Never know, might be good

Alessandra Stanley has a review in The New York Times of two new cop shows, Southland and The Unusuals:

In the 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt was considered a traitor to his class, and in the 1960s so was Mick Jagger. The lead characters in two new police dramas that begin this week are upper-class kids who defy their upbringing to become cops. That downward mobility has little to do with solving crimes, but it does suggest that these days, it is fashionable for the rich to be self-loathing. Casey Shraeger, played by Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), is the heroine of The Unusuals on ABC, and she is a Gossip Girl gone good— a Dalton School alumna who trades her Birkin bag and Jimmy Choos for a gun and a badge on the meaner streets of New York. On NBC’s Southland, Ben McKenzie plays Ben Sherman, a rookie in the Los Angeles Police Department who grew up in Beverly Hills and is teasingly called 'Tori Spelling' by his elders on the force.
Until recently cultural collisions mostly worked the other way. On Gossip Girl a middle-class student at a snobby private school has to make his way past the wealth and privilege of his super-rich classmates. On The OC Mr. McKenzie played a poor kid from Chino, California, who mingled with the plutocratic teenagers of Orange County.
That reversal isn’t so surprising coming from John Wells, who was a creator of ER before moving on to Southland, because Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle) of ER also came from rich, snooty parents who sneered at emergency medicine as déclassé. But the fact that the creators of The Unusuals made the same choice suggests there is a broader shift at hand. There are other similarities: both shows seek a bold, contemporary tone by breaking with current fads and borrowing from series past.
Tough-minded, suspenseful and shot in an unnerving bleached light, Southland is by far the better drama— Thursday’s pilot is one of the most gripping opening episodes of any network crime series. That’s partly because Southland leaves behind the hokey forensics fetishes of CSI and the soap-opera anguish of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; it bypasses the trend of eccentric, mind-reading detectives in favor of the harsh realism and moral ambiguities of cable shows like The Shield and Rescue Me and even, to a point, The Wire.
Southland finds eloquence in holding back. Ben’s first day on the job is so harrowingly tense that at times it also evokes Training Day, starring Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington.
The Unusuals, which begins on Wednesday, isn’t nearly as thrilling. But it isn’t bad, just more predictable. It’s ambitious in a different way, trying to recover the mix of high drama and absurdist comic relief that distinguished shows like Hill Street Blues. It invests a little too much of its energy in attempted humor, including an unseen dispatcher who blurts out bulletins in a nasal Queens accent: “Second Squad, this is dispatch. Be on the lookout for a Puerto Rican man wearing a cape and no pants.”
Casey, who dropped out of Harvard to become a cop, is working undercover as a prostitute for the vice squad when she is suddenly recruited, still in her falsies and stiletto heels, to help investigate the murder of a veteran detective. It’s not a very imaginative way to start a new series about a female cop— more like the 'jiggle TV' of yesteryear. But Ms. Tamblyn has an appealingly aloof, brooding manner that wipes some of the silliness off her character.
Casey’s new partner is Detective Jason Walsh (Jeremy Renner), who used to share his cases with the victim, and is a retired baseball player who in his off time runs a tiny diner. Walsh and Casey work well together despite the preening, idiotic interference of Detective Eddie Alvarez (Kai Lennox), who refers to himself in the third person and is the joke of the squad, a little like the Frank character on M*A*S*H.
No show is totally original, but The Unusuals lifts a scene from The Wire so blatantly that it’s practically plagiarism. Two of the more screwball detectives are questioning a suspect in a series of cat killings, and tell the man that the copier machine is the latest high-tech lie detector, before asking him questions and photocopying his hand with the word “true” on it. That ruse worked on The Wire because those detectives were questioning hardened teenagers from the ghetto who knew everything about drugs and weapons, but had no idea what even basic office equipment looked like. On this show the suspect is a well-spoken middle-class adult, and the prank makes no sense.
Southland doesn’t steal from The Wire, but it is inspired by that HBO show’s intense, intimate look at the inner workings of street crime and beat police work. Ben is assigned for training, not to say hazing, at the hands of a hardened police-force veteran, John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz), who subjects his charge to an endless stream of insults and sexist jokes. Ben, determined not to be baited, tries not to flinch or react, which prompts Cooper to call him a Canadian.
Most of the police officers who surround Ben are as crude and unfeeling as the suspects they hassle. It’s the crimes that are heartbreaking: a teenager killed for no reason by gangbanging ex-cons driving past him, a girl snatched outside her house when her father’s attention strays for a moment. Ben is almost as spooked by his new colleagues as he is by the criminals, and with good reason.
Even the most hard-edged network shows tend to surrender to expectations after a while and go soft, diluting their power with mawkish sentimentality and romantic subplots. For now, at least, Southland is commendably stinting and cold, a series that doesn’t aim to please, and is all the more pleasurable for it.
Southland, NBC, Thursday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time. Created by Ann Biderman; directed by Christopher Chulack; John Wells, Mr. Chulack and Ms. Biderman, executive producers; Jon Pare and Andrew Stearn, producers. Produced by John Wells Productions in association with Warner Brothers Television. With Ben McKenzie (Ben Sherman), Michael Cudlitz (John Cooper), Regina King (Lydia Adams), Tom Everett Scott (Russell Clarke) and Shawn Hatosy (Sammy Bryant).
The Unusuals, ABC, Wednesday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time. Created and written by Noah Hawley; directed by Stephen Hopkins; Mr. Hawley, Robert DeLaurentis and Peter O’Fallon, executive producers; Peter Tolan, executive consultant. Produced by 26 Keys Inc. in association with Sony Pictures Television for ABC. With Amber Tamblyn (Casey Shraeger), Jeremy Renner (Jason Walsh), Kai Lennox (Eddie Alvarez), Terry Kinney (Harvey Brown) and Adam Goldberg (Eric Delahoy).

Rico says that, in another Zelig moment, this reminds him of his attempts to become a reserve police officer when he lived in Oakland (didn't work out; medical problems), when he shocked the training officer with his W2 from Apple; Rico was making more than a ten-year captain on the force.