Esquadra de Polícia
Episode List
This is bog standard copaganda, aping NYPD Blue, or one of the Bellisario shows, without the grit. But it’s written by a local former cop (or something), there’s opportunity for unintended comedy.
The cast is massive and talented, but I predict there’s got to be some crappy scripts coming.
There’s so many stereotypes on the uniformed team:
- The college kid just earning his keep
- The heart of the team, a nice young woman, with extreme empathy
- The tomboy woman, one of the boys
- The young upstart kid, trying and failing to advance in the team
- The schemer, always with the office bets, jokes, and fascist overlook
- The old, drunk cop
- Da Chief, the tough but fair dude
- The actual chief, the tough bosslady (played by the (future?) wife of the writer, expect a Mary Sue)
- The police commissioner, never shows up in the office, was married to the “actual chief”. He’s actually some idiot.
There’s also plain clothes detectives (who wear trench coats, in case anyone forgets they are cops):
- the ultra violent nutter, from the same football club as the writer, so you can expect political rants
- the aloof nutter, eating food in crime scenes, ranting about dogs in the middle of questioning
There’s even a prosecutor lady (ball breaker cock blocker!), and one of those sleazy defence lawyers, a drunkard.
The big problem is that they got all the real actors in the regular cast, and there’s not enough other actors for the bit parts inside the episodes. The biggest problem is of course the shitty scripts, as usual.
S1E1
Yup, right off the gate, this starts with a truly unhinged story. Family and friends celebrate the 18th anniversary of the daughter, then she bumps off the cake. The pater families snaps, knifes his wife, then goes on a rampage, killing his daughter, and 5 other people. He then escapes into the night, on one of the most prestigious real estate areas in Lisbon, fresh off the World Expo ‘98 (see Tarde Demais).
Suddenly the older cop is going back and forth holding two live chickens in the precinct.
The other subplot is quite topical, but extremely conservative as usual. Some dude start shooting in his apartment, the cops break in and arrest him. But the wife explains idle hands are the devil’s playthings, the factory closed a couple years before retirement and he’s too old to get another job. When this was released, domestic violence was not a public crime, so it’s true the cops needed an actual complain to imprison the guy.
The heart of the team is distraught by this, thinking she could have killed the “poor” guy that fired pistols at his wife and kids. Of course the college cop is super pissed about this, he’s got to have some personal stories.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.