2 out of 5

Created by: Edward Burns

covers season 1

Okay – this doesn’t really cover the ten-episode first season, because I quite six episodes in.  Reviewing at this point sort of goes against my rules, then.  But seeing as how each episode has felt like a retread of the same thing and that I can’t remember one character’s name at this point, I’m ready to draw some conclusions.

So it’s the 1960s.  Edward Burns, as usual, plays another version of Edward Burns as a New York cop in the ‘Public Morals Division,’ which deals with drinking and gambling and whatnot.  And also because it’s Edward Burns, there’s a lot of tough guy chitchat and an inflated sense of what you’re watching being “about something” – generally fueled by some type of biographical element in the production, which, this time, stems from Burns’ father’s experience in the NYPD – resulting an a lack of filter regarding what we actually need to see.  So instead of things being structured with a key character to anchor us, we’re just thrown into a giant mixer of thugs and police; rookies and old men; etc. and etc.  People get shot, hustle for power, swagger about.

But for all his predictability, I generally don’t mind Burns’ chuminess, and can almost appreciate his obsessive need to keep detailing his life to us via various stories.  It’s a Woody Allen vibe, just with a smaller list of respected movies and as funneled through a New Yawk mindset.  That being acknowledged, I generally don’t mind Burns in small doses, but Public Morals needs to be a procedural, or at least a drama with some clear throughlines and it’s neither.  The first episode hustles out with wonderful confidence, and sets the stage for some gang stuff that seems like it’s going to matter… but the hustle is just that.  Nothing settles down; it’s all bluster.  Well-effected bluster, but by that sixth episode of realizing that I wasn’t paying attention and that nothing was making me want to pay attention, I decided to stop pretending.