Yes, i agree on both counts. And I hate the “and this time it’s personal” thing. Once it gets personal,you’re off the case.
That, indeed- is why I gave up. The first season with Ted Danson was great, they kept it light and his personal life off screen and a little mysterious. But then- “and this time, it’s personal!”:rolleyes::mad:
That declaration was good evidence of how little “personal life” content L&O had, even that late in the show’s run. (In that the remark caused a sensation; we had been given no clue in the years preceding.)
I don’t tend to read or watch lots of detective shows, and so my responses might all be disqualified for not exactly fitting the genre–but I find that the ones I like are the ones with lots of personal life details. My three examples are from books, film, and TV:
Books: The Dresden Files are about a Chicago detective who’s also a wizard. They’re true mysteries, inasmuch as every book has a twist near the end that Harry Dresden just barely solves in time. And they’re very heavy on his personal life. I really enjoy them.
TV: Okay, it’s a twofer: Justified and The Wire are my favorite shows with detectives. Justified isn’t technically a detective, but he spends a lot of time solving crimes, so I think he counts. And half the folks on The Wire are detectives. Again, their personal lives are very interesting to me.
Film: This is the first example I thought of. Heat is my favorite cops-and-robbers movie, due to the character of the detective. On the job, he’s a genius. Off the job, he’s a mess. I love that combination, and I think his character works so much better because you see what a failure of a husband he is.
None of these are strictly in the mystery genre, however. And it’s making me wonder if my general apathy toward the genre might be due to how little detectives’ personal lives make it into lots of genre fiction there.
I think this just made me realize something: It’s not the detectives’/main characters’ personal lives that I mind (I love The Dresden Files, for example)–it’s their romantic lives. A little of that is fine, but when their SOs start getting threatened/kidnapped/messed with/used against them, I start getting annoyed. You can get away with this maybe once in series. After that, find another plot.
The thing about Dresden is that there’s very little separation between his professional and personal life - everyone he loves, hangs out with, has sex with or plays D&D with is in “the business” in one way or another. He isn’t really close with any “civilians”.
Oh, yeah. First, there’s the women in refrigerators trope, which I didn’t even know of until I watched this video and now can’t stop seeing. And second, it’s a hackneyed cliched plot hook: find a more original way to get the protagonist to care about a case, please! And third, the more it happens to a single character, the less plausible it becomes.
Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series spent a fair amount of time on the detectives’ personal problems, at least the main characters like Carella.
I couldn’t tolerate Sue Grafton’s novels because the characters spent so much damn time gabbing over lunch and not much ever happened.
On the hardly anything personal side, the Continental Op was possibly the most mysterious. He just went about his business, dodging bullets and adding to the rising body count all around him.