Isn’t it odd that characters in television crime dramas never seem to have seen any television crime dramas?
The spouse always takes offence when the police interview them, as if they didn’t know that the investigators ought to interview everyone connected with the crime. The family shouts at the police for not arresting a suspect after just a day (and they usually shout at a beleaguered underling, not the relevant managing officer), as if they were completely unaware that a city police department might have responsibilities other than solving one case. The characters don’t have the faintest familiarity with police procedure.
Even granted that serials don’t represent ‘actual’ police procedure, characters ought at least to have an appropriately distorted media image of how the police pursue a case. And that’s before you even count the romanticised image of honest, hard-working cops (with a few bad apples they’re trying hard to root out) — didn’t anyone learn from The Wire?