Post by -|E|- on Dec 12, 2005 17:38:08 GMT -5
The Pop Vulture has landed
By GRAEME MCRANOR
Vancouver24hrs.ca
This just in: "Reel Wrap," the column usually consorting with "After Six," my smirk and wiry wisps of exposed chest hair on this page every week, is dead.
But there's no time to grieve, "Reel Wrap" fans (mom and dad). "Pop Vulture," circling overhead for weeks now, has landed, its powerful beak and featherless head adaptive advantages as it picks the pop culture carcass clean of its well-marbled meat.
Television's meat and potatoes has always been cop shows. Over the years, hundreds have come and gone - some rocked, some continue to rock and some were just known as Cop Rock.
Just imagine how the pitch for Cop Rock went: Steven Bochco (who created the groundbreaking Hill Street Blues, by the way) walks into an executive's office at ABC and puts an object on the desk.
"What is it?" the executive asks.
"Crack cocaine," Bochco responds.
The executive smokes the crack cocaine: "Man, I've never felt this high before."
"I know, it's incredible," Bochco says as he takes his own hit. "Hey, I had this idea for a cop show where all the cops sing..."
Of course, Bochco would sing the blues after only four months when ABC cancelled the musical abomination and, in 1993, Bochco would return with another crack at the cop can with NYPD Blue, one of the best cop dramas ever to flash a badge on television.
I say one of the best because the best cop show ever badge down is The Shield, which currently airs every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on CH Television. The gritty drama stars Michael Chiklis (Fantastic Four) as Det. Vic Mackey, the leader of a strike team where the road to justice often blurs the line between right and wrong. This season (Season 4 in Canada; the show is starting its fifth in January on FX in the U.S.), Glenn Close (The Stepford Wives, Fatal Attraction) has been added to the cast as ballsy barnstormer Capt. Monica Rawling.
Sure, there's been other good-if-not-great cop shows: Boomtown, Homicide: Life on the Street, Crime Story, Reno 911 (borderline brilliant, I say), in addition to the ones mentioned above (sans Cop Rock), the list reads as long as my arm which, coincidently, just happens to be the length of most TV-drama ex-cons' rap sheets.
But what makes The Shield shine is its unrelenting pace and its brash, unflinching fellowship of flawed characters. Conventional television this is not.
In one memorable episode from Season 3 entitled "Strays," Det. Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach takes a confession from a serial rapist, who tells a story about the power he felt when he choked a cat to death as a child. The last scene of the episode we see Dutch, his face contorted in anguish. The camera pulls back to reveal he's standing at the backdoor of his house. He's just choked a cat to death. He drops the cat's limp body at his feet, and slowly raises his quivering hands up in front of his face.
Sick and twisted? Definitely. But it's also poignant and completely unpredictable. Boundaries are being pushed here. It's that kind of fearless writing that makes you sit up, take notice and say to yourself, why can't all television be this good?
Catch the season finale this Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on CH Television.
By GRAEME MCRANOR
Vancouver24hrs.ca
This just in: "Reel Wrap," the column usually consorting with "After Six," my smirk and wiry wisps of exposed chest hair on this page every week, is dead.
But there's no time to grieve, "Reel Wrap" fans (mom and dad). "Pop Vulture," circling overhead for weeks now, has landed, its powerful beak and featherless head adaptive advantages as it picks the pop culture carcass clean of its well-marbled meat.
Television's meat and potatoes has always been cop shows. Over the years, hundreds have come and gone - some rocked, some continue to rock and some were just known as Cop Rock.
Just imagine how the pitch for Cop Rock went: Steven Bochco (who created the groundbreaking Hill Street Blues, by the way) walks into an executive's office at ABC and puts an object on the desk.
"What is it?" the executive asks.
"Crack cocaine," Bochco responds.
The executive smokes the crack cocaine: "Man, I've never felt this high before."
"I know, it's incredible," Bochco says as he takes his own hit. "Hey, I had this idea for a cop show where all the cops sing..."
Of course, Bochco would sing the blues after only four months when ABC cancelled the musical abomination and, in 1993, Bochco would return with another crack at the cop can with NYPD Blue, one of the best cop dramas ever to flash a badge on television.
I say one of the best because the best cop show ever badge down is The Shield, which currently airs every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on CH Television. The gritty drama stars Michael Chiklis (Fantastic Four) as Det. Vic Mackey, the leader of a strike team where the road to justice often blurs the line between right and wrong. This season (Season 4 in Canada; the show is starting its fifth in January on FX in the U.S.), Glenn Close (The Stepford Wives, Fatal Attraction) has been added to the cast as ballsy barnstormer Capt. Monica Rawling.
Sure, there's been other good-if-not-great cop shows: Boomtown, Homicide: Life on the Street, Crime Story, Reno 911 (borderline brilliant, I say), in addition to the ones mentioned above (sans Cop Rock), the list reads as long as my arm which, coincidently, just happens to be the length of most TV-drama ex-cons' rap sheets.
But what makes The Shield shine is its unrelenting pace and its brash, unflinching fellowship of flawed characters. Conventional television this is not.
In one memorable episode from Season 3 entitled "Strays," Det. Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach takes a confession from a serial rapist, who tells a story about the power he felt when he choked a cat to death as a child. The last scene of the episode we see Dutch, his face contorted in anguish. The camera pulls back to reveal he's standing at the backdoor of his house. He's just choked a cat to death. He drops the cat's limp body at his feet, and slowly raises his quivering hands up in front of his face.
Sick and twisted? Definitely. But it's also poignant and completely unpredictable. Boundaries are being pushed here. It's that kind of fearless writing that makes you sit up, take notice and say to yourself, why can't all television be this good?
Catch the season finale this Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on CH Television.