Giles: Helping out with the dishes makes me feel useful. Dawn: Wanna clean out the garage with us Saturday? You could feel indispensable.

'Dirty Girls'


Procedurals 1: Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You.

This thread is for procedural TV, shows where the primary idea is to figure out the case. [NAFDA]


Juliebird - Oct 07, 2012 11:47:17 am PDT #9282 of 11831
I am the fly who dreams of the spider

I took it to mean that Watson was no longer watching the baseball game, and was now allowing her focus to be with the consulting detective, whom it is her job to watch over.


Pix - Oct 07, 2012 11:48:32 am PDT #9283 of 11831
We're all getting played with, babe. -Weird Barbie

Ha! I thought what ita ! thought.


Ginger - Oct 07, 2012 2:04:19 pm PDT #9284 of 11831
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

Isn't that what your seven million flavours of CSI are meant to address?

I view the CSIs as a form of science fiction, since as far as I know, no police department in the country has that level of equipment and doesn't have at least a month's backup. The Georgia crime lab is regularly six months behind. Also, crime lab techs don't carry guns or talk to witnesses. They collect evidence and go back to the lab.


§ ita § - Oct 07, 2012 3:00:33 pm PDT #9285 of 11831
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

It's not like all the other procedurals are documentaries. Unless there's a specific plot point to be raised, there are no backlogs or resource constraints in any part of the justice machine, period. There's no standard "it takes x days to do that, because you're not first in line" or because "the process takes y days anyway".

If there's science in the show, they compress it (see Bones, also any show with a coroner or fingerprint recognition, never mind zoom, enhance, what's that reflected in his retina?). If there's law, they compress it. If there's investigation...yeah, like that.


erikaj - Oct 07, 2012 3:48:05 pm PDT #9286 of 11831
Always Anti-fascist!

The only one that addresses that stuff is "The Wire" and I hope they are too cynical, but probably not.


Typo Boy - Oct 07, 2012 4:09:50 pm PDT #9287 of 11831
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.

Not realistically, but to some extent Major Crimes addresses it. Of course it helps that they get the FBI to pick up the tab much of the time.


Tom Scola - Oct 07, 2012 4:13:18 pm PDT #9288 of 11831
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

I haven't been watching Major Crimes, but I'm kind of surprised, because The Closer pretty much took a dump on the Constitution every episode the last couple of seasons...


Typo Boy - Oct 07, 2012 4:15:21 pm PDT #9289 of 11831
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.

They took at least one big time dump on the const. in major crimes, But in other episodes they have been concerned with getting convicitions and limited resources. As I said not realistically.


Connie Neil - Oct 07, 2012 4:23:08 pm PDT #9290 of 11831
brillig

In earlier seasons, NCIS bitched about not having the resources of the bigger agencies, and it's a common thing to have Abby complaining about workload. They more or less show concern for getting warrants and for legalities.

Bones actually had an episode where they had to go for the plea bargain because they could not prove the higher crime and the perp was not falling for confession tricks.

My dividing line on procedural appeal is how much soap opera is going on. That's why I stopped watching Bones, and it's affecting my appreciation of Castle. There is soap opera on NCIS, but they also throw in humor, which saves a lot. A lot of the CSIs and L&Os, from my limited viewing, seem pretty joyless.


sumi - Oct 07, 2012 4:27:12 pm PDT #9291 of 11831
Art Crawl!!!

I was talking about Elementary with a friend and one of her other friends refuses to watch it because they made Watson a woman and the thought popped into my head: what if instead of Irene Adler, they had Ira Adler - then the question of some Watson/Sherlock could be avoided. (Assuming that one wants to do that.)

The main think I think is that they forgot that Watson is supposed to be almost somebody that you don't really notice and Lisa Liu stands out. If they had a few more female characters that might help - but it's as if they really didn't understand Watson as a character.