1. Baby, I am tied to a tree in a jungle of mystery: Lost, Sawyer and Kate.
2. Welcome home: Gilmore Girls, Rory and Jess.
3. You wanna talk?: Rookie Blue, Andy and Sam.
4. I blew it: The Good Wife, Will and Alicia.
5. You can’t keep on doin’ this to me, Potter: Dawson’s Creek, Joey and Pacey.
The thing about Rookie Blue (an ABC 2010 summer replacement so bland and unremarkable I didn’t even know it existed until a friend emailed me the pilot with the subject line got 40 minutes to kill?) is that it’s stupid. It is. Even the title is stupid. The premise, as one might surmise, is as follows: five fresh-faced coppers straight out of the academy make their collective way on the mean streets of a city never actually identified, suck an inordinate amount of face with both one another and their world-weary supervisors, and learn the tough lessons about life on the Job as appropriately melancholy indie songs swell in the background. Think the poor man’s Grey’s Anatomy, only with guns and vague Canadian accents.
The other thing about Rookie Blue is that it’s sort of wonderfully great, if you’re the kind of person who likes his or her mindless TV with a modicum of plot and character as opposed to, say, ice-dancing non-celebrities. For all its clumsy dialogue and instantly forgettable crimes-of-the-week, this show delivers straight-up, uber-satisfying wish fulfillment in a way you almost have to admire for its obviousness. Seriously, all I had to do was think, “Hey, those two police officers should make out,” and there they were in the next scene, humpin’ in the squad car. “Rookie Fight Night” boxing episode? You got it. Sexy blackout on the hottest day of the year? Absolutely. Partners with unresolved romantic tension go undercover as a couple and have to kiss a bunch of times? Twist my effing arm, I swear to God, it’s like a 14-year-old with a laptop and an account on fanfiction.net came up with this stuff, and I loved every shameful minute of it.
As far as cop shows go: you know, it’s not The Wire. There’s no strenuous effort required to digest serious issues of poverty and corruption. You don’t even have to chew. But I would argue that there’s no reason Jimmy McNulty and Sam Swarek can’t happily coexist both in my television universe, and in yours. After all, sometimes you want grit and tragedy. Sometimes you want police officers who look like they got their clothes from Delia’s.
Besides, David Simon could never, in his crankiest dreams, conceive of a montage like this one.
...Which Was Completely Delightful 