The Long Arm of the Lo.
By Matt Fowler
It’s easy to assume that NBC’s new Shades of Blue – starring Jennifer Lopez and premiering Thursday, January 7th – is nothing to get excited over. That it’s “Standard TV.” In a time when standard just might not cut it when it comes to your devoted TV time. And in most respects, that assumption is correct. Shades Blue is nothing special. Though, I will assert that there’s such thing as well-done “standard.” This new crooked cop series may not have much teeth, but I still left it feeling invested in seeing an outcome.
Jennifer Lopez is no master class thespian, but she does have a very workable naturalness to her performances. She comes with a bit of baggage (to balance out her big marquee name) in that most every movie she’s done since 2001 (kicking the steak off with The Wedding Planner) has been disposable nonsense. Monster-in-Law, The Back-Up Plan, even last year’s The Boy Next Door – all very broad, unimpressive projects. So she doesn’t come into this series with the markings of quality.
Though I’m still a huge fan of pre-Wedding Planner Lopez. Out of Sight. Blood and Wine. U-Turn. The Cell. Even Anaconda. Riskier fare that showed us an artist who was more willing to stretch. Before the big rom-com paychecks started flooding in. So I’m always hoping Lopez will go back to that style of role-choosing. And some of that is present in Shades of Blue. Not fully, but there’s enough here to make it less of a bland, middling cop show than usual.
Lopez plays Harlee Santos, a key member in a cabal of crooked cops who “do what’s best for the neighborhood.” The pilot episode doesn’t start out great, but it slowly eases into itself more once Ray Liotta’s “big fish” Lt. Bill Wozniak enters the picture more. Liotta is really this show’s ace in the hole. He’s just a really good performer and – despite it being a typecast – he can easily give us the “likable scumbag.” And that’s who Wozniak is. A man who’s really kind and loving – to those he chooses to love and provide for. His circle of cops. The surrogate street family. If you’re outside of that, you’re screwed.
Anyhow, back to the opening. Santos – who for some reason is made to look like TV cop Dee Dee McCall from the ’80s series Hunter (played by Stepfanie Kramer) – gets into a sticky situation with her rookie partner and winds up covering for him after he straight-up accidentally murders a drug dealer on his couch. It’s a little rocky considering that right before that, in a preamble, we saw Santos tearfully confessing about her downward spiral. Two weeks later. Like, in a mini-flash-forward. And in it she says – quoting – “I always wanted to be a good cop. I told myself the end justified the means.”
Those feel like two different mindsets, since a good cop would probably care very much about the means. Later on, Wozniak questions Santos’ choice to protect her rookie in such a big, corrupt manner (he cares more about the risk, not the murder, naturally) and I had to agree that it stood out as an odd way to bring us into her world. Because it’s one thing to be on the take, and to split up ill-gotten gains with your police partners, and it’s a whole other thing to cover up an unjustified shooting without blinking. Because it worked to, right off the bat, almost make Santos the worst of the entire bunch.
From there though, the show smoothes out and begins to feel more conformable in its skin. Liotta, as mentioned, helps a lot. And then, at the halfway point, the full premise kicks in after Santos is picked up by the FBI’s Anti-Corruption Task Force and is strong-armed into becoming an informant against her own crew (she’s got a daughter who goes to an expensive music school). I don’t know how long this premise will hold since the “mole” thing can tire quickly, but after Santos began to get more and more desperate, trying covering up her lies-upon-lies, I found myself more interested.
I’m giving Shades of Blue a slightly tilted upwards thumb here. It’s trying to be The Shield, of course, and as one might imagine it comes nowhere close. Nor does it come close to the quality of most modern cable dramas. But for a network cop show, there’s certainly worse. Faint praise, I’m aware, but Lopez and Liotta might be enough to draw your attention. And the “ratting out your own crew” premise is strong enough to pique my interest. For now.
