I loved Helen Mirren’s British Prime Suspect and this is very different. But I kinda like it.
I enjoy Maria Bello’s character in the way that she’s a character and snarky and herself. It’s not getting good ratings.
Does anyone else enjoy it?
No, and I can’t even take the endless promos for it. Not appealing at all. The promos almost seem like those fake “overly dramatic” promos they do on skit television shows.
No, it’s such an outdated concept. Law and Order has been employing plenty of female detectives since the early 90s, and THEY didn’t get scrutinized. Then again, they didn’t wear stupid hats either.
previews looked so unappealing I didn’t bother to watch either.
I watched for about a minute and a half before turning off. I’m too fond of the Helen Mirren character to give another an even break.
I liked her character and thought the interactions (like deputizing the desk clerk) could make it work but the good old boys keeping her down thing is just too thin and off-putting. It isn’t set in the late 70’s/early 80’s so lose that crap. But keep the hat, it works.
I like it. I am a female in a very man-heavy workplace and it’s not that far-fetched.
I’m a bit dubious about her solving cases despite the indifference (if not outright interference) from her sexist co-workers. That’ll get old real fast.
Plus the accommodations she’s making for her live-in boyfriend’s anal-retentive ex-wife are tiresome. The ex is turning into a modern Frank Burns - a character present only to be ridiculed and shot down by the lead. I’d find it refreshing if at some point Timoney said “Y’know, screw this. I don’t care if your kid wants to drink all the bleach in the house or not. I’ve got cases to solve and I’m sick of babysitting any of you idiots.” A career-minded woman who has no children of her own could easily (and plausibly, and entertainingly) rebel at the hassles of having pseudo-parenthood forced on her with the straitjacket of a million pesky paranoid “rules”. I’d like to see her tell her boyfriend to grow a pair and deal with his ex “because I’m getting sick of having to do it for you.”
I’ve seen two episodes, and if the third reinforces these patterns, I guess I’m done.
I like it. I even like the schtick with the hovering ex-wife.
I won’t like it if she continues to be so much more intuitive than the other detectives. I get that she has to show them up a couple times, to get them to take her seriously. But now that she’s done that, the writers can let up.
The second episode with the reformed (?) pedophile was predictable but interesting. I’ll keep watching, if I can remember when it’s on.
Now that you mention it, I was trying to think of a TV drama where the once-convicted (and now suspected in a new crime) pedophile doesn’t have one of the following fates:
a. Convicted of the new crime, even under dubious legal theories and machinations.
b. Dead, by his own hand or someone else’s, even if innocent of the recent crime.
c. Released on technicality while wearing a crooked smile, meant to enrage the audience with how screwed up "the system is (and then possibly gunned down on the courthouse steps - see (b) )
Offhand I can only think of one Law & Order episode from the Paul Sorvino years in which one ex-con pedophile gets browbeaten through most of the episode to confess to a murder, to abruptly disappear when another suspect, the right one, gets arrested.
The stock pedophile character makes such an easy target, I’d almost find it refreshing to see one who knows his rights and thus refuses to talk to police, to let them “look around” or take him “down to the station” without a warrant, etc.
This one was almost at that point. He was neither defensive nor obsequious, sorta wavered between, as if he wasn’t sure of himself. “I didn’t do this particular crime but in the right circumstances, maybe I would.”
I haven’t seen all the pedos on TV but this one had more dimension than most, not cardboard at all. I liked what he said about his internet research. Something about “If you have a disease like cancer, you want to learn as much as you can about it.” Is he rationalizing or what?
Not sure how I feel about Bello not telling Trixie the truth about him. It raises some good questions about second chances and putting children at risk.
I chuckled at Acevedo having to see a shrink because he’d been bested by a pedophile.
I like it quite a bit. I hope it’s not just murder-of-the-week and they can get some ongoing storylines in, but the look and feel of the show is good.
It’s all right. If it can avoid the excessive shock & gore that turned me off to shows like Southland and Profiler, I may stick with it.
Of course, I am one of that tiny minority of US tv watchers who likes Maria Bello in general.
Even though the MCP cop attitudes seem time warped, I’m enjoying the show. Mostly I like the actress, and that the character is not all one way. She’s tough with her colleagues, but is willing to put up with a lot of nit-picking shit from boyfriend’s ex, clearly out of love for him and understanding how much having his son visit matters to him. Though I also like the way she ‘fights back’ against said ex-wife.
This show, and Revenge, are the only two of the new shows I sampled that I enjoyed enough to watch the second episode.
This one has charactaristics of the “Saving Grace” series, and the boyfriend was even "Grace’s boyfriend. But, that said, it was well done.
Lose the hat.
I own that same hat, but I don’t look nearly as good in it.
Overall, I like the show, and I am a big fan of Helen Mirren in the original. They seem to be successful in Americanizing it without parodying it. I don’t watch a lot of other detective shows, so maybe I am not as jaded on the plots, but I can believe in the sexism in the police department, and even the nasty ex-wife. It sort of makes sense to me that the boyfriend would go from one extreme character type to another, from the obsessively controlling ex who is using their child as a way to control and punish her ex and his new squeeze, to the obsessed-with-her-job lead character who is using her job as a way to validate herself in her own eyes.
I especially like the plot point where they were staking out the wrong house. Millions of special SWAT units and cop cars and everything, and then this major screw-up. Oops.
I hope the show lasts. I haven’t found a show I want to watch regularly for a long while.
Regards,
Shodan
Didn’t care for this week’s crime plot – the villain was too obvious and it seemed that there were some holes in the detective work, although I suppose some investigation might have been done that we didn’t see. Like checking with that youth center where the guy worked, to see if he’d had relationships with other young women. Didn’t like that Bello got a confession without a Miranda warning, or that the fake ultrasound worked. The male detectives falling all over the pretty detective was too broadly done. And the luminol face in the storage facility? Really? A smashed bloody face would look like that?
Liked that Bello didn’t do something stupid when the bar was robbed, and liked the three detectives testing their theory about the baddie’s alibi – the foot race.
It’s OK; but not great. I really want to like it. I agree with Auntie Pam on almost everything; The ‘face’ reminded me of Forrest Gump where he inadvertently creates the “have a nice day” t shirt.
I like that it’s not all-guys-hate-the-girl-detective. It’s now mostly only one detective that has a problem with her. The guys falling all over the ‘other’ woman detective was a bit much. I could see them all being friendly; but that was a little ridiculous.
I didn’t even think about Miranda on the confession scene. I just don’t buy a cold calculated murderer ever confessing. But even then, that was a small thing.
He over-calculated, didn’t he? I think that’s what pinged Jane’s radar. The convenient text, which he’d saved, and offering to let them search his home and office, before they even asked. He was way too accommodating.
Figured out where I saw the one detective who still doesn’t like Jane. He was in the first episode of The Wire, the detective who’d arrested Dee and whose case went south while he was arguing on the phone about lumber for his deck. I’m still waiting for him to put a phone in his crotch.