COPS cancelled after 33 seasons

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/10/cops-cancelled-after-33-season.html

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Well, whatcha gonna do.

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Good riddance!

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Wow, Jay Sherman gifs all around this morning.

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I only watched that show when it was in towns that I had lived and then be all like …

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It was still on?

What is Inner Circle doing to do with out that royalty money?

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Maybe work on getting rid of Blue Bloods. The one episode I saw was a one-hour diatribe on how stop-and-frisk was the greatest thing ever.

It’s no accident that half the characters are named Reagan.

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And on this day, it was made clear to all who the Bad Boys really were.

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You can still watch Dukes of Hazzard, right, where the white boys with a Confederate flag on their car get constantly hassled by cops?
It’s an 80s alternate-universe classic.

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I ran into that shite sometimes at homes of friends and fam. I never understood the appeal. But then, I don’t like those videos of people breaking their arms or getting whacked in the balls either, so. :woman_shrugging:

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Yup. It’s even worse when it isn’t self-inflicted.

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The only episode of COPS I’ve ever watched is the X-Files crossover episode.

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Is it weirder than the Magnum/Murder She Wrote episode?

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Oho, a homework assignment! :wink:

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That show is the most overt right wing propaganda I’ve ever seen on TV outside of Fox News.

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Back in the mid-90s for a few years I watched COPS. I also watched Jerry Springer. I’ve evolved since then, and now the only “reality” tv I watch is RuPaul’s Drag Race.

I’m honestly surprised COPS was still running. Maybe they just ran out of anything they could air without upsetting the public?

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Anytime someone brings up problems* with shows aired on CBS, I tell them the same thing. I record and watch one show on that network, CBS Sunday Morning, mostly out of a sense of nostalgia. Any time something political comes on, I know exactly what to expect - and use the fast forward button rather than waste time on it.

*By problems, I mean misogynistic, racist, and abusive behavior behind the scenes and/or on the screen.

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  1. Lets not judge a show based on “one episode you watched once”, but more importantly,
  2. Lets not confuse fiction against “reality TV” where the primary concern has been that having TV crews along causes the police to focus on “good for tv policing” instead of doing their jobs.

COPS was problematic because it focused on making policing “dramatic”, and this involved focusing on violent crime (a minority of crimes committed) and on the underprivileged (because showing cops breaking a white-collar crime ring isn’t good tv), which, at least initially, also lead to a disproportionate number of POC being portrayed, and being portrayed as violent offenders.

Fictional shows like Law & Order, Blue Bloods, whatever, can choose to cover more aspects of policing than LivePD or Cops can, because they are constrained by 1) reality and 2) what reality looks good on TV, coupled with the fact that if they make the cops look bad then they loose access to their ridealongs, killing the show, so it is, by its’ very nature, skewed.

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That show is the most shamelessly over-the-top LEO celebratory effort I’ve ever seen. Everything’s justified. Citizens are the enemy.

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