At This Rate, All Crimes Will Soon Be Committed By TV Cops
While actual crime rates continue their multi-decade plummet (the most recent FBI violent crime statistics show a year-to-year drop of 6.2 percent in the first 6 months of 2010), the urge to fight crime through any means necessary is only getting more intense on America's television screens.
The libertarian novelist and screenwriter J. Neil Schulman, who for reasons we probably shouldn't think about is hanging out at the Internet Movie Database message boards, shows how. When I was a kid, Hawaii Five-0 was the awesomest thing on TV. Now that I'm old, the awesomest thing on TV is Hawaii Five-O. But in a post titled "Hawaii Five-0 Fosters Official Lawlessness," Schulman points out a fairly disturbing difference between the overcaffeinated reboot and Leonard Freeman’s relatively staid (though well caffeinated for its time) original:
My heroes are not Gestapo.
On last night's episode -- Powa Maka Moana #1.18 -- Steve McGarrett demands to be let into a pawn shop for a search. The owner refuses, citing his 4th amendment rights: no search without a warrant. McGarrett then attaches a hand grenade to the anti-theft door and blows it down, committing felonies that Law & Order's prosecutor Jack McCoy would have charged to include assault and battery, attempted murder, reckless endangerment, and violation of civil rights. Hell, I'd charge him with terrorism and use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Is a hand grenade less powerful than the shoe bomb that sent Richard Reid to a supermax prison for life?
I want to see Steve McGarrett fired, doing a perp walk, hiring an attorney with his own money, losing his pension, and doing hard time.
For years we've been told that violence on TV creates imitation in real life. What, are police exempt from this theory? If a TV network makes felonies committed by a cop under color of authority entertainment, network standards and practices is complicit in fostering an atmosphere of lawlessness and disrespect for the Bill of Rights that can only encourage more official lawlessness.
While I have in the past applauded the new Five-O for its tacit encouragement of proper diet and exercise, the real reason to put McGarrett through the perp walk is that Alex O'Loughlin, who plays the part, is a charisma vacuum and the only weak point of the show. The Egyptian Mukhabarat-style tactics Schulman discusses are a world apart from the by-the-book methods employed by the original McGarrett -- the rock-ribbed, dispassionate Jack Lord, who remained mindful of proper procedure and courteous toward all but the most felonious members of society. I’m not the first person to point out that the littler the dog the bigger the bark. Would a McGarrett as resolutely confident as Lord’s have to break the rules like this?
Homer Simpson might point out here, “He gets results, you stupid chief!” And in fact the original Five-0 was sort of a throwback in a context of rightwing policiers that celebrated rogue cops. (Lucky for you I don’t have time to uncork my thesis that the original Dirty Harry is more nuanced than its reputation suggests.) But if this McGarrett is already breaking the law before he’s even had to take on Wo-Fat, what hope is there for the 50th (or is it the 51st?) state?
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Why are those cops ogling that 11-year-old girl? Or did we ask that same question several months ago in a previous thread?
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That "11-year-old girl" is Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica), and they're ogling her because that's what any red-blooded American/Hawaiian/Japanese-American would do.
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Don't forget the Korean-Americans!
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I would literally cut off my left pinky for Grace Park. I just thought everyone should know that.
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I'll see your left pinky and raise you an arm and a leg.
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That 11-year-old girl is like a road between Ft. Worth and Houston: No curves.
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I don't find her attractive. Skinny is fine, but fucked up looking piggy snout of a nose is not.
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Buy some glasses:
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Lol! You would link to a pic that so obviously hides a complete profile of that snout. It's a snout. Likely the result of shitty rhinoplasty at that.
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Hell yes! Pig. Snout!
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Man, they really did fuck that up. Or, the direct controlled source lighting of BSG was put to good use in covering up a flaw that can't be hidden in the sunlight of Hawaii without going over budget on some serious CGI.
one pic, http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dyn.....rk_320.jpg
But every episode trailer of that show I've seen (never watched the episodes), that nose just looks awful.
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I'm not really a nose-man like you alan. I'm more into tits and vaginas.
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What's the point then? If they showed her tits and pussy, I'd probably watch the show, but as it stands, her boyish figure and smudgy face don't so anything for me.
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Why are those cops ogling that 11-year-old girl?
They're interviewing her about Berlusconi...
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+1
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"I’m not the first person to point out that the littler the dog the bigger the bark."
Because they can't do anything with their small, small penises - which is responsible for more police misconduct than all the Rambo, Schwarzennegger, and Bruce Willis movies combined.
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When I was a kid, Hawaii Five-0 was the awesomest thing on TV. Now that I'm old, the awesomest thing on TV is Hawaii Five-O.
So, what you meant to say was "I don't watch TV and this shit is why"?
Personally, I'm still waiting on the remake of Hogan's Heroes (oh, wait, was that what Heroes was?) though a remake of The Monkey's tv show would be cool as shit too!
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Do you mean the Monkees or Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp?
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The latter being more awesome than our culture can handle today.
We could use an Agency to Prevent Evil these days, too.
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Oh, Mata Hairi, with your sultry, simian ways.
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The allure of human-chimpanzee sexuality was further explored by Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes.
Crazy times, the 70s.
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Damn dirty apes! Damn dirty, nasty dirty, hot apes!
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I'm surprised that Tim Burton didn't remake the sequel (Beneath the Planet of the Apes): What Taylor did with the chimp woman and Nova after he realized he was on Earth.
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I loved Lancelot Link!
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You sure you don't mean The Hathaways?
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...though a remake of The Monkey's tv show would be cool as shit too!
Actually, they did have the "New Monkees" in the '80s.
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I vaguely remember this.
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Remember when Sonny Crockett executed at least on drug dealer a week?
It took a little dehumanizing by television fiction to make it more socially acceptable for police to murder druggies.
Who cares?
They're not human.
They're only druggies. -
Actually, I've been rewatching Miami Vice recently, and their respect for civil rights is in marked contrast to cop shows today. In that they actually had a little, as opposed to absolute zero today.
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It's all the pastels. Made the cops calmer, less violent.
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That's strange, I thought it was the Ferrari Daytona Spyder that did it.
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Nah, that induces drug use. The 308 on Magnum, P.I. was the subject of several studies demonstrating this effect.
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I thought it was Higgins who caused the drug use. You're confusing me a lot today, ProL. I need to go talk to Icepick.
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Pay your tab at the club first.
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That's understandable, as his role in Blazing Saddles is generally thought to have ushered in the widespread use of coke in the 70s.
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You fool. 308's only induces British gentleman's friendships. How else do you explain Higgins?
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Fucking refresh. How does it work?
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I never understood the buddys-therefore-gay thing. It's not like it was Top Gun or something.
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I never understood the buddys-therefore-gay thing.
I blame Delvecchio.
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It might have something to do with the homo-erotic overtones that's always been portrayed in the popular media, with all the lonely soldiering and only the filthy native women around to rape.
Colonizing the world was hard work you know. If you can't have quiet and familiar solidarity with your best mate when no one else is around, what can you have?
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I don't believe it. I'm sure Oxford and Cambridge boys were straight or asexual and raped native women with the same fervor and aplomb as Americans.
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I liked Edward James Olmos. He was the only reason to watch MV.
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Castillo was admittedly awesome. When he went full ninja in that episode with the guy from Sledge Hammer!, it was the coolest shit on TV.
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Yeah, I remember that episode!!! All the Yakuza guys he apprehended kept swallowing their tounges rather than break "the code of silence". He was searching for his daughter and went katana on the bad guys.
David Rasche was the Sledge Hammer guy.
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Trust me...I know what I'm doing.
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Wow, I never thought I would see a "Sledge Hammer" reference on here. I use to love that show when I was a kid.
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I have the DVDs. It holds up somewhat, but not that well. It was intended, initially, for cable and would have been even more ridiculous if it had managed to be that, but it instead got picked up by network TV and had to tone down.
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What would have been the best series ender ever, but a 2nd season was greenlit:
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At what point are they going to fix the damned linking code.
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I wasn't a big fan of the show, but he was great.
Always thought it was weird that Crockett was supposed to be a former Florida football star. I guess he could've been a punter or something.
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This was the '80s. Burt Reynolds was a college football player.
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Yes, but he was also big enough to have actually played as a tailback. Don Johnson is kind of a runt, at least in terms of football.
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They should've titled my show Jack Bauer: SUGER KGB AGENT but then the PATRIOT act was passed so it's all good.
*hic*
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SUGER
Diabetic?
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Who's this SUGER guy? The ultimate badass?
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I have not watched the "new" Hawaii Five Oh...and I will not. I want my Kono and Chin Ho to be fat native islanders, not 11 year old chicks.
And "Mannix" was the shiz at that time, Tim, even better than Five Oh. MANNIX, I say! He had the coolest car...
That is all.
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http://www.google.com/imgres?i.....03&bih=596
I mean, come on!
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I've watched the new version a few times. It is dismaying. Turned off the TV in the middle of one episode when the cops kidnapped and started torturing a suspect. They are supposed to be the good guys??
Give me Jack Lord any day--along with Kam Fong as Chin Ho!
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You are clearly a man after my own heart - chaka!
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Also, "Zulu as Kono"....FTW!
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Yeah Kono was underutilized--would have liked to see more of him.
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I guess I need to speak up in defense of Kono's replacements: Ben and Duke.
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I just wish there would be an episode where some big Tongan takes Danno by the scruff of hair on top of his head and busts him in his 5' 2" face.
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They should just drop the whole cop show pretense and just follow the bikini chick around for forty four minutes.
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this was the genius of "Baywatch"
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YEs!
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Mannix also had the hot secretary. There was never any implication of romantic involvement, but, heck you just knew they had it going on.
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Homer Simpson might point out here, “He gets results, you stupid chief!”
Ah, McGarnagle... eases the pain.
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Police Chief: McBain! That cannon of yours is not regulation size!
McBain: But how do you expect me to avenge my partner with this tiny pea-shooter!
Police Chief: In my department we do things by the book!
(McBain shoots book in Police Chief's hand, blowing a hole in the wall) Bye book! -
Dammit McGarnacle!
(I was into The Shield when I first saw that episode, and the parody was uncannily apt.)
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Dumb question, completely divorced from the main point of post, but why is the fact that Schulman hangs around IMDB message boards a disturbing thing? I fail to see how it is disturbing, considering that this is the internet.
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Because IMDB message boards are barely a step above YouTube message boards. If you don't find that disturbing, you need to go read some YouTube comments.
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I've seen them, I am not at all bothered by it. Who cares? I don't get why people are such puritans about the internet these days.
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Imagine if every commenter on here was John and MNG, Tony, Max, or shrike... then you would be 1/10 of the way to a YouTube message board.
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Christ - John & MNG, while they can be pains in the ass, make intelligent comments. Tony, while a borderline troll, is also not a moron - he's just unable to get out of liberalthink much of the time.
Shriek and Max are definite YouTube commenter material.
Shriek11!!: UR not reel libertaryans, UR JustinByeber fanz who sux cox with so-cons LOL!!
MaxMax46: FuckYa shreik! Libtards suck RonPuals coxk 2! -
You forgot the evar-poplar "Christ-fags and Fat Rush cocksuckers."
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I tried to sign up for the IMDb boards so I could comment on how they've screwed up the "born on this day" pages, and got a message that I either had to give them a credit card number associated with an Amazon account, or my cell phone number. Not happening.
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I think the joke is that he's not, you know, working. It's like the starving "artist" who hangs out at the art gallery.
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Is there some kind of union instigation going on in Wisconsin right now?
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Adam-12, now there was a great show. You wouldn't catch Reed or Malloy blowing up doors with hand grenades. No sir.
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Wasn't that like Dragnet, based on actual cop stories?
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Yes.
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As TV cops go, libertarians could live with them.
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You know, maybe the portrayal of cops as law-abiding, rule-following, uncorrupt servants of the people is worse than what we see today.
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You may be on to something; lulling us into a false sense of security?
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That was when police still carried six shot revolvers and had no vests. They didn't even wear seatbelts fer cryin...
How did the world manage not to end? -
Back then, the black markets didn't pay average criminals enough for them to afford reliable, high-powered firearms. So the cops were the beneficiaries of the old "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight" adage. This truth, incidentally, is one of the reasons some cops are now openly anti-WoD.
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I blame punks with cell phones.
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Is there a taser app available yet?
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Yeah, but the names were changed to protect the innocent.
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That's another difference. We don't have innocent people on contemporary cop shows.
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True dat - also "Emergency" - Johnny Gage was my HERO!
"Rampart, Rampart...."
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Also kicked ass. Especially the forest fire eps.
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I was a kid when Emergency was originally on, and remember asking my parents why they always took off the men's shirts to administer the defibrillator, but never took off the women's shirts to do it. ;-)
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There were a couple of (old) 5-0 episodes about a master safecracker / criminal who was a 50 year-old guy. They were well plotted, and IIRC, the criminal got away. I don't think they'd do that today.
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Kam Fong as "Chin Ho".
I'm certainly glad that they didn't cast against type in those days.
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how about Zulu as Kono?
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I never guessed you for a Five-O fan, Herc! Welcome to da club, bruddah!
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Hahaha well played, anonbot
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+1 to da bot
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And yet the Muslim missionary got banned.
Why does Reason hate Islam?
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And does any cop show ever have a uniform just go up and knock on a door anymore? It seems that every show I see, nothing less than a full assault by a squadron of paramilitary troops is undertaken for anything more serious than a parking ticket.
I don't like the trend, and it seems to be desensitizing people to goon squad tactics in real life.
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But dunphy said that they're highly trained experts?!
(looks at Jeffersonian with doe-eyes)
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I have been impressed with Southland this year.
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Read about Jason Kemp Grand Junction, CO 7/21/10
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What the fuck is this shit?
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It's our new pet.
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I DON'T LIKE SPAM!
SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM LOVELY SPAM WONDERFULSPAM!
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Do you have something that doesn't have so much spam in it? I don't like spam.
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Well, we've got spam, spam, spam, baked beans and spam.
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It's our new pet.
And if you can't housetrain the little shit, it's back to the pound with him!
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I want whatever he's having.
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That guy makes me misty for Wahid Al-Whatshisface from this morning.
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I want to see Steve McGarrett fired, doing a perp walk, hiring an attorney with his own money, losing his pension, and doing hard time.
Nice.
They can put him in the cell next to Jack Bauer.
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"Well, it hasn't got MUCH Spam in it..."
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If this keeps up we're screwed. Hopefully the Reason intern is back from lunch and checking the comments.
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Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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Strange? For Schulman, its downright normal. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy and his work, but he's definently a bit on the nutty side.
As an aside, I highly reccomend his novel Alongside Night. Superior to Atlas Shrugged in almost every way possible (no speeches!)
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OK, I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but the constant Atlas-hate, especially among libertarians, is really freaking tiresome. It's like some ritual to ward off evil. Or it's supposed to indicate some kind of special libertarian street-cred.
The standard jab at Atlas (OH NOES SPEECHES) is pretty weak. There aren't that many of them, and the shorter ones (e.g. Francisco's root-of-all-money speech) are worth re-reading on occasion. Otherwise, it's got a great f---ing long-ass plot, great f---ing characters (especially the villains, and excepting the big man himself, who is perfect and therefore kind of uninteresting), some great f---ing dialogue. I'm supposed to forget all that because of one long speech (just like I'm supposed to forget the rest of the Fountainhead because Rand couldn't resist spelling out her rape fantasy.) And Rand's cinematic literary style is totally underrated, as documented by Kirsti Minsaas among others. It might have been even better in Russian, but then nobody would have read it.
I like Alongside Night (I bought one of those autographed copies from LFB and treasure it), but it's superior to Atlas Shrugged in one way: the absence of that one long plot interruption in the form of Galt's speech. Which, personally, I skip because I know that stuff, but only because it was later put in essays where it belongs. If I were reading Atlas back in the 50's, I might feel different.
Alongside Night is fun and worth reading, but honestly I can't remember much about it besides the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre, the Friedman-analogue, and some kind of subterranean bases.
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Whoa, calm down there. I wasn't trying to badmouth Atlas. It's a great book for what it is. I just find Alongside Night to be better written.
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Yes, I like Rand's books, but she wasn't exactly a flawless author. However, she is an important one.
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So no love for Southland here?
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Detroit 187 anyone?
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Haven't watch it. Is it worth a watch?
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No. It's awful.
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Thanks
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Too unrealistic. Nobody actually lives in Detroit anymore. It's kind of like trying to make the Martian Chronicles into a reality show.
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Wait a cotton pickin' minute.
I live in Detroit. Since there's lots of fuckin' people around constantly pissing me off, I conclude that others do as well.Haven't bothered to watch the friggin' welfare funded show.
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Are you for or against the Robocop statue?
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Who is against a crowd-sourced Robocop statue?
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I can't imagine how anyone could be opposed to such a thing.
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I'm a libertarian. Naturally I'm against a publicly funded or maintained Robocop statue.
If the private sector wishes to finance it, it's not really any of my friggin' business, is it?
The newly surfaced need in Detroit for RoboCop may be a fluke, inspired by a whimsical tweet on Twitter, but it is proving bizarrely compelling. This Detroit need is perverse on its face. But ever since the call went out last week to erect a large public, but privately funded, statue of the cyborg/cinematic hero of the 1987 movie, people — at least 963 — have answered.
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Yes, privately funded, of course. After all, we are not communists.
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We've got a Mary Tyler Moore (as a hat throwing Mary Richards) statue in downtown Minneapolis:
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Same thing.
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Man, that fuckin' thing is a rube magnet....
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"Book us, Danno."
No one thought to use that? Even in alt text?
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My wife and I have watched most episodes. I lived above Pearl Harbor as a young child (Army brat) when the original series aired - I remember my parents telling me they were filming a show where we were, at one point. I fondly remember the original - especially the opening shot of the B-52 landing gear. Anyway, my wife loves new version, I am disliking each new episode. Besides the blatant civil rights violations, they do stupid cop things. For instance, Dann-O drives up to the mansion owned by his ex-wife's husband, with his ex-wife and 8-ish child in the car. He sees that the house has broken in to - so, he gets out of the car, and clears a mansion by himself. Unbelievable, even by the sci-fi standards I hold dear...
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I watched a few episodes. It has beautiful scenery, is very easy to watch, and is more than a little dumb. So yeah, all the makings of a hit show.
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I can't watch any cop shows at all anymore....thanks Radley.
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Same here, the only two that I still watch are "The Closer" and "Southland". Both have featured police beating the crap out of people and abusing their power with impunity.
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"The Closer" is one of my favorite shows, but it bugs me when Brenda & team violate people's civil rights six ways to Sunday. My only hope is that perhaps it will wake folks up to the fact that cops are like your prom date; they will tell you anything to get from you what they want.
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+1.
If you really want to get pissed, watch those "Policewomen of X County" shows. I'm pretty sure that one of those title sequences features the line "There's never a bad time to use a taser."
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Everyone knows the A-Team was superior in every way to every TV action drama EVAR. Because of Dirk Benedict. *flutters*
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Oh good grief! Dirk "The Face"? Whatta tool!
I liked George Peppard myself. Yeah, he had some snow on the roof, but I remembered him from the Banecek show...and he was pretty suave.
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I didn't watch the show, yet I was still weirded out when Murdock played Oppenheimer.
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The X-Files did a lot of pointing-guns-at-citizens-and-yellin' too.
Friends would (gently) remind me that it wasn't real.
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I remember in one episode one of the G-men literally taking shots in the dark.
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"The truth is not out there"
--Bart Simpson -
When I was a kid, Hawaii Five-0 was the awesomest thing on TV.
When I was a kid, it was Hawaiian Eye. -
I was just raving today about how awesome the new 5-0 is. In fact, I was telling a guy about using a hand grenade an dudes with that shitty "I know my constitutional rights" attitude.
5-0 is just like Cobra in installments. Horrible acting, breathtakingly stupid plot twists and retarded violence.
The other thing that always gets me is how cool the computer equipment is on the show. Yesterday they were using "biometric data" from a security camera (i.e. they scanned the features around the perp - who was wearing a ski mask - eyes) and comparing it with the eyeball scans of a bunch of other thugs.
Seriously, that is like an order of magnitude better than CSI's sissy ass "zoom in and enhance" computer system.
The only downside to 5-0 is that Hawaii has the stupidest crooks ever. None of them ever dummy up until they get a lawyer. All of them spill the beans within 5 minutes.
One last interesting note is that all the cops and good guys in 5-0 drive Chevy's, while all the crooks drive Fords.
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Lucky for you I don’t have time to uncork my thesis that the original Dirty Harry is more nuanced than its reputation suggests.
LIES!!!
If you can't distill it down to a paragraph then you have no business being a TV and/or movie critic.
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Grand Junction, CO 7/21/2010 Colorado State Troopers said they were coming in.
Jason Kemp says you can not come in without a warrant. State Trooper broke open the door and pepper sprayed Jason.
Again you can come in without a warrant. Colorado State Trooper broke on the door again and shot and killed Jason Kemp. He was in his house and he was unarmed, he demand a warrant and the State of Colorado had him shot and killed.
Two State Troopers appear in court in Grand Junction 3/8/11 Stay tuned to this real life story. -
Funny how I found this thread. I was attacked by police - a sexual assault to start with in order to provoke my resistance. I was then tased, brutalized and maced. I was charged with two felonies. I imagine that's the way they usually get their asses covered by the DA. I couldn't afford a decent attorney...and my court-appointed one din't bother to put on much of a case. So I got fucked. Well, after I got out of jail, I din't have any dignity left - so I seriously considered becoming a prostitute...and by way of that, I met up with a cop who was screwing around on his fiance - whom I was told was frigid. I could understand why if she was - he had the lilest dick I've ever felt - could barely tell that I was having sex. And it makes me realize - when I was attacked, there was a point at which I was made unconscious. I don't know how long I was out. And it's very possible that these cops raped me and I wouldn't have even known - because their dicks may have been too lil to be able to tell later.
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Scottsdale Police Officer James Peters (SCOTTSDALE, AZ) - An unarmed Arizona grandfather was blasted in the head this week by a police officer who killed the man because he "thought" he had a weapon.2-16-2012 Colorado State Trooper that shot Jason Kemp has a court date 4-2-2012
