I’m probably the last person to realize this, but a new genre of crime TV seems to have taken over the airwaves. I call it the “team procedural,” or TP. It’s a police (or military intelligence or medical examiner or crime scene investigation) drama in which a motley band of public servants with complementary skillsets solves crimes. TPs include such shows as “CSI” in all its incarnations, “NCIS” and its progeny, “Bones,” “Criminal Minds,” “Numb3rs,” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” There are others, no doubt, but I can’t sample them all, nor would I wish to.
Uniting all TPs is some special approach to crimefighting, usually with a scientific twist. The many CSIs, for instance, derive their cachet from the Michael Mann flick “Manhunter,” a “Silence of the Lambs” prequel whose mesmerizing FBI lab scenes decorate a solid, multifaceted plot. In CSI, however, the garnish of forensics becomes the only dish on the menu, so the show has to kill time with banter and backstory among the teammates. In order for this to work, the dialogue has to be crisp and witty, and the characters have to engage us both singly and in ensemble. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, the CSI franchise is uniformly bland, with tepid dialogue, smarmy characters, and increasingly arcane forensic techniques used to uncover increasingly outlandish modi operandi.
Each TP requires roughly the same set of team-member types. There are the “competent hotties” (one male, one female), the “science and computer nerd-genius,” the “intuitive whacko” (often in the form of a “spooky girl”), the “by-the-book guy,” and the “hothead” or “outsider with something to prove.”
One character often fills more than one niche, and there seems to be no limit on nerds—half the cast of “Numb3rs” play geeks, for example. The “whacko” trope often seems inserted to show that “it takes all kinds,” even in highly regimented surroundings, or perhaps to supply the esprit de corps that only a village shaman can confer. “NCIS” (“Naval Criminal Investigative Service”) sports a maniacal goth-emo milkmaid named “Abs,” who is at once unacceptable and completely appropriate to a military installation.
Integrating and harnessing this powderkeg of ids and superegos is the Leader, who acts as the team’s ego. The Leader always answers to the Suit, a first-level management type who may or may not have the team’s best interests at heart. The Suit is sometimes an ex-teamie who “knows what it’s like in the field,” sometimes a shadowy puppetmaster pursuing hidden agendas. At some point in a TP’s life-arc, plots will be driven by the tension between Leader and Suit.
I may have given the impression that TPs never work, but such is not the case. They work when they work, but, I will say, in spite of their genre. The fascination seems to be in watching an investigation unfold like clockwork, through a series of contingent interactions among colleagues who can barely comprehend one another. But for the steersmanship of the Leader, all would be chaos.
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