Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
Back in the 1970s, the streets of Los Angeles were paradoxically the safest, most dangerous streets you could find—at least on television.
L.A. crime was astronomical on the tube—like, Gotham City levels of crime—but necessarily so. If it wasn’t, what would all those bell-bottomed, L.A.-based television crimefighters do? From Columbo to Adam-12, from The Rockford Files to CHiPs, almost every corner of Southern California was guarded by a police squad or private eye and his/her/their attendant camera crew. No one could so much as jaywalk without Barnaby Jones or a couple of Charlie’s Angels whipping out a pair of handcuffs.
In that overbloated crime-fighting landscape, it’s no wonder ABC’s original S.W.A.T. series lasted just two forgettable seasons, from 1975-76: There just wasn’t enough crime to go around.
More than 40 years later, crime’s down in Los Angeles, both in real life and on television. But the television landscape itself is as brutal as it’s ever been. Can you blame CBS, whose median viewer age is 59 and which already serves as a rest home for a dizzying array of geriatric reboots, for dusting off yet another golden oldie?
Why, yes. Yes we can.
Dan “Hondo” Harrelson leads Los Angeles’s super-weaponized S.W.A.T. team, and he and his squad dash through every episode as if the script itself was on fire. Clever, daring criminals stand no chance against Hondo and his stern glare. Would-be murderers and racketeers cower in the face of S.W.A.T.’s collective muscle. (No, literally: Cast members seem hired solely based on biceps radius.) Every episode involves detective work and derring-do aplenty, with plots seemingly constructed from particularly boring games of crime-procedural Mad Libs.
But there’s more! When S.W.A.T. members aren’t catching bad guys, they’re supporting each other as only best friends on television can. They commiserate with each other when things go bad and tell each other how special they are in between shootouts. Character complexity varies between the stuff of generic Facebook posts and spam email, and every episode contains at least a little subplot flotsam, ’cause CBS apparently told S.W.A.T.’s team of possibly-imprisoned writers that television shows should have it, even if no one (including the characters) seems to care much what said subplot flotsam actually is.
It’d be nice to bring this review to an end right there, but alas, we must say more.
Television reboots are all the rage—even if television viewers are getting increasingly sick of the trend. And broadcast networks like CBS, struggling with dwindling audiences and a sinking bottom line, are always on the lookout for something tried and true that can grab a few eyeballs and keep advertisers happy. (Or, if not happy, at least content enough to keep the laundry-detergent and acid-reflux-medication commercials airing.) And CBS never met a crime procedural it didn’t like—even if no one else liked it much the first time around.
Whatever appeal shows like S.W.A.T. have is rooted in familiarity—giving viewers safe, reliable comfort food. But with this one, the show’s makers decided to give an otherwise aggressively milquetoast show a cutting-edge turn in the sexual department. There’s a bisexual woman who was formerly in a consensual polyamorous relationship back in Season 2. But now, in Season 5, that relationship is over.
Yet, S.W.A.T. has other problems, too. Though not particularly bloody, the show’s viewers will still reliably see murders, assaults, drug deals and shootouts in almost every episode. Language can be rough, too. And, naturally, watching the program risks lowering one’s IQ with each episode.
On the bright side, the theme music—lifted from the original S.W.A.T.—is pretty catchy. And the show’s name is fitting, too. After watching it, “swat” is what I want to do to the television power button.
Hondo wonders why his father is hesitant to move on; Luca bails his brother out of prison; the S.W.A.T. team tracks down a female responsible for murdering two men.
A woman shoots a man and then flees the scene as he bleeds to death; elsewhere, the same woman shoots a social worker who ends up in the hospital.
A woman tells the police that her sister was raped by their foster father and then forced to give her baby up for adoption. Years later, we hear that woman commits suicide. The police force discusses a difficult case where a woman was constantly beaten by her husband, developed a drug addiction and their children were sent to foster care.
Luca’s brother is charged with breaking and entering after his girlfriend frames him. A woman kidnaps a 12-year-old girl and speeds away, resulting in a reckless car chase.
The words “h—” and “p-ssed” are each used once.
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).
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
