Cop Show Cliché

You’ve seen it a hundred times without questioning it. Maybe you’ve seen it so many times you no longer noticed it, but after you read this, it will jump out at you every week. A cop draws down on the bad guy with gun, or the bad guy draws on the cop, but however it comes about, we have a bad guy with a gun pointed at the cop, and a cop with a gun pointed at the bad guy, both caught in an apparent standoff. The cop usually says, “Drop it or I’ll shoot,” or the bad guy says something similar, as the tension builds with the passing seconds. Here’s my problem with that: no cop is going to put down his gun or offer the bad guy a couple of choices. He or she is going to shoot the guy. The police officer will not take the time to tell someone pointing a gun at his or her chest, “Put down the gun!” They will aim center mass and fire, they hope, before the bad guy does. To do anything else is contrary to their training and stupid beyond belief. So why do we keep seeing this scene over and over, even in “good” cop dramas? It’s an easy tension builder on which mediocre writers can rely. TV writers get a check whether they come up with a new way to do this scene or not. It’s an old stand-by, however unrealistic. But “realistic” cop dramas do it, too. Just once I’d like to see a bad guy pull his gun on a cop and say, “Drop it,” only to have the cop double-tap him in the chest and say, “Nope.” There are many plausible tense situations for police officers. Leaning on this weak and unrealistic premise is an early indicator of shitty writing throughout, with stilted dialog, cliché situations and stock characters aplenty. So when you see this scene, change the channel. Or read. You won’t find that kind of cliché standoff in many cop, crime or mystery novels. A decent editor somewhere would have cut it or rejected the manuscript. I don’t ask much from television: divert me from everyday life for a little while and make me laugh or cry or sit on the edge of my seat. Watching one more too-good-looking cop act like anything but a cop will not do any of the above.