I was at a screening of The Avengers* last night and up late talking about it with some of my colleagues about it after, so shorter thoughts about this than usual. But I thought this episode of Community, a Law & Order parody, did a really nice job of exposing the ridiculous things we let people get away with when they have badges or the power of the district attorney’s office behind them. It’s not like readers of this blog don’t know that I find it disturbing that our cop shows tend to legitimize a certain amount of police brutality when it’s performed by cops we’re supposed to be emotionally invested in. But it’s still really funny to see Troy rage around an interrogation room, insisting “You don’t order ketchup! It’s a condiment!” And it was a treat to see Leslie Hendrix, who played Law & Order medical examiner Elizabeth Rodgers for years pop up to explain “This level of smashing is consistent with someone stepping on the yam after it was dropped” in the same deadpan TV doctors use to give the impression that crime-solving science is precise and unbeatable.

Crime TV may strive for certain kinds of nuance, but it’s always very invested in conveying how powerful the police are. And goodness knows that’s justified—the state hands the police a lot of power, and protects them when they use that. But approaching the police with respect and caution doesn’t mean we can’t look at the power we give them ourselves, and the ridiculous things we dignify. Laughter at the latter is a good place to start.

*Three-word review: it is awesome. More details to come.

I know, I know, I should have gotten to The Interrupters sooner. But I do whatever Ta-Nehisi tells me, and so I finally sat down to watch it yesterday. While the documentary, about anti-violence advocates in Chicago who work to deescalate situations that could lead to violence and crime, on the surface of it has very little in common with Appropriate Adult, the British film about serial killer Fred West and Janet Leach, the social worker trainee assigned to make sure West understood what was going on during interrogations to cut down on the chance of an appeal. But taken together, they’re a powerful indictment of the poverty of our popular entertainment’s approach to telling stories about crime and violence.

The Law & Order franchise’s formula of voiceovers is the clearest condensation of this approach. It’s”"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” Or “In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.” Or “In New York City’s war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Squad. These are their stories.”

In all three cases, and in many other crime-solving shows, the point is clear. Crime in our culture is about the people who arrest and prosecute criminals. Criminals exist as obstacles for those people to foil, problems for them to solve, people for them to break. Victims exist to provide meaning to that process. People who seek to prevent crime, or to heal victims of the trauma from it are largely incidental—when we see psychologists on television, they’re largely present to help detectives and prosecutors assess criminals or obtain convictions, or to help make prosecutors and detectives more effective and functional. There’s no question that crime affect the people who investigate them, and that case investigation is a neat package for television storytelling. But officers of the law are not the only people affected by crimes. And arrests and trials aren’t the only ways to tell stories.

The Interrupters is a phenomenal movie, and lots of people have laid out why, but I want to discuss it here as an example of how to tell crime stories with different people at the center of the frame, and through different processes. The movie, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is about violence interrupters in Chicago, people who work directly with people who are at risk of committing crimes to de-escalate both short-term and long-term situations that could lead to violence, acting on the presumption that violence is a public health risk that can be combatted by disrupting cycles of behavior. “The story about sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you? Words can get you killed,” Says Ameena Matthews, the daughter of Jeff Fort, an influential Chicago gang member who herself was involved in gang activity until she was shot. She’s since converted to Islam, and works to disrupt conflicts, whether she’s wading into an impending fight; confronting gang members who are hanging out with a much younger child and putting him at risk and telling them “This is unacceptable for me to be holding this young man’s obituary. Schools, church’s, your mama’s house…those are safe zones”; helping arrange a burial for Derrion Albert, an honor student who was beaten to death in a case that drew national attention; or taking a young woman whose mother is an addict on a carousel ride for the first time.
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This is actually a reasonably clever idea for a movie: Seth Rogen and Kevin Hart are apparently going to star in a movie in which they play the first interracial buddy cops. Now, it’s not like Hollywood is new to being self-aware about the trope. 21 Jump Street has Ice Cube, with the double wink that N.W.A. is on the movie’s soundtrack, and a less subtextual scene where he explains that he’s a cop and sometimes he gets angry:

The Other Guys contrasted a pair of black super-cops with a pair of white schlubs who rose to the occasion:

But treating the anthropology of that particular joke as the basis for an entire movie could work well, and not simply as a one-off joke. We treat this kind of schtick as if it’s immutable, as if it comes from someplace real rather than a commercial urge to appeal to as many demographic groups as possible. We might as well have fake history to go with our fake rules.

I quite liked Awake, NBC’s beautifully-shot and subtly-acted new show about a cop, Detective Michael Britten (a wonderful Jason Isaacs) confused about which of two worlds he’s living in is real and which is a dream. But one thing that struck me about the pilot is the way it handles Detective Isaiah ‘Bird’ Freeman (Steve Harris), Michael’s partner in the world where his son is still alive. Harris is good in the role. But as can be the case with black characters in cop shows or movies, he sounds like he’s in an entirely different show than the white characters he works with.

Part of it is that Freeman has some of the best, quippiest lines in the show. Much of the dialogue in Awake is muted, straightforward in keeping with the fact that this is a very strange situation that’s being treated as if it’s normal or sustainable by the person at its center. The fact that Michael and his therapists are trying to work through this situation logically and gently rather than making grand pronouncements about the utter weirdness of this lets us appreciate the power of Michael’s circumstances without constantly being bashed over the head about it. Freeman isn’t an actual exception to that rule, but he does spend a lot of time uttering koans like “This is why I’ve avoided success at all costs. You work your whole life to afford some nice stuff, so someone can come along and kill you for it,” or “Been a cop for 20 years. Only seen hunches on TV,” or “Remember when you used to think that solved and fixed meant the same thing?” It’s an oddly performative role.

And there was also a moment when Freeman and Britten were investigating a brutal murder when Awake‘s writers decided to just straight up have Freeman channel The Wire‘s Bunk Moreland. “You see this coffeemaker? $600. My ex-wife wanted one of these. I told her if she wanted a $600 coffee-maker she shouldn’t have married a police,” Freeman said, pronouncing police with an exaggerated “o.” “Eventually, we agreed on that.” I’m not saying it’s not a good line. But it’s a weird reminder that when it comes to black characters, folks seem to reach for archetypes first and to go through the process of developing original characters second.

This post contains spoilers through the March 6 episode of Justified.

One of the things I like about Justified that makes it somewhat different from a show like Sons of Anarchy is that it acknowledges how hard a good crime is to set up, pull off, and get away clean from. The trap that’s been sprung for Raylan tonight is a sophisticated one, and there’s no question he’s blindsided, failing to see some possible implications and events as early as one might wish he could. But it’s still one that he can pick apart even as it’s closing on him.

Still, as traps go, it’s a decent one. Whether Quarles knew that Gary had a hit out on Raylan and Winona, it was a decent move to pick a victim who could be easily linked to Raylan. There might have been better ways to do it—kill Boyd in a way that makes it look like a fight (which would strengthen the idea that Raylan was on Boyd’s payroll), or kill Winona and make it look like Raylan got jealous or angry at his abandonment. But the hit on Gary is clean, and relatively easy, and besides, they had to use that bullet that Raylan threw at Wynn somehow.

Justified’s always done a nice job of balancing between the competing ideas that Raylan’s a badass and Raylan’s badassery creates a lot of problems for him, and the bullet is a perfect example. “Deputy, that just might be the coolest thing I ever laid ears on,” Garritty gushes. Dempsey’s a bit more skeptical, wanting to know “Did you come up with that on your own?” Raylan’s a hep cat when he explains that he “Heard it on the Johnny Carson show once.” But no matter the coolness of the act itself, Raylan’s temper has handed his enemies a literal and figurative weapon against him. Raylan may be able to see Duffy’s weakness before he does, but when Duffy declares that “Between you and me, Raylan Given is a very angry man,” he’s seeing Raylan more clearly than he sees himself—and he knows how to use Raylan’s anger against him. Raylan’s colleagues, who are willing to play at a cooler temperature—when told not to play stupid, one replies “I’m not playing. I’m an idiot. Ask anybody.”—may be awful stressed a la Art, but they escape with considerably less trouble.

Sammy sees the same short fuse in Quarles, it seems. Quarles may hate Sammy as the son by blood who held onto the place that Quarles believes he should have had, but at least this time around, the goofy runt is proving his mettle. It’s only by the skin of his teeth that Quarles gets out of that house before Dempsey discovers the room he tortured a prostitute in (Duffy hasn’t had time to redecorate), and once he does, it appears Detroit’s had enough. Sammy tells Quarles he’s cut loose, and when Quarles pulls a gun on him, Sammy coolly talks him down. And then, on the way out the door, tells Quarles of his unique little gun, “That’s awesome. It ever jam on you?” Whether it does or it doesn’t, Quarles ends up popping pills and shotgunning sermons instead of pulling the trigger. Awesome, it seems, can be overrated.

I’m almost done with Season 4 of Sons of Anarchy, so keep your eyes peeled for a lot of blogging on the subject. But I noticed today that the show’s creator, Kurt Sutter, tweeted that “i’ve talked to [FX President John] landgraf about the 1st nine. he digs it, but thinks it might be best to put some time between SOA and a prequel. i agree.” I’d like to see that. I am, perhaps more than the average Sons of Anarchy viewer, in the questions of governance the show raises, whether we’re hearing about SAMCRO founder John Teller’s anarchist theorizing or seeing how the MC interacts with Charming’s law enforcement officials. But it would be neat to see how that synergy developed in the first place. Most of the big governance shows on television give us, in Rhett Butler’s parlance, empire building (Deadwood) or empire wrecking (The Wire). It’d be neat to see a single coherent story about a rise and fall.

No matter how much I think the Spider-Man reboot is utterly unnecessary, I have to admit it looks like a lot of fun:

A couple of thoughts: I’m relieved that the movie is acknowledging that someone other than the scientific community, riders of random subway cars, and J. Jonah Jameson notice that a dude in a funny suit is messing with the city’s criminals. It makes sense that an escalation of tensions in the underworld that leads to massive property damage and physical fights would pop up on the NYPD’s radar and that they’d have an interest in what’s going down. Dennis Leary is great as a cantankerous, drunk, or otherwise difficult representative of city government (he is the best part of The Thomas Crown Affair remake), and he’s got the perfect mein to pull off a portrayal of a man who is personally and professionally deeply irritated by Spider-Man. If the Powers adaptation ends up not happening, at least we’ll have something.

Second, the Gwen Stacy storyline in the Spider-Man universe is awesome and heartbreaking. And if this iteration of the franchise wants to honestly grapple with superheroic hubris and the limitations of superpowers when the go up against the laws of physics and the odds, it would be wonderful if they followed that original template. Being a teenager—as well as being a depressed middle-aged billionaire—is a dark thing. And I don’t mean in a getting-infected-with-venom-and-going-to-jazz-clubs kind of way. It’d be nice to see a movie franchise that recognizes that not everyone makes it out of that period okay, and that having superpowers may increase the kinds of risks you can take, but it doesn’t mean you’re utterly protected.

This post contains spoilers through the January 30 episode of Alcatraz.

By David Liss

Alcatraz, I’ve come to realize, would be a much better show if it were about strange goings-on in the prison in the 1960s. The time-traveling inmates on their psychopathic 21st century crime sprees remain the least interesting part of the show, but last night’s episode demonstrated how transcendently weird and wonderful this series can be when it is allowed to linger on its core strength: Alcatraz of the past.

This week’s time-hopping prisoner is Cal Sweeney, a bank robber who only targets safety deposit boxes – ostensibly because that keeps the robbery being classified as a federal crime (though he ends up in federal prison anyhow, doesn’t he?), but we learn that there is a deeper psychological component involved. In the modern era, Sweeney’s m.o. is to romance a bank teller and gets her to give him unmonitored access to the safety deposit boxes (though, at least in my bank, it’s not the tellers who do that). Then he jabs a needle in her neck, robs the boxes, and tracks down the owners of the stolen objects, whom he tortures and kills. Neat.

Back in the 1960s, Sweeney has a contraband operation going on through the prison laundry room. It’s all going swimmingly until crooked deputy warden Tiller tosses Sweeney’s cell. A precious object goes missing, and when Tiller demands a cut of the contraband business, Sweeney says no way until his beloved box is returned. It’s Harlan, laundry room protégé and next-cell-neighbor, who comes up with the solution. Infiltrate Tiller’s birthday party, held at the warden’s residence, and get a word alone with the deputy warden.

The two narratives proceed much as they have in previous weeks, but never before has the magnetic pull of the flashbacks so effectively dwarfed the contemporary “main” story. Madsen and Soto have come to feel totally forgettable despite their being the stars of the show. They’re there to follow around the bad guy and collect clues so we understand him better. Along the way, we come to care about and be interested in, if not like, Sweeney. We still don’t give a crap about the protagonists despite half-hearted efforts to give them character by showing Madsen loving dim sum or having Soto talk about his (absurd) journal article which used Gotham City crime figures as a statistical model.
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Because I have a particular fondness for fairy tale retellings, and occasionally, a girl’s got to watch television that she doesn’t analyze to death, I’ve been keeping up with both Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Both could be loosely described as fairy tale procedurals. In Grimm, a cop finds out that he’s descended from a long line of fairy-tale creature-fighters, and begins taking out the worst of them with the help of his policing skills and a werewolf who repairs clocks for a living and does pilates in his spare time. In Once Upon a Time, Emma, a bail bondswoman who gave her son up for adoption as an infant, has her life turned upside down when the boy tracks her down and asks her to move to Storybrook. There, Emma becomes the town sheriff, working to solve a number of mysteries caused, unbeknownst to her and the rest of the town’s residents except the mayor, by the fact that all of the citizens are exiled from fairy tales by the Mayor’s — really the Evil Queen’s — curse.

I think there are two reasons Once Upon a Time is working better than Grimm for me. First, the serialization in Once is much stronger than it is in Grimm. In the latter show, Nick is supposed to be part of this long tradition of monster-hunters, enmeshed in a struggle with some sort of monster organization. But the show hasn’t done very much to advance or make meaningful that narrative except to give Nick a van full of evil-vanquishing goodies. Monsters show up, are defeated, and disappear without giving us a sense of the larger world around us.

In Once, by contrast, the episodes are part of a contiguous fairy tale about the rise of a great evil. Every case teaches something about what happened to the characters in the past that contributes to our understanding of where they were when we met them — and our sense of where they’ll go. The interlocking stories feel considered, rather than slapped together. And the fairy tale characters are reconsidered in ways that feel thoughtful and intelligent: Snow White is a forest-dwelling badass after her exile from her cushy castle life; Rumplestiltskin is a grieving father; and Midas is basically a central bank, controlling the economies of entire kingdoms.

Second, I think the re-envisioning of the detective role is more interesting in Once Upon a Time than in Grimm. Nick is basically your standard white-boy detective with a black partner for balance and some extra equipment. It’s true that it’s not totally unusual for blonde white women to be cops either. But Emma’s operating in a world that feels different because it’s largely ruled by women on Once. Women hold the mayor and sheriff’s office. The most notable teacher in town is a woman, as is the proprietor of the local watering hold. There are, of course, men in Storybrook, ranging from the therapist to the newspaper editor. But Rumplestiltskin is the most powerful man in town by a good measure, and he tends to exert power outside the traditional channels rather than holding official office. The show doesn’t hammer it in obsessively, but it is nice to spend time in an environment where the normal assumptions about who controls things are flipped.

As Hollywood’s tackled the recession, it focused first on Ponzi schemers in the mode of Bernie Madoff, villains whose schemes were easy to explain, and whose evil didn’t require a thorough examination of the financial system. Slowly but surely, though, we’re seeing financial crisis movies that are structured like mysteries or heist films, where the action — and heroism — are to be found in understanding precisely what financiers got away with behind our backs and the full extent of the damage they’ve caused us. Half of Arbitrage, the financial thriller that premiered here at Sundance, is that kind of movie.

Arbitrage stars Richard Gere as Robert Miller, a hedge fund titan who is on the verge of selling his firm at a very high price determined by the success of his predictive model. It should be a windfall for his family, including his wife Ellen (Susan Sarandon), a dedicated philanthropist, and his daughter and Chief Investment Officer Brooke (a very good Brit Marling), who would prefer to hang on to the firm given its growth. But it quickly becomes clear that Robert is selling a company that was decimated by a bad bet he made on Russian copper, a giant hole that’s been papered over with a loan from a friend so Robert can pass an audit and offload the company at a price that will let him pay back the debt and make his investors whole.

That ought to be enough for one movie, as it was in J.C. Chandor’s justifiably Oscar-nominated Margin Call. But Arbitrage throws another factor into this deal-making stew, giving Robert a French gallerist as a mistress — and having him kill her when he falls asleep at the wheel as they head out for a lost weekend. Robert flees the scene with the help of Jimmy (Nate Parker, who is having one hell of a beginning of 2012 between this, Red Hook Summer, and Red Tails), the son of his late driver, who comes under the eye of angry working-class detective Michael Bryer (Tim Roth).

The question becomes, then, whether Robert can play the information imbalance — his knowledge about the truth about the state of his fund and his mistress’s death — to his own advantage, or whether Det. Byer and Brooke’s investigations will move fast enough for them to expose him before the deal with an irritatingly elusive mogul (played, in one fun scene, by Graydon Carter, who director Nicholas Jarecki credits with commissioning the financial journalism that inspired the movie) closes. Jarecki makes the mistake, however, of thinking that the murder investigation is more interesting than the financial one. Roth is always fun, and gives Bryer a nice insolence in the face of authority, and there’s some appeal in listening to him rant about how men like Miller “outmanuver us, they outbuy us. I’m fucking sick of it. He did it! He doesn’t get to walk just because he’s on CNBC.”
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