How to bore me in thirty seconds flat

[swan_tower]

I needed to be doing some random stuff on the computer this morning, so on a whim, I put on the first episode of Rizzoli & Isles, which is Yet Another Police Procedural, though with two female leads.

First thing I see: a bound and terrified woman, in the clutches of an unknown villain.

Which led me to ask on Twitter, What percentage of police procedurals open their pilot ep with a woman chased, crying, screaming, or dead?

Because seriously — at this point, that is the single most boring way I can think of to open your show. Also problematic and disturbing, but even if you don’t care about those things, maybe you care about it being utterly predictable. There is nothing fresh or new about having the first minute of your police procedural episode show us somebody (usually a woman) being victimized. I said on Twitter, and I meant it, that I would rather see your protagonist file papers. I might decide in hindsight that the paper-filing was also boring . . . but in the moment, I’d be sitting up and wondering, why am I seeing this? Are the papers important? Or something about how the protag is approaching them? Because it isn’t a thing I’ve seen a million times before.

The only thing that brief clip of the victim gives us is (usually) a voyeuristic experience of their victimization. They don’t make the victim a person, an individual we get to know and care about. They rarely even give us meaningful information about the crime, except “this person died from a gunshot/strangulation/burning alive/whatever” — which is info we could easily get later in the episode, through the investigation.

There are exceptions, on a show or individual ep level. But the overwhelming pattern is: here’s some violence for violence’s sake, before we get to the actual characters and the actual story.

I decided last year that I was done with the genre of “blood, tits, and scowling.” I think I’m done with police procedurals, too. I won’t swear I’ll never watch another one, but they’ve just lost all their flavor for me, because I’ve seen so many. And because I am so very, very tired with those predictable openings.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to remember if Flashpoint usually opens that way or not. I've loved it for starting at rhe moment of tense decision and back tracking where we get to know the victims and villains as well as our heroes.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like it when the shows make some effort to personalize the victims, as more than just a set of facts.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's on my shortlist on why I stop watching procedurals (the other one is child abuse or gratuitous children's deaths, which basically means I never get to watch much beyond cozies/period pieces like Miss Fisher or Grantchester. I'd add badly handled race to it, but then I'd have to stop watching 99% of stuff).

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It isn't a dealbreaker for me in its own right, but after a while, I've had more than my recommended daily allowance, y'know?

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I watched the first season of Rizzoli & Isles and kept waiting for it to get better. It didn't. The writers kept focusing more and more on R & I's family, rather than on the work they were doing. Deadly dull.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Heh. Whereas for me, that actually makes me think I might keep watching. Because after a while, the work smears indistinguishably into the plots I've seen on a dozen other procedurals, while the family stuff means character, and that's what I care about the most.

[carbonel]

I've been watching the show (almost to Season 4) and reading the books. They're vastly different. In the TV show, the dysfunctional family stuff is played for laughs, and the family supports each other (except for the disappearing father). In the books, Rizzoli is totally dismissed because she's the girl -- and there's no little-brother-who's-a-cop.

I keep watching the TV show despite its flaws because a) serious Bechdel pass, b) I'm a sucker for cop shows, and c) I've already watched Scott & Bailey twice, and Prime Suspect was sufficiently grim that once was enough.

I'd welcome other suggestions, though.