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Shades of Blue

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay
Kristin Smith

TV Series Review

The streets of New York can be dangerous places, filled with all sorts of terrible people who’re liable to sell you drugs or take your money or, who knows, maybe even kill you.

So it’s a good thing that those same mean streets are home to New York’s finest, the brave men and women with badges who protect ordinary folks like you and me. ‘Course, sometimes they’ll take your money, too—and that’s if they like you. And if they don’t … well, they know a good mortician who doesn’t ask a lot of questions.

That’s the world to which we’re introduced in Shades of Blue, an NBC drama where the straight-and-narrow goes as crooked as a used paper clip and “protect and serve” actually means, “Let’s protect this great racket and serve ourselves some awesome, illegal contraband!”

Love Don’t Cost a Thing … But Police Protection Does

It’s not like the cops serving under Lt. Matt Wozniak lack good intentions. They really do want to serve their community in their own dirty way. Crime is down in their precinct, and Wozniak makes sure that at least some of his streets—the ones closest to schools—are free of drugs. Hey, the fact that they’ve worked out under-the-table deals with some of the area’s less savory elements is a win-win for everyone: Families get safer streets, drug dealers continue to ply their trade with minimal interference, and the cops get some extra spending money.

Why, when rookie officer Michael Loman accidentally shoots and kills a man playing video games, his partner, Harlee Santos, barely flinches. Instead, she promptly sets up the whole crime scene to look like a justified shooting. Because, well, the guy was a drug dealer, too. No need to threaten a promising career in law enforcement over a pesky little thing like manslaughter, right?
“I don’t want to be this kind of cop,” Loman says to Santos, threatening to tell the truth.

“None of us is that kind of cop!” Santos tells him, and she seems to believe it. She believes that they’re still the good guys—protecting their city while they protect their own. After all, Wozniak’s team is a family. And a family looks out for itself.

But when Santos gets caught in a crooked act by the FBI, suddenly she doesn’t feel so familial. After all, she has a real family, too—a daughter to raise and her pricey private school tuition to pay. So she reluctantly cuts a deal with the feds and agrees to help them bring her crooked cohorts to justice. Unless, of course, Wozniak discovers her double-dealing first.

“One slip at the wrong time and we all go tumbling down,” he tells Santos in happier times. “And I don’t tumble well.”

Antiheroes in Blue

NBC’s Shades of Blue seizes our culture’s current antihero craze and shoves it one step further, eliminating the hero part entirely. Forget the notion that the police are the good guys: Wozniak might as well be a mob boss with a badge, someone who will kill if he feels his turf is threatened.

But the show seems to want viewers to like him more than FBI guy Robert Stahl, whose “narrow-minded” view of things like truth and justice turn him into a 1980s-era Bill Murray-style bad guy. And while NBC would like us to sympathize with Santos (played by Jennifer Lopez), it’s hard for me to work up too many tears for a dirty cop who only feels dirty when she’s forced to come clean.

I suppose Loman may wind up being the moral core of the show, given his unique desire—at least so far—to tell the truth. We can hope so, at any rate. But even if Shades of Blue’s underlying message gets better, I have little hope for the content.

The mortality rate on the streets is pretty high, judging from show’s early going, ranging from run-of-the-mill shooting deaths to grisly murders most foul. As for the morality rate … that’s something else. The neighborhood’s prime players are all willing to send messages in bruises and blood. Sex can be an issue, too, with characters stripping down to their skivvies to moosh bodies together. Meanwhile, sexual hookups are a frequent topic of cop banter. You won’t hear HBO-levels of profanity on an NBC show, of course, but the language is pretty bad by network standards, too.

I think NBC was aiming for a gritty, morally compromised cop show along the lines of FX’s much-lauded The Shield, a new series with enough quality to make viewers contemplate the nature of good and evil. But while they nailed the moral compromise part of the equation, the quality was left along the side of the road somewhere—like a gym bag full of drugs in a deal gone wrong. Shades of Blue is a shady show indeed.

Episode Reviews

June 24, 2018: “The Hollow Crown”

After Harlee’s boyfriend, Special Agent James Nava, is killed, she goes on a violent rampage in search of his killer. Lt. Wozniak makes a deal with another special agent to protect her. People are shot in the head and chest multiple times. A dead body hangs from the ceiling; another is shown on a gurney in a morgue. Blood covers characters’ hands and other body parts. Two young women get into a fist fight after harsh words are exchanged, and another woman is punched in the face. Someone is threatened.

People cry after hearing bad news, with one character having an emotional break down. Agents lie, cheat, steal, seek revenge and aid citizens in corrupt behavior (including drug trafficking and money laundering). A man references his anatomy and later has sex with his wife in a car (though we only see them, fully clothed, afterward). Profanities include “h—,” b–ch,” “a–,” d–n” and “p-ss.”

Shades of Blue: Jan. 7, 2016 “Pilot”

While trying to sign up a new “client” for Wozniak’s neighborhood network, Santos is busted by the FBI and threatened with jail time if she doesn’t turn on Wozniak and his team. To comply she begins spinning a web of deceit that may eventually trap her.

Santos’ partner, Loman, mistakes the sound of a video game for gunfire, and he breaks into a suspect’s apartment and shoots the man dead. (Two bullets do bloody damage when they pierce the victim’s chest.) Santos then fabricates the appearance of a crime. And to make it look convincing, she shoots Loman in the chest with the suspect’s gun. (Loman is wearing a bulletproof vest.) Wozniak and others later chase the suspect’s accomplice. He’s apprehended after getting hit by a car, though mostly uninjured. It’s implied that the mortician Wozniak takes the man to will finish him off. (We see a rag stuffed in man’s mouth as he’s being taken down to the work room below the mortuary chapel.) Wozniak threatens the mortician, holding him down while he throws ash remains in his face. Santos intentionally crashes her daughter’s car.

Santos makes out with her male sparring partner. She’s shown in a bra (after removing her shirt) straddling the shirtless guy. A kissing scene cuts to a later shot of her with wet hair and him in a towel (followed by more kissing). Someone tries to pick Santos up in a bar. She discusses the bisexuality of lilies with her police partner (“They screw themselves,” she says), and she makes a crude reference massaging a man’s privates. One of Santos’ coworkers suspects her husband is having an affair (possibly with a teenager). Verbal references to forced celibacy, group masturbation and underage prostitution are made. We also hear about dog fighting and cockfighting. Santos and her police peers slam beer and shots. Virtually everyone lies. Characters say “a–,” “b–ch,” “h—,” “d–n,” “pr–k” and misuse God’s name once.

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paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

kristin-smith
Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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