I want a procedural where the accused spouse really did not have an affair, where the other spouse really is just an obsessive nutball and the sympathetic other person really is just sympathetic. Every time our investigative heros get into the interrogation room and start screaming at the suspect, I'm rooting for the suspect to be proven innocent and then to sue the investigators for abuse.
NCIS and Bones will occasionally have someone innocent in the interrogation room. And on at least one Bones, the guilty party didn't confess and there wasn't enough evidence for a good case. It was very refreshing.
Don't forget the very special episode
Bonus points if they can combine a, b and c.
Garrett Dillahunt
I love him, but the only time I haven't seem him play a villain (generally one of maximum loathsomeness) of some kind was on John from Cicninatti (except maybe John Henry on SCC, but his earlier incarnation definitely was).
Oh! There was a John Henry look alike on the bus the other morning and it creeped me right the fuck out.
(Something in his posture and stillness making it the character and not the actor that he doppelganged.)
I can remember innocent parties in the box in L&O and The Closer off the top of my head.
And then there's H:LOTS.
Where they can get the right guy in the Box and still make you wonder who the bad guy is.
CSI and Cold Case are always calling people into the box until they hit one that sings. Every episode. It's not that rare, I don't think.
It may be anti-social of me, but I love when the guilty one won't crack. The cases are so often so flimsy that they wouldn't get anywhere without a confession. And I notice the cases almost never show the conviction. Which is standard, I believe.
I notice the cases almost never show the conviction. Which is standard, I believe.
It doesn't fall under the umbrella of the procedural, I don't think. That gets as far as solving the crime, and a little bit of satisfaction of seeing the guilty person nabbed. L&O has to excise so much time to include the legal proceedings in the same narrative.
On Dragnet, they would announce at the end of each episode what sentence the perp got.
DUM DA DUM DUM!
