DVR REWIND: From
Detective to Captain to Detective Again? Myteries of Laura is Back!
#MysteriesofLaura #PremiereWeek
All pictures courtesy of NBC unless otherwise sated.
OK, so with writing and editing and gardening and exercising, not to mention all the premieres that happened this week and the books I’m trying to read, some stuff naturally has to get pushed back to a day when I don’t have as much stuff to watch. Case in point, Mysteries of Laura wound up on the tape delay. Note: I won’t always be able to cover every show every single week as some nights are stacked (Mondays, Thursdays, Sundays). For those nights, as in this case, I will have the DVR REWIND (#DVRRewind) for anything I’ve missed and wanted to cover.
When I started
watching Mysteries of Laura season one I wasn’t jazzed about yet
another procedural (I think I made my feelings very clear on my
premiere week post about the inundation of cop and case-of-the-week
procedurals). They’re nice, but get boring after a while. I like
new kinds of dramas but always find myself lured in by at least one
or two. So when I started watching this show, I thought it similar to
Castle in that it focused more on humorous aspects rather than the
seriousness of the cases. Her ex-husband is Detective Laura Diamond’s
captain, they have small twin sons, there’s a wacky wasp guy with a
trust fund that plays as her gay bestie, the two minority detectives
have a thing for each other and then there’s a whole bunch of cases
and stuff. Again, the humor drew me in so when I came back to the
premiere, I wanted to laugh as I did last season.
And... I kind of
didn’t. I know it was the premiere of the second season and they
had to have some riveting case to draw new viewers but it felt almost
as if they either switched showrunners or decided to tone down the
humor in the episode in favor of tension. Listen, as a previous
stand-up comedian, I can tell you that tension can help in humor but
isn’t always the most laugh-inducing drug (unless you’re a veiled
psychopath). What I can say is that tragedy and strange circumstances
make for great comedy. Thankfully, Mysteries had a great circumstance
with her ex being her new captain.
Until the premiere
episode. Last season, Jake got shot while in the field working a case
with his team. He went on medical leave and decided to come back a
week early to poke around the office. Well, as was revealed to him,
as a junior captain he didn’t have seniority to pick his post. The
captain serving in his stead does have seniority and decided she’ll
stay. The hard-nosed, hard-butt she is, she and Laura differ.
As with any new
changes and characters to a show, I always try to give it three weeks
to see how well it goes but I can tell you I don’t like her
already—not the character, nor the actor playing her. I’ve seen
this actress before and while she was good in other stuff, I don’t
think she fits here. She’s a worse fit to me than the female
captain they had on Castle for the last few years and, thankfully,
got rid of. Nothing against females in a captain’s role, I just
don’t like how the writers treat them (the one on Castle always
wanted to be called sir, rather than ma’am or Madam which just got
annoying as hell). They need to write them far better. I felt because
of this new boss, she essentially sucked all the humor and fun out of
the show, and frankly, I really couldn’t care less if they solved
the case after that. Oh, and they got rid of that over-the-top blonde
woman they added late last season. While I thought she was a little
too ditsy to be a detective, I did want to see how she would fit in
for a full year.
Oh, the case!
Right. Well, the case was an abduction thing which started off as a
murder. One of the abductors changed his mind, was run over by the
two other would-be cohorts and died on the scene. The abduction was
of a young boy who the detectives discovered had been secretly and
illegally adopted. They quickly closed that side case as both birth
parents had died a while ago and the only living relative the boy had
they arrested for child abuse. Excusing the parents’ crimes, they
also had to rush to find the boy as he was diabetic and needed his
insulin shot before sundown.
Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly Magazine
After flubbing the
money drop/child’s return (something that was totally the captain’s
fault) they finally discovered the boy’s sister (the parents’
birth daughter) semi-knew the dead guy from earlier as they attended
rehab together. He told of a place he used to hideaway when getting
high and bam! They found the kid in that place. It was an OK case
with plenty of twists and turns but ultimately, the case is not why I
watch the show. Hell, this is a show sold to the audience last year
as having the young twin boys peeing on each other in public as a
competition. This was the slapstick of a single parent working with
an immature ex as boss. Now, he takes a voluntary demotion to be a
detective in the same department again? Hey, I see the awkwardness
there but I also think something is lost in the show. I hope they get
him back into the captain chair by the end of the season or sooner
because I don’t like this new woman. It brings too much seriousness
to the show and I don’t want another Law and Order: SVU (by the
way, that premiere was quite good).
What do you
viewers think? Am I overreacting and being too hard on the show? Did
you love the first episode? Did it have you laughing just as much as
last season or did you sense a change in the show as did I? Or do you
have faith it’ll get right back to the super awkwardness of what it
always was? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
As
always, check out my books on Amazon (if you’re looking for
Halloween scares
check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or #ThePowerOfTen).
For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check
out #TheWriter.
The final episode of season one of The Writer is OUT NOW. Ahh! That’s
right, all 15 episodes are out now available exclusively on Amazon.
Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to my
blog.
Until next time, “woop! Woop! That’s
the sound of da police.”
P.S. Yes, I may have hit you with a
little old school KRS-One lyrics from his “Sound of Da Police”
song, but Laura Diamond is a policewoman. Didn’t you read the post.
I’ll keep working on a good sign-off.
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