You said:

No one. NO.ONE. seriously gives a shit who those people are. No One. And all you accomplish with making me wait ANOTHER 45 seconds to discover who the director is, is my irritation.

YOU give a shit who the director is. If you didn't care, you wouldn't look for it, would you? Would you deny that to the grip who broke his hand holding up the fill light for that male bimbo Dr. McDouchebag on Grey's Anatomy? He worked on it, it's his resume, it's him sacrificing a little bit of his life for this thing.

They put those credits over the front of the show to avoid running even longer credits at the end. They've been doing that in TV shows since the 60's. And those are the "prestige" credits, the above-the-line, creative people. Grunts, doing the equivalent of my job, don't get that. They get the teeny, tiny, too-fast-to-read credits at the end.

This has gone pretty far from the original discussion of time compression. In fact, I'm not sure where you're going, Dave Satan. General bitches about the quality of television should be taken to the asshats that do The Mole and delivered with a running chainsaw with a newly sharpened blade.

SAVING GRACE with last week's episode featuring AMY MADIGAN and HOLLY HUNTER singing to the body of just murdered/despised husband of MADIGAN's character was the quirkiest/absurdest/existential yet. WHAT WAS EVEN 'WEIRDER' WAS THAT MADIGAN HIRED AT LEAST 5 OTHER CHARACTERS TO KILL HER LOUSE OF A HUSBAND.

Even though I take exception to you dismissal of Holly Hunter's incomparable performance as Grace Hannadarko in "Saving Grace" (not to mention Leon Rippy's Angel Earl), I totally agree with your assessments of "In Plain Sight" and "Burn Notice." In the former, I like that Mary is not gorgeous, nauseatingly slim giggle-face. In the latter, I'm enjoying the obvious parody of spy flicks and the main actor's good looks (hey, snow on the roof ...). It's nice to come home after hours of fighting for the rights of true creativity to prop my feet up and watch the reasonable to extraordinary creativity of these three shows. See, someone does get it! Enjoy!

Regarding my previous post (if it got there), I fight battles for creativity, being a writing professor. There, whew!

I miss Barney Miller

Because it's about crimes that weren't solved, it's about much more than catching a killer. It's about time and how it changes things--or doesn't. It's about who a society really values and who gets the short end of the stick. And it's about how people are never who they--or others--think they are. In addition it spotlights fascinating corners of history through lives of unconventional characters, who are worth watching all on their own. CC is about memory and nostalgia in the Proustian sense, and is one terrific show.

Burn Notice in my opinion has great acting, and the amoral and ruthless Fiona is a great character. The writing is great and the casting is superb.

The Closer has really good ensemble acting, but Brenda's poor treatment of Fritz is getting a little tiresome. I think the best episode, one that should become a TV classic, is the one in the second season when Provenza and Finn find a dead body in Finn's garage, but don't call it in right away because they are late for the Dodgers baseball game, and when they come back later (having not made it to the stadium) the body is gone. It was hysterically funny but also believable.

I watched In Plain Sight because I like Mary McCormack, but I really like her partner and his philosophical musings. Her family situation is also a real one, cliched only because it is such a reality. Overachieving caretaker oldest child of alcoholic mother and ne'er do well father, drifting and immature younger sibling. They all seem believable to me.

Haven't seen The Wire or The Shield, so cannot comment but the Wire, at least, sounds good.

If you like that, you'll probably like Da Vinci's Inquest. Based on a real person (now Senator Larry Campbell, former Mayor, coroner, cop).

Very character driven, great dialogue, not of the one-case-per-episode format, but cases carry on over seasons sometimes.

Intelligence grew out of Da Vinci's Inquest -> Da Vinci's City Hall. Many of the same characters, though often on the opposite side of the law.

As for commercials, CBC runs / ran them both with no commercial break until at *least* the 13 *MINUTE* mark. Yes, 13 minutes uninterrupted, first class acting, writing, everything.

"Sex, Drugs, and, Intelligence, monday nights on CBC"

Da Vinci's is available on DVD and got a fantastic review here on Salon.com, but I cannot find it right now...

Heather,

I don't see WAT as a typical crime drama. Hmm. Far from it, most of the plots turn out not to involve a crime, but are real human dramas. Most of the time they do an excellent job of doing the unexpected; and the bit parts are almost always excellently realized.

In fact I buy them. I have boxes of Bones, 6 Feet Under, etc.

And other thing.....

Did every production guy go to the same irritating seminar? The one where they told you if you just ran the credits through the ENTIRE first fucking 12 minutes then people will think you're 'important' or 'serious'.

No one. NO.ONE. seriously gives a shit who those people are. No One. And all you accomplish with making me wait ANOTHER 45 seconds to discover who the director is, is my irritation.

My god, I'd somehow forgotten about "Life" and then when I saw the heading I thought "Is that still running somewhere?" Thank god! Bless you my child! And Hulu also. Gonna catch up with "Life", one of the most intriguing, involving and provocative of the new wave of, uh, procedurals. Did I spell that right? Anyway, cool!

Cop and crime shows thrive in conservative eras - the 1950's, 1980's - in liberal eras like the 60's and 70's, and in polarized times like today. Why, when staples like Westerns and variety shows and sitcoms have faded, do crime shows wax stronger?

My personal opinion is that it has to do with this country's Shadow- the "War On Drugs."

The first Prohibition War only lasted about 13 years until the American public got fed up with it. Prohibition War II has gone on so long that most Americans have become resigned to living in a constant low-level state of siege coupled with a burgeoning illegal economy, complete with the twin institutions of drug gangs and the prison-industrial complex put in place to react to them.

Strictly in legal terms, at this very minute tens of millions of Americans are guilty habitual criminals on the basis of their occasional possession of illegal drugs- a status that didn't portend to those possessing alcohol during Prohibition, incidentally.

This may be the first democratic republic in history to legally divide its citizenry so radically and forcefully, intensifying that pressure rather than lessening it over time. (Actually, if the personal choice of chemical inebriant is framed for consideration as a form of political dissent, the claim of the USA to be a "democratic republic" is severely undercut. Disturbingly, that analogy is the most incisively accurate way to comprehend the Drug War, it being the case that its purported motivations confound logic and reason. )

The incarceration rate has gone up over 400% over the past 30 years. That fact has influenced nearly everything I can think of in regard to American society and culture- including the popularity of television crime dramas.