Static Thoughts - Cop Rock

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Today marks the return of Brooklyn 99, probably the last show we’re going to get for a long while that tries to be a cop comedy.  All things considered, Brooklyn 99 is a lot better than you’d probably expect from a show trying to sell the audience on a group of goofy, fun-loving cops but I really don’t think anyone else would be able to pull off what it does.  The bottom line is that in an age of seemingly endless and incredibly public police atrocities getting an audience to find police work “funny” has gone from entertainment bread and butter to a herculean task. 

Seriously though, cop comedy used to be a major moneymaking genre with massive franchises like Police Academy and Beverly Hills Cop.  The whole thing was so big through the ‘80s that things started to get pretty weird in the ‘90s to try and find new avenues for it.  In particular, 1989-1992 was a great time for just completely bonkers cop comedy genre fusion and as exhibit A in that case, I would present Cop Rock, the musical cop show. 

Produced in 1990 by Steven Bochco, Cop Rock was a bizarre attempt to blend police procedural and musical theatre, an experiment which landed it the #8 spot on TV Guide’s ranking of the worst TV shows of all time.  I’m not entirely sure where the musical aspect of Cop Rock came from but the police procedural side of things is pretty clear.  The show’s producer Bochco had made a name for himself in the ‘80s with the hit series Hill Street Blues, one of the most well-regarded cop shows of the era. 

He’d also worked on L.A. Law so he’d had some serious success in the crime and justice genre before, though he also produced Doogie Howser M.D., a show about a brilliant child doctor that introduced the world to Neil Patrick Harris.  My point is that the guy was a kind of ‘80s TV who had a shock success with a high concept genre blending show in the past so I do at least get why he thought he could shepherd Cop Rock to success.  Incidentally, Cop Rock actually did feature crossovers with L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues in the form of character cameos- as was the custom at the time. 

Premiering in September, the show only lasted 11 episodes before coming to a pretty infamous end but we’ll get to that in due course.  The idea of the show was to be an ensemble piece police procedural about the LAPD that would sporadically break out into musical numbers.  The musicals were all specifically written for the show week-to-week, which in retrospect was probably a big part of Cop Rock’s inevitable demise. 

Musical TV is pretty hard to pull off even at the best, I’m actually not sure it’s ever been done well for that matter, but trying to write ALL new musical style songs every week sounds near impossible.  That’s part of why Glee opted for the jukebox musical style.  It certainly leaves most of Cop Rock’s musical numbers completely unmemorable and pretty un-impactful.  There are a few exceptions like there’s a gospel style musical from a jury that’s pretty nice but for the most part, you’ll forget them as soon as you hear them.

The really tragic part is that the non-musical parts of Cop Rock aren’t actually that bad.  I mean, there’s nothing amazing but it’s solid late ‘80s cop fiction that’s actually a lot darker than the show seems to fully appreciate.  The musical numbers are never once integrated well into the series but there are some parts where they’re actively cringe-inducing with how unwelcome they are. 

Among the subjects that were apparently with a musical number are: a drug addict selling her baby for drug money, a black mother finding her son dead, a cop visiting his partner who is in critical condition.  I realize that there are dark or sad musical numbers but Cop Rock is not the kind of musical that really knows how to handle the horrors of drug addiction or injustice of dead children. 

It also REALLY doesn’t work that the main overarching plot of the show is about a cop who killed a suspect in cold blood getting put on trial and eventually getting acquitted.  What strikes me most about this idea, in particular, is that you could probably pull off a version of this show nowadays with a more socially conscious aspect.  See, the big problem with Cop Rock is basically that they picked the most difficult road in all the decisions of a musical- newly written songs instead of old standards, integrated musical numbers instead of vaudeville-style musical where the numbers are separate from the story, and only drawing from the styles of musical theatre rather than anything more contemporary.  

You could probably make a pretty solid cop musical out of rap and hip-hop songs being performed in parallel to the action with a stylistic connection to the action and an increased consideration for social consciousness, sort of like BET Tales by way of Cabaret.

As for Cop Rock the show I feel its reputation has kind of swallowed the reality.  It’s honestly not as impressively bad as one might’ve hoped, to the point that if it had been a cheaper show to make it probably would’ve lasted the full season.  I admit that people probably dismissed it out of hand but the show was exactly what they imagined so it wasn’t completely unfair- it was the Geico Caveman show of its day. 

The only really memorably bad/weird part of it was the series finale.  The show has set-up a ton of balls in the air involving that murderous cop getting acquitted, the mayor running for Senate, the main character may be getting divorced, it was a heavily weighted episode and then, right at the midpoint, it ends with no explanation.  Actually what happens is that, without resolving any plot points, the show breaks the 4^th wall having the actors discuss how disappointed they are the show is canceled and then sing one last final song- the end. 

It’s like the series was canceled while filming.   Also, this final episode was airing the day after Christmas, just to add to the cauldron of surreality.  It’s a completely out of left field move and kind of a nothing of an ending, which pretty much works a summation of the entire show- Cop Rock, nobody saw it coming but once it got here it wasn’t really worth watching. 

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