Go, Team!

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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Trilogy of error

In honor of Halloween, I rescreened the famed “Amelia” segment from the 1975 ABC special “Trilogy of Terror.” This is the one that pits Karen Black against a voracious Zuni warrior fetish doll. Having completely misremembered important details from the first viewing–I was probably scared out of my wits at the time—I feel obliged to point out three infelicities in the depiction of the doll. Amelia’s boyfriend, an anthropologist, might have been pleased:

1. The Zunis were a peaceful, agricultural people. Although they may at times have fought for what was theirs, it’s highly doubtful they glorified a thirst for blood.
2. The Zunis were Native Americans and so not nearly as dark-skinned as the doll.
3. Real Zuni fetishes are totemistic stone carvings a few inches in length at most. They are supposed to confer certain natural powers upon the bearer by analogy with the animals they represent. They’re not supposed to spring to life if handled incorrectly.

But this is just me being pedantic. What I was most struck by was the story’s subtext, which renders the doll a fetish after all. At the outset, Amelia is having an argument with her mother about their weekly visit that evening. Amelia is going out with this anthropologist at City College, it’s his birthday, and she’s trying circumspectly to let her mother know about the impending booty call. Mom accuses Amelia of preferring this feller to her, because God forbid Amelia’s bio-wants should supersede filial piety toward a mother who brought Amelia into the world after succumbing to her own bio-wants some 25 years earlier. This we may call the Paradox of Libidinal Emancipation.

Amelia succeeds in dismissing her mother, but only temporarily. Guilt gets the better of her, and she instead calls off her rendezvous with homo anthropologicus. Before she can tell Mom the good news, however, the warrior doll attacks. Named “He Who Kills,” the action figure has come packed in what appears to be a shoebox, with very clear instructions not to remove the attached chain under any circumstances. Amelia promptly unchains him—by accident, yes, but in tales like this, nothing is deeply accidental. Does she think the Zuni artifact purveyors were kidding, or does the submissive daughter unconsciously wish to tap into He Who Kills’s warrior spirit?

Whatever the case, Amelia must first save her own skin by defeating the fetish. This proves surprisingly difficult, considering the weight differential, but in the end the doll is stuffed into a 450°F oven with a salted and peppered flank steak. Amelia opens the oven door when she thinks he’s “done.” She screams, shocked, and we next see her on the phone, asking her mother to come over for that visit. Amelia then squats in front of the door, playing mumbledy-peg with an enormous blade. She flashes a mouthful of jagged teeth to show the audience that Amelia has been replaced, through the miracle of occult cookery, by She Who Kills.

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