CBS tried to reform the cop show. Police reform advocates are not impressed. What the show did in the eighties and nineties was so bad, it had to go. In the current season we have an old cop who’s been retired, a cop who’s a recovering addict and, with the addition of a white male cop, we have the first fully fledged (non-male) cop as a partner with a black female. The new partner is a black female who was arrested in a robbery case, an arrest for which she had no legal representation. And, to be clear, she did not have a trial — or even the opportunity for a post-arrest interview with the judge or a lawyer present.
The show also has a man, by the name of “Chick” who is portrayed as an old and trusted friend of the detective and his partner, who is also black and female. When the detective is assigned to be his partner, he seems to embrace it, although at the start and end of the episode we hear him say, “You’re getting so close to my friends and they’re gonna hate you and make you feel guilty about what you did. You are not guilty and you’re not getting close to anyone. You don’t have anyone. I’ve got everybody.”
There’s also the man, by the name of “Chick” who is presented as somewhat of a villain, though he does appear to be an old and trusted friend of the detectives and of the black female detective. He is never actually the villain of the piece; he just takes the part of a villain. And it’s not as if he is shown as being evil or anything other than a man in the wrong and in the wrong with his old partner.
Which brings us to the thing that most people who watch this police show do not understand about it: all those old cop shows are dumb, and all those shows that try to pretend that the police are real (and therefore smart) are also dumb.
The real cops are