Talk First, Shoot Maybe: 'Flashpoint,' Season One DVD

| Print Post This | Like (4) | Comments (0)

THE WORLD PROBABLY doesn't need another cop show, but CBS's "Flashpoint" focuses more on normal people cracking under pressure than your typical cop-show "bad guys." Any given hostage situation, bomb threat or gun situation merits a visit from the Strategic Response Unit (SRU), a tactical unit fronted by Sgt. Greg Parker (Enrico Colantoni, from "Just Shoot Me" and "Veronica Mars").

The first season, out now on DVD, shows Parker's role as chief negotiator with any party who has gotten out of control, calling for the use of force only when necessary.

The show (one of the rare series to start broadcasting in Canada and then get picked up by U.S. television) succeeds in making its civilian characters seem real and empathetic; in an early episode in the show's first season, a single father argues with a hospital over a heart transplant that he believes should be granted to his young daughter. In a spontaneous effort to gain control over the situation, he grabs a gun from a security officer and begins to threaten hospital personnel. But it's clear he's never done this before — or even thought about it. It reads all over his face and demeanor that he's torn between backing down (and losing the heart) and sticking, literally, to his guns. And Parker plays every card in the book to get him to come to his senses, starting with simple tit-for-tat negotiating tactics and finally getting the man to relate to him as a fellow father.

As far as individual episodes go, they do feel a little formulaic in their structure: they start right in the heat of the moment and then rewind to a calmer moment hours earlier. As the situation escalates, we're brought back to the episode's starting point and then to its eventual resolution. It's a quick way to introduce us to the situation's key players, but it does unfortunately remove much of the element of surprise in the civilian plot line.

As diverse as those civilian stories are, they're fairly inconsequential in what makes the show so compelling (although they do remind us that even during the stresses of day-to-day life, we don't really have it that bad). The show's real focus is on Parker, who stays cool under pressure, always able to react to whichever direction the suspect takes — with a little help from a headset that connects him to the rest of his team. It's only after one tense negotiation is complete that he fesses up: "We [negotiators] stall for time, we pass the buck, we stretch the truth." It may all be for the greater good, but the fatigue is heavy in his voice.

"Flashpoint" is not without its problems; it can't steer clear of some predictable cop-show plot lines (balancing work and family life, a verboten intra-squad romance and a season-one cliffhanger that involves an officer in the hospital). But ultimately it succeeds more often than it fails, thanks to a more humane twist to the cop-show canon: Let's try to work it out first, rather than busting in with guns blazing.

Written by Express contributor Catherine Lewis
Photo courtesy CBS