There's a recurring Urban Legend that the reason ABC canceled the short-lived comedy classic Police Squad! was because the network felt that it required too much attention from the audience to catch all of the rapid-fire gags. In that vein, Angie Tribeca is what you might get if the Zuckers decided to remake Police Squad! in the age of CSI, while being mindful of slower-minded audience members. This is not a show you watch for complex characterization or deep drama; this is a show you watch for the 22-minute stream of goofy gags and silly sight jokes.
And because the entire appeal of the show is in its humor, the show lives or dies on its comic delivery. Here we see why Police Squad! was as fast and densely-packed as it was; Angie Tribeca can feel uneven at times, because the timing of the jokes often stumbles when the show slows down for the audience's benefit. The jokes are still funny, but many of them get stretched out for viewers, and as a result they verge on the edge of Overly-Long Gag and suffer accordingly. The end result is not a machine-gun barrage of bellyaching laughs, but a measured stream of good-natured chuckles — it is still funny, but it also left me wanting a stronger "hit". To be fair, the comic timing improves over the first season, and the last few episodes show a noticeable improvement in delivery.
Perhaps it's too early to tell if Angie Tribeca will be remembered as fondly as Police Squad! or Sledge Hammer! — but given how influential the CSI-verse has been on pop culture, it'd be a shame if Angie, Giles, Tanner and Hoffman gave up the (not-so-high-speed) chase too soon.
Series A 'Police Squad!' for the 21st century
There's a recurring Urban Legend that the reason ABC canceled the short-lived comedy classic Police Squad! was because the network felt that it required too much attention from the audience to catch all of the rapid-fire gags. In that vein, Angie Tribeca is what you might get if the Zuckers decided to remake Police Squad! in the age of CSI, while being mindful of slower-minded audience members. This is not a show you watch for complex characterization or deep drama; this is a show you watch for the 22-minute stream of goofy gags and silly sight jokes.
And because the entire appeal of the show is in its humor, the show lives or dies on its comic delivery. Here we see why Police Squad! was as fast and densely-packed as it was; Angie Tribeca can feel uneven at times, because the timing of the jokes often stumbles when the show slows down for the audience's benefit. The jokes are still funny, but many of them get stretched out for viewers, and as a result they verge on the edge of Overly-Long Gag and suffer accordingly. The end result is not a machine-gun barrage of bellyaching laughs, but a measured stream of good-natured chuckles — it is still funny, but it also left me wanting a stronger "hit". To be fair, the comic timing improves over the first season, and the last few episodes show a noticeable improvement in delivery.
Perhaps it's too early to tell if Angie Tribeca will be remembered as fondly as Police Squad! or Sledge Hammer! — but given how influential the CSI-verse has been on pop culture, it'd be a shame if Angie, Giles, Tanner and Hoffman gave up the (not-so-high-speed) chase too soon.