Word: swiftly
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...SWIFT IS THE KIND OF COP who doesn't have to worry about pockmarks. Unlike the physically imperfect lawmen who now populate prime-time TV--the Dennis Franzes and Jerry Orbachs--Mac's skin is invincibly smooth. Nothing, it seems, can scar him as he dodges punches and pummels bat-wielding thugs with an assured agility that seems to say, "Hey, I'd look even better toppling Christy Turlington on a sandbar in Maui." Happily for Mac, his appearance isn't all he has going for him. Smart enough to have developed an immensely profitable software program, this New York...
...Swift (Jack McCaffrey), the hero of the new drama Swift Justice (UPN, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. est), belongs to another television era, a time before cop shows like NYPD Blue, Homicide and Law & Order grounded the genre in reality with unglamorously complex characters and somber portrayals of urban life. But to all good things must come a backlash. And so Swift Justice harks back to a period of frequent car chases, poorly staged punch-outs and cartoonishly evil bad guys...
...Bridges, centerpiece of an eponymously titled series (CBS, Fridays, 10 p.m. est) about a San Francisco police inspector who races around in a 1970 Barracuda and combats the bad guys with tough talk ("I don't give a damn about you boys--but this guy, his ass is mine"), swift kicks and an occasional disabling spritz of WD-40 right to the eye. In a priceless nod to nostalgia, Bridges is played by TV's best-known exemplar of rose-tinted crime fighting--yes, Don Johnson...
Nash Bridges. Mac Swift. Like Thomas Magnum and Tony Baretta, these names imply a benighted sense of macho can do-ness. Not surprisingly, perhaps, both shows wallow in an anachronistic treatment of women. For the most part they are portrayed as victims-either of Bridges' noncommittal ways or of nasty evildoers from whom they need Y-chromosome-enhanced protection. Prostitutes in danger turn up on both shows, looking not at all as they do on the streets of the grittiest precincts in urban America, or even as they do on NYPD Blue. Waifish and fresh-faced, they resemble well-educated...
Catering to male fantasy is seemingly the point of these regressive new police dramas. All three series are vastly more violent than any other cop shows currently on network television, where the trend has been to keep the killing and maiming offscreen. In one episode of Swift Justice, we see more than a half-dozen people get shot to death, blown up and, in one scene, deliberately hit by golf balls. Sad but true. Justice was created by Dick Wolf, the producer responsible for the far more sophisticated Law & Order. "There are guys out there, 18-to-34-year-olds...