Culture and Context

The Laws of (TV Gunshot) Physics

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Television takes liberties with reality for the purpose of storytelling. It requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. As a result, it ends up creating its own set of rules. My favorite set of these TV laws relates to being shot.

The real-life physics of gunshot wounds is too wild to properly translate to television. First of all, dying instantly isn’t something people do under most circumstances, let alone gunshots. We simply don’t have time for the necessary lingering unless there’s a confession or plot point to convey. Second of all, millimeters and luck play into the survival rate in such a way that people would likely struggle to find it believable if they saw it on their favorite procedural.

However, what does translate to screen is somehow easier for viewers to swallow. In addition to the prevalence of instant deaths, there’s also the understood notion that getting shot blows you off of your feet depending on the weapon used. I think it’s generally known that this doesn’t happen (more fascinating is the range of physical reactions gunshots survivors describe), but it’s something we as an audience have come to expect, especially when it’s the bad guy getting blown away. We prefer that dramatic liberty.

When it comes to the survivability of a gunshot, it’s guaranteed that our good guys will survive any wound inflicted unless they’re leaving the show. Bad guys, unless they’re a recurring threat, are probably dying instantly no matter where they’re hit. Westerns are my favorite example of this. Bad guys do not survive gut shots; good guys do. In reality, surviving a gunshot wound to the abdomen is a toss-up. There’s a lot of organs, arteries, and blood vessels packed in there. If you don’t bleed to death because the bullet nicked an artery or hit an organ, you just might die of sepsis, peritonitis, or some other kind of infection due to a perforated bowel. And then of course, the bullet might miss everything vital and you’ll be just fine.

Speaking of our good guys surviving their gunshot wounds, they rarely suffer any negative aftereffects unless the plot calls for it. So often they’re shot in one episode and then right back to work the next episode with nary a mention. When it comes to older reruns, this is more a matter of treating each episode as its own thing rather than adhering to any serious continuity. Look no further than our Five-O heroes for an example of this. In one episode, Steve McGarrett is shot three times and left for dead. In the next, he’s back to work and well-enough to be stabbed.

Or perhaps we can consider the interesting gunshot wound continuity of Eric Delko on CSI: Miami. He was shot twice at the end of the first part of a two-parter in the fifth season. During a firefight in a parking lot, he was shot once in the right thigh. Horatio Caine dragged him behind a car where Delko was then shot in the back of the head by a different, unseen shooter. During the second part, Delko fought for his life, rallied, and lived. However, they couldn’t get all of the bullet fragment out of his head and Delko did suffer aftereffects from this head wound. He lost memories from around the time of the shooting, had some confusion issues regarding aspects of his job, and had transitory hallucinations. In the eighth season, the fragment jarred lose during a shooting/car chase/car crash and he ended up on the operating table yet again to have it finally removed. He recovered from that without any issues. So, that one incident had long-lasting implications.

However, the gunshot wound in his leg was literally only addressed once…when he was initially shot. It was never mentioned again: not when Delko was in surgery, not when he returned to work a few weeks after getting shot, nada. It was as though it never happened. Setting aside the fact that it was dubious at best he’d be returning to work so soon after being shot in the head, Delko definitely would have been limping if he had. He’d probably know every time it was going to rain for the rest of his life, too.

Many of our law enforcement leads could find themselves in a similar situation, especially if they’ve been shot in the shoulder, which is a favorite target of the writers and bad guys it seems. Shoulder wounds are notoriously nasty as there’s a lot that can go wrong in that region and not much room for it not to. There’s the subclavian artery, which could easily have someone bleeding out in minutes, not to mention all of the muscles, tendons, and bones in that area that work together to move the arm. Starsky got shot in the shoulder on the first season of Starsky and Hutch, nearly died, was back to work in the next episode without a bandage, and never had a problem using his arm to enforce the law for the rest of the series. Heroes don’t get arthritis from traumatic injuries.

Rumor has it that the best place to get shot (aside from nowhere) is in the backside. The abundance of fatty tissue is ready-made for high-impact projectiles (good luck if you have a flat ass, I suppose), but rarely do shows, cop shows in particular, have one of their mains take one for the team in this fashion. I guess there’s something less dramatic about spending the week on their stomach than taking one in the gut or the shoulder and still managing to chase down and arrest/kill the bad guy. Or maybe spending most of the episode in a coma while their besties get justice for them for maximum viewer angst.

No matter where they get shot, we all know they’ll be back and better than ever in the next episode anyway.

It’s Okay! They’re the Good Guys!

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It’s a common scene in a cop show.

The cops arrest someone and maybe it’s during the arrest, maybe during the interrogation, one of our guys loses his cool and gets a little rough with the suspect. And, you know what? We’re fine with that! Punk had it coming.

It’s yet another way that copaganda inures us to questionable police conduct.

We are firmly on our good guys’ side. We understand their frustration when a suspect won’t give up information or if they run and have to be chased down. These are bad guys after all. We’d lose our cool, too. Especially when some punk won’t talk and there’s a bomb about to go off or some kidnapped person’s minutes are ticking away. If our guys get a little aggressive in the pursuit of justice, it’s all good. After all…they’re the good guys. Sometimes a choke hold is necessary.

The shows are great at normalizing this. It makes sense that our cops would get a little rough while arresting a suspect, especially if they ran or were resisting. It makes sense that our cops might need to utilize a little physical persuasion during an interrogation. Lives are on the line. And besides, these are the BAD guys. Who cares if they get a little roughed up?

Except how often do we watch those arrests and those interrogations and the suspect in question turns out to NOT be the bad guy of the episode? Pretty often considering the first person arrested is seldom the culprit in an hour long police procedural. You can argue that it’s all in the pursuit of justice, but that argument doesn’t hold up against a person’s rights.

Ah, yes, those pesky rights that apply to everyone, not just the good guys. How our cops often lament how they’re forced to observe a suspect’s rights when they’d really rather smack them around.

And how often they ignore those rights and go right ahead.

We all know how much I love Horatio Caine, but the man crosses lines like he’s running a touchdown. Given that his line-crossing increases as the seasons progress, I could argue that his increasing disregard to the rights of suspects is a response to traumas he suffers over the years, but that’s a post for another day. The point is that Horatio has no problem threatening physical violence or getting outright physical with a suspect. In one episode, it’s insinuated that he beats the shit out of a pedophile for “resisting arrest”. Another insinuates he does the same to a guy who abused his girlfriend, but at that point, he was no longer even a suspect in her death. And in yet another episode, Horatio and Boa Vista get a guy in the backseat of one of the Hummers and it’s implied that they inflict some pain in order to extract information.

These three incidents are presented without any question to Horatio’s actions. Because we sympathize with him and in fact, identify with him. We’d beat the shit out of a grown man preying on teenage girls. We’d beat the shit out of a guy who was fond of DV. We’d do a little painful persuasion to get crucial information from someone already in custody.

However, we are not law enforcement. And there are very good reasons why law enforcement is not allowed to do such things.

But this is the standard for these shows. There’s no real attention brought to this sort of police violence other than mild warnings as a means of twisting the tension and providing a barrier to our good guys saving the day.

Unless they happen to be falsely accused of police brutality.

In a third season episode of CSI: Miami, Horatio is accused of police brutality and Calleigh has to clear him, which she does, of course, because in this instance Horatio hasn’t done the violence that he’s accused of.

It seems like every cop gets falsely accused at least once. Ponch and Jon. Starsky and Hutch. Reed and Malloy. It’s a rite of passage for a TV cop, like a police involved shooting. The focus of these episodes is always the same: the injustice and unfairness of our heroes being accused of brutality and how easy it is for people to make those claims. These people are only saying these things because they have an agenda. They hate the police. They’re petty. They’re either seeking retribution for getting caught committing their own illegal transgressions or trying to detract from them. Because only bad cops engage in brutality and our heroes are never bad cops.

Inevitably, like Horatio Caine, they’re cleared of any wrongdoing.

And then right back at manhandling the next week.

One cop show that didn’t really normalize police violence was Barney Miller. First of all, we didn’t see any of the arrests. We were told that the suspect had to be chased or that the suspect resisted, but it was understood that no violence ensued during these apprehensions. At least there was no apparent evidence or mention. Second of all, a preponderance of the criminals the 12th precinct dealt with where, well, harmless. There were some armed robbers and assaulters and the like, but this is a comedy. Most of the perps that the detectives arrested were of the nature of blind shoplifters and women throwing toilet seats out of the window because their husbands locked them in the bathroom and sugar addicts who fall off the wagon in hilarious fashion.

When the subject of police brutality came up in conversation, Wojo was usually the detective mentioned, particularly in the early seasons. He had a tendency to be aggressive in his arrests and it got him into trouble more than once. Inspector Luger was a great champion of police violence as that’s how things were done back in his heyday. He was painted as out of touch and his methods antiquated. The policing techniques of the 12th didn’t require rubber hoses or anyone “falling down” the stairs. Policing had evolved beyond that.

Which wasn’t an accurate reflection of reality, but it was a decent attempt at providing a counter thought to plant into people’s heads.

Police violence isn’t normal and we shouldn’t accept it as such.

Not even from our law enforcement faves.

The Complicated Legacy

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I had mixed feelings when Kirstie Alley passed away in December.

She was one of my birthday buddies and our first names are similar, something my mother loved to point out. I was never a big fan of Cheers, though I did watch it when I was younger, and I only watched Veronica’s Closet a little bit. When I think of her, I tend to think of her movie work first, primarily Look Who’s Talking and Summer School because we watched those flicks an ungodly number of times when I was a kid. I always enjoyed her whenever she showed up in something. I liked her.

But.

In the last several years of her life, I didn’t like her, at least not on a Twitter level. Social media exposed her as the sort of person I did not care to know. Not just the scientology, but some of her personal and political opinions were just, well, garbage.

So, it was strange for me when she passed away because while I did respect her work, I didn’t really respect her all that much as a person anymore. I was sad, but not? Somewhere closer to unaffected. Like I should have been sadder than I was given that I used to be quite fond of her. Something like that. It’s hard to explain. It was even further complicated when the people who knew her mourned her as being so kind to them and then trying to reconcile that with some of the hateful shit she said online. I realize humans are complex creatures, but damn. I shouldn’t be this twisted up about someone I only experienced, but never knew.

I think those conflicted feelings are not uncommon when it comes to actors, particularly those who play roles that we like so well, but the person playing them turns out to be not so great. There are some people who can separate the artist from the art, but for others, it’s not so simple. The revelation that the actor is some kind of nasty less-than cannot be bested by the suspension of disbelief.

The actor doesn’t have to die for that conflict to kick in either.

Take Stephen Collins for example.

I’ve talked about how good he was in Tales of the Gold Monkey. And he spent multiple seasons playing the perfect father on 7th Heaven. But the reality is that the guy is garbage of the inappropriate touching variety. I can’t speak for 7th Heaven fans, but in my own experience watching Tales of the Gold Monkey, that legacy hangs over the whole show. It’s not something I can just forget about while I’m watching.

Nor should I.

There’s is nothing wrong with me not being able to separate the art from the artist, particularly if the artist is someone who has done something so despicable. I have conflicted feelings about enjoying Tales of the Gold Monkey because of Stephen Collins’s role in the show. How I deal with that is up to me to work out.

There are some people I will never give money or attention to again because of their actions (the wizarding TERF comes to mind). Those are the easy ones. It’s the ones like Kirstie Alley that are a little more difficult for me to reconcile.

People are complicated and so are their legacies.

And, yeah, that affects their art.

Weaving the Fabric of Pop Culture

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I’ll be honest with you: I heard the phrase “Book ’em, Danno” long before I started watching Hawaii Five-O in my early thirties. Considering the show went off the year a few months after I was born, that’s pretty impressive. This one little catchphrase (which wasn’t even designed to be a catchphrase; in fact, Steve McGarrett goes the entire third season without saying it) became a thread that had itself woven into the fabric of pop culture. So has the term “Five-O” as a way to refer to the police. That entered the lexicon before the show even went off the air.

Not bad for a police drama.

I talked a little bit about this phenomenon when I confessed that I’d never watched Seinfeld. Some shows just get into the collective consciousness. Seinfeld was one of those. Intensely popular, I may have never watched an episode, but everyone around me did. Immersed in that situation, I absorbed the show via diffusion. Because the show became so cemented into pop culture, I know all about Festivus, Elaine dancing, George’s fiancee dying, Jerry’s puffy shirt, Kramer’s…everything, yet never experienced any of these things in the context of their episodes.

Much like people recognizing and/or using the phrase “Book ’em, Danno” but have never actually seen Steve McGarrett say it in an episode.

Some shows just get absorbed into pop culture.

A sunglasses-quip combo. “I’m so excited!” A nose twitch. “Hello!” Turkey Drop. “To the moon, Alice!” A ponytail flip. “Dammit, Jim.” Tapping the sides of your fists together instead of flipping the bird. “Who loves ya, baby?” The Monkee Walk. “Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!” The Bart Dance. “Dyn-o-mite!”

There is an excellent chance you recognized more than one of these. And there’s also a chance that you might not have watched all of the shows these came from.

Who’s to say why some shows find themselves a place in pop culture and some don’t. Popularity plays into it, naturally, but not necessarily longevity. Star Trek only lasted 3 seasons, but it’s impact has lasted a lifetime. Obviously, the fans of the show play a big role, not only in making the show popular, but also identifying what bits and pieces will become meme’d and gif’d in some cases decades later.

There’s no telling what show might catch on, or what bit of it might embed itself into the conscious collective mind. Not every super popular show finds its staying power. You never know what little bit people will discover and latch onto and blow up. Or who will latch onto it.

Say “How rude” or “Did I do that?” to a Gen Xer or older Millennial who lived on TGIF and you’ll get a different response than maybe a member of Gen Z who hasn’t discovered that bit of nostalgia yet. Some of these bits of fabric are truly generational, while other bits span the scope.

If I were an educated person, I might better be able to analyze this sort of thing. Pick it a part and understand how it all comes together.

But I’m not.

Instead, I just marvel at all of the colorful bits and pieces woven into the pop culture fabric.

Holy tapestry, Batman!

Foiled by Miranda

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It is a guaranteed scene in a cop drama.

Our detectives are interviewing a suspect, trying to break them, and they say those fateful words…

“I want a lawyer.”

Thwarted, the detectives end their interrogation and look for another way to nail their suspect, which turns out to not be their culprit a big part of the time.

This oft-repeated scene is a brilliant piece of copaganda. The invocation of the Miranda rights is typically presented as a bad thing, a major hurdle to an investigation. Only criminals trying to get away with something would ask for a lawyer or invoke their right to remain silent. Or hell, even ask to end the questioning and leave because they’re not under arrest. But the truth is that these rights are guaranteed for everyone and not just criminals are entitled to use them.

If you’re unfamiliar, Miranda rights are the spiel that used to frequently be recited onscreen, usually when a person was placed under arrest, typically to the tune of: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

I don’t think you see it as often now as it’s just sort of understood that it happens. I could be wrong, of course. I watch several cop shows currently in production, but not all of them. Maybe some shows are saying it more than others. But it happened a lot on older cop shows. In fact, there’s a few Barney Miller episodes that make a point of ensuring the rights have been read.

Here’s the thing: if you’re under arrest or being detained, the cops do not need to read you your rights to have the rights available for you to invoke. This is especially important since the Supreme Court decided to take away any repercussions for law enforcement NOT informing people of their rights. The cops do not give you your Miranda rights; they’re already there.

Here’s the other thing: if you’re not under arrest or being detained, then the questioning is voluntary, which means that anything you say can be used against you, but you’re also free to end the questioning at any time. Cops will sometimes inform you of this, but often times they’ll word it in such a way that makes you feel like you can’t really end the questioning or leave. But you can.

When you watch these scenes play out on television, there’s an underlying, unspoken insinuation that an innocent person wouldn’t have to invoke their Miranda rights or stop an interview before law enforcement was finished. And it’s a trap that many innocent people fall into. “I haven’t done anything wrong, so I don’t need a lawyer/I’ll answer the questions” turns into marathon interrogations leading to false confessions. It’s not an uncommon thing.

Innocent people can, do, and should invoke their Miranda rights or leave a voluntary interview.

So should criminals. Those rights are available to everybody.

And even though it is a major source of frustration for our heroes -and hell, even me as a viewer out for fictional justice and firmly on the side of our mythical good guys- I can’t help but get a little thrill whenever I see someone invoke their rights onscreen. Hell yeah, honey. Shake what the Fifth Amendment gave ya.

It’s not like someone won’t be totally waiving their rights and spilling their guts in a full blown confession in the last five minutes anyway.

Make It Fashion

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It’s no secret that one of the things that caught my interest when I started watching Hawaii Five-O was the fashion. Sure, our team is typically dressed in conservative suits, but their personal and undercover fits are a sight to behold. Not to mention that you’re dealing with an island vacation spot in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s. So many bright colors, bold patterns, and a broad assortment of people wearing them.

It’s a glorious time capsule.

In fact, it covers the end of one decade, the entirety of the next decade, and the very beginning of a third decade, which shows off the evolution of fashion during that particular time period. In that time span, dresses are going from short shifts to waist-defined and below the knees; the skirts go from minis to maxis; bell bottoms grow and waist-lines lower; even the suits change, with the widths of lapels and ties changing.

Not only that, this is Hawai’i fashion. In addition to what you might find on TV at the time, the standard styles and the styles indicative of certain groups like hippies, you also got island fashion, both residential and vacation. Yes, there are a lot of Aloha shirts and matching Aloha outfits and other threads common to vacationers and required of those working in the tourist trade. And the colors and patterns are glorious. But there’s also what the average, everyday people wear while working in the markets or on boats or doing their shopping. And there are muumuus. So many glorious muumuus.

That’s what’s so great about Rerun Fashion: it tells us so much.

Iris Apfel once talked about fashion as being a sort of record for history. You can tell what was going on in the world at the time by what people wore.

I feel that way about TV fashion as well (however I’m not nearly as cool or as well-dressed as Iris Apfel). We’re not only getting a glimpse into the fashion and styles of the time, which provides its own little insight into what the world was like, but we’re also getting that all filtered through the characters that are wearing it.

Obviously, Steve McGarrett is my favorite example of this.

While the Five-O team wore their conservative suits at work, they’re off-duty attire was much more relaxed for the most part, polos and Aloha shirts. And then there was Steve. Conservative, by-the-book Steve had an affinity for ascots, whites suits, pops of color, and some pretty fab hats. You never would have thought it from a man like him, but he was a bit of a fashionista. While some hard-nosed cops have a softer side off-duty, Steve McGarrett had a stylish side.

There’s something especially fab about characters you’re used to seeing in uniform in their street clothes. When the guys at Station 51 on Emergency! change into their street gear, you not only get a glimpse into their off-duty personalities, you also get a glimpse into their off-duty personalities as filtered through the ’70s. That’s why Johnny Gage is sporting these patchwork jeans. Of which I had a similar pair in high school in the ’90s when some ’70s styles had a resurgence.

I would wear them again today, no hesitation.

Speaking of out of uniform, given how infrequently everyone on Stargate Atlantis gets to don street clothes, it feels particularly monumental when they show up in those duds of the aughts.

If you want to look for character definition through wardrobe, look no further than The A-Team. Each character is defined by their clothes. Hannibal with his safari jacket, Face with his leather jacket, BA with his gold chains and perpetual lack of sleeves. A ball cap, bomber jacket, and pair of Chuck Taylors is Murdock. You can see that from space.

There was a similar situation on the ’60s Dragnet. Joe Friday and Bill Gannon wore the same suits every episode.

One other thing that I find fun to look out for is how the wardrobe department of shows not only dress characters for their personalities, but also how they coordinate the characters with each other.

One of my favorite things about CSI:Miami is that starting in the second season, wardrobe started doing a little color matchy-matchy between characters. Calleigh’s shirt matching Frank’s tie. Delko and Speed wearing similar colored shirts. By the fourth season, it was full-tilt coordination. It seems like at least one character in each episode is guaranteed to match Frank’s tie. And there are some episodes when there’s obviously a color theme. Everybody sporting a shade of one color. It’s glorious.

On the flip side of that, wardrobe on The Golden Girls did their best to make each woman stand out on their own. Not much in the way of matchy-matchy unless there was a specific reason. There’s one episode that sticks out in my mind in which Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche are sitting on the couch looking like a stoplight -red, yellow, green.

Just like the plots and slang, the fashion of reruns can either be dated or timeless, however it never fails to deliver some sort of statement.

Just pay closer attention to the threads.

Battle of the Sexes

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When I watched the first season of Baa Baa Black Sheep, I dreaded getting to the episode titled “W*A*S*P*s”. Right there in the episode description it said that “a battle of the sexes lands on the frontline”.

I loathe a battle of the sexes.

I make no secret of the fact that much of the rerun content I watch (and some of the current content) is “male-oriented”. It’s action stuff. It’s police stuff. Classic cis het guy fare. So there isn’t a lot of quality women content or input. And yes, some of it can be eye rollingly bad. But nothing quite irritates me like the battle of the sexes.

The context is typically of women doing man’s work, whatever the hell that is. I wasn’t raised with gendered work. I was raised with work and somebody better do it and don’t make me tell you twice.

Think of “St. Gilligan and the Dragon”, which I talked about in this post. The women go off on their own because the men are being pricks The women are able to hack it and the men are useless. The implication, of course, is that the men don’t know how to do things like cook and do laundry because it’s something women do and is therefore beneath them. Starving and stinking for their mancards.

Naturally, it’s played for laughs because the battle of the sexes is a frequently used theme in sitcoms.

One such episode that has always stuck with me is The Brady Bunch episode “The Liberation of Marcia Brady”. Basically, Marcia goes on the record that she thinks women can do anything men do and then Greg ends up goading her until she decides to prove herself by joining The Frontier Scouts. For the final initiation, Marcia has to use her Frontier Scout skills to navigate through the woods following a trail that Greg has left.

The twist? Greg has purposely made the trail as hard as possible to follow without breaking the rules. And to everyone’s surprise, Marcia succeeds.

Marcia’s initiation is a perfect example of how the patriarchy works. In order to prove that women can do anything men can do, Marcia actually had to do better than what the guys had to do because the boys were so threatened by the idea of a girl joining their little scouting group they had to actively sabotage her.

Something similar happens in many episodes of Barney Miller whenever there’s a female detective. I can remember it happening with Wentworth, Batista, and with the two officers in “Hot Dogs”. All of the women were seen as overly enthusiastic and aggressive in doing their jobs because it went right over the heads of their male counterparts that they had to be. They had to do everything the men did, but they had to do it more and they had to do it better -and in heels!- lest they be considered failures and ruin it for every other woman on the force.

There’s a similar vibe in the Emergency! episode “The Indirect Method”. Roy and Johnny are charged with training a female paramedic who is described as hard-nosed. Is it any wonder? The pressure is intense. She’s doing man’s work, after all.

As for the Baa Baa Black Sheep episode, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I didn’t hate it. The women were not only good at their job, but also serious about it in a way that was less about being as good as the men, and more about showing their passion for flying. Yeah, the guys tried to treat the ladies like they would any pretty face in the vicinity, but it turns out the women were more like them than they realized. Translation: our fellas got hoodwinked by them.

This battle of the sexes was a little more evenly matched. And while it did have it’s hang-ups and of course, the guys had to save the ladies (though, they didn’t really do anything that fighter escorts wouldn’t do for transport planes other than be a little mushy), at least the respect cultivated between the two groups was genuine and not based on arbitrary standards of excellence.

As a result, the episode got my respect, too.

Heteronormativity Is a Helluva Drug

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I didn’t expect to like the reboot of Magnum PI. I only gave the pilot a shot because I’d been watching the 1980 series and decided to compare and contrast. I already knew that Magnum was now Latino and Higgins was now a woman. I went into it thinking it’d be fine, but not for me, like most reboots.

The pilot was a fun ride. I gave it the three episode test (pilot establishes the show; second ep is the adjustments; third ep is the vibe) and ended up hooked.

My one hope for the show was that they wouldn’t default to hooking up Magnum and Higgins.

Well, it was good while it lasted and it lasted until early in the 2nd season. Once it became clear that the endgame is Magnum and Higgins are omg-meant-to-be (and that it’s apparently going to be played out in poorly executed fanfic tropes), it then became a countdown until I got fed up and quit watching. That lasted until half-way through the 4th season. I haven’t given up entirely but I am absolutely half-assing it and I don’t care about the show like I once did.

It’s a shame, but thems the breaks.

And there’s plenty of history behind the continuation of the heteronormative narrative that defaults opposite sex leads or lead/supporting into a romantic tension leading to a relationship.

Obviously, the most known example of this is Dave and Maddie on Moonlighting, a show that so depended on the will-they-or-won’t-they, that when they did, it pretty much cancelled the show (to be fair there were other behind-the-scenes issues that contributed to the show’s demise, too). Also, Agnes and Herb had the much better relationship.

Scarecrow and Mrs. King and Remington Steele drew from the same playbook. On Barney Miller, it played out over five episodes between Wojo and Wentworth before Linda Lavin left to be Alice.

In the case of shows like Tales of the Gold Monkey, it’s less of a will-they-or-won’t-they and more of a when-will-he-commit. Because there’s obviously something going on between Jake and Sarah (hell, they kiss in the pilot), but it’s a situationship that allows Jake to kiss other ladies depending on the plot. There’s a similar sort of set-up happening with Walter and Roxanne on Automan. Are they dating? Kinda, maybe, it depends.

Emergency! actually began with Dr. Kelly Brackett and Nurse Dixie McCall in a romantic relationship, which was dropped in later episodes without explanation (read: break-up). From that point on, Brackett and Dixie were friends and colleagues, caring for and respecting each other in both professional and platonic ways, showing that, hey, it could be done.

I’m not saying that it wasn’t. There were series that didn’t necessarily default to the romantic relationship. Della Street didn’t get involved with Perry Mason or Paul Drake (though Paul did nickname Della “Beautiful” and there was some joking that might be considered flirting). Likewise Britt Reid clearly cared about Miss Case and vice-versa, but there was nothing but boss-secretary friendship happening with The Green Hornet. Clearly, it could be done.

But there’s no denying that it could be a struggle. For most of Hunter‘s seven season run, Rick Hunter and Dee Dee McCall were partners and friends, a caring and satisfying platonic relationship that Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer were happy with. But as the story goes, the network and the fans wanted more. As a result, a Season 6 episode informed the audience that Hunter and McCall had once slept together, but it caused an issue with their work relationship.

It’s the default aspect of the hetereonormative narrative, the well-worn path of it, the perpetuation of the idea that the only chemistry that exists between opposite sexes is sexual and the only important relationships are romantic that really grates. Worse, it’s dull. And it’s dull because it’s expected. No other options are presented or considered.

Magnum PI had an opportunity to explore something beyond the default, to establish a couple of opposite sex platonic soulmates without some sort of caveat or exemption (like one or both of them being queer), to really dig into that kind of relationship and do something different.

Instead, it fell for the same quick and easy high that’s been dulling senses for decades.

It really is a helluva drug.

Policing Copaganda

/ Kiki Writes / Leave a comment

It’s no secret that one of my favorite TV genres is ‘70s cop shows. I don’t know why. You can say it’s because my father was a police officer for twenty-five years, but I think that has little to do with it considering very little of what I’ve seen on the screen reflected what he dealt with policing my small town in the middle of a cornfield.

But that could be why even though I love these shows, I never really thought about them accurately reflecting reality. Maybe because my dad would point out the inaccuracies in these shows. Maybe because as soon as I got my license, my dad drilled it into me that if I got pulled over not to allow the cop to search my car without a warrant. Maybe because my dad has always told me never talk to cops without a lawyer.

I’m sure that’s why I get all swoony when I see someone exercise their rights on these shows. That is like reality in that it doesn’t happen often. Most people don’t know them, let alone use them.

The point of these shows is entertainment, of course. Even Adam-12, which had episodes shown in police academies to illustrate certain situations because it was so accurate to uniformed officer life, had more hostage situations and shoot outs than even a cop in the busiest metropolitan area would encounter.

Action, drama, a witty one-liner or seven, and the good guys (usually) win. I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for it.

And it’s all, of course, fiction.

I think of it as the depiction of ideal policing and justice. It’s what we want it to be, what it’s supposed to be, what the people in power try to convince us that it is (when it’s absolutely not). The police are there to protect and serve, the justice system is fair, the good guys get the bad guys, and the bad guys get punished. It’s all make believe and I prefer to see it on the small screen. Sort of like my affinity for slasher movies. I prefer my violence to happen fictionally.

I blame Jack Webb for some of that. He was a devout believer in law enforcement and the justice system. The Los Angeles police department was wildly corrupt back in the long, long ago (save your jokes) and underwent a huge reform (I said save your jokes), which made an impression on Webb. While Dragnet and Adam-12 depicted a lot of the work detectives and uniformed officers do accurately, it was still idealized. A sanitized depiction of the job, the life, and justice. This is the way things work when everything works as it’s supposed to.

The police involved shootings on most of these cop shows is where this idealization is most evident. Adam-12 probably had the best technical depiction, though Hawaii Five-O had a thorough one as well with “And They Painted Daisies on His Coffin”. Even Joe Friday himself had to have his shooting of a burglary suspect investigated. And while they all present the idea that lethal force is harshly scrutinized and thoroughly investigated, these episodes are also constructed to insure the audience’s maximum sympathy to our protagonist cops. Of course, every shooting is always justified.

It’s been said that cops (including my father) felt that Barney Miller is probably the most accurate and realistic when it comes to the depiction of law enforcement. Maybe because it was a comedy it had no trouble depicting some of the mundane realities of police work: the paperwork, the bureaucracy, the budgets, the lack of manpower, the limitations and inadequacy of the law and the justice system. The 12th precinct wasn’t dealing with non-stop homicides like most cop shows. They were dealing with what cops actually deal with the most: petty shit. The show might be a little too honest to be pure copaganda, but it still does its part, if only in a ‘not all cops” kind of way.

The ideal depiction of police and justice continues today.

According to this article, police procedurals today distort the view of how policing and the justice system actually work. These shows don’t accurately reflect the imbalances in the justice system, the abuse of power by the police, the inherent racism, white supremacy, and wealth-bias that’s integral to the system.

And if you watch enough reruns of cop shows, particularly from the ‘70s, you can see how that groundwork was laid. It’s easy to forgive and/or overlook our protagonists playing fast and loose with the law and people’s rights because they’re the good guys.

After all, they’ll tell you that themselves.

The Addict’s Morality Tale

/ Kiki Writes / Leave a comment

Cautionary tales and morality tales have evolved from stories and plays to television and movies. Makes sense. Go where the people are. And in theory, the tales themselves should also evolve to fit the current times. However, sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes, they stagnate.

When it comes to depictions of drug use and addiction on TV, it can be argued that there has been progress. Addiction is recognized now as a complicated disorder rather than just a conscious bad choice. There are shows out there willing to depict the complexities of addiction now, and even some reruns that took to tackling the topic with the humanity and understanding it deserves.

However, that hasn’t always been -and isn’t always- the case. There’s still a certain stigma around addiction, a residue left behind by the old thinking of previous times, much of which was propagated by television back in the day.

A lot of these episodes were presented as cautionary tales. Drugs are bad and if you do drugs, bad things will happen to you. Over the years, these cautionary tales became morality tales, with only one possible redemption for the addict.

Death.

Obviously, overdose or some other death by drug-induced misadventure would be the ultimate bad thing that could happen. But it also became the only possible outcome to totally free a person struggling with addiction from that fight. Rehab is nice, but that whole relapse thing…not the nice neat ending one requires in 30 to 60 minutes of television.

For example, in the Season 3 Hawaii Five-O Episode “Trouble in Mind”, there’s some tainted heroin going around the islands and it’s believed that pianist Mike Martin is in the cross hairs. He’s been picked up for heroin before and did some time in rehab. However, it’s later revealed that Mike took the fall for his love, singer Eadie Jordan. She’s got the problem.

Eadie isn’t depicted like the typical addicts that you’d see on TV (and even on the show). She’s not some hippie looking for a high or some stupid kid who thinks drugs are fine and they’re immortal. It’s implied that it’s her job in show business that’s gotten her hooked and she functions quite well as an addict. Steve never suspected her being a heroin user until it was too late.

The depiction of Eadie’s addiction as something sinister. One lapse in judgment condemns an otherwise good person. And even though Mike is trying to help her quit, she still needs it just to keep the edge off of the withdrawal, which the episode doesn’t shy away from depicting.

But this is an addict’s morality tale and as much as we like Eadie, and as much as we want Steve to save the day, there’s only one way this ends.

Perhaps an even more tragic example is that of the story arc of Lt. Aiden Ford on Stargate: Atlantis. During the three-part Season 1 finale/Season 2 opener “The Siege”, Lt. Ford nearly dies while battling a Wraith. The Wraith attempts to feed on Ford just before they plunge into the icy ocean waters. The two of them are recovered in a dormant state with the Wraith still attached to Ford. Dr. Beckett is able to successfully separate them and save Ford, but unfortunately, Ford has received a massive dose of a Wraith enzyme that strengthens their victims so they don’t die too quickly during the feeding.

As a result, Ford becomes addicted to the enzyme. Similar to a person becoming addicted to pain killers after a horrific accident, Ford had no say in this suddenly being thrust upon him. This wasn’t a conscious choice. However, like an addict in denial, Ford is convinced that the enzyme is soldier’s little helper.

The result is him abandoning his friends and his life on Atlantis (and any life and family he might have on Earth). Obviously, the Atlantis crew go looking for him in an attempt to get him help, but in the end Ford escapes. He falls in with (or creates) a group of fellow enzyme addicts and their constant need of the enzyme leads them to riskier and riskier plots, endangering his old friends, which ultimately leads to his downfall, after a brief glimpse at redemption.

Given that this arc played out in the mid-2000’s, it would have been much more interesting to see Ford’s arc resolve in a different way, allowing him to come to terms with his addiction and get the help he needed. But I suppose, there’s fewer explosions in that.

As you may have noticed, the two examples I cited involve people of color portraying the addicts. I don’t think it’s necessarily a coincidence as race plays a part in the stigma of addiction and the portrayal of it. After all, the crack epidemic resulted in a lot of people going to prison and the opioid epidemic generated a lot of discussion about rehab and the nature of addiction. That wasn’t just because we learned something about addiction in the ensuing years.

However, being white doesn’t always save you from the inevitable fate of an addict in TV land. Just think of “Blue Boy” in “The LSD Story” episode of Dragnet.

I have no problem accurately portraying the struggles of addiction. Overdosing or relapsing after rehab is a very real danger. But death is not the only redemption available to an addict.

Our morality tales should reflect that.