I was drawn in because of Scott Caan in another police procedural. I really liked him as a cop in Hawaii Five O and expected something similar here. I couldn't have been more wrong.
Strike One
Scott Caan isn't a cop. He runs a security company. His ex-wife works in a missing persons unit. Yet the first episode had Scott hanging around the precinct, reading files, interrogating suspects, even participating in armed assaults, ALL WITHOUT WORKING THERE! Towards the end of episode we're told they are considering hiring his company but everyone is against it. So we were watching another Wesley Crusher, only this time in adult form.
Strike Two
The two lead's son resurfaces after presumably having been kidnapped six years earlier. There's lots of problems with this. The mother works in a missing person unit and immediately concluded "kidnapped" despite no evidence of abduction, no motive, no suspects, and NO RANSOM DEMAND! Obviously it was a kidnapping; no other explanation for the disappearance is possible. Kids never run away from home, fall into wells, or turn up unidentified in the morgue in her world. Yet when a ransom demand appears six years later she refuses to pay! Is she a psychopath?
Strike Three
The team is massively impossibly California DMV meets the San Francisco City Council world-class level incompetent. It appears to have been thrown together to meet some sort of quota for low-intelligence, unprofessional, emotionally unstable inappropriate make-work hires. There's a guy in the basement who desperately needs professional counseling. There's a woman conducting religious services for her coworkers and the victims's families during working hours. There's a lead character having sex with her boss in the office while on a time critical abduction case. There's an open romance between characters with a reporting relationship. They take breaks during time-critical situations to discuss personal issues. There's a civilian in the interrogation room threatening a suspect. There's a "computer expert" who thinks it is possible to identify the exact hotel room from which a photo was taken by triangulating two points from an out of focus mountain thirty five miles in the distance in the background of a low-rez image. There's a judge who grants a Philadelphia police team a search warrant in Las Vegas based on this preposterous photo interpretation. There's a chain of command who approves flying his team and A CIVILIAN to Las Vegas to break into what in reality is a random hotel room in a random hotel on a random street in Las Vegas. One can only imagine the legal exposure of getting it wrong yet they kick in the door full commando style because they're unfamiliar with the concept of a hotel override door key.
Strike Four
I could go on. I shouldn't be able to. But I can. Easily. It's that bad.
Three strikes and you're out. Four strikes and you're either a parody or never should have been green lit. Five stars for what I assume is a parody (rewatch it with that mindset and you will laugh) and for Scott Caan. Five stars.
