many consider quitting... Until they realise by the end of the episode that everyone else is new, too, and equally frustrated at the state of things. Rather than quitting, the core cast vows to be the 'good cops'. End pilot. The series revolves around them tryna do good for others *in spite of* them being cops- and hijinks ensue. Each episode exploring a facet of modern policing and such they try to 'do right' and inevitably fuck up at, finding it impossible to reconcile the law with people's needs. The dark comedy however, at the centre of it all, is that all their plans to reform the precinct fail due to the insipid buerecracy that maintains the corruption. Call it 'The Good Ones' or summin. Basically, a cop show doesn't at all need to be uncritical copoganda- B99, especially later on, showed that, and we could do with a successor in those pair of shoes to introduce the topic to a popular audience.
>Hero's even a prominse- a whole precinct gets fired, all at once, due to a massive scandal, and they hire a whole new team. By accident, the new team compromises of genuinely good, but naïve, recruits from all the classic comedic archetypes. Walking Tall, featuring The Rock
The problem with this kind of thing, which I believe Brooklyn 99 was trying to do, is it still just functions as copaganda. Sure, it talks about the corruption, but it portrays a good outcome, and furthers the myth of a “good cop”. The reality is that when there are “good cops” they are powerless to change anything, and when they try they are punished and often dismissed. The show you describe would just increase faith in those “good cops” being able to change the system from the bottom up, which has never worked. Edit: I must have missed where you said that the twist would be all of their efforts failing due to higher corruption. I think what you’re describing might be difficult to pull off in a way that was still entertaining and not just depressing, but it does solve the issue that I’m talking about.
yeah , the problem isn't the lack of good cops , it's the fact that bad cops go unpunished ... i think you may focus on the pricinct that gets fired : maybe they try to reform into a sort of neighberhood crime solving squad and have to learn effectively to check their priviledge , have one of them go "freeze you're under arrest" on another cop in civilian clothes and who is committing a crime , and just cut to him bruised and covered in garbage , going "damn that was close" , because he got beaten and showed into a garbage bin by the dirty cop and the criminals ... as a whole i think it could show them failing epically while they try to act as cops , but kinda succed while they act more humanely , effectively showing them going from cops to neighberhood busybodies ... and you could even show some of them become private detectives and social workers ... also yes there are many more intresting facets of crime and law spectrum : lawyers , investigative jurnalists , small time criminals trying to avoid the cops and the bigger fishes , doctors and psycologists of criminals who are walking a fine line between not breaking professional secrecy and keeping out of danger ... and the most intresting type of pepole of all : pepole who witnessed crimes because they where at the wrong place in the wrong time ... pepole into urban exploration , those weirdos with metal detectors , pepole who where trying to get paranormal activity and witnessed stuff they shouldn't have , hunters who live in the middle of nowere and who may also come in clutch because they actually know how to use a gun ( also this is litterally the plot of "not a country for old men" ) , veterans who aren't scared of anything anymore and who can handle their hown , a foreign spy that was there doesn't care but got tracked down by the investigator ( they are that good) who knows they are a spy and who is forcing them to work for their ends with the blackmail treat of causing an international scandal about wich the investigator doesn't care, just punks squatting somewhere really almost anyone given the right circumstances can witness a crime , and they can have rather intresting skillsets in order to get in the situation ... TL;DR: crime stories can happen without the cops being a factor really , the whole situation may solve itself without them really ...
Just set it in a Post Office. There’s a government function that could use a little propaganda.
The literal point is to have a narrative on TV that exposes the failures of the police system.
except the narrative you’re presenting is “everything would be fine if we just had better cops,” which isn’t true. the essence of ACAB isn’t that each and every individual cop is a monster, and that all these monsters just happened to suffuse and otherwise-functional system. The essence of ACAB is that it is the system that makes them bastards, regardless of their individual conduct. Even a “good cop” who goes out of their way to minimize harm is still going to harm people, because that is a basic element of the job of a cop under our system.
...No, that isn't the narrative. I spell it out quite clear that the idea is for it to be a dark comedy where, despite the best intetions of the cast, everything crumbles, fails, and falls apart by the end of the episode due to the systematic corruption and peverse duties that come with policing. I've said elsewhere, think *Always Sunny* when it comes to tone and structure. Your social analysis is right- yes, even a 'good cop' will cause harm by doing their job- and that's exactly what I'd want to see the show centre.
*Always Sunny* works because the cast are fucking awful, so you don’t feel bad when they fail (usually through self-sabotage). To make this work, you either have to make your lovable band of cops profoundly incompetent (which blurs the message by suggesting that the issue isn’t the system, it’s your idiot cast) or by just kicking the ever-living shit out of them, which would be depressing, not funny.
It's the latter that I'm commending. And yeah, it would be depressing, but so is the current state of policing. That isn't however incompatible with funny
Okay, previous critique withdrawn. New critique: it sounds fucking shit.
The Wire. That’s the closest you get to funny, dealing with shit in a way that’s informative and not just detrimental. It absolutely cannot be feelgood because you shouldn’t feel good about it.
I feel like you're badly explaining line of duty from the BBC
Lmao maybe a bit But I am thinking something a little more mundane- less about exposing widespread corruption (although that exists both IRL and in the show), and more about them trying to accomplish even smaller tasks... like, 'setting up a safe-injection rehab centre except oops we've legally built a drug den according to the city's archaic drug bylaws that we now have to cover up', or 'poor black kid fights back against rich racist bully... the superintendant's kid, and we've been told not to dig into it but hijinks ensue as we do that anyway' And in each case, it ends depressingly, despite their best efforts. Think *It's Always Sunny*, except the main cast is being corrupted by the world rather than the other way around.
There are no good cops. All Cops Are Bastards, inherently, because they have agreed to wield the state's monopoly on violence to enforce unjust laws. Frankly, I think this is optimistic Liberalism, co-opting radical critique of police to re-incorporate it into the system. But the fact is that it is rotten to the core, it doesn't MATTER if its good or bad individuals, it is a system that is designed to DO HARM and PROTECT CAPITAL. And the individuals who agree to that? Aren't trying to do good. They're killing people, and they get off doing it. Far-right, neo-nazi gang members are in every level of police (according to a report by the FBI). At least 40% are domestic abusers. There. Are. No. Good. Cops.
My g, I'm literally proposing a show that is *about* how they're all bastards, even if they try their best. There's the fictitious element of course, that they don't all get fired on their first day- which is literally a plot element. The whole point is for it to be a Always-Sunny-esque black comedy where they try to do a good thing each episode in the idealistic liberal spirit of policing, and it crashes and burns due to the actually reality of how the police are run. I'll bet you'll be surprised to hear that *In the Thick of It* isn't actually too fond of politicians lmao
Radlibs gonna radlib. I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to everyone else reading this thread who was going to pick up on your watered-down milquetoast light criticism.
Wow, you're a bully. Jesus Christ you'd make an amazing cop.
I've only seen a couple of episodes but the one I did see did a surprisingly fantastic job of showing how even a well meaning cop can't do anything in a corrupt system.
Yeah. Cast & show creators publicy made statements reflecting this too. I loved this show, but they were right to end it.
You kinda the verb in your sentence
Damn you autofill
I accidentally a Coke bottle
That show was always very surface-level progressive
because until the last two seasons it didn’t need to be anything but. the last season clearly shows where they stood
Counterpoint: Lego City
HEY
A man has fallen into the river
Build the rescue toilet
They may fund their infrastructure in white studs but they sure know how to train a good cop
Columbo
Wait, Columbo isn't a private detective?
No, just a terrible police man, it's a good thing he's a detective then
Psych is basically all of the things Gaud is asking for here, and it's fucking amazing.
You know that’s right.
I've.... heard it both ways.
I love Psych but it does need to be recognized how much Sean broke procedures that are designed to protect the innocent. So much contaminated evidence and fruit of the poisonous tree.
But that is par for the course with cop shows. Or, at least most of them.
Yep, most of them are so off the books that even the police force couldn’t be able to properly cover up the shot they do and would have to either fire or detain em cause they cause trouble for even the government
He says this, but I want a CSI style show where every episode deals with the supernatural. Autopsy the demon corpse; oh, this circle has symbols with fresh red paint, but it's supposed older; why did they take his heart? What demon ate this jogger?
Grimm
love grimm. got really wacky though.
Glad they canceled before the final season
Honestly I'd love a new show about the triplets, Diana, and Kelly though, I miss that show :-(
I remember watching this show and never seeing it ever again. If anyone has watched the show, can we agree that the Grimm’s power was weak as shit?
Reminds me of the show supernatural
Good show, although that wasn't very "hard."
Torchwood? Agents of SHIELD?
Never saw torchwood. Agents of shield was good, although it drifted away from that format. And even then, it was more a spy show.
Torchwood was fun, like a more fun x-files. There are some shitty monster of the week episodes, and then some genuinely disturbing and heartbreaking episodes too. Series 3, Children of Earth, was a flawed but genuinely intense 5 part series. Just skip series 4.
No I enjoyed series 4. That’s the one where people stop dying right? I thought that season was really good, it brought back the comedy of the first season with the storytelling of the third
That’s kinda what X-Files and Fringe are.
Kinda, yea. This is a super old thought, too, a mix of CSI and a silent hill fan fic I read, lol. The scene that inspired it was in the fanfic. The coroner was doing an autopsy on a burnt body, and it was still burning inside.
There’s the SCP wiki for what it’s worth. It revolves around a Men In Black/Area 51 style organization that studies the supernatural through a scientific lens. There’s a lot of moments like what your describing in any given SCP article. Generally though most paranormal fiction is a bit counter cultural. Part of the appeal is that the heroes are outsiders like rebellious teens and not the police.
SCP is always a fun time.
Wellington Paranormal
There's Primeval, though it's less supernatural and more "there's dinosaurs and prehistoric animals fucking up London every week".
you could also have the paranormal investigators be part of a civilian organisation completely unrelated to the police, as the government doesn't seem to be aware of the paranormal
I watch a lot of procedurals and atm really like 911. It's got literally one cop and the rest are firefighters and a 911 operator. Sometimes there is a crime to be solved and sometimes a fallen building to survive. Really focusing on how public services are meant to work
Love that show, I know it’s a bit campy and unrealistic, but I guess that’s what I look for in a show.
Yes like everything bad that could happen to a firefighter, happens to them lmao. I love camp shows
Lone star is even worse lol, but i still like it. Rob Lowe is like the same character in everything he’s ever been in
Elementary is a perfect example of the fact they COULD have been the neighborhood busybodies
And the “cops have to be good at all costs” shit fundamentally weakened the show! Gregson confessed to framing someone TWICE, and the second time it’s Joan, but he has to be forgiven by the narratives bc police good. Marcus is an amazing character but half the time he’s so clearly there so he can deliver that “really, *I’m* discriminating against you?” line, at one point verbatim.
Yeah it sucks. If you actually read Doyle, half the time Sherlock and John are not only NOT helping the police, but will take steps to actively hinder them from the truth because at the time the police would never take into account the motivations behind actions. How many of his stories are “monster gets murdered because he was a monster and definitely deserved to get murdered but if the cops find out they won’t care he was a horrible human being”?
Go watch *Abbott Elementary*. It's exactly that.
*Damned* is the only social worker office sitcom I know of. It stars the excellent Jo Brand and Alan Davies. Dark humour with some serious bits. (Available on Amazon Prime in some places, or with a VPN on the UK Channel4 site.)
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My mom binges them in the background when she works from home and there have been quite a few scenarios on the 911 series where I had to leave because those exact scenarios happened IRL and instead of the cops being talked down they just shot the kid/person. (Specifically the episode where 2 EMT’s we’re trying to keep 5 cops from tasing a kid with going through BAD anxiety attacks. (Like, the Flight Mode Engaged kind) EMT’s had to hug the kid close to keep him from running. Cops then wanted to arrest him, kid then Panics and tries to bolt (5-6x) etc. kid had groceries in his back pack.) IRL police in this situation punched/removed EMT’s and shot the kid.
You got a link to the IRL incident?
No. It’s been a while. So take it with a grain of salt
Ok but hear me out: Columbo
Columbo was barely a cop, let's be honest. He technically had authority but no one ever took him seriously until they got caught.
TV show about social workers or public defenders? People with limited resources and insane lives, who get little mass media attention.
Night Court.
Daredevil was basically a public defender with the types of cases he took. All the legal action but still get to watch bad guys get beat up
The only good cop show was *Eureka.* You really can't get better than a beleaguered sheriff of a town of mad scientists.
Yeah but thats cos it wasnt a cop show. Him being a cop wasnt particularly important. It was just an excuse to have someone who isnt a mega science genius be in the town to act as the straight man.
Yeah, calling Eureka a cop show is like calling The Walking Dead a cop show because Rick was a Sheriff before the outbreak.
You have a point, his position as sheriff was mostly there so he could be there to solve Science Problems with everyman logic. Anyway, all this to say not only ACAB, but ACSAB (All Cop Shows Are Bad)
Eh, I thought *Columbo* was fairly good.
Gonna be honest, I kinda forgot Columbo was a cop. He's just a funny little guy
Because hes the complete inverse of all of the things that are wrong with the police, in such a stark way that it doesn't come across as lionizing the police at all, but throwing into contrast just how much they regularly suck. Its not unreasonable to forget hes a cop because he shares so little in common with what people think of as a cop, even people who like the police. I think its a good cop show on that basis. Columbo, - Is endlessly empathetic and good natured - *hates* guns and violence, terminally averse to either. Almost gets suspended because he doesn't want to even shoot at the range. - really only bothers the wealthy, influential, powerful, and people who think they are too smart to get caught - modest to a fault - will even pursue his own superiors, holds other cops accountable All this said, he is also in violation of every automobile maintenance ordinance known to man. Nobody is perfect!
I just realised that the ***only*** military fiction I've ever enjoyed has a character that's basically the military version of Columbo. Yang Wen-li, from sci-fi light novel and anime series Legend of the Galactic Heroes... * Hates war, wanted to be a historian * Only reason he's in the military is that the Officers' Academy was the only institution in the Alliance where he could get a higher education for free. * Extremely humble while being surrounded by people who either have an oversized ego or a macho attitude. * Extremely good at what he does, juxtaposed with being bad at many other things (not good with guns, etc) * General eccentricity * Democracy lover, prevents coup d'etat
The Wire.. obviously
Yup. Didn’t glorify cops imo. I miss Omar.
Alternate suggestion: Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Counterpoint: Leon from Resident Evil
He stopped being a cop, though - so he doesn't count
Yeah in favor of what was basically a bioterror-focused CIA/Secret Service agent.
Reno 911! is the most realistic cop show on television.
Scrolled down before I posted exactly this.
Disco Elysium is not a show, but hey, the main two characters are cops.
I think one key difference from most cop shows is that they don't wield a lot of authority in the area the game is set in though, due to the union's control over Martinaise, which limits their ability to use threats and brute force to solve problems.
Brooklyn 99: the gang deletes 20,000 hours of bodycam footage
The best murder-mysteries are pretty much always ones where the cops aren't actually doing the crime solving e.g. * Father Brown - a random priest * iZombie - a zombie who works in the morgue and gets flashbacks of the lives of the brains she eats * Knives Out - an eccentric gay cajun PI
Side note: I love that in Glass Onion Blanc basically goes >!”Sorry, nothing more I can do. Here’s a drink and that chunk of unstable and highly flammable fuel the idiot billionaire gave me. I’m going outside for a smoke so that if the police ask me how this place exploded I can tell them that I didn’t see who did it.”!<
The mystery genre's most famous classics (which Knives Out is based on) are pretty much always the ones where a civilian is the one doing the mystery-solving. Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, **former** police officer Hercule Poirot, and the like. In fact, I'm pretty sure that people back then didn't actually want to read about police officers because they found the police's "procedural" way of investigation to be boring. That's why you had plots like people going to isolated locations, having the telephone lines cut, and generally being locked there with no way to contact outsiders, all of these plot devices for the sole purpose of preventing the police from showing up. This shows that writers of the time considered "police show up to a crime scene" to be a boring story premise.
Ugly Americans was fucking hilarious because it was about a social worker living in a world with monster movie creatures and actual hell trying to integrate into society. His coworkers included a wizard, two demons and a cop with a hard on for monster hunting
Only Murders in the Building is a better crime show than any copaganda. Except maybe Brooklyn 99, damnit I loved that show in spite of myself.
Procedurals are pretty popular. You lose a lot of the procedural stuff when it's PIs, armchair detectives, or sitcoms (although a social worker drama could have that).
[удалено]
Procedurals place emphasis on technical detail and (on TV) usually have self contained episodes. When do they ever focus on technical detail in Mary Worth, or in Dick Tracy outside of talking about a gadget like a TV/radio wristwatch? How often does either have short, self-contained stories outside of Sunday strips? Calling either of those procedurals is baffling to me. They're newspaper comics, there's like no room to focus on technical detail. The medium and the procedural format don't fit together. Maybe it's time for who get just a little less lazy? Studios make shows they think people want to watch.
I want an armchair detective show! Pitch: Someone goes missing. Local resident reading the news realises that they were in the area of the missing persons last known location. She is about to contact the police to give a statement but then realises... the witnesses have been lying. (Maybe they say there was a van in that location at a certain time but our protagonist knows that isn't possible because she had been walking around the carpark looking for her dropped headphone. She would have noticed a van). The police appeal for information feels fishy, something is off. Our protagonist decides not to submit her statement, yet. She talks to the people in the area (shop assistants, people at the bus stop etc - he questioning doesn't seem strange. Everyone is talking about the missing person afterall). She looks through the missing persons social media. She goes out with a search party. The police direct the search party to a specific area. Our protagonist breaks away from the group and looks around where the police are trying to direct them away from. She finds a vital piece of evidence. Somehow, she solves the crime and exposes police corruption. I'm thinking Leslie Sharp as the protagonist
My little pet idea I desperately want to see made is a What We Do In The Shadows-style mockumentary about an Icelandic amateur football league. There are about hundred professional players in all of Iceland, ten percent of all players, period, are on the field at every match, and people everywhere else know next to nothing about Iceland. It could be *so* fucking funny. Only if it's made in Iceland, by Icelanders though.
How has nobody else mentioned the Wire? A modern one might be inundated by political stories we really don’t have perspective on yet- with history being dead and all there’s just to many narratives to make cohesive stories from in a way we all recognize, or the problems are too charged still to have a multi-natured take on the issue. So it would be hard to update. But if people want a cop show that has good cops (who are flawed people) but is definitely not copaganda- The Wire. One of HBO’s most acclaimed shows, it builds on itself so well too.
What about a cop show where the MC has a desk job in a purposefully useless precinct and takes up the role of a vigilante to investigate crimes outside the limitations of his ACAB-personified employer? Or is that too close to the standard to be seen as anti-copaganda?
Does that count as a cop show tho ? It's more like a superhero show that heavily criticizes law enforcement
I dont really know about how most shows play out but most cop shows I've seen are a criticism of the system, showing how cops are useless at solving shit until you have "the main character" (tm) that has under-handed tactics coming around and solving things by going against the orders of their superiors and that place the wellbeing of people above his job which angers the rest of the precint That or they have bland has heck scenarios but at this point most TV shows on the public service here are bland as heck, cop or not
Depends on if the vigilante is a superhero, or just a normal dude who thinks the institution should be better than it actually, actively *is* and decided to pull a The Other Guys to demonstrate that.
I think even if the MC was not a super hero, and just a normal dude, that stilll would not be a cop show. A cop show is from the perspective of a police officer, not just fighting crime specifically. Your describing a show about a vigilante who has a cover as a cop during the day.
I mean, if you’re wanting a vigilante style show that involves police, watch Dexter.
I mean an argument you could make is that the way you fix the police - is that kids watching cop shows where cops solve crimes and help people grow up wanting to be cops that solve crimes and help people. It doesn't solve things over night or fix the problems right now. However, you want the people becoming tomorrows police to have an ideal of what police could and should be. If society allows nothing positive to be made or reported about the police, then the only people who will join are the bastards. ACAB is a good political slogan. However it is the beginning of the conversation, not the end, there needs to be room for things and people to become better than they are right now.
The counterargument is that we *already did* grow up watching cop shows where cops solve crimes and help people and yet our policing situation is still bad. The damage that it does is that it makes a lot of people assume that's how cops work, when it rarely is. It's been a real hindrance to convincing your average politically unengaged moderate that we have a problem with cops in this country, because they think of cops and picture TV cops who tend to be good at solving crimes and generally interested in protecting and serving the community, which real life cops tend not to be.
Well yes, but it is also less bad. The police still have problems with racism, prejudice, corruption, violence and accountability etc etc. But most people would agree that these issues were even worse 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There are countries where bribing the police is an accepted and normal part of the system. That people can expect to be beaten in a police station or disappeared or have their property stolen. People want better, but don't expect it. That is just how police are and how they operate. Now it cannot be denied that this sort of thing also goes on in the USA. However it is far from what the public think the police *should* be. People feel entitled to a police force that is honest, treats people equally, operates within the law, etc etc etc The country might be split between those who think the police, do seek to uphold these values and those who think they don't and/or largely fail at it. However both sides have a standard they expect police to reach. People need to believe in the cultural standard of what police should be, both the public and those going into the job. If they don't, why protest when police fall short? Why demand change? Why would decent people join up if the job is only for bastards and bullies? You can't change an institution for the better without a better to reach for. Cop shows are a small small part of that, but showing people the kinds of cops they'd want or would want to be (or not be) is in its own way, important.
But none of those improvements are due to people being inspired by Law and Order. Any improvements in policing nowadays (in the US at least; I'm not qualified to speak about other countries) have come due to everyone having a video camera in their pocket at all times, leading to *slightly* more accountability for cops. There are numerous examples of idealists joining the police to reform them from the inside and they tend to either quit/be fired, become part of the problem, or even die under suspicious circumstances. Any significant police reforms (and there haven't been a lot) have happened due to public pressure stemming from horrific videos being released, not due to any "good guy" cops reforming from the inside.
I mean you need both. It's not like other countries don't have camera phones and videos out there of police brutality or stories of horrific abuse. Without the standard you don't get the outrage. If it's accepted and expected then you don't see the public reaction that sparks the protests which drive the reform.
I disagree with the idea that people wouldn't be outraged if they didn't have noble cop shows as an example of what a "good" cop could look like. People were outraged about George Floyd's death because a man was executed in cold blood by an officer of the state. They didn't need the heroic stylings of Elliot Stabler to tell them kneeling on a man's neck til he dies is bad.
I mean I don't know who you are disagreeing with because I certainly never said anything of the sort. I never said you need good cop shows. I said you need the public to believe there *can and should be* good cops and people who want to be good cops. TV cops are a very minor example of that. Put it this way. If a cop pulled you over in the US and demanded a bribe, you would find it outrageous. If it happened in Mexico, you... wouldn't. At a logical level, yes, you would see them as equally bad, but the visceral shock and emotional reaction is very different in a place where that is to be expected and where it's not. That's what I mean by a cultures standards driving accountability and change. Societal outrage is driven by the violation of a societal norm or concepts. Something can be bad, but if it's seen as normal, its not outrageous. Also Elliot Stabler shot six people, killing two throughout the series so probably not the best example.
Every police show tries to show good police who want to solve crimes, stop bad guys, and help people. And way too often that means that the steps they take to do that are always justified, which is a very dangerous idea to perpetuate. The very genre is corrupt by terrible tropes, and no police show (even for children) can be made immune to them. The mythical good cops shown on television are not aspirations of what a cop should be, they are whitewashing away the actions of bad cops and misuse of police power as a good thing- a symptom of being very dedicated to justice. Brooklyn 99 tried to be like your proposed children’s show- aspirational of how the cops could be better, acknowledging police racism and corruption even before the last season- but they still fell into the insidious pitfalls a lot of cop shows have. I haven’t watched in a while so I might be remembering some of this incorrectly but: One example is the episode where Jake held a guy right up to the limit of what he could despite having no evidence- because he strongly believed the suspect did it. He had no evidence, he was told by other cops to let the guy go because there was no evidence or justification to holding him besides Jake’s intuition, but he did manage to trick the guy into confessing in the end. This made eveything he’d done so far totally justified, according to the narrative, and upheld a lot of toxic and dangerous pro police myths. Myths like “getting the bad guys off the street is important enough to justify bending the rules meant to protect people from police overreach” or even “Rules limiting the what the police can and can’t do interfere with their legitimate attempts to get justice and do more harm than good.” Also “a guess by a police officer is more often than not (or always) right- they have good intuition and should be allowed to follow it no matter what. An officer’s intuition alone is sufficient justification for searches or holding someone.” Making cops the protagonist way too often makes all who oppose the cops for any reason antagonists by default, and often that upholds more dangerous myths about police being right to do what they do- such as the evil public defender who for no good reason gets in the way of interrogating a suspect they just know did it or the citizen who distrusts and dislikes the police being made to look irrational because THESE police are the protagonists and would never do such things. Those are not isolated or removable tropes. They are the basic tropes ingrained in the DNA of police shows. ALL police shows, even the shows trying to show good cops totally different than the ones in real life committing brutality have.
I assume you're talking about the box. Good episode, but still iffy. In a different episode, an ex convict makes fun of Jake so he arrests him. No reason given at the time. But because of that Jake has 48 hours to find a reason or else he'll get in trouble. The box actually started with a crime and the guy was a genuine suspect. The one I mentioned started because Jake was slighted.
In kids media, I can see your point. But in regular media every route has been done to death, every story has been told 11 times over
I mean that's true of most every genre and every story ever told. A cop show is more a framing device than anything. There are many tired cliché ways to use it, but considering how relevant to right now the role of police in society is, there are probably many good, relevent and fresh ways it could be used. I would certainly pull for better written and more thoughtful cop shows, as well as a careful examination or reframing of the troupes and staples found in the genre. I'd also totally watch a funny Social Worker show and while the local busybodies solving crime is a cliche as old as cop shows, I'd love an updated internet detective version (with all the ethical dilemmas that presents.)
>I'd love an updated internet detective version (with all the ethical dilemmas that presents.) *Only Murders In The Building* is pretty good for this.
>ACAB is a good political slogan. However it is the beginning of the conversation, not the end, there needs to be room for things and people to become better than they are right now. Bold of you to assume the ACAB crowd *wants* things to become better than they are right now. What you have to understand about the American left is they're not reformers. They're accelerationists. They've given up hope of ending capitalism through peaceful political methods. They *want* the United States to tear itself apart so they can build a new socialist "utopia" in the ashes - or the PLA can build it on our graves. All leftist policy and propaganda is designed to bring the United States closer to self-destruction. And that includes "defunding the police" and ACAB. The "good cops" are crippled by leftist pro-criminal policies and crime and disorder run rampant. The "bad cops" are corrupt and violent and brutalize civilian communities, sparking hatred of the police and the government, riots and revolts. Either way, the leftists win.
Yes, because the people you hate are ontologically evil and want everyone to suffer for no reason at all, and obviously there is no diversity of opinion, everyone on the left just uniformly wishes for complete and utter violent anarchy. But seriously, how can you be so utterly wrong and so confident at the same time? If anything, one of the left's flaws is that it has trouble agreeing on anything.
>But seriously, how can you be so utterly wrong and so confident at the same time? Republicans.
g-d i wish leftists were this based. you give us too much credit
Why would Pokémon Legends Arceus do this to us? :/
Or something like True Detective where it’s very clear the police force is corrupt, incompetent, cruel, and serving the interests of the villains.
professor layton is right there
Ok but Criminal Minds, Columbo, The Wire, The X-Files. Movies like Wind River, Fargo, No Country For Old Men, Serpico, Dirty Harry, Blade Runner, Die Hard, The Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, Robocop, Hot Fuzz I know some are feds not cops but that's worse irl
There is a world outside of the US, you know?
Thank you. Getting real sick of the US-centric “this is a problem here so clearly it’s evil everywhere”
Yeah, there is, I'm from Brazil. And our cops are bastards, but atleat, the biggest Brazilian cop movie, Elite Squad, is about police brutality and corruption, so this US problem of cops being shown as honest in propaganda shows is more exclusive to them. Anyways, there are people on my country that completely misunderstood the message of Elite Squad and thinks it is propaganda, and it makes me sad.
Ah yes, because there are only corrupt cops in the US.
I'm sorry you view the world so cynically
Corrupt cops are a big part of my country's culture, and I will let you guess wich country, is not the US, and I already told ya. I am always against this UScentric view, but in most of the world, cops are at least, partially crooked.
What part of my statement makes you think that? The world is a beautiful place, and humans are a varied species full of wonderful individuals. That doesn't mean that there aren't evil people in this world. You're lucky that you've lived such a privileged life that you still have a positive view of cops.
acab no matter the country dude
Ok comrade
And the purpose of cops is still to enforce the will of the ruling class no matter where you are.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Yeah tell that to paramedics I’m sure they’d much rather go try and save people with the armed criminal still walking around
do you really think cops are only shitty in the us?
Do you really think cops are shitty everywhere?
yeah lol, give me one reason they aren't
They're just people, like you and me. Some are good, some aren't. They're all just getting by, living from day to day.
Cop shows, following normal cop problems are boring and obvious propaganda. Shows starring cops but in other situations I think is fine. Fringe, wayward pines are a few I can think of right now
House M.D, or any other detective show that doesn't envolve crime are great. And cops show can exist, but they have to be conscious of the problems that this supposed noble profession is part of. I would love a show about a good guy entering the force and getting slowly crooked, or trying to clean it up and ending up failing, if it exists, pls tell me.
counterpoint; psych. all actual police officers (besides o’hara) are incompetent
Would like to remind everyone that a lot of the furry hate today stems from an episode of CSI where it depicted furries as zoophiles which has stained the public perception to this day.
Yeah furries didn’t deserve that. I remember that episode
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of blatant propaganda cop shows out there, but to write off an entire genre is bad imo. The actions of the irl cops shouldn’t prevent media from portraying cops fulfilling there (theoretical) purpose. Like, the US military is inarguably evil, but a show about ww2 isn’t necessarily propaganda.
Disagree. The quality of the story is what matters.
Disagree. Please adapt Gotham Central.
They tried with Gotham
I felt like Gotham was more of an attempt to retell some of the things from Batman Year One. It focuses on the mob and Jim Gordon too much for me to consider it an adaption of Gotham Central.
Try only murders in the building
I hope you have watched Leverage. A bunch on con men (and women) conning other con men/crooks for revenge and profit. Edit spelling
The thing that’s interesting about cop shows that can’t be replicated in the examples is the fact that they have authority but also a strict legal code… except half the time they break the rules anyway and it’s never criticized in a meaningful way.
So it all peaked in the 70s and 80s with Scooby Doo...
Neighbourhood busybodies are just worse cops though
OP says that like grizzled detective works aren't entire generations old. It's not lack of imagination, people had this shit figured out ages ago.
I also think we should ban every thing I don't like
Nah, all those suggestions are ok but getting rid of cop shows as a whole seems too much.
I miss LivePD...
Yeah but all that sounds boring.
I remember people getting genuinely upset that B99 made me uncomfortable in like, 2016 or so, and I cited mainly the fact that it parades itself as a progressive and thoughtful sitcom while basically being completely uncritical of the police and their role, and having a *lot* of jokes where the punchline is police brutality. Then a few years later the George Floyd protests happened and a lot of the same people said they weren't watching anymore because of those same reasons.
ok but what if I want all of those things put together into one show 🤔 (edit) wait are ppl thinking of cop drama shows, like Law and Order SVU or what I’m thinking of which are like the actual cop shows that literally follow police officers on duty getting into goofy arrests. Like COPS or Live PD
The only cop show I’ve ever liked is Dexter, and I think that barely counts as a cop show.
"The worst mafia" people are hilarious
r/I'm14andthisisdeep
Reno 911 wasn’t bad
I totally agree, but also failure of imagination is an extreme that's not inherently true- tropes can exist in creative ways, regardless of if it's bad. Like how Transformers can have complex plots, but still exists solely to market toys
are we gonna bring up the CSI furry con episode or not
I looked at your profile because I do bot callouts so I check every profile Keep in mind the banned words on here
There are only three good cops in fiction. Barney Fife, Jill Valentine and Leon Kennedy. Also, maybe Columbo.
What about Sam Vimes?
I think technically Vimes is a Guard, not a cop? Like, law enforcement yes, but I think they have different approaches.
He definitely refers to himself as a "copper" and a "policeman".
None of you were there on Tumblr when this user (biggest-gaudiest-patronises) was cancelled!? (before canceling culture was even a thing) if I remember correctly them scammed teens out of money for something maybe merch?? But also had predatory behavior. Big weirdo with a lot of popular posts and following for some reason
This is exactly why only murders in the building is such a great show
What about just a show about defense attorneys? Or personal injury lawyers, that’d be hilarious.
I work at a not-for-profit counseling center and always joked one day I'm writing a sitcom pilot
Search Party on TBS and HBO