In the past few months, I’ve been watching five seasons of another Dick Wolf creation called “FBI.” In the later hours of my day, I like an episode or two.
This police drama follows two main protagonists, Maggie Bell and Omar Adom, who are FBI field agents working in New York City. They chase down terrorists, embezzlers, child abductors, drug dealers, bad cops, organized crime leaders, etc.. Each episode moves from the original crime scene to the resolution.
Often episodes put a supporting character or two on the front stage, giving the audience a nice variety of storylines and characters. This approach kept this TV watcher engaged. Let me say the actors and writers are great!
The characters come with obvious flaws. And yet they somehow work around those flaws to “do their job,” which is a common expression in this series. “Doing their job” often means the characters facing a moral/ethical dilemma. This TV series shows that the world is more complex that what simple solutions can provide. This show will make you think!
Just about every episode involves gun battles. I don’t think this is a daily occurrence of real FBI agents. And given the number of gun battles these TV agents face, they should not survive five seasons, regardless of their training or experience. The law of averages is not conducive to living a long life if your workday ends with a gun battle.
The characters are very much “career” people. Their job comes first. Personal and family life are sacrificed. So the show epitomizes hard choices many workers make. I often wonder about the society impact of this this work/life imbalance.
There is a scary aspect of this show. Or maybe I should say “scarier.”
One of the main settings is the “situation room.” This big room has about 20 computer stations, staffed by FBI analysts ready to dig up information on any FBI suspect. It has the “big board” of screens displaying all attained information. When a New York City camera shows a clear face in a crime, the analysts can turn that face into a name, address, bank account, social media, high school, work history, family history, etc. with five minutes of keyboard pounding.
Remember a big challenge of police dramas of the 1970s and 1980s: to get a judge to approve to phone wiretap? Clearly the world has moved past our former privacy balance.
And I wonder about the expense of keeping the situation room on standby. And what about those SWAT teams that seem to be mustered to the SWAT location within an hour? Maybe we are already in a police state!
The Business Angle
Now this review goes to a different tack. I have the basic fiber optic TV package for $25 a month. Maybe 10 channels. Three Canadian broadcasters (CBC, CTV, and Global) and PBS are my most watched mainstream channels.
One of those other channels is the streaming services from the Canadian broadcasters. The FBI show is one of 40 TV shows I have access to — for no additional cost — and with no advertising. I have gotten great entertainment value with the 80+ FBI episodes.
Putting together a TV drama like FBI is not cheap. So I have to ask: How is the FBI business unit making enough streaming profit to justify the original investment? Or is the FBI business unit just using streaming to scrape a few extra nickels as this show becomes obsolete on the main cable channels?
It would be interesting to see the business matrix of streaming services for TV series.
FBI and Tiered Democratic Governance
I suspect the action in the situation room is probably a bit on the sensationalist side. But there is probably a lot of truth to this stage.
The ease our police agencies seem to be able to access our personal information is concerning. I would like to believe that there is some government oversight in these matters. There should be, in my opinion, a neutral monitor in that situation room.
But when our elected representatives seem to be spending much of their political time about who gets to occupy the highchairs, is effective oversight really happening?
If nothing else, the situation room of the FBI TV drama is another reason to start building a new democracy. Imagine FBI agents checking random people who show up on the cameras — just for fun!
Published on Medium 2023
Please Put Me in an American Prison
