How Come Every Cop Show Feartures a Chaotic Aligned Character?

[dmccoy1693]

I was on my home I heard an interview with the main character of some new cop show taking place in post-Katrina New Orleans. The description the actor gave of the main character was that he was a "not by the book man." And all I could think of was, "Is there EVER cop show or movie where the main character wasn't a "by the book" cop? I mean, there's The Shield, Bad Boys, Sci-Fi Channel's The Invisible Man, The Negotiator, Lethal Weapon, The A-Team, 48 Hours, and so on. I mean when you ACTUALLY get a show featuring lawful cops, you get CSI and Law and Order. What gives? Why does our society praise those of Chaotic alignment? (For the record, I love Law and Order and wasn't insulting it by calling it lawful alignment.)

 

[Crothian]

It has northing to do with praise. Chaotic is more about conflict and conflict is more entertaining.

 

[jdrakeh]

I dunno, Crothian. With the exception of The Shield, I prefer Law & Order over all of the other shows so far listed. Also, it's worth noting that popular "cop shows" like Banacek (in which the lead is arguably Neutral Good), Columbo (in which the lead is Lawful Good), and The Man From Uncle (Lawful Good without a doubt) didn't have a Chaotic ensemble cast or even an iconic Chaotic protagonist.

[Note: If the Invisible Man and A-Team qualiy as "cop shows", so must all of those that I have listed here.]

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The first iconic cop show -- Dragnet -- was about as Lawful Neutral as you could possibly imagine.

I do think that the core L&O show is also LN, although both of its two surviving spin-offs feature a wider range of alignments, including several CG detectives.

The Shield, though ... that's an interesting mix of characters. Saving Grace, while not as good, is also a similarly mixed bag. I think in both cases, the detectives think they're good.

 

[dmccoy1693]

[Note: If the Invisible Man and A-Team qualiy as "cop shows", so must all of those that I have listed here.]

The Invisible Man was definitely a Cop Show. The Agency was under the US Dept of Fish and Game. Admittedly, they didn't hunt down "regular" criminals, but hey. Granted, I did stretch the definition with the A-Team. And before anyone asks why I didn't have the X-Files on the list, I'm on the fence as to whether or not Mulder was Neutal or Chaotic.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I think in both cases, the detectives think they're good.

Hit them with smite evil and see if that clears things up for them.

 

[frankthedm]

I was on my home I heard an interview with the main character of some new cop show taking place in post-Katrina New Orleans. The description the actor gave of the main character was that he was a "not by the book man." And all I could think of was, "Is there EVER cop show or movie where the main character wasn't a "by the book" cop? I mean, there's The Shield, Bad Boys, Sci-Fi Channel's The Invisible Man, The Negotiator, Lethal Weapon, The A-Team, 48 Hours, and so on. I mean when you ACTUALLY get a show featuring lawful cops, you get CSI and Law and Order. What gives? Why does our society praise those of Chaotic alignment? (For the record, I love Law and Order and wasn't insulting it by calling it lawful alignment.)

You see the 'chaotic cop'* because many folks view the Law getting in the way of itself. They hear about murderers IRL being let off on legal techinicalties, and wonder, wasn't there anyone who could a bullet in his skull? The cop who breaks the law to bring criminals down appeals to this ideal.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Mixing Lawful and Chaotic is a recipe for drama and tension, and that gets viewers and sells advertising.

It *should* make D&D games more fun, but YMMV.

 

[WayneLigon]

Why does our society praise those of Chaotic alignment? (For the record, I love Law and Order and wasn't insulting it by calling it lawful alignment.)

Who knows? Americans have always admired the man who goes out and does something for himself rather than wait and work his way up through society, be that in a lawful or unlawful way. Indeed the very definition of The American Dream is the man who is his own boss, beholden to none, who acheives success by the power of his own hands and desires.

 

[Celebrim]

America - always the rebels to begin with - has become a highly chaotic culture.

It's natural that its protagonists should all tend to be chaotic, and its villains all tend to be lawful.

In America, you'd never make a movie about a heroic empire trying to preserve the peace in the face of a rag-tag rabble of revolutionary terrorists bent on destroying society. Our sympathies by training would naturally be with the rebellion and with the underdogs.

It's very hard to shake out of that mind set, especially if your political and moral empathies lean strongly to the chaotic side of the spectrum, as it probably does in the case of most artists and certainly most current American screen writers.