CHICAGO PD

** (out of ****)

 

When you want to make a boring, garbage-ass cop show, how do you pitch it? What do you say? “We want to add nothing to the genre. We want to add nothing to the medium of television. It will seem like this new show has been on for years, so tired will the tropes, characters, and storylines be.”

 

“Oh…OK,” you think, as the person hearing the pitch. “Then why make it at all. What’s the point? Why do you think it will succeed?”

 

“Because it’s a spinoff of a different mediocre show that enough people watch!!!,” he exclaims, as hundred dollar bills fall from the ceiling, and dozens of strippers run into the room, throwing coke everywhere.

 

Chicago P.D., a truly bad show, is a spinoff of Chicago Fire, which isn’t truly bad, but certainly not great. I’m not sure what the connection is, other than the first word of the titles. Was there a police department that helped the characters of Chicago Fire in an episode? Were they the same cops that are in this show? It doesn’t matter. They both share a creator in Dick Wolf, who is the closest thing to an above-the-title-name that this show has. That name doesn’t do anything for me.

 

I have never understood the interest in Dick Wolf shows. It seems his best shows form their own template, and stick to it no matter what. The template of his worst shows are the same templates of bad television in general. I get why he has a lifetime contract to create shows, based on the Law and Order world he created, but every Chicago PD makes that contract more and more confusing. It’s a major step backwards for him, because even if Chicago Fire isn’t going to sweep the Emmys at some point, it showed that he could do something different than Law and Order. It’s a little more conventional, but a little more soapy. And, although this sounds kind of dumb, firefightin’ isn’t lawyering’ or policin’. It’s a different thing that needs different stories. So his first move, after Chicago Fire is a hit? Go right back to policin’.

 

The show itself does nothing to establish it from other cop shows. The closest it comes to compelling is showing us that the main character, who heads the special task force that is the focus of the show, may or may not be corrupt. That’s it. It’s got nothing else. The rest of the cast is filled with blandly attractive actors who are completely at the mercy of their two-dimensional characters. And then there’s the always awesome Elias Koteas, who was clearly told to look and act exactly like Mandy Patinkin from Homeland. That pretty much sums up the problem. Everyone was told to “be like that one thing, from that better show.”

 

And then all hell breaks loose. To save you from watching this, I’m going to spoil the shit out of it for you. After forty minutes of boring schlock, a female cop gets shot. Through a door. With a shotgun. To the face. She gets shot in the fucking face, and dies a few minutes later. The character wasn’t set up to be the lead, but she was definitely meant to be one of the main team members. And they reward her by shooting her in the face with a shotgun.

 

So finally, we have our gimmick. Our one thing that will separate this show from the dozens of other shows just like it. Crazy violence, like shooting a cop in the face with a shotgun. First of all, that’s not enough of a gimmick. There are plenty of good shows we can get violence from. Second of all, it couldn’t be less earned. I know how tall of an order it is to tell someone to build their entire world in 44 minutes, but come on. Thirdly, this show is on NBC. Does anyone trust them giving us the violence we crave from something that relies on its violence? Doubtful.

Really, all of this boils down to one thing. Would you watch a show that has this for a billboard? If so, have fun.

 

-Ryan Haley