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Scott and Bailey
Dec. 29th, 2014 01:47 pmI watched the first four episodes of Scott and Bailey. I wanted to watch the whole first season (it's only six episodes), as it's a buddy cop drama about two women... but unfortunately that premise is the only thing I like about the show, as the showrunners seem to have cherry-picked all of my least favorite cop drama traits for the rest of it.
First, and most obviously annoying although ultimately least offensive, the show focuses too much on the characters' personal lives and not enough on the cases. I don't want to explore their romantic dramas so extensively that the cases seem like an afterthought.
I might have found it slightly less annoying were the romantic drama not squalid as well as time-consuming. No, I don't care that one of your heroines accidentally dated a married man for two years. (She's a police officer, for God's sake, is she incapable of adding up two and two to make four?) I don't care that the other is having marital problems, especially considering that they've been brought on by the fact that she and her husband are pettily unkind to each other and she's considering having an affair. All of you, grow up!
Second, many of the crimes are messy and gross and sexual, which is not a criticism of the show exactly, but rather of the show as a fit for me: I prefer Psych or Castle-type crimes. I did not need the audio of that guy screaming as his wife's boyfriends cut him up with a machete.
Third, the perps are disproportionately women, and even when the actual perpetrator isn't a woman, the show finds a woman to heap the moral culpability on. My least favorite was the the episode about the gruesome rape and murder. After they catch the culprit, the police discover that his mother concealed an earlier rape and murder, which, okay, let's all pause and acknowledge that that was terrible of her. But that doesn't make her more guilty than he is, Jesus Christ.
But what makes this episode despicable to me is the scene at the end, where the murderer's house gets burned down as vigilante justice. The murderer and his mother are both in jail, but the murderer's teenaged sister was asleep inside and died. One of the police constables - one of our heroines, forsooth! - takes it upon herself to tell the errant mother that her daughter burned to death, and it's ALL HER FAULT because if she had informed upon her son in the first place NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED, so chew on that, bitch. (The show tosses around the word bitch like confetti, which I find deeply grating.)
No pause to sympathize with the absolutely innocent teenage girl who just died in a house fire. No condemnation of the arsonist, who is, after all, male. I suppose I should be pleased that the show didn't blame his crime on his mother for going and getting murdered in such a gruesome way.
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
***
However, I have not exhausted my female buddy cop options yet. Maybe Rizzoli & Isles will be more to my taste?
First, and most obviously annoying although ultimately least offensive, the show focuses too much on the characters' personal lives and not enough on the cases. I don't want to explore their romantic dramas so extensively that the cases seem like an afterthought.
I might have found it slightly less annoying were the romantic drama not squalid as well as time-consuming. No, I don't care that one of your heroines accidentally dated a married man for two years. (She's a police officer, for God's sake, is she incapable of adding up two and two to make four?) I don't care that the other is having marital problems, especially considering that they've been brought on by the fact that she and her husband are pettily unkind to each other and she's considering having an affair. All of you, grow up!
Second, many of the crimes are messy and gross and sexual, which is not a criticism of the show exactly, but rather of the show as a fit for me: I prefer Psych or Castle-type crimes. I did not need the audio of that guy screaming as his wife's boyfriends cut him up with a machete.
Third, the perps are disproportionately women, and even when the actual perpetrator isn't a woman, the show finds a woman to heap the moral culpability on. My least favorite was the the episode about the gruesome rape and murder. After they catch the culprit, the police discover that his mother concealed an earlier rape and murder, which, okay, let's all pause and acknowledge that that was terrible of her. But that doesn't make her more guilty than he is, Jesus Christ.
But what makes this episode despicable to me is the scene at the end, where the murderer's house gets burned down as vigilante justice. The murderer and his mother are both in jail, but the murderer's teenaged sister was asleep inside and died. One of the police constables - one of our heroines, forsooth! - takes it upon herself to tell the errant mother that her daughter burned to death, and it's ALL HER FAULT because if she had informed upon her son in the first place NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED, so chew on that, bitch. (The show tosses around the word bitch like confetti, which I find deeply grating.)
No pause to sympathize with the absolutely innocent teenage girl who just died in a house fire. No condemnation of the arsonist, who is, after all, male. I suppose I should be pleased that the show didn't blame his crime on his mother for going and getting murdered in such a gruesome way.
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
***
However, I have not exhausted my female buddy cop options yet. Maybe Rizzoli & Isles will be more to my taste?
