| Welcome! It was the week when Netflix signed a huge deal with Sony Pictures, in case you were afraid Netflix wasn't powerful enough. It was the week when people kept trying to make you know what an NFT is. And was the week of the GLAAD Media Awards. |
Opening Argument: A Year Without Cop Shows |
I don't remember exactly when last year I stopped watching police shows. It was probably June? I had long been a fan of procedurals, spending a lot of time immersed in the Law & Order universe, to the point where I had made my 2020 pop-culture resolution to stop blowing hours at a time watching that stuff. Not, at that time, because of the material. Just because of the time it was occupying.
But amid protests and reporting about police violence, people reiterated an argument I'd known was true but not acted on until then: that the way police dramas show police work centers their needs and their fears and their fundamental goodness (most of the time), rather than paying much attention to the needs of the communities where they work or, more important, the harm that they can do to those communities. (This piece by Kathryn Van Arendonk in Vulture is one I remember reading.)
So I stopped. I stopped watching police procedurals, but comedies too -- Brooklyn Nine-Nine had always been one of my go-to relaxation binge shows, and I just decided to drop it. Recently, though, I went back to the L&O world in anticipation of Law & Order: Organized Crime, which brought back Chris Meloni's Elliot Stabler, who left SVU ten years ago and hasn't been seen since. The reunion of Stabler and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) was much anticipated by fans, myself included. And it seemed like something I might want to cover as a critic. So I waded back in.
It was interesting how, after a break, I saw so many devices right away that, even if procedurals are determined to go on with the basic police narratives they're used to, they could stop doing tomorrow and they'd barely miss them -- but they'd at least be a step in the right direction. Here are the first three I thought of. - Police threatening to call immigration as leverage. Either immigration status is important or it isn't, but making ICE a go-to threat for vulnerable people is an attempt to force cooperation based on that very vulnerability, and it also scares communities into not calling the police.
- Police using sexual assault in prison as a threat, or the prevention of it as a reward. If you had a nickel for every time somebody on SVU told someone they were questioning that if they didn't cooperate, they'd wind up in prison where they'd be sexually assaulted, you'd have a lot of nickels. In fact, in the premiere episode of Organized Crime, Stabler and another law enforcement officer teased an incarcerated person about being assaulted, and about how they could potentially help him avoid it if he cooperated. For a detective who has spent his entire career investigating sexual violence, this is an absurd blind spot that makes his so-called dedication to victims a joke.
- Police threatening people with extrajudicial execution. This might not seem immediately familiar, but here's the scenario: A person is brought in for questioning and doesn't want to cooperate because they fear reprisals from Powerful Bad People who will literally kill them. The detective says if they don't want to cooperate, that's fine -- they'll just be released in a way that will wrongly create the impression that they cooperated. And, goes the implied threat, they'll be killed anyway. This happens distressingly regularly, and it amounts to a law enforcement officer saying "If you do not cooperate with me, I will have you killed."
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| I point out these three patterns not to suggest that putting a stop to them would fix the problems of cop shows, but only to stress that it's not that hard to peel away some of the most abusive tactics that are attributed to "good" cops on television. So if you keep seeing these things, you're seeing shows that aren't even making the slightest effort to listen to arguments I am far from the first person to make. |
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| Take a moment to read about comedy writer Anne Beatts, one of the original staff members of Saturday Night Live and later the creator of Square Pegs, the 1982 show that introduced audiences to a young Sarah Jessica Parker. She passed away this week, leaving quite a legacy.
Tatiana Siegel contributed to what is hopefully an ongoing discussion of, among other things, how Hollywood treats people with very little power in a disturbing and lengthy piece about producer Scott Rudin in The Hollywood Reporter.
Speaking of Saturday Night Live, I really enjoyed the sketch featuring Daniel Kaluuya and Chris Redd that showed up on YouTube after being apparently cut for time. It can be very weird what they cut for time, that's for sure. |
Aisha wrote a piece this week about Amazon's new anthology series Them, and how it fits into the current wave of art about trauma.
And Glen wrote about the HBO show The Nevers, which has trouble getting out of its own way.
On Monday's show, Stephen sat down with Bedatri D. Choudhury and Mark Blankenship to talk about the sad but intriguing film The Father, which features great performances from both Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.
On Tuesday's show, Aisha and I talked to Ronald Young, Jr. about some essential performances from Chadwick Boseman -- yes, we talked Black Panther, but other things too.
Wednesday's show featured more essentials, this time from Frances McDormand. Glen, Jeffrey Masters and Bilal Qureshi talked about her long career and some of the principles she applies to her chosen roles and her place in the industry.
Thursday's show was a conversation with Stephen and Aisha about the movie Bad Trip, which wasn't quite what they were expecting.
And on Friday, Shereen Marisol Meraji, Petra Mayer and Tre'vell Anderson joined me to discuss the lovable, relaxing The Great Pottery Throw Down, which is sort of Bake-Off but for pottery.
Finally, also for your Friday, Stephen wrote up a SXSW-adjacent Tiny Desk Concert from clipping that features not just Tiny Desks, but really Teensy Desks. |
| Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: |
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