Dallas is my adopted home town. I love the place – the people, the architecture, the places to go, the things to do. And I wanna move back there ASAP. Until I do, Fox is offering up a little slice o’ home in the way of a new cop show, The Good Guys. Starring Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks (Tom and Rita’s kid), The Good Guys is set in Big D, and is the closest thing you’ll ever see to a cop/buddy flick (think Lethal Weapon without the bigotry and misogyny) on TV. Explosions. Car chases. And gunplay. Lots and lots of gunplay. And not just handguns, either, but ARs, AKs, and some other ordinance that lights up the Texas sky on a weekly basis.
Employing the time-honored technique of pairing an uptight, by-the-book, bumbler (Hanks) with a past-his-prime, burnout, alcoholic screw-up (Whitford), in a world populated by a sweet-n-sassy ex-gf assistant DA and a tough-as-nails Hispanic female squad captain, The Good Guys doesn’t just have cliches…it revels in them. Practically wallows. Which turns out to be a really good thing, as it provides a vein for comedy that is a mile deep and twice as broad.
Now if you’re from Dallas, you might take offense at the accents, the characterizations, or the inherent silliness of it all. But to do that, you’re missing the point. It’s a buddy flick. This is not David Mammet territory, nor is it a docudrama. It’s a comedy in cop clothing. A very loud, pyrotechnic comedy, I grant you, but a comedy nonetheless. You might quibble with Jenny Wade’s Southern Belle accent (come on, guys – Dallas women don’t really sound like that) or Whitford’s drunken, lecherous redneck schtick. But if that’s what it takes to get a show like this on the air, so be it. You’ll also revel in a host of guest stars from a bit off the beaten path. (Last week, Dan “Homer Simpson” Castellaneta did the guest star bit as a none-too-bright wheelman who was simply too stupid to do anything but get caught.)
It’s obvious from the B-roll and locations shooting that, like Walker, Texas Ranger before it, The Good Guys is actually being shot in the Metroplex. It’s refreshing to see a show feature scenery from the actual location, instead of wondering why the flatlands of Kansas, for instance, have so many hills and oceans in the background.
Ah, but what’s in it for the TTAGencia? Bullets, baby. Lots and lots of bullets.
The Good Guys is a gun wrangler’s dream show. Every episode I’ve seen so far has featured a host of serious full-auto weapons, crates of rifles, service weapons and the like. Twenty years ago, this would have been but one show in an ocean of firearms-oriented TV. Today? Even the cop shows like CSI, Castle, and Law & Order are a little light on the gunplay. And forget about the good guys using their guns for much of anything. The bad guys get all the range time, apparently.
So if you’re in the mood for a little entertainment of the shoot-em-up, blow-things-up, mindless variety, you might wanna flip that dial on over to Fox, Mondays at 9 Eastern, 8 Central, for a visit with The Good Guys. I’d give it 5 out of 5 (Lone) Stars. Check it out.
