Up until BROOKLYN NINE-NINE, THE GOOD GUYS filled a gaping hole in a TV landscape chock-full of by-the-numbers police procedurals. You know the kind: lots of standing around and talking, plots that are made in the crime lab. It gets old quick, and this was (largely) the antithesis, embodied by '70s throwback Dan Stark; an old-fashioned reckless cop who's constantly calling for crimes to be solved where they should be: on the streets, guns blazing, in a fast car. I love this character and what he and the show stood for. It's fantasy, flies completely in the face of realism (which we have plenty of, at the moment), and its breezy sense of humor and action is perfect for Summer. It's just a breath of fresh air, all around. There's nothing else like it, even four years after the fact.
For one thing, one of the stars of the show is a '79 Trans Am. That alone tells you what kind of show this is, and it informed a great deal of the series' action scenes. That's just a righteous car, no two ways about it. And not only that, they set the show in Dallas. Not New York or L.A. or Miami or Chicago. Dallas! And they made the city look really cool doing it. All the pieces here just seemed to uncannily fit.
THE GOOD GUYS never took itself too seriously. It always started with our heroes on a dead-end property crime, some galactic coincidence would occur, and the case would blow wide open - usually with the resulting bullets flying. It was a winning formula, one that sought to put some fun back into the cop show.
There are only 20 episodes, but it's still one hell of a fun season.
10/10
For one thing, one of the stars of the show is a '79 Trans Am. That alone tells you what kind of show this is, and it informed a great deal of the series' action scenes. That's just a righteous car, no two ways about it. And not only that, they set the show in Dallas. Not New York or L.A. or Miami or Chicago. Dallas! And they made the city look really cool doing it. All the pieces here just seemed to uncannily fit.
THE GOOD GUYS never took itself too seriously. It always started with our heroes on a dead-end property crime, some galactic coincidence would occur, and the case would blow wide open - usually with the resulting bullets flying. It was a winning formula, one that sought to put some fun back into the cop show.
There are only 20 episodes, but it's still one hell of a fun season.
10/10