New Procedurals: The Player and Rosewood

Are procedurals my favorite kind of television? That’s a hard question to answer. Have I watched a lot of procedurals and am I most likely to watch procedurals more than any other genre of television? An easier question to answer in the affirmative.

Procedurals are beautiful because they are simple, like a daisy. They are most notable for their formulaic episodes. And although they are similar in format, they can span a variety of other genres—comedy, action, drama, science fiction—and subgenres—police procedurals, medical procedurals, supernatural procedurals. There is a procedural out there for everyone.

Although there may be a season or series long story arch, every episode to some extent stands alone. Every episode relays one crime, one case, one client. Something happens, an obvious suspect or solution is found, that obvious route turns out to be wrong, and a less obvious, shocking twist is revealed to be the right suspect or solution. This formula, being as it is so popular, has been transferred to spy procedurals (The Avengers, Man from U.N.C.L.E., Burn Notice, Chuck), medical procedurals (House, Royal Pains, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice), and supernatural/science fiction procedurals (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Supernatural, Daredevil, The X Files, Torchwood, Lost Girl). But my favorite, and perhaps everyone’s favorite, is the police procedural.

Police procedurals have been popular since the beginnings of television and they will probably still be playing as the last post-apocalyptic television loses its final surge of power and flickers off. New police procedurals are made every year, with half-hearted attempts at originality. But originality isn’t what makes police procedurals popular. They are a dime a dozen, and we literally consume them by the dozens. Columbo, Murder She Wrote, NCIS, Law and Order, Monk, Elementary, The Mentalist, Cold Case, Psych, Criminal Minds, Lie to Me, CSI, Castle, Bones, White Collar—and many more are some of the most popular television shows of their time. Some are so successful that they inspire spin-offs and some are immortalized through syndication. Who hasn’t found themselves up late at night eating ice cream out of the container and watching reruns of CSI. I could be in another room entirely, half listening to the television in the background, only get about two notes of the Law & Order theme song, and I would know exactly what show is playing. These shows have become legendary and every year networks try to recreate their successes.

So far this fall I have seen two new procedurals, The Player and Rosewood. Many other favorites are back, such as NCIS, Castle, The Mysteries of Laura, Law and Order: SVU, and Criminal Minds, among others. I would categorize these two new series very simply as, unsuccessful and successful.

The Player is unsuccessful. It is a spy procedural based on the premise that some British woman and Wesley Snipes know EVERYTHING that is happening EVERYWHERE in the world at ALL TIMES and then let rich people gamble on what might happen next. Thus enters our strapping lead, Alex Kane (played by Philip Winchester), who is as far as I can tell a poor man’s Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) of Burn Notice. Alex Kane is an ex-spy (like Michael Westen) who has done some pretty unforgivable spy shit (like Michael Westen) and now works as a freelance badass and protector of the people (like Michael Westen) who is forced to work unwillingly for a mysterious international organization (like Michael Westen) in order to find out what has happened to his life (like Michael Westen). If you are starting to think that the show sounds like a carbon copy of Burn Notice, the similarities stop there. There is no badass girl sidekick (yet?) or comedic relief sidekick (yet?), to the deficit of the series. Alex Kane also is less sexy, less charismatic, less funny, and less compelling than Michael Westen. Philip Winchester breathes no life into his character, and the character becomes a two dimensional cardboard cut-out of a jock you knew in high school who never spoke in anything but monosyllabic words and struggled with anger issues. Maybe I’m being too harsh, but throughout out the pilot I was unmoved by his plight, even in the face of his (ex?) wife’s death.

The writing was bad and the acting was worse, with the exception of Wesley Snipes. Snipes is an established badass and I am positive he can do anything and look cool doing it. I bet if there was a video of him snuggling a tiny kitty cat, everyone would still think he was a badass. But even Wesley Snipes cannot save a ridiculous show like The Player. The show mistakenly believes that it is being revolutionary when it compares the unpredictability of life and humans to the unpredictability of gambling in a casino. But what the writers of the show fail to realize is that the comparison is backwards; that gambling is like life, not that life is like gambling. It’s a chicken and egg scenario, only the show claims that casinos came before human nature.

On the other hand, Rosewood is successful. Besides garnering more viewers than The Player on the night it premiered, Rosewood is simply a better show, if a less inventive (read: far-fetched) one. It is the epitome of a lighthearted police procedural; it is funny, sexy, and charming. It’s funny because the two leads, a medical examiner with an overly optimistic attitude and a cop with a more hardcore, badass exterior, engage in on point banter basically from the moment they meet. It is sexy because it is set in sexy Miami, starring sexy Morris Chestnut and sexy Jaina Lee Ortiz. And it’s charming because Chestnut and Ortiz are clearly having fun with their characters, and that playfulness permeates the show.

Although the show is promising because it fits the mold of a successful procedural without contrived originality (it has the same medical examiner/detective dynamic as Forever without the painfully forced supernatural element), it may suffer if the writing and acting cannot compete with what is already out there. Existing shows like Bones, which is ironically on the same network, may beat out Rosewood simply because those characters and the relationships of those characters are better established. On the other hand, Bones is entering its 11 season, and I would not be surprised if Fox is testing the waters for the end of Bones, with the intention of a Rosewood takeover.

In any case, there were some rocky elements to the pilot that I think could have been written more delicately. I could have done without the melodrama dropped ungracefully throughout the otherwise witty, fast-paced episode. Presumably that was put there to make the audience care about these characters and their budding relationship, but it just seemed clunky. The last scene especially was crow-barred in what appeared to be an attempt to assure the audience that their relationship is not romantic—although I’m not ruling that out as a future plot point.

I was glad there was diversity in the form of a black lead, a female lead, and two lesbian supporting characters. Viola Davis’ recent Emmy speech was fresh in my mind while I watched Morris Chestnut move away from his previously long list of supporting roles to leading man and title character. There are a few racially diverse sidekicks in police procedurals—Laz Alonso in Mysteries of Laura, Dule Hill in Psych, LL Cool J in NCIS: LA—but scarcely any leads. Although I will always be in favor of badass lady cops like Jaina Lee Ortiz, and although I think there has been a lot of progress in gender parity in television recently, and although I think way more progress needs to happen before women roles in popular media are fully realized, I am putting my militant feminist agenda aside for the moment to celebrate Morris Chestnut, Lorraine Toussaint, and Gabrielle Dennis.

Overall, I enjoyed Rosewood. It was simple and beautiful, like a daisy. It was familiar and I think it will do well within the rest of the procedural canon. I will have to see if The Player can win me over in the next few episodes, before I will abandon it entirely.