what's on tv

[calimac]

I'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.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I finally gave up on Criminal Minds this season, about two seasons too late, when it got too disgusting. At first, the straight-arrow profiling worked, but they pandered to the squick crowd (as you note).

Castle (which has the best opening sequence on tv) is fun, with enough verisimilitude to drive the copular supertext. It's sort of the flip side of Eureka!, with a similarly flippant lead and sassy daughter. I like the supporting cast as well. Fillon's "consultant" is better than than Murder She Wrote without being smug like The Mentalist or Psych. Not as good as Monk, but it works.

A show that I didn't expect to like that's growing on me is Human Target. Literally a comic book character, each episode has managed to be different enough to avoid too much formula. I hope they stick to individual stories and don't descend into soap opera character arcs.

[richardthe23rd.livejournal.com]

If you heard the "American Life" episode on confessions, police will frequently give someone, anyone, the third degree in hopes of eliciting a confession; the cops may even have convinced themselves the suspect is guilty, but much of the time it doesn't even matter.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

In fact "unsub" has been explained a number of time on the show. Often in the early years and lately about once a year they get someone who wants to hang monniker on the guy and they explain why they use the term and what it means.

MKK

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've only been watching it a couple of years, and I must have missed the later episodes where the term is explained, just like I managed to miss all the ST:TNG episodes that didn't have Q on them.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

The word goes back to at least the late 1980s, when it was the title of a TV show. My brother, a deputy sheriff since 1981, says he has never heard an actual law-enforcement person use the word.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I had thought it particular to the Behavioral Analysis Unit. They explain on the show that giving serial killers a name, like the Yorkshire Ripper or whatever merely feeds their ego and even glamorizes them. Which, of course, they don't want to do.
MKK

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

In that case, everybody should be asking what it means, unless they think, "Oh yeah, I saw you use it last week on TV."

I dunno, "The Un-Sub" sounds like a pretty glamorous nom de guerre to me. Sort of like "The Un-Abomber" (who didn't choose that name for himself either).

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Unsub means unknown subject doesn't seem very glamorous to me. Furthermore, they use that for all of them.
MKK

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

It is particular to them.

I'm overly-read in the literature of profiling, and that has been the standard term in the FBI Behavioral Sciences (as it was originally known) unit, for any perpetrator who had not been known. It was just "unknown subject" of the discussion -- which given the organizational propensity for using abbreviations became "unsub".

It's a weird balance for the show to deal with. On the one hand, they're going to assume that a large portion of their audience is moderately familiar with the literature (and true-crime shows) that involves profiling. On the other hand, they have to presume that a significant portion of their audience isn't up on FBI lingo. Apparently they are erring on the side of too little explanation.

I love Castle. I don't take it too seriously, but I do appreciate that they handle the characters well. The crimes might be outrageous, but the keep the emotional temperature of the regulars fairly realistic.

I never did get into Criminal Minds in spite of all the reading I've done on profiling. I think there was too little relief from the grimness. That, and it was much more satisfying to watch Vincent D'Onofrio (and now Jeff Goldblum) do profiling on Law & Order: Criminal Intent).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

One Criminal Minds episode a couple years ago, concerning a child molester/kidnapper, was one of the few TV series dramas I've seen with the emotional impact of a good dramatic movie. And just about the only one such not by Joss Whedon.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

What is the word they use to add more cops to a show that didn't have enough?

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I gave up on Criminal Minds long ago, when the supposed experts started missing clues that I caught and doing stuff that even I knew was stupid. It's one thing when a non-professional in a murder mystery misses clues--after all, they don't KNOW they're in a mystery!--or does stupid things. But when characters who are supposedly expert professional crime solvers do it, I give up.