"Chicago Code" hits the road

Who's gonna hear you cry, When there's more of them than there are of you?

Who indeed? Topping my list of mid-season replacements I wish had been a lot better was Shawn Ryan’s dog-whistle laden police drama “Chicago Code.”

Even at the end this FOX production could barely maintain its running rage against liberals in general and powerful (it says corrupt) African American Chicago thug politico Ronin Gibbons, who they posit is murdering accountants and making payoffs and accepting bribes and generally getting poor welfare recipients big-screen TVs and not really caring about anything except his next campaign while playing footsie with crime bosses, sleeping with his secretary and disappearing witnesses, cooking the books, manipulating the media and, well, generally if any one person was doing all the stuff we saw attributed to Ronin Gibbons that person would have been jailed years ago.

In that it took the feisty, good and pure spitfire police superintendent Teresa Colvin and her tough-talking super hero cop friend with some fidelity issues Jarek Wysocki a full season to get a grand jury to put Gibbons away and clean up that corruption in City Hall, I think they’re overstating how clever he was or understating how driven and committed she was.

I mean worse than Erica in the “V” remake and Sean in “The Event” for knowing what’s going on and having to conceal it while trying to take down the “bad guy,” by the end Colvin was telling anyone who would listen how corrupt Gibbons was and all but baring her teeth and snarling in his presence. Anyone that corrupt and powerful would’ve simply shelved her back in October.

Again, am I overstating this? In the finale, which I finally got around to watching this week, supercop Jarek Wysocki’s dad is changing a lightbulb and casually complained about how they were taking his lightbulbs away and they’d make him use mercury bulbs and hazmat suits and the environment and oh, those lousy liberals. In the past we’ve had some unmistakable barbs directed at unions, unchecked violence, the gays, lax accountability regarding federal funds, poor people and the swirling miasma of social ills conservatives regularly attribute to Democrats.

Yes, it’s “The Chicago Code,” where everyone’s corrupt, everyone’s on the take, and no one cares about freedom or justice or honor any more, oh, except for one cop and, in her attempts to shake things up, everyone’s really upset with her. Roiiiiiiight.

Probably more for its poor representation of life in Chicago but generally for its cartoonish view of reality and certainly for its poor ratings, “The Chicago Code” is no more. Buh bye.

Parks and Recreation

I finally got a chance to see the season finale of “Parks and Recreation” last week and I think they structured this oddly. Rob Lowe’s character made a whole bunch of changes in the Parks and Rec department – including the invention of the fourth floor which I thought was brilliant – the cameras haven’t been up there before and it’s the seamy underbelly of the Pawnee Public Works division. As Tom Haverford is shown to his new office he’s told not to move things around too much because the area is still technically a crime scene.

But see, Rob Lowe’s Chris Traeger has been there for months, now, and if he were to make all these ridiculous changes he’d have been more likely to make them right away at the beginning. That said, I loved Ron Swanson swiveling away to avoid taking a complaint from a citizen. And I really enjoyed Leslie and Ben’s secret relationship that everyone knows about and then Leslie’s mom hitting on Ben. Very fun.

Doctor Who

What else? Well, the people who were buzzing about the “Doctor Who” episode “The Almost People” followup regarding the 22nd century slave workers demanding rights were absolutely right. That is, it was a great episode, but it didn’t do much for me – I’m already all about people having rights and so forth, so mostly it seemed like two hours of running about, although I did enjoy Matt Smith’s impression of Tom Baker and David Tennant’s Doctors, and I enjoyed his humanizing the situation by having the ganger talk to the dead guy’s son.

I thought there was a bit of a giveaway when the real Jennifer experienced pain – the gangers are better suited to dangerous work because their nerve endings shut down before they die, although the pile of discarded gangers was just disturbing.

I was mostly moved by the last 30 seconds, when the lady in the wall, a following character for most of season six, now, was revealed as Amy’s OB/GYN, and that Amy has really been safe in a stasis booth someplace else now for a good long while having a baby. That was truly mind-blowing stuff, and I can’t wait to learn more next week. Until then, would anyone care for a jelly baby?

South Park

Beyond that, I caught an episode of “South Park” recently, probably one of the better ones, actually, where Cartman was pitting crack-addicted babies against one another in a new sport he’d created, “Crack Baby Basketball,” to sell to EA Sports, in which it was determined that everyone exploits the hard work of everyone else and Guns-n-Roses guitarist Slash isn’t real. Highlight of the episode: “I’m Sarah McLachlan. I was famous for two months.” El Kabong.

Supernatural

I finally caught the season finale of “Supernatural” this weekend and I think the writers have bitten off more than they can chew. Castiel absorbed the souls in Purgatory and defeated Rafael in a wave of the hand. Now he’s a wrath-filled, vengeful God and I think “Supernatural” is moving full-force into theology it’s not really ready to explore.

For instance, if Cass is all-powerful, how could he be focused so intently on Earth. There’s this entire multiverse along with all of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory to be in charge of, not to mention all those other deities. Whether Dean, Bobby and Sam, who tried to vanquish him with a silver sword, bow down and worship him, he’s got other stuff on his plate – not to mention the counterfactions alive and well in Heaven still. So big picture, um, what the heck was that? I guess they’ve got all of summer to figure out what happens next, so I guess my advice would be to get working on that.

Summer premieres

In other news, I missed the premiere of “Love Bites” on NBC this week so I’ll try to pick it up next week. It looks like Michelle Trachtenberg has been roped in as part of it so that should be charming. Speaking of Dawn, Teen Nick started airing “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” from the beginning last week so if you’re just tuning in you haven’t missed much.

All sorts of new premieres coming up, actually. This week “Covert Affairs” and “White Collar” return Tuesday night on USA. “Men of a Certain Age” returned last week on TNT, I’ll have more to say about that later. TNT also premiered the new series “Franklin and Bash” Wednesday starring Mark Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer, whoever the hell that is, playing hacky, stunt-y lawyers hired by Malcolm McDowell to shake things up at his button-down law firm.

Say, I’ve got a question: Why do people insist on casting Zack Morris from “Saved by the Bell” as a lawyer? They keep doing that with J. August Richards as well and people keep not tuning in to watch these shows. He played some sort of political consultant in “Commander in Chief” and then he played some sort of pretty boy lawyer in “Raising the Bar” on cable and now they’ve repackaged him in “Franklin and Bash” and I’m still actively uninterested in a new buddy-lawyer series. Really, even for dramedies, could television get away from the quirky crime-solving nonsense? There’s just got to be other stuff to write about.

“Switched at Birth” premieres Monday night on the Family Channel, and “Master Chef” returns on FOX. And then, for anyone who missed the dark, gritty magnificence of the “Battlestar Galactica” remake in its initial run on Syfy, BBC America is airing it from the beginning starting Saturday, following a sixth season break of “Doctor Who.” If I recall correctly it took a little time to get going properly and for me to care about these characters and their situation, but once I did I was completely hooked, so here’s another chance for everyone to get into it. Enjoy!