Flashpoint: Lawmen

Posted by: S.P. Young • November 17, 2012 @ 5:58pm

"Do not think you are off the hook."

There were two god awful all too familiar stories that were present in "Lawmen," that have been way overused in the genre of the police drama. The first story was that of the renegade police officer, that was willing to be the bad guy in order to punish the criminals. Even from just within Flashpoint itself, this kind of storyline has popped up on more than one occassion before. The second overused story, was about the stupid kids that deliberately disobeyed orders, only to prove that they had done the right thing. Combine these two plots, and you get one of the most predictable episodes of any police drama ever.

In the case of the renegade cop, well, the story is pretty self-explanatory. The only thing worth mentioning, is that Flashpoint actually had a really bad villain. He was a drug lord that used kids to commit his crimes. But this drug lord was hardly the focus of the show. Flashpoint would rather emphasize the gray characters, rather than the black hearted villains, because the gray misguided do-gooders can be talked down from doing harm.

One of the biggest failures of Flashpoint as a show, is its inability to give its characters much personality or background. When the show does provide some of it, it is usually pretty irrelevant in the long run, boring, and minimally related to the actual main plot of the episode. Take the kids for example. They are completely useless to the show as a whole. Thus far, Greg's kid has only served the purpose of showing that Greg put more time into his work than his family. Ed's kid is just as irrelevant. Only difference is, Ed has not lost his family yet, even though he came close to it. Yet, the writers of the show, decided to make the kids the central focus of the show. Neither of these kids have ever received more than five minutes of face time in any previous episode before. And somehow, they are now the main characters of this one episode.

While Ed was pointing a gun at that renegade cop, this made Ed's son think about his father shooting that girl from the season premier. So just where is this storyline supposed to go? It is actually rather uninteresting, and has served very little purpose thus far. So Ed shot a teenage girl, but she brought it onto herself. And that is the main story for the season?

It sounds even less interesting than the whole team getting put on probation.

At the end of the day, that renegade cop had to be talked down from executing the bad guy. Typical recycled Flashpoint formula. Upon exiting the building, the kids were thanked for their contribution of sneaking in the cell phone into the bag, to help with the case. What an awfully predictable ending.

Tags: Flashpoint, Lawmen, Broken Peace, Hugh Dillon, Headstones, Amy Jo Johnson, Power Rangers, Enrico Colantoni, Person of Interest, Sergio Di Zio