BTW, I’m sure non-Britishers will like the quaintness of this…
On the UK equivalent show, which always intersperses the voyeurism with sanctimonious road safety crap, the phrase “…in JAIL!” is replaced with “…at her Majesty’s pleasure.”
Isn’t being forced to pleasure her Majesty kind of a stiff (no pun intended) penalty for a traffic violation?
You say this as if it were a bad thing … I love this show! Turn off brain and laugh at the Darwin award wannabes.
LOL!!
God, I laughed my ass of for 5 minutes after reading this! Funny stuff!
They do this all the time, and not just for helicopter pilot voice-overs. Apparently we’re to believe that the police deploy a cop to all incidents to give a live radio commentary for anyone who has difficulty following what is happening. I call him … Commentary-Cop! Commentary-Cop knows all the impressive cop-codes, but will always repeat what they mean. Commentary-Cop adds unhelpful emotive exclamations if tension is flagging. Commentary-Cop sees all and knows all, no matter where he’s situated, and declares the incident wrapped up within a second of the guilty party being run to ground.
Also amusing is the footage where it’s pretty apparent that the bad guys are getting away, but the Sheriff’s voice-over assures us that these guys were running … but they couldn’t hide. They were running… all the way to jail. Yeah, right, because you’d never dream of using exciting footage where the bad guys escape and then lie about it.
You’re right, it is all about the footage. And that’s why i draw a firm distinction between Worlds’s Wildest Police Videos and Cops.
I literally cannot watch Cops, beause the temptation to throw something through my television screen is too strong. About 80 percent of Cops episodes seem to involve police busting people for minor drug offenses or prostitution, and i’m afraid that these scenarios generally just make me feel sorry for the “perps,” and make the cops looks like a bunch of self-righteous, overbearing, power-hungry assholes.
It’s a shame, because i know that many (most?) police are good people doing a very tough job. Hell, my step-father’s a retired cop. And i also know that many cops themselves get sick of rounding up small-time drug users and hookers.
World’s Wildest Police Videos, on the other hand, generally shows incidents involving pretty hard-core criminals and/or people who present a clear danger to themselves and the public. If you can get past Bunnel’s hilarious commentary, there’s some real heroism in that show sometimes.
I remember a scene where a bunch of cop cars were chasing a woman who was driving wildly around the streets. It was dark and the roads were icy. After a long chase, the woman ended up pulling into a driveway and it looked like everything was over. Then, she jumped out of the car and held both hands in front of her as if she were aiming a pistol, and she had something small and black in her hands.
In the dark, there was no way the cops could tell whether or not she actually had a gun. I wouldn’t have blamed them for blowing her away right there, but they retreated, took the time to make sure that the woman only had a small purse in her hand, and then they arrested her.
This sort of thing has happened plenty of times on that show, and seeing cops who are so reluctant to take a life, even in cases of extreme danger to themselves, is heartening, and is a useful corrective to the trigger-happy killers in incidents like the Amadou Diallo case.
Reason number 533 NOT to have a gun.
Diallo did not have a gun either, and still got shot – that’s why this last chase was a good example of the police going out of their way to avoid that sort of mistake.
After having listened to small and large city police on my scanner, I’d have to say that what is shown on Cops is somewhat representative of a typical day. There just aren’t many shoot-outs, chases or other excitement. A lot of calls are for domestic problems, drunk/drugged stupidity, various types of theft or disputes. I’ve only heard a handful of chases, the most memorable was a kid who shot an officer in a small town, stole the police car and drove about 60 miles into Indianapolis in about 40 minutes before he killed himself.
Officers are also indirectly affected by political promises to “crack down on [drugs, crime, gangs, etc]” and I’m quite sure that if these shows are edited to show only exciting/successful scenes, they are also edited to show that officers are meeting our expectations by fighting drugs, crime, gangs, etc.
Vlad/Igor
Dear Sweet Og! wipes tears of mirth from his eyes
I think I may just have to make that a sig, if you don’t mind…
JR, I think he meant that the cops in NZ don’t regularly carry guns.
Aha! So THAT explains the sorry downward spiral of Michael Moore “documentaries”! I knew there had to be an explanation somewhere!
I still enjoy the show despite the commentary and sound effects.
The worst part about the faked helicopter voice-over is that the guy CLEARLY foreshadows what’s about to happen.
“…and now the suspect is driving thorugh heavy urban traffic! Pedestrians better stay out of the crosswalks! OH NO! There’s a pedestrian in the crosswalk!!” (cue squealing brakes)
“…this guy is still running from the cops at a high rate of speed. But he’s approaching an overpass! I hope he doesn’t let his car veer off too far to the right, otherwise he’ll miss the overpass and plunge his 1980 Camero into a dangerous, tree-lined ravine! OH NO!” (cue viewer laughter)
Actually I think you meant:
[Futurama]
Fry: I perfer my shows in the genre “World’s Blankiest Blank.”
Fox Network Guy: Well, she is wearing the world’s shortiest skirt.
[/Futurama]
Argh. City Confidential. Self-parodying leering, boozy narration. Pointless digression for local colour. Mind-bogglingly forced similes involving local sports teams. “Eleven-year-old Suzie Smith enjoyed her cake and ice cream. Little did she know that before the night was over, her blood would be running faster than the Denton Dinosaurs’ star quarterback.”
Ick.
Actually, the worst part is that the producers think we, the viewing public, are so dumb that we won’t notice that, no matter whether the chase is in Alaska or Georgia, the helicopter commentator is always the same dude, with the exact same voice. That guy sure gets around a lot.
The show I want to see again is When Cars Attack, featuring Lt. Munch.
That’s like what, 7 shows he is in?
Anyone who expects intellectual content above the comprehension level of planaria from one of these shows has no intelligence to insult. 
Doesn’t mean seeing a Camaro going airborne into a tractor-trailer full of soda pop isn’t fun, though.
On the subject of “Cops,” does anybody think HBO or Showtime could get any mileage from acquiring older episodes of the show and airing them without the profanity-bleeps and nudity-blurs? No? Just me? Okay then.
Indeed. Next thing you know they’re going to start bad-mouthing MXC!
I can’t watch that stupid show. The outcome is rigged, I’m pretty sure. And they’d better get better translators, because I don’t think it’s very accurate.
In my head, Everygirl is hot, though.