5 out of 5

created by: Steve Carell and Nancy Walls Carell

covers season 1

No, I don’t care that it lifts half (more than half…) of its repeated gags from ZAZ productions like Police Squad and Airplane!; nor do I care that some episodes out of this 10-ep first season fall flat.  Steve and Nancy Carell and the show’s writers make no attempt to disguise that this is very much of the same lineage as the shows / films, and because we have so precious little of that material actually out there – PS had a short run; ZAZ stopped working together after a few films; and A Touch of Cloth is probably done – I will take as many seasons of Angie Tribeca I can get, assuming the writing remains as on point.

Because people have tried this.  The worst offenders, of course, are those Epic Movie doofs who think that simply repeating something from another film makes it funny; Scary Movies trade in farts and piss in a similar fashion.  Other projects besides Touch of Cloth have come close, but it’s generally not sustainable or the balance is slightly off in a way that makes it Close But No Cigar.  Ah, but I mentioned some episodes falling flat…?  Well, even out of 6 Police Squad episodes, not all were winners, so that Angie Tribeca scores about 8/10 – again, as long as their writers keep doing what they’re doing, do this forever.

Angie, played by Rashida Jones, is our titular Tough Cop, partnered up with “Jay Geils” – one of the series’ best ongoing jokes: humorous character names – played by Hayes MacArthur, chewing through cop cliches on a case-by-episode basis whilst working for LA’s “really heinous crimes unit” – the RHCU.  If you’ve seen the movies / shows mentioned, you know the style: endless visual gags, wordplay, and silly situations.  You probably also know the magic ZAZ ingredient that everyone else forgets: that no one should be in on the joke.  Frank Drebin was as clueless as everyone in his department, and similarly, no one bats an eye at the detective dog in Angie’s unit, or the way “expert scientist” Dr. Edelweiss (Alfred Molina) shows up in a different ridiculous outfit every episode.  The show also doesn’t do the modern “I’m so clever” trend of over-emphasizing or milking gags: it’s get in / get out, and things like those character names are just dropped in there and left for you to laugh at; no need to mug to the camera about it when there’s another joke on the way.

I was a little worried that TBS did an all-in-one online release for this, but apparently it worked well enough to merit a second season, which I hope to be laughing at also.  And if it goes the short-lived way of Sledge Hammer!, and everything else great in this vein, then you and I and all the other fans of this stuff can at least add one extra show to foist on girlfriends / boyfriends who totally won’t appreciate it and god damn they suck.