TV is the new reading

Not much flash, not much of a point, in ‘Flashpoint’

I’ll admit that I wasn’t giving this show much of a chance from the get-go.

The very first time I heard about “Flashpoint,” the CBS drama concerning the exploits of a paramilitary police force, I thought it sounded like another cookie-cutter cop drama with a placeholder title.

And despite the fact that I heard nothing but positive things about it – clearly from people whose thirst for law enforcement dramas wasn’t yet slaked by “Criminal Minds,” “The Closer,” “Saving Grace,” “In Plain Sight,” three “CSIs” and three    “Law & Orders,” among countless others – I remained skeptical.

And then I watched it.

The show featured Enrico Colatoni (”Veronica Mars”) as leader of a Strategic Response Unit, a team not unlike a SWAT team, featuring sharpshooters and body armor and computers and cameras and everything, based on a similar strike unit in the Toronto police force.

Sadly, it also features every “lost-my-buddy-Over-There” cliche, all of the back-slappy hut!hut! alpha male bonding camer-rah-rah-raderie heading into the situation, and then getting super serious when the violins start getting nervous.

It also panders to the worst preconceived notions of its audience, whose median age must be something like 70: Young people are always up to no good and they’re all on the drugs, tearing their poor families apart. They get into trouble and they go right back to the evil drug dealers. Thank goodness for these pleasant, smily, well-armed officers who will protect us from the drug addicts, and from those scary ethnic teens who deal the drugs. The nice officers will put a stop to all of these hoodlums and their shenanigans.

Etc.

And then there’s the constant noise about how impossible it is for different law enforcement units to work together. The show spent lots of time on that kind of squabbling, and no, it wasn’t remotely interesting.

Ultimately, the characters are as flat as their dialogue and even less interesting. There’s a babble of police jargon that adds little and there was this whole suspense-filled standoff, which might’ve been more effective if we hadn’t seen the resolution coming from the opening scenes, or if the sharpshooters hadn’t had all kinds of opportunities to take the dealer down.

I might be entirely spoiled in this kind of storytelling by “The Shield,” the over-the-top FX cable drama about cops vs. thugs in L.A. gangland. In that one, the stakes are high, the action is non-stop and the intricately drawn personalities are in constant flux between allies and enmity.

By comparison, “Flashpoint” looked like a low-energy squabblefest among heavily armed, heavily armored high-tech police officers who ultimately were of little value – that is, they got the dealer, but not before he managed to flush all the drugs, shoot the undercover officer and kill the hostage, in part because the team leader didn’t trust one of the officers, and the whole thing fell apart.

It’s true that I might have had a little more love or patience for the show if I’d seen the first two installments as well. But having seen the third, well, it really feels like I’ve seen the whole series 100 times over elsewhere, and better. As cop dramas go, you can safely give this one a pass.

“Flashpoint” airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBS.