Today, I poke some fun at shows where the police all continue to doubt the detective who is always right about their cases.
This is Disgrace Distract and Bother Me, a feature where I just point out minor things that annoy me in pop culture. Basically, think of it like the lowest level of criticism, then Remember to Forget is the middle, where it’s like, “Okay, this is bad, but not, like, offensively bad” and finally, Things That Turned Out Bad is for, “This is seriously messed up.”
I’ve been enjoying the hit ABC TV series, High Potential, about a single mother with an exceptional mind gets hired by the Los Angeles Police Department as a consultant due to her knack for solving crimes.
One of the trickiest things in TV series is how to handle a character’s dominance as a detective. Essentially, if they’re always right, how can you continue to doubt them? In the case of the iconic detective, Columbo, the solution was for the rest of the LAPD to all know he was a legend, but the people he is investigating only know him as a seemingly bumbling fool, until he nails them to the wall (or, at least, figures out their crimes enough for them to inexplicably confess. Way too many episodes of Columbo end with the bad guy confessing once Columbo figures out how they committed the crime, even if the criminal justice system requires more than “Columbo has figured it out” as evidence to convict someone. So many Columbo murderers would likely have walked if they just pled “not guilty,” so instead, they all just confess when Columbo figures it out to avoid that issue).
In the case of High Potential, the show should probably go that route, as well, because the current approach of “Yes, you’re right every time, Morgan, but in this one instance, you’ve gone too far!” is kind of silly (the Season 2 premiere DID at least throw in some off-camera examples of her being wrong on some hunches, but generally speaking, if she’s CONVINCED something is the case, it probably is the case).
We all get WHY shows do it, as they want conflict for the sake of drama, but just move that conflict to the criminals that Morgan is helping to investigate. Her fellow cops should all have total faith in her by now.
