#procedurals

[seonghwadyke]

[imthefailedartist]

Found. Lost.

I said it before, and I'm going to say it again as we say goodbye; Found's problem was that it committed too much to being a procedural and not enough to being original.

I wish Found had been focused on one case, Jamie's or another long-term kidnapping, using the case of the week as a guide. It would've had a lot more ground to stand on.

Week to week, I found myself bored with that weeks case and wanting them to get back to Gabi and Sir and finding Jamie. Because when it was focused on those things, the show was electric. When it was looking for random missing people, it was a slog.

It was him escaping the basement too soon. That should've lasted longer it's why we were all watching.

It's like they never knew what the audience wanted. Or they did, and they didn't want to give it to us. Maybe it was a network thing. They weren't willing to do something a little darker than the norm. Fine. Then, advertise the show as such, and people wouldn't've felt bamboozled.

It's ending on such a good cliffhanger. My god. Bring it back, NBC, please. Please!!! Just one more season let's close out this story.

I need to know why Sir thinks he and Gabi are destined to be together (other than him being psychotic)

I need to know if Zeke's going to leave the house.

If he's dead? He's not he's using it as a way to escape.

What's going to happen to Gabi after her confession? To M&A?

Jamie???

[beingharsh]

the pitt is hho? maybe it has a fighting chance at not being garbage

[thisisatesttai]

This, unironically. I can't hate any show if I can see the good version of it trying to peek through

i love watching TV shows that absolutely suck and being like "this would be so good if it was good"

[postguiltypleasures]

My Peak TV Journey Matlock (2024)

I wasn’t entirely sold on the new Matlock from the trailer. I thought it looked good and was intrigued by the decision to reference the earlier series with which it shares a name. But was it worth making the time in my limited TV watching schedule for? I didn’t watch the first episode as it aired, but I saw articles about it having a twist. I read spoilers for the twist, realized the show runner was Jane the Virgin’s Jenna Snyder Urman and was sold. As probably one of only a few people to watch both Jane and Matlock, I understand that the tv executives didn’t think there was enough crossover appeal to feature that in their advertising campaign. (Later while watching I also noticed the name Sarah Gertrude Shapiro as a “Consultanting Producer” This excited me because she was the creator of UnReal and I had recently read Emily Nussbaum’s Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV in which Shapiro was interviewed, and I was hoping for good things for her after that.) Anyway having Kathy Bates, one of the most celebrated actresses of our time as the lead Madeline Matlock was always going to be the main attraction. Hinting at how manipulative and cunning she could be was what gave it allure, and the twist made me happily commit to it.

For those who don’t know, Maddie Matlock is not who she’s been presenting herself as for most of the pilot. She’s in her seventies, previously worked as a contract lawyer and is coming out of retirement while caring for a middle school aged grandson named Alfie after the death of his mother, her daughter, Ellie. She is also well aware of how older women tend to be over looked and knows how to use that to her advantage. But she’s using it to her advantage to make sure people accept other parts of her backstory at face value. For starters, she was a much more successful lawyer than she lets on, and doesn’t need the money. Her husband, Edwin Kingston, is faithful and never had a gambling problem, both of which she claimed during her first day at work. Most importantly, she has chosen the name “Matlock” as a nom de guerre to infiltrate the law firm of Jacobson and Moore. She and her family found an anonymous claim that the firm hid documents that could have taken opiates off the market earlier, in time to save their daughter. As the narrator of Jane the Virgin would say, “Just like a telenovela!” There are several time throughout the season when having a narrator make this remark would be appropriate, but no narrator. Anyway, a perhaps more useful analogy is Matlock (2024) is to prime time legal procedurals of the 1980-90s what Jane the Virgin was to telenovelas of the 1990s-2000s. But I don’t think I can get into that in more detail right now.

Despite the Jane the Virgin direct connection, Matlock (2024) really fills the hole of topical legal procedural with a twist that The Good Fight and The Good Wife left. (I do watch Elsbeth, the actual spin off of those shows. It is different, and I will get to it later. ) Like The Good Fight/The Good Wife it the cases are mostly civil and most of the work is done outside of the courtroom, which is such a change from what I remember of late twentieth century legal procedurals. The cases of the week tend to involve a lot of in the news discussion such as tech startups, abusive corporations acting as landlords, covert anti-union action from corporations, and various reasons people mistrust the pharmaceutical industry. Also, as plot, the cases of the week tend to slow down the more serialized plot. This captures the feeling of “the world seems to be falling apart, but I still have to go about my daily life,” in a way that I really admire. The solutions to cases are rarely absolute victories. There are often complications due to conflicts of interest. Maddie has to deal with more than one person who reminds her of her relationship with her daughter, and/or the case itself has an interesting parallel to Maddie’s personal investigation.

Which brings me back to discussing Maddie and her family’s double lives. The situation they’ve created for themselves is messed up, and the show knows it. The whole Kingston family is involved in the investigation including thirteen year old grandson Alfie, who sometimes wants to skip school or sleeping to work on it. Until recently they were based in San Francisco and this project not only required relocating to Westchester, but getting an apartment in Queens where Maddie and Alfie can pretend to live if anyone from work visits. Alfie also visits his grandmother at the firm on “Family Day”, helping in her espionage plans while he is there. There is always tension that they will be found out. But over the first few episodes when the plot seemed to include an “accident” that would expose them, then flashbacks would reveal how Maddie and her family planned things to get more access to information her new colleagues have. These scenes could just make the viewer feel relieved, but they also are unsettling. The people we’ve decided to follow can be manipulative and deceitful. Also the Kingston family dedicating themselves to get revenge like this sometimes seems to get in the way of their ability to heal and move on. Besides, it’s something of a leap to say if certain documents were not hidden, the whole pharmaceutical industry would stop making opioids and they also would cease to be available in any black market variety. Proving this malfeasance won’t bring back Ellie, nor make her parents feel better about any decisions they made during her life.

The office life part of the show relies on a tricky balance. The characters Maddie works with the most have to be engaging and likable, while the greater structure, and the mostly unseen partners retain some suspicion. Maddie shares an office with Junior Associates Billy and Sarah. I am going to take this opportunity to say that when Kathy Bates decides to wrap things up and retire, I hope Billy and Sarah get spun off so I can keep watching them. The Sarah character in particular seems to trigger a lot for me. She’s unapologetically abrasive in a way that reminds me of how when I was a teenager I thought the phrase “never change” sounded like a curse. She’s gotten far with her manner of being, but there are also ways it feels like self sabotage. In my early notes on Matlock I called her the “Petra” of this series, referencing the character from Jane the Virgin. I’m not sure how much I agree with this by the end of the season. But it’s worth noting that the actress who played Petra, Yael Grobglas, has a reoccurring role as a Jury Consultant named Shae. She is a minor antagonist, land always fun on screen.

The most important relationship Maddie h develops is with partner track Senior Associate Olympia Lawrence, played by Skye P. Marshal. They quickly become a kind of professional confidants, but reluctant to call each other friends. There is a tension between who is mentoring who, the elder person, or the one who has been at the firm longest. When we meet her, Olympia is in the process of getting divorced from Julian Markston, Jr., son of one of the firm’s partners. Olympia, her soon to be ex and his father have been selected by Maddie and her family as the people most likely to have destroyed the documents that could have taken opioids off the market. So some of the tension is will their burgeoning trust be destroyed be the reveal that Olympia is who Maddie would find most culpable? Or by the various ways Maddie manipulates her over the season? Also how can you worry about their personal conflicts when they are in trying to take down the most evil beverage company since iZombie’s Max Rager?

It’s worth noting that the Julians, Junior. played by Jason Ritter, and especially Senior, played by Lloyd Bridges, are used sparingly throughout the season. Maddie interacts much less with them, so there is much less dramatic tension with how a reveal of their culpability would play out. We’re told that they have a messed up relationship, but we mostly don’t see it. What we do see fits that description, but it’s not a tension for the viewer. The opacity around these characters makes you hope that they are the guilty ones, unto the show confronts you with how much that will affect the other characters we have met at Jacobson Moore.

This is good tv drama. A fun mix of procedural/serial/workplace comedy/ domestic drama. I’m glad it exists, and continue for at least one more season.

[steelbluehome]

I feel like I need to reiterate this, Americans, we do not EVER turn anyone in just for the reward money, because the reward money is a LIE!

There will be a reason they come up with for not giving it to you. Even Nancy, the snitch at McDonald's, who everyone in the world knows turned in Luigi Mangione, will not get a penny of the reward money. The reason she is getting is that she called 911 instead of the tip line.

But there are other reasons they give, like, the cops already had the info you gave them from "other sources". "Lots of other people" called in the same tip. The reward was "up to" the amount promised, so you're getting $1.50. You didn't do the proper paperwork before you gave the tip. And just about anything else you can think of.

They won't give any money out until the person is actually convicted, not just arrested. It could take years for a case to even get to court. If the suspect takes a plea deal, then did your info really lead to a "conviction"? Or by the time the suspect is convicted, suddenly the money is not there. Reward money? What reward money? It isn't like they have it sitting in a box waiting to hand it over to you after the conviction. No, after the conviction, now they need to try to find the amount they put up for the reward. And who's budget is that going to come out of? Who wants to put that money in your pocket instead of their own? Okay? Understand? Got it?

You never get the reward money!

[sailingfireshipz]

Does anybody know why we went from 24 to 23 to 22 episodes in a season!?

[lornabassiswrites]

Whodunit? The very first person you'd suspect

When I first started writing about my narration pet peeves, I had about two or three in mind. I have now written about eleven of them, and I still have at least a couple to go! Who thought there were so many things to critique in movies and series. I’ve watched a lot of police TV shows where the main focus of each episode is an investigation culminating in solving the case. I’m not talking about…

[beyourghost]

oh so you thought existing only to perform a soulless office job was bad. how about existing only to go to the dentist. how about existing only in planes. how about existing only to perform stupid and repetitive yet socially expected tasks. how about existing only to withstand every unpleasant thing that somebody else decided to go without

[seonghwadyke]

[wanderinginksplot]

When I looked this up, this type of show is known as a howcatchem (versus the more popular whodunit).

Leverage is not a "drama" or a "crime show." Its genre is actually "Columbo-like," wherein every episode a rich asshole that you already know Did It gets not just caught but absolutely lit the fuck up by our hero(es) at the end of it

[wordofthewolf]

Media Update 2/27/25

Hunting Party (2025) I thought the title of this one was fairly generic, but after reading the blurb, I was intrigued. After a secret prison full of serial killers is sabotaged, a secret squad is formed to track the escaped prisoners. Melissa Roxburgh plays an FBI profiler who is getting a second chance at a career. Nick Wechsler plays her former partner (in both meanings of the word) and also…

[xipe-slayground]

Millennials and Gen Xers who refuse to admit they've watched procedurals and pretend those tv shows are for old Boomers are the weirdest people online.

[ryanxross]

The Pitt literally has everything. Socially awkward and highly competent autistic coded character. Sarcastic asshole with a heart of gold. Nervous white boy with the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen. Nepo baby child prodigy. Milf with a mysterious past. Noah Wyle. Need I say more

[ghostlypawn]

[car seat headrest // unk. // tvline // ada limón // nichole rae klein // anna ostroumova-lebedeva // my chemical romance // margaret atwood // agustin gomez-arcos // walton ford // unk. // briton riviere // mitski // boygenius // phoebe bridgers // rachel howard]

LANGDON/ROBBY + DOGS