Series Outro: Cop Rock

Well it might have only been eleven episodes, but “Cop Rock” felt like an incredibly-long journey: it took me over two months to watch them, with up to three weeks between some episodes because--and this is neither a joke, nor hyperbole--I was dreading it. There were times when I literally had to force myself to sit down to a viewing, just so I could make some forward progress. Seriously. Add to that the startling reality that all the episodes that filled my heart with fear were the first few (and by “few“ I mean half-dozen, which is more than half the total number), and it’s no wonder that it was axed when it was, after just eleven episodes.

I even mentioned in an episode review that, as the season wore on and I found myself warming up to the idea, I couldn’t tell if the show was legitimately getting better, or if it had just pummeled me into a reluctant acceptance of its idea. Aside from the last two episodes, which are actually very good (especially in comparison to the rest), this is a critique that I still maintain. Having a standard set of five songs per episode, which according to an Entertainment Weekly article from before its premiere, take up a whopping 12 minutes (out of approximately 47) per episode; about a quarter of an episode's total allotted length, didn't give much time to pursue actual storylines. It certainly gave the songwriters a legitimate enough workload to earn their paychecks, but the sheer number forced the music department into taking some real risks, in terms of the subjects it deemed worthy of being the focus of a song. It is no doubt thanks to the five-song standard that we were treated to such misguided duds as “Baby Merchant”, in which a man who sells babies (?) assures a couple (who happen to be undercover cops) that he will get them exactly the kind of baby they ask for; and “Lament of the Line-up Guys”, an aptly-titled, yet dud of a song in which a line-up of Latino men rap about being targeted by the police simply because of their race. I could keep going on and on, like the ditty with Chief Kendrick singing a country-themed tune while riding through the streets on a horse, or the many sung from the perspectives of pathetic characters, but I realized that I have just opened a can of worms, because the bad songs vastly outnumber the good ones.

"LAMENT OF THE LINE UP GUYS"

At the same time, the inclusion of musical numbers becomes a catch 22, because removing them would simply leave your standard cop show. While much of the blame can be laid at the feet of co-creator Stephen Bochco (yeah, THAT Stephen Bochco, he of “Hill Street Blues” fame before, and “NYPD Blue” fame ahead), I have to commend him for at least trying something new with the endless goodwill he had built up from the network. He could have just rested on his laurels and presented another straightforward police procedural, which I guess history maintains he still should have done, but he didn’t, and instead used his pull to create something that no one else would have been able to get greenlit. The one thing I learned that makes me respect Mr. Bochco even more, despite my overall dislike of this series, is his absolute dedication to the material: he helped write or co-write every episode (except for, curiously, the final one), and even balked at the network’s offer to continue the show without the musical numbers, something that almost certainly would have bought it at least one more season. Instead, he chose to take the high road, refused to sell out his co-vision (he created the series along with William M. Finkelstein), and watched it sputter and fail to attract an audience to the bitter end. Granted, an argument could be made that his clout was so great, he didn’t need to rely on its success to know that he would be afforded another chance (so admired was he that CBS offered him a job as president of the entertainment division; had he not turned it down, he would have been in charge of every show on the network, with the exception of news and sports), but even by that logic, this show couldn’t have possibly been made by anyone else. The network only attempted it given Bochcho’s name being attached to it, and even before the first episode aired, acknowledged that it was a huge risk. So any way you dice it, this is a show that lived and died on its own terms.

"I ACHE TO HEAR THE DOHGIES SING AGAIN"

I don’t watch much television at all, so I am far from any sort of reliable source on the medium, but the one thing I will give it is that its standing as one of the worst shows ever made feels pretty misguided. There’s no denying that I hated the first few episodes, and was ready to throw in the towel after number three, but the second half did pick up quite a bit. The problem is that it’s such an easy target: a show that couldn’t tell if it wanted to attract viewers with its grittiness, or with lighthearted comedic bits, or with its music. It was a constant push-and-pull, with some scenes that tried to wallow in all three bits at once, to expectedly disastrous results. Maybe I just have a different set of criteria than most, but I would take an epic, intriguing failure over a lazy, dull, uninspired bomb any day of the week; if you can’t at least acknowledge that “Cop Rock” is “intriguing”, then it wasn’t anywhere close to being down your alley to begin with.

I can’t really recommend this show to anyone, but if you think you might possibly like it, I will still urge you to check it out. I mean, just the awkward blend of drop-dead serious plot points focusing on racism and homophobia, paired with the frequently-bizarre songs will be enough to make even the most ardent fans of musical theater cringe; I shouldn’t have to mention what that same pairing will do to fans of gritty police shows. I can’t even say that this is a show ahead of its time, which is usually a classic argument for risky older shows that fail to catch on and find viewers, because if kept within the same format as it was back then, I would argue that it would somehow manage to be an even bigger bomb today. Still, there are enough people out there in the world that odds are somewhere around 100% that this ugly combination might actually work for some.

"HE'S GUILTY"

Right as I’m posting this, the series has been quietly released to DVD (by Shout! Factory), so now there is a legal (and widely available) way to view them. There were a couple low-quality copies available on YouTube (which is how I viewed them), but those have since been taken down, probably by the studio to force you into buying their product. I find this to be a rather shortsighted attempt on their part, as the copies available on YouTube were of terrible quality, but at least the songs remain viewable online, so you can get a taste of what the series is like before you pony up to buy the discs. While we’re at it, props to Shout! for delivering an obviously very niche product to the masses. Who knows, maybe it will take off so much, we’ll be seeing a “Cop Rock” remake within the next few years, though I would hope that we’ll see Armageddon before that…

(Also, for the sake of a full disclaimer, I am in no way, shape, or form affiliated with Shout! Factory or their forthcoming DVD.)

SERIES RATING: 4/10

"COP ROCK" PROMO

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