Prime Suspect

Mary McCormack from In Plain Sight

Maria Bello from Prime Suspect

Prime Suspect is a new cop show on NBC. We watched the pilot episode last night and the next episode this evening. It's pretty good. Maria Bello, the lead, reminds me of Mary McCormack from In Plain Sight, they could be sisters, or maybe they are both just very close to the "ideal" woman. She has a rough row to hoe, with all kinds of unpleasant characters she has to deal with, and that's not counting the criminals. Both episodes had a set of almost identical situations. If they keep this up, it could get old. She's the new "guy" in the homicide squad room, full of good old boys, and she's a woman, and they're good ol' boys and they give her a bad time from the get go. There is one guy in particular who seems to actually hate her. Doesn't help that he's a lazy, incompetent jerk-wad. Other common elements:

• botched arrest, complete with an officer attempting to apprehend a suspect alone, losing their weapon and getting their ass kicked,
• the significant other's ex, the absolutely worst kind of passive agressive. If she doesn't wise up pretty soon I'm going to start throwing things at the screen. It does give our heroine the opportunity to put her in her place, and even grind her under her heel a little. Which kind of makes up for it.
• big SWAT-like - what's the word I'm looking for? Where you get a whole bunch of guys, armed and armored, all focused on one little, tiny spot? A situation? That seems inadequate, not to mention non-descriptive. Confrontation? That implies there is someone facing back at them. Not accurate, there is a door, and an apartment behind it, but who knows what's behind the door?

In defense of the good ol' boys, I can't say as I blame them. TV makes it look glamorous, but being a cop can be a really depressing job. Everyday you get to see the worst that humanity has to offer, and 99 times out a hundred the crime is just what it looks like. The husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend did it, there is no reason to look any further. Why bust your ass on some lying piece of shit's say-so? Your fellow cops are the only ones you can rely on, the public either hates you or lionizes you depending on what was in the paper this morning, or more likely, what was on the news last night. And the criminals, well, that's your job, sweeping up the shit. And now some fancy broad comes waltzing in trying to make everyone look bad? Screw her.


We tried watching the pilot off of the NBC website, but the video quality was abysmal. Choppy, flashing, black bars, basically unwatchable. Switched to Megavideo which was much better.