In Plain Sight: Good Cop Bad Cop
By fred | July 28, 2008
(S01E09) Last week I wasn’t too happy with this show, because after a pretty great episode, and given how each episode had a tendency to be better than the last, I guess it’s fair to day we might have had some expectations that clearly weren’t met. The show has improved from its debut, it’s gotten better, but last week it wasn’t at his best.
So it’s a great thing to see that this week it got better, and while there are still flaws - and this episode had quite a few things that felt a bit off, really - at least it was back to a better level. This was another episode that, despite everything, I really enjoyed. I had a good time and I think that this is the kind of episode we might want to see each week from this show, only with less flaws/non-sense maybe.
Marshall wasn’t all that present, and back to being mostly sitting on his own at the office while Mary was doing all the work, but at least he wasn’t a complete idiot like we’ve seen him before. He and Mary still has some nice exchange, and there was lots of humor all around - for instance when Marshall questions whether or not it’s a good idea for her to go talk to a widow, she replies : “I’ll be so nice she’ll be happy her husband is dead just for the chance to meet me!” Love it.
So we started with a guy, dirty cop actually, joining WITSEC some time back, when Mary just bought her house and - รด surprise - her mother just showed up uninvited to “help”. Apart for some nice exchange between Mary & Marshall, this little flashback thing didn’t really do it for me. It only served for two things : one, to prove Mary’s mother is completely useless, past, present, future, doesn’t matter, we really should get ride of her; and second, to show us how Mary got to sleep with that guy, the bad cop who joined WITSEC as her witness.
And that was a very odd thing to me, because Mary might have tried to justify that all she wants, I felt it was quite out of character for her to go there, maybe risk her job, just to have sex. Somehow I feel she could get one-night-stands without having to pick from her witness list, and that it would be ore like her. I’m not buying any connection with them, plus while Mary might not always play by the rules, I doubt she would plant false evidence and get false testimony just to arrest some bad guys. She might be willing to break some rules, but she has her own limits and I feel that guy went further that she would have, or be able to justify.
It’s a funny thing though, because this episode was about some cop who got shot, and somehow it got back at Mary’s witness. Why? Because she conveniently lost her phone at the police station long enough for the cop to get a phone number. And? you ask. And that’s it, next thing you know they’re got a warrant against the guy and send all the cops in town with backup from the army, cars, helicopters, planes, people parachuting all over the place to get that one dude, one guy who’s not been hiding from anyone, who’s not been doing anything even remotely illegal ever since he came her a few months guy, and more importantly one guy they have absolutely nothing against.
Oh, wait, he was a cop in Chicago, just like the one who got shot. That’s it. That is literally the only thing they have, but apparently that’s enough to send everyone to arrest him, treating like like he was the most dangerous criminal to ever live. Then follow some very bad police work, like accusing him of lying about working with the guy on a case, when all it took was to look at who else worked that case to see that about every cop in Chicago got to be involved, and so chances are they really never met…
Clearly, this whole thing was pretty weak. They had to involve Mary’s witness somehow, but there wasn’t any real reason for it. It felt pretty weak, but we had quite a few laughs along the way, and they even managed for the first time to give Mary’s boss something to do.
Meanwhile, the mother is completely useless, really, and the whole mess with Chiko and Brandi couldn’t be any worse, I don’t think. So no, they didn’t sleep together, but the idiot who was asking Mary to become his wife a couple weeks back already slept with someone else meanwhile. He told Brandi about it, and then she had Mary to find out, and now they might really be broken up, and Brandi could be back hanging out with Chiko except he don’t want to and blah blah blah… so she got to get that stupid suitcase she threw away a few weeks back.
To sum up : the whole love triangle or whatever is pure crap, I’m not sure where this is going and to be honest it doesn’t really feel like writers have any clue where they’re going with this either; the mother should be killed already; and we might expect soon Brandi to be in trouble, and need Mary to the rescue. Just please don’t have her join WITSEC or something, because that would really suck.
Still, as I said in introduction I managed to enjoy this episode, I think because both Mary and Marshall were actual characters and there was humor. Hopefully things won’t go down to trash next week…
Posted in Reviews
Shows: In Plain Sight
