Do you watch Crime shows for the Crime stuff?

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zeldapsychology
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01 Aug 2013, 9:37 pm

I could list spy shows and Crime Dramas etc. but I'm odd I don't watch for instance BONES or DEXTER or BURN NOTICE to see the good guy win. I want to see overall what kind of horrid crime scene the killer creates or in the case of BURN NOTICE a spy show FINALLY in the FINAL season Michael had an advisory WORTH FIGHTING AGAINST! The villain is a leader of a terrorist group and when the guy used to be a spy he was told to kill a "King" well that "king" was a bunch of punk kids. ALL his teammates said NO they weren't following orders and killing a bunch of kids! UH! the villain James slit all there throats his teammates! in the middle of the night! and killed the kids! and put his "friend" into a mental institution! WOW! This is a doozy! A guy NOT to be messed with WOW! Was my view. I was jumping up and down excited over this and my dad said I'm "Sick" :-(

I watch BONES to see where and how will they find the skeletal remains this time? NO not the computer imaging girl YAWN! stuff or body parts where and HOW are they going to find the body this time? Also Hannibal is WAY WAY WAY over the top sick and gross (The show that is).

I want to see how the killer has killed. Even real life documentary cases to me Dahmer/Bundy did what?! bleached bones! Put bodies into barrels! Some of there twisted fantasies are SICK! and to me that's INTERESTING!

Can anyone relate? Thank You.



Jory
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01 Aug 2013, 11:45 pm

I'm the opposite, for the most part.

Two of my big fictional obsessions are Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason, but otherwise I have very little interest in mystery and crime fiction. So why do I latch onto these two? Why do I enjoy a good Holmes story (or movie or TV episode) even when the mystery plot isn't all that interesting? Why do I keep reading and watching Mason novels and TV episodes even though he seems to be solving the same damn mystery 300 times in a row?

It's because the characters are a lot more interesting to me than the plots. Holmes could be a carpenter or an accountant or a plumber for all it matters, because the most interesting scenes are always the ones in which he's just sitting at home and interacting with Dr. Watson, not when he's explaining the grisly details of a murder to the police. Now compare this to, say, Law & Order, which is all plot and no character. You could take a script from any given episode and erase the names, and you'd never know who was talking based on the dialogue alone. Every character is just a cardboard cutout designed to get us to the next scene.

Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and its sequels are another good example. I couldn't care less about the details of the gory crimes committed by Hannibal Lecter and the Tooth Fairy and Buffalo Bill. What's interesting to me is the mental chess match between the characters, and the psychological torture that a person like Will Graham goes through when getting inside the mind of a serial killer in order to catch him. No detail of any murder could possibly be as interesting to me as simply watching Graham sitting across from Lecter and having a quiet conversation with him. This is why a show like Hannibal works on broadcast TV with its PG-13 standards. Extreme gore isn't needed.

It's never the grisly details for me. What's the best scene in Night of the Living Dead? The cemetery zombie killing Johnny by crushing his head on a tombstone? The little girl stabbing her mother to death with a garden shovel? Tom and Judy dying in the exploding truck? A pack of zombies eating Tom and Judy's cooked intestines? Nope. It's Ben, sitting on the floor of the house, telling Barbra about seeing a tanker truck crashing. Just sitting there, talking about it. We never see it. It's all in his performance. Of course all of this chaotic and traumatic violence is important, but it's just wallpaper, and that's the way I prefer it.

The best crime dramas focus on the characters, not the crimes. The best horror films focus on the characters, not the horror. And so forth. Of course, the characters and actors have to be good for this to work. I can't say that I find any of the characters on Bones terribly interesting. My sister likes the show and I've been subjected to a few episodes of it, and for the most part, I find the characters to be smug and insufferable twats. And yes, Sherlock Holmes is a smug and insufferable twat, but Benedict Cumberbatch has the required acting ability to make him likable. Not so sure about David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel.



benh72
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02 Aug 2013, 12:06 am

I get it.
I often watch those shows, or have in the past wanting to see how things were done, how they figured out what was done, and what motivates people to do these things.
I'm interested in true stories as well as well written crime stories, but the descriptions explanations, or graphic depictions are often more important to me than character development.
I won't settle for a simple explanation, or some token motivation though, it has to make sense, if it doesn't seem plausible in real life - even if it is a bit unusual, I will feel ripped off and stop watching.
I probably would have been a good CSI type person if I wasn't prone to PTSD.



zer0netgain
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02 Aug 2013, 11:19 am

I used to, but they get so much wrong that I sort of lost interest. That and everyone is making copycat crime shows (how many CSI shows do we really need).



ScrewyWabbit
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02 Aug 2013, 2:19 pm

zeldapsychology wrote:
I could list spy shows and Crime Dramas etc. but I'm odd I don't watch for instance BONES or DEXTER or BURN NOTICE to see the good guy win. I want to see overall what kind of horrid crime scene the killer creates or in the case of BURN NOTICE a spy show FINALLY in the FINAL season Michael had an advisory WORTH FIGHTING AGAINST! The villain is a leader of a terrorist group and when the guy used to be a spy he was told to kill a "King" well that "king" was a bunch of punk kids. ALL his teammates said NO they weren't following orders and killing a bunch of kids! UH! the villain James slit all there throats his teammates! in the middle of the night! and killed the kids! and put his "friend" into a mental institution! WOW! This is a doozy! A guy NOT to be messed with WOW! Was my view. I was jumping up and down excited over this and my dad said I'm "Sick" :-(

I watch BONES to see where and how will they find the skeletal remains this time? NO not the computer imaging girl YAWN! stuff or body parts where and HOW are they going to find the body this time? Also Hannibal is WAY WAY WAY over the top sick and gross (The show that is).

I want to see how the killer has killed. Even real life documentary cases to me Dahmer/Bundy did what?! bleached bones! Put bodies into barrels! Some of there twisted fantasies are SICK! and to me that's INTERESTING!

Can anyone relate? Thank You.


I'm guessing that you'd really like the British TV show "Luther" - there's only 12 episodes or so but the main villain in the first season is really quite interesting,