Entry tags:
Oh, hey!
I remembered the other thing that made me angry at the Criminal Minds finale!
The scene in the finale went like this (I paraphrase):
MORGAN: How dare you, a detective in the Detroit Police, fail to follow up on this particular missing persons case when the victim's brother brought it to you? How dare you have so many as THIRTY-FIVE open missing persons cases? *
DET. BENNING: We're undermanned! **
MORGAN: HOW DARE YOU MAKE EXCUSES. (Strides off in a righteous huff.)
DET. BENNING: (Watches him go, stricken.)
* - In a city of 900,000 people! I suspect that in reality this number is higher by at least a factor of ten; keeping it down to thirty-five sounds fairly impressive to me...
** - Verbatim. And extra irritating given that Detective Benning is female.
And now I would like to present my response, in script form. I call it "L'esprit de l'escalier":
DET. BENNING: Hey, actually, how about you take your self-righteous ass and your team of seven highly trained experts working one case at a time, and your top of the line technical equipment and computers--saying nothing of the FBI labs back at Quantico to which you have unlimited access--and you get on your private jet and you spend a little in-flight time contemplating what, exactly, an UNDERFUNDED, UNDEREQUIPPPED, UNDERSTAFFED CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT WAS SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT A MISSING PERSONS CASE WITH NO MATERIAL EVIDENCE (TO SAY NOTHING OF ILLEGALLY OBTAINED, INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE WHICH, WHILE POINTING TO FOUL PLAY, ALSO PLACED THE VICTIM SIXTY MILES OUTSIDE OUR JURISDICTION, SO I DON'T KNOW WHY YOUR GUY DIDN'T TRY CONTACTING THE ST. CLAIR COUNTY SHERIFF OR THE STATE POLICE BEFORE TAKING MATTERS INTO HIS OWN HANDS AND CAUSING AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT) WHILE ALSO TRYING TO ADEQUATELY SERVE AND PROTECT A CITY THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF BOSTON.
If you have any constructive suggestions, you write them down on paper and mail them, because the fax machine's on the blink and that job opening for a PC Technician's been open for a year what with the hiring freeze, so I wouldn't trust our email further than I can throw my four-year-old computer. So don't you stand there, Agent, and tell ME how I should be allocating my time and resources.
MORGAN: (Wisely keeps silent, gives a nod that is respectful if not yet completely chastened, and walks away.)
Also, this post at the Urbanophile blog - Detroit: Urban Laboratory and New American Frontier - really illustrates what struck me as wrong, visually, about the representation of Detroit on the show (which I didn't expect them to get right, so I am not actually angry about this part).
Detroit is empty. Detroit is vacant. Detroit can't support a big-box supermarket anywhere in the city (or at least, at this point, they've all closed and the city can't persuade one to open). Detroit is 900,000 people scattered over almost 140 square miles. They coined the term urban prairie for the expanses of vacant lots in Detroit. I will grant you I have not been hanging out in the Cass Corridor--and I will grant you they tried to explain and/or hang a lantern on it by talking about the homeless people all being clustered together--but you just don't see crowds of people on the streets of Detroit. That, more than anything, looked wrong.
But nothing makes it okay to show characters driving around in the hulking American-made SUVs only the federal government can afford to buy and run anymore, talking about how the bailout's not going to be enough to save this city.
The entry is crossposted at http://dsudis.livejournal.com/525605.html.
The scene in the finale went like this (I paraphrase):
MORGAN: How dare you, a detective in the Detroit Police, fail to follow up on this particular missing persons case when the victim's brother brought it to you? How dare you have so many as THIRTY-FIVE open missing persons cases? *
DET. BENNING: We're undermanned! **
MORGAN: HOW DARE YOU MAKE EXCUSES. (Strides off in a righteous huff.)
DET. BENNING: (Watches him go, stricken.)
* - In a city of 900,000 people! I suspect that in reality this number is higher by at least a factor of ten; keeping it down to thirty-five sounds fairly impressive to me...
** - Verbatim. And extra irritating given that Detective Benning is female.
And now I would like to present my response, in script form. I call it "L'esprit de l'escalier":
DET. BENNING: Hey, actually, how about you take your self-righteous ass and your team of seven highly trained experts working one case at a time, and your top of the line technical equipment and computers--saying nothing of the FBI labs back at Quantico to which you have unlimited access--and you get on your private jet and you spend a little in-flight time contemplating what, exactly, an UNDERFUNDED, UNDEREQUIPPPED, UNDERSTAFFED CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT WAS SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT A MISSING PERSONS CASE WITH NO MATERIAL EVIDENCE (TO SAY NOTHING OF ILLEGALLY OBTAINED, INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE WHICH, WHILE POINTING TO FOUL PLAY, ALSO PLACED THE VICTIM SIXTY MILES OUTSIDE OUR JURISDICTION, SO I DON'T KNOW WHY YOUR GUY DIDN'T TRY CONTACTING THE ST. CLAIR COUNTY SHERIFF OR THE STATE POLICE BEFORE TAKING MATTERS INTO HIS OWN HANDS AND CAUSING AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT) WHILE ALSO TRYING TO ADEQUATELY SERVE AND PROTECT A CITY THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF BOSTON.
If you have any constructive suggestions, you write them down on paper and mail them, because the fax machine's on the blink and that job opening for a PC Technician's been open for a year what with the hiring freeze, so I wouldn't trust our email further than I can throw my four-year-old computer. So don't you stand there, Agent, and tell ME how I should be allocating my time and resources.
MORGAN: (Wisely keeps silent, gives a nod that is respectful if not yet completely chastened, and walks away.)
Also, this post at the Urbanophile blog - Detroit: Urban Laboratory and New American Frontier - really illustrates what struck me as wrong, visually, about the representation of Detroit on the show (which I didn't expect them to get right, so I am not actually angry about this part).
Detroit is empty. Detroit is vacant. Detroit can't support a big-box supermarket anywhere in the city (or at least, at this point, they've all closed and the city can't persuade one to open). Detroit is 900,000 people scattered over almost 140 square miles. They coined the term urban prairie for the expanses of vacant lots in Detroit. I will grant you I have not been hanging out in the Cass Corridor--and I will grant you they tried to explain and/or hang a lantern on it by talking about the homeless people all being clustered together--but you just don't see crowds of people on the streets of Detroit. That, more than anything, looked wrong.
But nothing makes it okay to show characters driving around in the hulking American-made SUVs only the federal government can afford to buy and run anymore, talking about how the bailout's not going to be enough to save this city.
The entry is crossposted at http://dsudis.livejournal.com/525605.html.