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what's on tv
Mar. 15th, 2010 06:27 pmI've been regularly watching a couple of crime dramas on tv; I'm not entirely sure why. Possibly I've been watching Castle1 because Nathan Filion is in it and Criminal Minds because Joe Mantegna is in it. But I'm finding them more and more wayward as they go along. Last week's episodes - which you've either seen by now or you don't care, so no spoiler cuts - were especially peculiar.
In Castle, Filion plays a goofball crime novelist2 who tags along behind a tough NYPD detective (female, so there's the sex tension thing to go on) and helps solve the crimes through his novelist's or other extra-copular3 insights. My problem is with the headstrong attitude of the detective, Beckett. In last week's episode, she hauled in to the interrogation room not one but three successive people who all later turned out to be totally innocent, and gave each of them the third-degree browbeating: we know you did it, we know why and how you did it (i.e. the latest wild theory that she and Castle have pulled out of their brainpans), don't try to pull the wool over our eyes. And they all give weak or shifty denials, as what innocent person would not, against such fury? Possibly a good approach to make the actually guilty confess; at least, it usually works on this show - I wouldn't know about real life. But shouldn't a respect for possible innocence cause one to refrain from declaring certain guilt, especially when you already know you've been repeatedly wrong?
Criminal Minds details the far-flung adventures of a traveling team of FBI investigators in search of this week's bad guy, usually a serial killer, whom they call the "unsub."4 Unlike Beckett's bloviating, these people proceed by making an (almost always - mistakes occur just often enough to be interesting) accurate psychoanalysis of the criminal, feeding the data to their computer whiz back in D.C. She instantly cross-correlates all the deduced characteristics in her magical databases, a feat achievable by typing really fast, finds the one person who fits them all, and sends the heroes rushing off to what is invariably the right house just in time to prevent something really dramatic from happening.
The problem is that more and more of the episodes feature over-the-top movie-plot psychopaths, and watching the heroes apply sober analysis to these cardboard clowns is risible. The worst was the woman who kidnaps young women, injects paralyzing drugs (stolen from her job at a health care clinic) to them, and dresses them up as the dolls her cruel father took away from her as a child. Last week's was almost as bad. A widowed long-haul trucker is desperate for a wife, or wife-like object, to provide a stable home so he can regain custody of the small daughter he loves. So far, reasonable; but instead of asking friends to set him up with a date, or even answering ads for Asian Women Who Want To Meet You, he uses tv psychopath logic: he kidnaps women from truck stops, locks them in a box on his semi, interviews them about their maternal instincts, and when their answers invariably prove unsatisfactory (as whose would not: you're kidnapped, locked in a box, and the kidnapper wants to know if you like children? what?), kills them and dumps them by the side of the road.
At the end of the episode two odd things happen. First, a previously unmentioned aunt suddenly turns up to take custody of the little girl; if she'd been around earlier, perhaps something other than stranger-adoption might have been in the cards. Second, the FBI muse that there are probably dozens of serial killers out on the roads in semis right now. And we cut to a trucker picking up a female hitchhiker ... Now, with the number-crunching skills their computer whiz shows, they could catch all these guys with no trouble. And what kind of gross libel is it on truckers to imply they're all potential serial killers? If Criminal Minds is on an actual campaign to stop people from hitch-hiking, they could be more explicit about it, instead of coyly insinuating; and if they're not, they should stop the insinuations.
1) Another entry in the increasingly long list of tv series that are not about what their titles say they're about. Monk is not about a monk; The Sopranos is not about sopranos; Angel is not about an angel; Firefly is not about a firefly; Castle is not about a castle.
2) Filion seems more and more drawn to goofball characters. I'd like to see him go back and play another (mostly) deadly serious character like Cap'n Tightpants. Go on; just try imagining it.
3) Copular: a word I just made up, meaning "related to cops," i.e. police. Why, what did you think it means?
4) "Unsub" is short for "unknown subject," not that this is ever explained on the show, or that any non-cops to whom they use the word ever say, "What?" Myself, I hear George Orwell intoning, A not unsub dog was chasing a not unsub rabbit across a not unsub field.
In Castle, Filion plays a goofball crime novelist2 who tags along behind a tough NYPD detective (female, so there's the sex tension thing to go on) and helps solve the crimes through his novelist's or other extra-copular3 insights. My problem is with the headstrong attitude of the detective, Beckett. In last week's episode, she hauled in to the interrogation room not one but three successive people who all later turned out to be totally innocent, and gave each of them the third-degree browbeating: we know you did it, we know why and how you did it (i.e. the latest wild theory that she and Castle have pulled out of their brainpans), don't try to pull the wool over our eyes. And they all give weak or shifty denials, as what innocent person would not, against such fury? Possibly a good approach to make the actually guilty confess; at least, it usually works on this show - I wouldn't know about real life. But shouldn't a respect for possible innocence cause one to refrain from declaring certain guilt, especially when you already know you've been repeatedly wrong?
Criminal Minds details the far-flung adventures of a traveling team of FBI investigators in search of this week's bad guy, usually a serial killer, whom they call the "unsub."4 Unlike Beckett's bloviating, these people proceed by making an (almost always - mistakes occur just often enough to be interesting) accurate psychoanalysis of the criminal, feeding the data to their computer whiz back in D.C. She instantly cross-correlates all the deduced characteristics in her magical databases, a feat achievable by typing really fast, finds the one person who fits them all, and sends the heroes rushing off to what is invariably the right house just in time to prevent something really dramatic from happening.
The problem is that more and more of the episodes feature over-the-top movie-plot psychopaths, and watching the heroes apply sober analysis to these cardboard clowns is risible. The worst was the woman who kidnaps young women, injects paralyzing drugs (stolen from her job at a health care clinic) to them, and dresses them up as the dolls her cruel father took away from her as a child. Last week's was almost as bad. A widowed long-haul trucker is desperate for a wife, or wife-like object, to provide a stable home so he can regain custody of the small daughter he loves. So far, reasonable; but instead of asking friends to set him up with a date, or even answering ads for Asian Women Who Want To Meet You, he uses tv psychopath logic: he kidnaps women from truck stops, locks them in a box on his semi, interviews them about their maternal instincts, and when their answers invariably prove unsatisfactory (as whose would not: you're kidnapped, locked in a box, and the kidnapper wants to know if you like children? what?), kills them and dumps them by the side of the road.
At the end of the episode two odd things happen. First, a previously unmentioned aunt suddenly turns up to take custody of the little girl; if she'd been around earlier, perhaps something other than stranger-adoption might have been in the cards. Second, the FBI muse that there are probably dozens of serial killers out on the roads in semis right now. And we cut to a trucker picking up a female hitchhiker ... Now, with the number-crunching skills their computer whiz shows, they could catch all these guys with no trouble. And what kind of gross libel is it on truckers to imply they're all potential serial killers? If Criminal Minds is on an actual campaign to stop people from hitch-hiking, they could be more explicit about it, instead of coyly insinuating; and if they're not, they should stop the insinuations.
1) Another entry in the increasingly long list of tv series that are not about what their titles say they're about. Monk is not about a monk; The Sopranos is not about sopranos; Angel is not about an angel; Firefly is not about a firefly; Castle is not about a castle.
2) Filion seems more and more drawn to goofball characters. I'd like to see him go back and play another (mostly) deadly serious character like Cap'n Tightpants. Go on; just try imagining it.
3) Copular: a word I just made up, meaning "related to cops," i.e. police. Why, what did you think it means?
4) "Unsub" is short for "unknown subject," not that this is ever explained on the show, or that any non-cops to whom they use the word ever say, "What?" Myself, I hear George Orwell intoning, A not unsub dog was chasing a not unsub rabbit across a not unsub field.
