Whoop!
Whoop! That’s The Sound Uh Da Police! #SWAT #3weekroundup #CBS
#recap #review
All pictures courtesy of CBS
Here
we are again with another late-season three-week roundup of a brand
new (read: completely old and overdone) show. On deck this time, we
have CBS’s latest remake/reboot of the police drama S.W.A.T. While
I’d like to hand it to them this time for picking a decade other
than the 80s to finally remake something from, I can’t help but
still feel a certain turning anguish in my stomach at the fact that
we are getting yet another remake. Granted, this is of a very
pedestrian idea, but there are so many pedestrian ideas out there
that haven’t been explored that it somehow gives me pause to see a
new show and/or network (or a film and film studio for that matter)
trade on an easily recognizable name over even considering something
that could be wholly different. Yes, there are thousands of stories
one can tell that are centered around the S.W.A.T. team, especially
in this day of mass shootings galore and terrorists supposedly
running to every corner of the earth, but there’s other agencies
that we could explore and in very intriguing ways. But again, since
this is so on-the-head obvious, I guess I can give it a pass as it is
another cop show and, frankly, they’re all alike anyway. So, is
this newest iteration of S.W.A.T. a battering ram in the right
direction or will it just be another flash(bang) in the pan? Let’s
find out together!
CBS’s
new 2017 SWAT (from here on out I will not be putting periods between
the letters) stars Shemar Moore (most recently of Criminal Minds
fame) as Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson who is one of the leaders of
the Special Weapons and Tactics force of Los Angeles. The little bit
of twist this time around from what I’ve read (I don’t actually
know because I never saw the original) is that this black Daniel,
like every black cop character apparently, has a connection to the
very streets over which he now “presides.” Side note: Why is it
that every black or Latino character who plays a cop has to have the
same played connection to the streets but the white guys usually just
get to be cops? Seriously? I really try to keep this blog
non-political and try to stay away from commenting about feminism,
race, religion and the like, but what is it with that? At some point
they almost always deliver a, “Hey, but I got outta that life”
speech and/or a, “but people like me seeing people like me, black
people for them and not against them...” speech too, signaling that
they became cops because they want to put a stop to this notion that
minorities don’t respect the law or that good cops do exist or that
cops can have a positive influence on society or something like that.
It’s never that the black or Latino guy became a cop because they
just wanted to stop bad guys. Now I’ve gone on a rant at the
beginning of the review which is definitely no good. Let me hop back
on track. No race stuff from here out. Maybe. No promises.
 |
| Hondo and Deacon in foreground, Christina and Tan in back |
Daniel
is put in charge of his unit over another qualified senior SWAT
member after the previous leader shot and nearly killed a black kid
during the opening raid. Some weapons runners were in the middle of a
deal and took off running through the streets and jumping on rooftops
and houses, which is, apparently, a thing in LA because they did the
same thing in Straight Outta Compton. Well, Hondo uses the
opportunity to prove his badassdom by beating up one of the runners
and shooting one in the head within seconds, sniping a guy from 30
feet away. The leader tries to shoot one of the other runners but
errantly hits a black teenager. Because of this, and LA being what it
is, the police chief and mayor decide to fire the old leader and
promote the black Hondo over the white guy who was next in line, one
sergeant David “Deacon” Kay who looks like the next oldest guy on
the team.
Through
the first three episodes, not much is given on Deacon’s character
per se, but you do get a sense of who he is. A family man, he is a
strong, rather silent type who, while he clearly feels the burn of
being passed over for a job which should’ve been his, is hardly
fuming about it as much as the many petty people that populate this
world would fume. But to his credit, Hondo has been a good leader so
far and has even consulted Deacon on the moves they should make in a
particular stakeout, but that’s not until episode three.
 |
| Christina |
Along
with Deacon and Hondo, we also have Dominique Luca who is the older
lock-and-step guy who does what his commanding officer tells him to
do but is a crack-up when not in the field. A SWAT lifer, he is the
womanizer who refuses to commit to anyone or anything outside of the
job. His father was a SWAT member and so was his grandfather, making
him third generation badass. We also have Victor Tan who is, for all
intents and purposes, our token Asian character through the first
three episodes. With so much going on with everyone else, he hasn’t
earned the character spotlight and, if I’m being honest, has nearly
melted into the background like ice cream into my belly (and you
thought I was gonna say pavement, didn’t ya? Nope! Went with the
clumsier simile). I think he also said that he’s married but I
can’t be certain. And I also don’t remember him doing anything of
real note, so... Yeah. Next we have Christina “Chris” Alonso
(side note: because I hate girls using boy’s names and because it
might get confusing with later references, I will call her Christina)
who is the Latina of the group. She is a softer version of Michelle
Rodriguez’s character from the Fast and the Furious franchise.
She’s Leti 2.0—the version that came back to the franchise after
they killed her off earlier, then brought her back more caring and
nurturing. Christina’s kickass-ness is quite evident and she seems
to have better detective skills than some of the others on the team,
Hondo excluded. She is also young and is one half of a “duo” that
represents the millennial generation (the actor playing Tan is
technically a millennial but I’m not sure if the character is or
not).
The
other half of the duo is newbie Jim Street, played by Alex Russell of
The Chronicle fame. Hand-picked by the exiting squad leader, he is
your quintessential young maverick/death-wisher who runs gung-ho into
any situation. We see him first zooming through the downtown streets
of LA on his motorcycle, racing to get to work and tailed by a patrol
unit of cops who have no idea who he is. He shows up late to his
first day and in the dressed-down tactical uniform. He changes out of
that and joins the rest of the group.
After
the opening salvo, the community where the black boy got shot is up
in arms about yet another police shooting. They organize an outside
protest rally for change for their little neighborhood and the city
as a whole. SWAT goes to walk around in their plain blue uniforms,
meeting people in the community and patrolling the gathering. This is
the best they come up with to mitigate the disaster that was the
shooting of the kid. While there, Jim flirts with Christina and I
don’t know if it’s the actor who is just always happy-go-lucky in
real life or if that is how the character is sorta supposed to be
played, but you can tell straight away that even though she is
turning down his advances because they work together, she is totally
going to give him some eventually. She gave this tiny flinch of a
smile that looked like she was holding back from jumping his bones
that night in favor of the, “Nah, I’mma make you work for this”
trope, which I am totally down for. I have no idea why, but I really
liked this. I’m jumping ahead.
 |
| Jim Getting The Chew From Hondo And Deacon |
The
main speaker at the rally is a young man who had a family member also
suffer gun violence and police malfeasance not too long ago. As he is
up on the dais making his speech, someone starts shooting and guns
down one of the other people right beside him. Jim takes off toward
the shooter with little regard for his safety or his team. He loses
the shooter after showing some pretty impressive Spider-man skills.
Hondo and the team have to chew him a little and they go back to the
station.
Hondo
learns the chief commanding officer in charge of all the SWAT units
in the city wants to handle the job with a sledgehammer rather than
some finesse, and he ain’t goin’ for it. Instead of roughing
people up, Hondo takes the “this is my hood” approach so often
used by the black cop in these shows/movies. He goes around the city
with his squad and asks some of the locals, stopping first at a
salon, which leads him to a street-hustling BBQ master, which finally
leads him to a towing company that was seen fleeing the rally on the
day of the shootings.
Well,
the towing company is run by some ex-military dudes (mostly white)
who look tough but SWAT’s got nothing on them for now. So Hondo
makes a stop over at the shot-kid’s hospital room. He’s alive and
awake and surrounded by family and the black activist dude. Hondo
says some encouraging words about how he was once in the same streets
and how it’s tough but the kid will make it and about how the
police are not there to be enemies to anyone. He then gets some intel
from the activist dude who said that he knew some ex-military sniper
who was supposedly into the movement but more from a “the
government is corrupt” standpoint rather than a “Black Lives
Matter” view.
Hondo
and the squad go to this sniper dude’s house to find that the other
towing ex-military people live there to. They figure out that not
only are these guys some of the people that were involved in buying
the guns at the beginning of the episode but that they also shot the
black people at the rally. They are trying to cause a race war not
because they believe in white power or the oppression of blacks but
because they are trying to bring down the entire system of the
government and hoping the city will rip itself apart in utter chaos.
Well,
Hondo splits his team. He gets to the roof of a building to stop the
sniper who has promised to kill a bunch of grade-schoolers only to
find that the threat is a decoy and they really plan to rob a very
important bank and start the domino in bankrupting the city(?). It
kinda got convoluted at that point but by then it was only ten
minutes left in the episode and I was ready for the wrap up.
The
bad guys have a rocket launcher that they use once on a truck. Hondo
and his team manage to stop the baddies and fight them in the street.
Jim shows that he can definitely fight and be good at the job, but
still gets saved by Hondo and the day is saved.
 |
| Jessica and Hondo; They Actually Make A Cute Couple When Dressed Down... And Naked |
On
a side note, one of their superiors Jessica Cortez is sleeping with
Hondo. But because she is younger than him, a woman, and
higher-ranking, at the start of the episode she wants to officially
put in the paperwork to declare their relationship. But when Hondo
gets the promotion, she then becomes his direct superior which makes
her want to break it off, and you can just tell that Hondo wants
part-time custody of her bed sheets (he’ll come by and hit it on
the weekends). And as much as she is objecting, you can tell she’s
gonna cave. A lot of this show is predictable, but it’s the first
few episodes so... what can you expect?
Episode
two sees them open with a training exercise on a meth lab setpiece.
There, as they go through the raid and look into room after room of
meth makers without firing a single shot, newbie Jim takes off once
again on his own and winds up taking one of the meth lab workers down
but getting shut with a sticky arrow in the back of the head by a
secondary SWAT training officer/meth maker. His team lost the
exercise do to his freestyling without the team, and if it was real
life he would’ve gotten killed. They break from the exercise only
for the chief over the SWAT units to come and privately talk to
Deacon about the racial tension having died down in the city and how
he can now go back and make Deacon the new squad leader and, I guess
demote Hondo? It’s all very hush-hush and Deacon really isn’t
having it because he, at the very least, is a man of integrity.
Meanwhile,
as the squad is going through more practice drills, across town a
county jail transport goes horribly wrong when the cousin of a big
bad criminal breaks him out of the transport. See, the lead prisoner
and three others were being transported to prison and were inside of
a building with a glass elevator. The lead prisoner’s cousin came
and shot up the guards, posed as a guard himself and they made off
with the lead prisoner and the other criminals who had to escape too
because they were all chained together. I’ll say I was actually
surprised that the lead prisoner and his cousin didn’t just kill
the other criminals once they escaped because he would’ve had to
know that by finding the other criminals, the police could
potentially interrogate them and then find him. And that’s exactly
what the SWAT unit tries to do.
Not
only is an escaped prisoner troubling the city, Hondo’s
non-girlfriend girlfriend and boss Jessica (she has a desk job but
used to be a patrolwoman; everybody is a cop) is the person who
busted the lead escaped criminal. If she knows one thing, it is that
this guy is all about the vengeance. Loves the vengeance. So she is
concerned most about the woman whose testimony put him away. That
woman is a single mom with two children, one of which was used as a
carving board for the lead criminal. As it turns out the lead
criminal was a rapist and pedophile who used to sleep with young
teenage girls. There mighta been some murdering stuff in there too,
but I can’t remember as they only mentioned it once. It’s a good
probability that the single mom and her family need protection but
because the police unit is already tight on fund allocation, the head
honcho will never approve of it. So Hondo takes it upon himself to
jump ahead and assign Christina and Jim to the woman’s house as a
safety detail. Naturally, they get their flirt on without really
flirting, talking about the latest dating apps and such.
As
Christina and Jim are getting familiar with each other at the single
mom’s house, Hondo has split the rest of the team up to go and
collect the various criminals around the city, the very plan I knew
they’d try. They believe they can get the other accidental escapees
to rat on where the rapist dude might be or at least where he dropped
them off. So they trick the black criminal’s friend into telling
them that the black criminal sometimes frequents his sister’s
place; then they find the exotic animal smuggler back at his home
feeding the crazy exotic animals because they haven’t been fed
since he was arrested I guess; and they also find some other dude
doing something else.
None
of that leads them to the rapist. But then Christina and Jim notice
that this teenage boy has been riding back and forth in front of the
single mom’s house like he’s casing the joint. They and Hondo ask
if he’s reconning for the rapist but he explains that he wants to
kill the escapee just as bad. He even says that he’s been bouncing
between the single mom’s house and his cousin’s house because the
rapist always claimed that the young teenage girl living there was
his bride and belonged with him. So Hondo and the group go over there
to find the rapist there, leaving Christina and Jim behind on the
detail. No, they’re not done protecting the family. In fact, the
rapist’s brother comes to get the single mom and her kids who go
and hide in the bathroom. Jim tells the little boy some story about
how he had to be a little man when he was younger and how that’s
the kid’s responsibility now and how the kid can calm himself down
during times of stress. Well, the kid does the thing and we get to
see none of the kickass-ing that Christina and Jim do to the brother,
but they do take him down.
As
it turns out, the rapist is not only at the other young girl’s
house but escapes out the back with her. Now they need to figure out
where he might go. They hear something from one of the other
re-captured escapees and/or the girl’s father about some cabin,
discover that his aunt had a cabin which is still listed as existing
outside the city and not belonging to anyone, and they load up and
get going. We get a huge shootout between the rapist and SWAT and
even have Hondo come riding in on a helicopter. Hondo, being the
capeless superhero he is, magically has the best shot from up high
when the rapist steps to the window using the girl as a shield. He
shoots the guy’s brains out and the day is saved. We also got a
little back and forth with Hondo and Jessica about their relationship
and his unspoken bad boy promises that he’s still gonna come over
every now and then and tap, flip and lick it, and she’s caving. She
wants to be bad. Secret romance that’s forbidden at work? Like
Brandy sang back in the 90s, she “wanna be dow-ow-own!”
Episode
three opens wiith them doing typical SWAT stuff: a raid on a heroin
smuggling ring. Nestled inside what looks like a pretty nice
apartment complex, they get some good intel about some people
smuggling drugs and go to raid the place. They bumrush the door and
immediately people scatter. They catch a few of the people, gun
others down, then return to the apartment to find a fairly clean
room. There’s no coke, no ex, no nothing inside. If this was a drug
den at one point then they have surely missed the—boomp! They hear
a subtle sound come from somewhere in the back and open up a room to
find a bunch of people crowded into a room no bigger than a janitor’s
closet at a rundown elementary school. One man, the “lead mule”
is the only one who can speak English. They get his name out of him
and some gobblety gook about wanting to be in America or something
and then he starts rubbing on his stomach, foaming at the mouth and
collapses in front of them. He’s overdosing on the copious amounts
of burst condoms full of heroin.
As
it turns out the people in the closet were all Filipino immigrants
who were being forced to be drug mules, and now the team has to
figure out who is behind this ring. Also, they learn that the people
in the closet (sounds like an off-Broadway gay musical about an
entire gay club in some straight-laced Republican dude’s closet)
are actually only halves or partial families. So they have to find
the families as well.
While
that investigation is going on, we get some more background for Jim.
In the first episode, we learned that the SWAT leader that was fired
was the same cop that busted Jim’s mom. Her crime: she killed her
boyfriend who was abusing her and little Jim when he was young. Zoom
forward to episode three when we actually see Jim visiting his mother
in prison. She is still in there for a while (maybe for life) but she
looks good. Actually, if you watch a lotta TV you will notice that
his mother is Sherilyn Fenn who played Audrey on Twin Peaks. Anyway,
she tells her son that one of the girls who she is close with in jail
is getting out soon and that the woman is scared that her ex (a
supposed abuser) is going to find her and get violent with her again.
She just wants Jim to go over to the guy and warn him off of this
woman, rough him up if he needs to. He promises to do so.
 |
| Tan |
Back
to the main story, the team starts to search for the strands that
lead back to the people behind the smuggling ring. Remember we’re
not only dealing with drug smugglers, but also human traffickers and
extortionists. So this has to be a pretty big ring. They discover
that all of the people in the closet were asssociated with this one
particular pastor/priest. Because the lead mule is still struggling
to live and is currently unconscious in a hospital bed, the priest
tells the cops that they all worked for this same cleaning and
hospitality agency. So they go to the place, which supplies workers
for a lot of medical properties like nursing homes or places where
“not a lot of Americans want to clean out bed pans.” A white guy,
he tells them that he hires a lot of immigrants because they are
willing to work the nasty jobs for a visa, but that he has outsourced
his hiring to this one guy because this guy speaks Filipino.
Well,
cut through the BS, SWAT chase around the HR guy, then a few others
only to end up back in the white guy’s house. They figure that it
actually was the white guy the entire time. So they go to his wife
and, surprise, surprise, his wife is Filipino (I don’t think the
actress is actually Filipino but some other Asian ethnicity. I’ve
seen her play a few different Asian characters). And I’m like,
“Well, it was her the whole time.” But apparently the one cop
(who is not part of Hondo’s SWAT team) doesn’t realize this. He
turns his back on her and gets shot when he turns back around.
The
woman and her husband get to a private airport where they try to take
off in a private jet but are stopped. The husband caves quicker than
a knifed souffle and tells the team everything while she resists
saying anything. She’s a gangster. With the husband’s intel, they
find the rest of the families before they die from suffocation while
locked away in a shipping container.
Back
with Jim, he goes to rough up the dude for his mom and gets arrested
for throwing paws with the guy who is totally not feeling anything
he’s saying. Well, Hondo discovers the real intel about Jim’s mom
and goes to visit her in prison. It turns out that prison has
corrupted her. Now Jim’s mom is a seller of contraband and the guy
on the outside was working with this woman on the inside who was
never actually getting paroled but is Jim’s mom’s competition.
Hondo warns her off of ever contacting her son again, or at least for
a good long while because he doesn’t need that kind of distraction
in his life right now. Oh, and there was a tiny thing about Dominique
needing a place to stay and depending on his SWAT brethren and
sisteren to house him for a while because his latest girl kicked him
out. Take a guess of who he stays with.
 |
Dominique and Hondo
|
What’s
my grade? I give it a B+. It’s strange that I enjoyed this show
because it’s a typical procedural drama that literally adds nothing
new to the plethora of cop shows we have on the horizon of TV. But as
a procedural, it is decent. The problem with the series is that it’s
just decent. It’s not flashy, nothing heavily intricate and is
predictable at nearly every turn, yet it’s entertaining for what it
is. I’ve said that a few times this new TV season and for those
that don’t know what it means, it means that you should know what
you are getting the moment you see the commercial for the show. It’s
just like every other cop show. And that’s the problem, but only if
you’re looking for something new and innovative.
The
show is also very strange in that it takes SWAT, which is known for
being the tactical team that comes in when a situation gets out of
hand, and turns them (or at least the public’s general idea of
them) into your basic detective unit. In the first three episodes
they did more detective work than both Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling
did in the two Blade Runner movies. It makes me wonder what the other
cops do.
Then
we have the stereotypes within the show. They get it right with all
of the minority inclusion, and it was about time that Shemar Moore
got to lead his own show (yes, he was a big part of Criminal Minds
but not the lead), but the writing is more typical of a lot of white
writers sitting around thinking about what other minorities do,
rather than having ethnic writers. I’m sure they do have minority
writers, but something about the black guy having come from “the
hood” is such a played motif that I groaned at the very mention of
it. But I digress.
Should
you be watching? Sure, if you like shows where the good guys always
catch the bad guys and procedurals are generally your thing. If stuff
like Criminal Minds, Chicago PD and the like are what you enjoy, then
go for it. This is an acceptable remake to a show that, in and of
itself, was not all that great. I can’t really be mad at an average
show that has produced an average show. And SWAT wins a few brownie
points for having adopted and adapted the old theme song to both make
it current while not sullying the catchiness of the original tune.
But if you are looking for something with a little more dramatic
depth, then this probably isn’t the show for you. Ultimately, SWAT
is a bubblegum show that tastes good for a while but quickly goes
flavorless after a few commercial breaks. Will you be talking about
it the next day at the watercooler? Probably not. But the cases could
get interesting and they do a good job at establishing all of their
characters while leaving plenty of room for intriguing developments.
SWAT airs on CBS Thursdays at 10pm.
What
do you think? Have you heard of the new TV remake of SWAT? If you
haven’t, do you think you would check it out now? If you have heard
of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? What do you think they can
improve? Do you think that Deacon will betray Hondo? And will Jim
find out about Hondo talking to his mom? And what do you think about
the relationships between Hondo and Jessica, and Jim and Christina?
Let me know in the comments below.
Until next time, “Hi, 911? Yeah,
there’s a giant pitcher of red liquid walking around the house
across the street. I’m getting nervous and I think he has a bomb.”
‘Have you seen a bomb?’
“No, but he keeps talking about an
explosion... of flavor.
‘Of flavor?’
“Oh god, he’s coming this way.
Ahhh! He just burst through the wall of my house. [background noise:
‘Oh yeah!’] He’s terrorizing me with Kool-Aid goodness! Help!”
P.S.
But on a serious note, swatting is a very serious and very dangerous
practice done by quite a few idiots out there. If ever it is done to
you make sure that you don’t panic, get down low, do not resist and
calmly explain what has happened. I’ll try to come up with a much
better, shorter sign-off next time.
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