Word: copping
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...when homeland security and amber alerts have informally deputized every Shoney's customer and freeway commuter, TV is reflecting reality: this fall it seems everyone is on the beat. There's the cabbie who solves crimes (CBS's Hack), the ex-cop who sees ghosts (UPN's Haunted) and the amnesiac genius who helps nab crooks (Fox's John Doe). What stands out is that several of the shows are packaging their hoary stories in some of the flashiest visuals on TV. As the old 7-Up slogan goes, they're the same thing, only different...
...angles. (CSI's flashbacks, which change as the investigators get closer to the truth, are more Rashomon-esque.) The cast, however, is fine, especially Donnie Wahlberg as a hangdog detective with a mentally ill wife, and the writing above average, though a bit grandiose. If you need a 15th cop show to watch this year, you could do worse...
...real class of this oversize field is Robbery Homicide Division (CBS, Fridays, 10 p.m. E.T.), from Michael Mann. In the 1980s, Mann changed the look of the cop show, first with Miami Vice, then (and more to his credit) with the hard-bitten serial drama Crime Story. RHD is police drama at its most minimal: a brusque L.A. detective (Tom Sizemore) investigates brutal acts by bad people--no back story, no moral, no attempts at uplift. What set it apart are the haunting music and the disorienting, bravura visuals--sometimes several minutes without dialogue--that turn L.A. from a neutral...
...heir of Miami Vice, look not to Mann but to Fastlane (Fox, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.), about two buddy cops who use--and destroy--confiscated sports cars and other pricey toys to catch high rollers. It disproves the theory that TV, a middlebrow medium, is neither as smart as the smartest movies nor as dumb as the dumbest. Fastlane is, blissfully, exactly as dumb as the dumbest movies. Made by the uni-monikered director McG (Charlie's Angels), it reproduces the high-gloss, empty-calorie experience of a summer action flick, down to the loud soundtrack and the black...
Massey said that due to the natural monopoly inherent in transmission grids, there needs to be a “regulatory cop on the beat” to avoid the type of price-fixing that he said seemed to have occurred in the California crisis...