SUMMER TV EXTRAVAGANZA

CROSSING LINES

 

* (out of ****)

 

It seems more and more rare to get a well told story — not just on television, but in any medium — that doesn’t feel like it’s screaming about all of its post-modern attributes. I understand that it’s impossible to tell a new story, and increasingly difficult to find a new way to tell it. Too often, though, these post-modern shows don’t comment on what’s come before them as a way to offer something new, but instead as a security blanket, because they don’t have enough confidence in their material. A good episode of Community shines a light on a particular theme or genre that feels new and original. A bad episode of Community is just unoriginal material, with some commentary in there to make people think it’s subversive. With this whole tightrope getting thinner and more annoying, it’s up to me how much I can hate something like Crossing Lines. I guess it’s not odd that I would hate it (it being awful and all), but it’s odd that it could leave me clamoring for something more aware of itself, even if it’s as aware as a bad Community episode. Crossing Lines isn’t just stupid, it’s stupid about how it’s stupid, and I can’t think of any form of television that’s more intolerable.

 

Maybe the reason that I’m bringing up shows like Community is because this felt so much like a satire of procedurals that you would see on Community. William Fichtner (recently cast as Shredder in the Ninja Turtles movie, after decades of no one on the internet demanding it) plays an ex-cop turned carnival janitor. He mopes up and down the carnival grounds, picking up trash whenever he’s not learning everything about someone just by glancing at them. That’s his cop superpower, which is now a requisite for garbage like this. Anyway, while he’s saving the carnival fortune teller from getting mugged or raped or some bullshit, his old partner watches him from afar, realizing that Fichtner still has his talents. The old partner has no choice but to bring him back in from the cold, and put him on a team of young cops, each with their own ethnicity and specialty, trying to find a serial killer. From there we are treated to a parade of clichés, each one dumber than the last. It’s as if someone was dealt 100 pages from tvtropes.com, and had to incorporate them all, but didn’t have to worry about plot or pacing, or if anything made sense. It’s fun to sit here and claim that, with a couple of changes, I could take a crappy drama and make it a good one. It would take fewer moves to make this a hilarious comedy.

 

Besides Fichtner’s powers, which even a show this dumb knows it can’t solely rely on as a gimmick, the rest of the premise isn’t bad, but it does prove to be the perfect thing for people who are bad at their job to fuck up. This crew that the ex-partner is setting up is using all of these people of different nationalities because they are going to solve crimes that happen outside of any one jurisdiction. When everyone is unclear which country is supposed to solve a crime, this Super Friends version of a Model United Nations class swoops in and solves the day, using their strongest stereotypes and accents. It’s not the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen, although the fact that the Irish guy is not only the explosions expert, but also shoots people with a potato gun, is a bit much.

 

After doing a little bit of research on the show (after I watched it, unfortunately), I found out how Crossing Lines came to be. Crossing Lines is an international co-production, which means that this isn’t necessarily an NBC show, but instead it’s a show that NBC only has a piece of, in exchange for the rights to air it in ‘Merica. So instead of attempting to appeal to all of America, something NBC hasn’t done for almost 20 years, Crossing Lines has to appeal to an entire planet. Think about that: the wider the target audience, the dumber your product will be. Crossing Lines has the biggest possible audience, which means, by my math, it is the dumbest possible thing. But what the fuck does NBC care? They put in a minimal amount of effort and money, and have something to fill a timeslot for the rest of the summer. I guess I’m supposed to be stoked that I’m getting less of that reality television I’m always complaining about. It turns out I just need less of that NBC that I’m always complaining about.

 

The only good thing I can say, in the end, is that if it wasn’t for shows like this then smarter, more post-modern shows would have nothing to comment on. As tired as I am of this need for satire, what choice do shows like Community have? Someone has to do it. You can’t just let shows like Crossing Lines exist without finding a way to tear them up in some way. So, I will end this article in the same way I’m going to end my next couple of articles: Breaking Bad 8/11/13.

 

-Ryan Haley