I love crime shows on tv. It all started with Quincy M.E. re-runs and Law & Order (the good, old school L&O when it was about the crimes and not the detectives personal lives), then I fell in love with CSI and NCIS. Now it's Castle, a great show staring the always badass Nathan Fillion. I love Castle, the crimes are imaginative (except the Strangers on a Train episode that every fucking crime show ever must rip off at least once), the characters are interesting, and it doesn't suffer from either staleness or campy-over-the-top-ness. That being said, it makes the same fucking mistakes that every cop show ever makes.
Mistake #1: Phone Traces
Every fucking cop show/movie ever that has had a phone call traced has subscribed to the bullshit that traces take time and if the bad guy hangs up early then they won't be able to find him. This is utter and complete bullshit that any moron with a brain can see is bullshit. Don't believe me? Try it at home. Have your buddy call you, and before it rings twice I bet you have his name or number pop up on your caller ID. Guess what, you just traced a phone call. And even if it comes up blocked or anything else then all you do is call the phone company and say "I'm the police, who just called 555-5555? And give me the address while you're at it." Ta-da! Phone number, name and address, and other information associated with the call are automatically and instantaneously recorded the second the call is placed. It only takes as long to trace a call as it does to dial the call.
Cell phones are a bit trickier than land lines, as per their nature they move around and aren't tied to a physical address (and can be bought anonymously at places like Walmart). Tv shows tend to get cell phones mostly right, thanks to obvious tools like GPS and cell-tower triangulation, which are real things that really work.
Calls that some expert hacker dude/spy has routed through payphones in Oslo are beyond my knowledge. I imagine it's completely possible to do such things and to disguise your tracks while doing it, but that level of deception is beyond the abilities of most criminals in most cases.
Mistake #2: High Heeled Shoes
Every female police detective in a tv show or movie is rocking heels. They're not usually 6 inch stilettos or anything, but they are still heels. And they're bullshit. Office workers wear heels, cops don't. Heels are the most impractical of shoes we expect people to wear on a daily basis. You can't run in them, you can't walk across uneven terrain with them, they destroy your feet, and they're not sturdy. A real police detective who might need to be comfortable, chase a suspect, or walk on anything that's not concrete or asphalt would never wear heels, thus no police detective would wear them on the job (except for court appearances, maybe).
Mistake #3: High Tech Bullshit
Enhancing security camera footage, fancy see through touch screen smart boards, instant lab results and more are all great examples of high tech bullshit.
You can't increase the resolution on any picture or video (once it's been made) and zoom in on the tiniest detail. What you see it what you get. There might be some enhancing in the form of noise filters and such, but you can't zoom in and get a clearer picture and any alteration you make to the picture/video will harm the quality, thus making it more difficult to find little details.
Touch screen smart boards exist. We used one in college and it was awesome. However, it wouldn't look all that cool on tv. Also, you can't see through it and if the actors are facing a white board or a smart board then you can't show their faces and the board at the same time. Thus the invention of the high tech bullshit we know as the transparent touch screen computer thingy. Could you build one? Yes. Would it work? Yes. Would it be practical? Fuck no, unless you're a camera crew trying to get a shot of actors and the info on the board at the same time (and make it look cool, as well). Reading anything on a see-through medium (like overhead projector transparencies) is a pain in the ass unless you have a solid, contrasting color in the background. Also, anything you could see from the other side would be backwards, thus making it useless as something you can look at from both sides. So why make it transparent? It makes no sense to anybody but a film/television director and audiences that don't think.
Scientific testing of anything takes time, especially in a law enforcement situation where there is a backlog of shit to do. You do not get DNA results the same hour, same day, or even the same week (for the most part). It just doesn't happen. It doesn't matter how fast the actual test is, a human being still has to perform the test and process the results and the test you need might be the last thing on their to-do list for the day.
Those are only three of many mistakes that irk the shit out of me. They are glaringly apparent and they should be to all of you as well. I know they are all done for a reason (dramatic tension, costume design, and audience friendliness respectively) but that doesn't mean they have to be relied on. Instead of a telephone trace you could have an uncooperative phone company or an anonymous cell phone (who has land lines anymore anyways?). Detective Kate Beckett could wear fashionable flats or athletic shoes instead (plus who looks at shoes while watching those kind of shows [except me, obviously]?). And instead of high tech bullshit... Well, some high tech bullshit has to stay because audiences don't want to wait a week for a test result or have to stare at the back of actors heads while they look at case notes. But that doesn't make it any less annoying, just more necessary.
However, the zooming in on a crappy security camera video to look at the license plate of a car three blocks away is complete bullshit and relying on it is bad writing. Stop fucking doing it!
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