Re:How TV dramas informed and misinformed perceptions of the...
by ljm on Friday June 18, 2021 @08:07PM
(#27556486)
It's all 'good vs. evil' except that the 'good' side has a lot more latitude to be actually evil than the 'evil' side does.
There's no such thing as being good, and no such thing as being evil.
For example, in The Rookie, the titular character gets shot at at an alarming frequency per episode. If cops had to endure so many shootouts, a) their life expectancy on the job would be in the order of a few months at most, and b) militarization and shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never would be understandable (not defensible, but understandable). Seriously, front line soldiers in war zones do not see as much action as rookie cops in LA presumably do, if the show is taken as realistic.
Or almost in any cop show, only guilty people ask for lawyers. And if the lawyers get someone out of jail, it is depicted as an injustice and a technicality.
The list goes on and on. Police procedural, both comedy and drama, suffer from a serious lack of verisimilitude.