In the of time off work, and not sleeping, you’ll find me watching hours of crime dramas like CSI, The Shield, and Law & Order. (Yes, Reno 911, but that’s comedy…) I’m bad, I don’t have cable or satellite, so that leaves me with a snowy TV picture or the Internet.
I think back, and I think I remember my passion for police drama from Rescue 911 and COPS. My father, of whom controlled the remote control for the larger family TV, surfed the major networks for interesting programming; but often resulted in FOX, running re-runs of COPS or America’s Wildest Police Chases — and I was entertained with our tag-team commentary about the suspects. Some dads bond with their kids over baseball, war stories, or building tree houses; ours was law enforcement TV programming.
Crime dramas intrigue me because I like to hypothesize along with the plot and think to myself, “He did it!” or run a variety of what-if scenarios in my head. I like to examine various scenes and find alternate solutions, clues, loopholes or exploits. For instance, how could a criminal avoid GSR from appearing on themselves and where to look?
I also like the different types of action involved in the three I mentioned above. Here is my overview of the three mentioned earlier:
- CSI: LV/Miami/NY — The action is generally divided into the field, the crime lab, and the interoffice drama, such as Sara and Grissom hooking up. The field action is varied between the three different series, from reserved to very direct with suspects and crime scenes. The overall focus is on collecting evidence for the case.
- Law & Order: SVU, CI — The action is mostly responding to a severe, well thought-out crime, and the focus is on the interrogation and investigative processes once they acquire the suspects. The other portion of the episodes focus on the court room drama, with bias for the prosecuting DA and is usually short in length.
- The Shield — This newer FX network crime drama is more action-packed with zero focus on collecting evidence, crime lab, or even the court room drama. The show depicts the fight-or-flight decisions that an aggressive crime task force makes in overriding their supervisor’s orders, bending the rules to take suspects down with a mix of Boondock Saints “god” style of choosing whether a suspect lives or dies in the Sonoran desert. I’ve noticed over the years, the interoffice drama has increased, but the severity of the crime has increased, too.
So which of these are my favorite? The Shield. This series satisfies my action and investigative needs from crime dramas. I really adore The Shield’s approach to crime, the strike force is tasked to take down high-priority crime with whatever means necessary, in addition, living up to it’s TV-MA-LSV FCC content rating. I agree with their choices sometimes, like turning over violent offenders to the Mexico Police, in exchange for cash to assure they won’t gain freedom. Other things like killing your own teammate to cover up internal interests, just ain’t cool and it keeps me on the edge of my seat.
In short: Action!
Update: I wanted to add a visual perspective regarding my interest in crime dramas. Four minutes in Excel 2007 results in this, fairly painless. Thanks, Microsoft.
