I've been watching Blue Bloods which is... kinda a WTF already. Some might remember that I often disputed incidents of supposed police misconduct, to put it mildly. This show makes me really uncomfortable. Police misconduct is a thing that happens continuously, and the show tends to present it as morally grey. People react and are like "Hey, you can't do that! Don't do it again, or I might report you!"... But it gets results. And here in season 4, people really aren't even reacting as much.
It's really creepy to think about how the DA sister barely speaks up for civil rights at dinner anymore (she spends most screentime raising her daughter now, and possibly getting back with her ex!??).
Then there's the idealistic younger brother who became a beat cop out of law school because he's basically Jesus. He used to get in shouting matches with the detective brother over people being innocent until proven guilty, and tried to stop his more experienced partners from beating information out of people. He's still super kind and generous, and resolves situations diplomatically... Except he's also fine with bad guys getting what's coming to them. Because they're bad.
The detective just beats confessions out of people. He basically doesn't have an arc, he started corrupt and stayed that way. He got in trouble a little in season 1 but now nobody even cares, because he gets the bad guys locked up. He had a brief sideplot with anger management which basically just demonstrated that he never hurt his family of 4, only suspects, so it's okay.
The bizarre thing is that it really felt like they were going to show that corruption like this has consequences, and isn't justice. There were a lot of hints of that. But the comeuppance just isn't coming... Everything keeps turning out alright. The criminals are obvious villains who are increasingly just committing suicide by cop. Because it's so much easier on the audience when the suspect goes for a weapon (while at gunpoint) - ah, they were bad after all! Everything was justified!
Er, anyway... The show is oddly desperate to show Muslims in a good light, as if they know they're basically aping 24 at this point and trying to distance themselves. The detective who beats confessions out of everyone turns completely around with Muslim suspects. He apologizes constantly, insists that his female partners hang back or wear headdresses while investigating, it's weird.
Especially since the rest of his unit was killed in Afghanistan. His anger issues supposedly come from the war, but instead of ever taking it out on Muslims or his family, he goes off on literally everyone else.
The specific thing was that they recently figured out that a series of mosque-bombings was being done by someone who looked Muslim and, I kid you not, everybody in the case expressed complete confusion that a Muslim would ever attack other Muslims. The Muslims interviewed, the detective who served in Afghanistan, everybody. They said "Religion of peace" a lot, and I get that... But it's like the Shia/Sunni split just... isn't canon!?
(It turned out to be a Muslim who lost his faith due to a hard life, so he started bombing other Muslims out of... spite? In other words, the one time a Muslim got violent in this show, it was because they stopped being religious. And also had diagnosed mental problems.)
(They also followed up that episode with a dinner discussion about religious war - specifically the Crusades, and Christians vs Christians in Ireland, but not Muslim vs Muslim. It was just... weird! Oh and just the Crusades, no mention of Islamic invasions.)
Author
Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14513262 times)