No real cop, male or female, ever willingly submits to medical or psychological care, no matter what trauma they’ve been through. Shot? No big deal. Multiple times? Less than inconsequential. Just killed a bunch of people? That’s what I signed on for. Partner killed? Don’t need the doc or a shrink, but I’m gonna spend the rest of the season (or maybe all of whatever remaining seasons the TV gods grant me) hunting down his/her killer.
I remember MAD Magazine’s obituary for Dick Tracy. He died of lead poisoning after taking a bullet in the shoulder for the umpteenth time.
Seems like I’ve ssen a similar trope, in cop shows or elsewhere, in which a hypnotist is brought in to recover important memories in a witness to something. It always seems to work like a charm, with the person who couldn’t previously remember details transported back in their mind to when it happened, and are able to see and recall fine, vivid details.
I don’t think it works quite that well in real life, and is also highly unreliable. I’ve heard it’s easy to create false memories that way as well, by asking questions that seem innocent or neutral but plant suggestions in the hypnotized.
One of my high school teachers said his wife once was trying to dump crumbs of tobacco out of her purses when she ran out of cigs one night.
I remember when my dad, a four-pack-a-day man, tried to quit smoking after ten-year-old me nagged him into it.
It didn’t last long. He claimed he started again because he was putting on weight, but he really began to shake like a leaf on a tree without his regular nicotine fix.
I’ve never understood why straight male cops are so opposed to seeing “the shrink,” since it will inevitably be an extremely attractive woman who will give him both an emotional catharsis and some great sex.
This is actually a real thing. For wildlife and the humans who shoot them to eat.
Oh God, that scene in the fabulous movie Dead Again that finally cures Kenneth Branagh’s character of his ciggie habit. 
Looking for a sure-fire way to ensure that your kids never pick up a cigarette? Just sit them down and watch Dead Again. Kenneth Branagh’s 1991 thriller depicts the horror of smoking in memorable fashion with a scene towards the end of the film where private eye Mike Church (Branagh) meets with former reporter Gray Baker (Andy Garcia). As a young newshound in the 1940s, Baker used to smoke like a chimney and the scars are still with him, literally, now that he’s an old man. At some point in the ensuing decades, Gray’s habit resulted in a serious case of throat cancer that required surgical intervention. But he isn’t going to let a little thing like that get in the way of enjoying a good smoke every now and then. As Mike watches, horrified, Gray sticks a cigarette directly into the tracheal tube at the base of his neck and takes a puff.
If just reading that makes you cringe, trust us — it’s twice as gross onscreen.
I remember that scene. IIRC, Gray then says something like “You wanna puff?” and Mike, thoroughly sickened, replies “No, thanks. I just quit.”
My dad eventually died a couple of months after his 79th birthday. Not from lung ailments (though he’d already had part of one lung removed a few years before), but from metastasizing bone cancer after he’d taken a nasty fall. (His ribs were broken and never knit properly.) However, the strongest memories I have from the last time I saw him are ones in which he always has a box of Kleenex to cough up in and a large grocery bag to discard the tissues filled with phlegm.
The following seems to include a lot of learning. (I didn’t realize all the McBain outtakes in early seasons could be reassembled to form a complete movie!)
When McBain’s foster parents were murdered, Special Agent [Dexter Scoey] took charge of the young McBain, channeling his rage, instructing him in the arts of war, and having clothes custom fitted one size too small. Scoey’s murder left McBain without a friend in the world. Seeking revenge, McBain lets nothing obstruct his pursuit of justice, not Senator Mendoza, not the law, not even innocent bystanders.
McBain is a former cop. He once stumbled upon evidence that implicated Mendoza, a respected senator, as the leader of an international drug cartel. While investigating, he ran Mendoza’s limo off a cliff, snapped the necks of three of his bodyguards and drove a bus through his front door. For these actions McBain was fired by his [captain] who refused to hear his side of the story. McBain punched the captain through a window in retaliation. This is where McBain’s life starts going upside down.
Sometime afterwards McBain, alongside his old partner and best friend Scoey, began their own investigation. One evening at Sloppy Joe’s diner, Scoey told McBain about his imminent retirement, his daughter Suzie’s upcoming college graduation, and his plans for him and his wife to sail around the world in their newly christened boat, “The Live-4-Ever”, beginning after he and McBain “nail Mendoza”. Suddenly the [waiter], actually a hitman hired by Mendoza, pulled a gun and started shooting. Scoey found himself in front of McBain unintentionally and was mortally wounded. McBain attempted to stop the assassin, but he managed to get away by grabbing a motorcycle from behind the counter and crashing through a window. Scoey died in McBain’s arms after asking McBain to take down Mendoza for him. This makes McBain become more determined than ever to put an end to [Mendoza]'s reign of terror.
After completing a series of impossible tasks, McBain gets his job as a policeman back. The first thing he does is to try and avenge Scoey. However, his regulated gun is far too small for him to use, so he decides to use a much bigger gun. He is then reprimanded by the captain about the size of his gun being against the manual. McBain merely responds by using his gun to shoot and blow away the Police Manual exclaiming “Bye book!” He then tries to hunt down Mendoza, with his regulated gun. At some point McBain meets and falls for McBabe, a sexy female who becomes his accomplice.
Eventually, McBain comes face to face with Mendoza in an alley. Mendoza proceeds to try and place a live Cobra on him, only for McBain to punch the cobra off. Mendoza manages to escape McBain’s wrath in this instance. Continuing on his hunt for Mendoza. He hears about a meeting that will be attended by Mendoza. McBain ambushes Mendoza during the meeting by dramatically bursting out of an ice statue on the dining table with the one-liner “ice to see you!” However, Mendoza eludes capture by offering McBain a drugged salmon puff.
Mendoza’s men are instructed to dispose of the unconscious McBain, but somehow, they fail. McBain decides to finally storm Mendoza’s headquarters atop a skyscraper. He interrupts another meeting, kills Mendoza’s men, and hurls Mendoza out of a window onto a parked gas tanker which explodes on impact, finishing Mendoza once and for all. McBain then decides to sleep with McBabe.
After killing [Senator Mendoza], McBain leaves the police force to become a transport plane pilot. However, McBain now has a new evil to fight Commie-Nazis. In one incident he is helping to deliver UNICEF-collected pennies to children, when he is suddenly attacked by a squadron of Commie-Nazis. In an attempt to save the pennies a literally-on fire McBain leaps onto one of the Commie-Nazi jet fighters and kills the pilot. In another mission McBain kills the president: Ross Perot.
Later, McBain quits Transport-Piloting and joins a chat show were he is interviewed on his life as a policeman and a transport-pilot. The show however fails and McBain goes in to comedy. He performs stand-up comedy, standing against a brick wall, saying bad jokes to an audience. When one of them criticized him, he killed him with various weapons, including machine guns and a grenade. McBain then proceeded to continue to do this to anyone else that criticized him. McBain’s career as a comedian didn’t last very long since he was so bad and was killing the audience.
After quitting comedy McBain joins the secret service. There he gets a new sidekick. In one of his missions McBain had to go undercover as a fat person in Newark, New Jersey. There he was reunited with McBabe. However, she was already married. Later on, McBain had an affair with her. They then went on a holiday together.
You have to wait at least 24 hours before you can file a missing persons report.
“Time for another meeting—in bed!”
“Oh, McBain…!”
… And you’ll be told “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. He/she’s probably just run away and will come back in a few days.”
I love that movie. Branagh is mostly pretty restrained which helps. Derek Jacobi got the scenery chewing duties in that one.
My dad died at 59 – lung cancer, emphesyma, heart disease. The trifecta. He kept smoking even after one lung had been removed.
Yeah, more or less it is pseudoscience. Bogus.
You and I have a lot in common! This is one of my favorite movies.
Kenneth Branagh is the only Brit who can do an American accent at all.
I love that Derek’s character uses hypnotism in the service of his antiques business. 
Yes! There’s lot of humor in this movie which is partly why it works for me. I love movies about old L.A., too.
Oh, and Robin Williams’s cameo is pretty nifty, too.
Yes-- Robin Williams was fantastic. That moment at the end when they go into Emma Thompson’s apartment and you see scissors everywhere! EEK! I think I’m going to need to watch that again soon (for the 10th or so time).
All information regarding possible witnesses is now texted to detectives instead of being given to them verbally, even if they are in the presence of the person giving them the information. This saves them from having to write it down in the notebooks which they no longer carry.
Did Smith-Jones throw his badge on the desk in disdain?
My dad, a heavy smoker and a power drinker, died of heart disease at age 50. And by heart disease, the pathologist who performed the post mortem informed my mother (long since divorced from him) that the heart literally disintegrated as he was removing it to weigh.
But I think we hijacked this thread enough.
Has anyone made a mention of the uncanny accuracy a cop has with a snub-nosed revolver, even when a bad guy is going full tilt with an Uzi fifty yards away?