Sing along with the LAPD on Cop Rock, the musical police procedural.
Look, there’s this junkie mother. The cops grab her in a raid. No conviction. Baby comes back. Deep addiction isn’t a life hack. Weeks shoots a cop in broad daylight. The “thin blue line” in action. Civil rights? Who cares about those? Death helps the mayor build jails unopposed. Songs are brand new, characters are stock, in a social justice musical called Cop Rock.
TOPICS
Open 0:00
– West Side Story 30:00
What The Hell is Cop Rock? 1:49
– Dramaturgy 1:43
– Inspirations 2:24
— Steven Bachcho on Cop Rock 2:37
— Great TV Musicals 4:40
— Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 5:57
— Schmigadoon! 7:07
– How It Was Received 8:25
– Get Involved 8:54
How Well Was It Done? 11:52
– Ralph Ruskin, Invisible Man 12:00
– The Cops Are All Bad People 15:25
– Talking At The Urinal 16:39
– Patty The Junkie Mom 19:32
– Animatronic Target Practice 21:23
Was It Worth Doing? 22:30
Bits and Baubles 24:11
– ARBITRARY SCALE 25:49
Listener Feedback 26:48
LINKS
Cop Rock
Steven Bochco discusses Cop Rock
Buffy – I’ve Got A Theory
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
ABC Cancels Cop Rock
Mr. Cellophane
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – The Buzzing From The Bathroom
“Til I Come Home” — Michael Chiklis Band (MCB) with the Boston Pops
NEXT WEEK – Small Wonder S01E01 – Vicki’s Homecoming
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Transcript
Introduction
Welcome to Weird TV, the only podcast exploiting tragedy to advance our own agenda. I’m Bill Meeks, coming to you from the land where cops and robbers sing in perfect harmony, Los Angeles, CA. Today, we’re discussing COP ROCK, a musical police procedural created by Dick Wolf’s arch-nemesis, Steven Bochco.
What The Hell Is It?
DRAMATURGY/SOCIAL CONTEXT
Cop Rock aired for half a season on ABC back in 1990. I don’t remember it, per se, but that’s probably because I was a little too young for it.
The show was created by Stephen Bochco, whose hit procedural Hill Street Blues defined the genre for decades. Hill Street’s popularity paved the way for Bochco’s self-admitted flop Cop Rock.
It became a passion project for Bochco, even when his peers tried to talk him out of it.
If even Randy Newman is telling you your show idea sucks, maybe you should listen. But at least he had fun.
INSPIRATIONS
Despite bad ratings, Cop Rock set a precedent. It might be the first ongoing musical network tv show. Writing 3-4 songs every week in addition to the A and B plots is no easy task.
These days, one-off musical episodes are a staple of primetime TV, especially anything geeky like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
It’s a fun sweeps week project to turn a show like Buffy into a musical, but doing it every week is a trail-by-fire. A lot of shows got it right in recent years, so I’d like to highlight my favorites in a segment called…
GREAT TV MUSICALS
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which aired on the CW from 2015-2019, was created by YouTube comedienne Rachel Bloom, who also wrote and performed most of the songs.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a musical comedy with a focus on the comedy. It also deals with more serious issues like co-dependency and mental health.
While the title turned off a lot of potential fans, I consider Crazy Ex to not only be the best television musical, but one of my favorite musicals full-stop.
Schmigadoon!
Schmigadoon! is an Apple TV+ original starring Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong as a couple who gets lost in the woods on a couples retreat and stumble into the magical musical-inspired world of Schmigadoon!
In this town, inspired by the stage musical Brigadoon among others, all the characters are caricatures, and a song can break out at any moment. And I mean any moment…
If you’re a fan of modern Broadway, where every show winks at an audience too embarrassed to admit they like musicals, Schmigadoon! is the show for you.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
Who did Bochco create Cop Rock for? Based on the interview clips I played up top, it was mostly himself. Still, there is a lot of crossover between fans of socially-aware procedurals and the Friday night theater crowd.
HOW IT WAS RECEIVED
This thing was a flop. Critics liked it, but the show only reached 13% of viewers in it’s Wednesday night slot. Bob Iger, president of ABC Entertainment, said weeks before the cancellation that the network stood behind Bochcho, but the ratings never materialized and Cop Rock was cancelled by Christmas.
III. How Well Was It Done?
Ralph Ruskin: The Invisible Man
Okay. Let’s start by talking music. My favorite song in this pilot has to be “She Chose Me,” performed by the Ralph Ruskin character. Ralph’s married to Vicki Quinn, and when she comes home after some sexy talk with her co-worker, Ralph notices she seems distracted.
After she goes to bed, he sings one of my favorite kinds of musical numbers: A ballad about a breaking heart, with a dash of denial.
He asks throughout the song how Vicki could choose him as her husband over anyone else, with the unspoken answer being she didn’t. She’s his happy ending, but he’s her burden. It’s tragic.
This song puts me in mind of another classic musical number, Mr. Cellophane from Chicago.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend had a take on this kind of song too, called The Buzzing From The Bathroom… You can guess what this one is about.
On the production side, they use a slow fade to black over the last half of the song as they zoom in on Ralph’s face. It’s a touch my theater geek side really appreciated.
The Cops Are All Bad People
Going in, I expected this show to paint cops as the heroes. Not so fast, says Steven Bochcho.
In the scene you just heard, Detective Vincent LaRusso interrogates somebody involved in a cop killing. We’ve all heard the stories of the “thin blue line,” but LaRusso cuts the subtext…
LaRusso beats and threatens the man, then pours hot coffee down his throat and makes him pee his pants. It’s a rough scene to watch. LaRusso isn’t a hero, especially after what he does at the end of the episode, but more on that later.
The next dirty cop, Officer Vicki Quinn, played by Anne Bobby, is having an emotional affair with a fellow officer. Not quite unethical police work, but still unethical.
They don’t shy away from exposing cops as racists, either. It’s a portrayal that was just as timely back then, since the series is set in Los Angeles and was made only a year before Rodney King.
Our last bad apple? The cop who acts like a “badass” right before he gets killed.
Cop Rock’s take on policing is grounded, based in the headlines of the day, and like most good fiction, makes you question the characters. Every hero has flaws, and most villains have logical, if questionable, reasons for doing what they’ve done.
Shielded By Due Process
All these cops have problems, but LaRusso is the bad cop here.
LaRusso reminds me a lot of Vic Mackie in The Shield, a cynical cop with low morals and a lust for power.
It all comes to a head at the end of the episode, when they track down the cop killer they’ve been looking for.
In LaRusso’s world, it’s not violating due process that’s the issue. He’s just mad that his fellow officers skipped steps, lessening the chance they’ll bring the cop killer to justice. No worries, though. There’s an easy fix.
LaRusso’s partner isn’t going to snitch, and even the medical examiner is protecting that thin blue line.
LaRusso feels like the “main character,” if there is one. I loved The Shield. It felt so fresh and innovative. Little did I realize Cop Rock plumbed the same depths years earlier. It’s enough to make me want to watch the whole series, just to see if they do it well.
Talking At The Urinal
Okay, I have one major pet peeve: People who try to strike up conversations in the men’s bathroom. For one, it echoes like crazy in most bathrooms. For two, people are in there for a reason, you know? It’s not nice to disturb them.
Apparently, cops are the exact type of people who talk at the urinal.
Don’t talk in public restrooms! This has been a public service announcement.
Animatronic Target Practice
The captain he has something in his office that blew my freaking mind.
That’s right. The Chief of Police has a mannequin behind a secret panel in his office that taunts him into an old west shootout. He shoots it with a real gun too.
I love this idea. It so weird, right? Who built this for him? Did the city pay for it? Why is he using a real gun in the middle of city hall?
The best part? The mannequin looks like Burt Reynolds.
Patty The Junkie Mom
In the visceral cold open, the cops raid a drug den somewhere in Los Angeles. After beating the crap out of everybody, they find a woman and her baby on a mattress in the back.
You feel for this woman right away, even if she is a drug addict. Vicki Quinn offers to help her but Patty has a pretty compelling reason to refuse Vicki’s offer.
Eventually, Patty tries to sell information to the cops for money she says is for her baby, but is obviously to support her drug habit.
Without the money from the cops, Patty is forced to sell her baby. Before she does, she sings a beautiful little ballad called Close Your Eyes.
She’s sitting at a bus stop, rocking her baby to sleep. In the last verse, a man who factors into later episodes of Cop Rock called the Baby Merchant pulls up…
You’ve probably heard of the Baby Merchant before. He’s the star of one of Cop Rock’s most viral songs.
This is another nuanced plotline, with Officer Quinn trying to help Patty, but Patty won’t help herself due to her addiction.
It’s a tragic, but relatable choice Patty makes to sell the baby. She’s at the point where she knows the baby isn’t safe with her anymore. It’s a responsible decision if you squint a little.
The irony here is that she loses the baby when she had a chance to get clean in rehab, but refused to go to rehab because she didn’t want to lose the baby she sold for more drugs.
Cop Rock might be cheesy, but Patty’s storyline is Grade-A tragedy.
He’s Guilty!
This series isn’t afraid to jump from high drama to musical comedy at a moment’s notice, which might be part of the reason it failed.
The biggest tonal shift comes at the end of the big trial…
Yep, the guilty verdict turns into a huge gospel number, complete with the jurors wearing choir robes as they celebrate sending a man to the electric chair.
I’m not sure what they’re saying with this song. Is it that the court is sort of the church of justice, with the judge being the preacher? Is it just an excuse to do a Gospel tune?
The lyrics focus on the judge and jury patting each other on the back for a job well done. It’s weird, right?
If there’s one thing I like about Cop Rock, it’s how ambitious it is. This episode only has four songs, but they take big swings in multiple genres. I’d love to see where it would have gone in future seasons. Maybe they could have got Sondheim involved or something!
Was It Worth Doing?
At The Time It Was Made
Cop Rock was a bad idea at the time it was made. Sure, coastal elites love musicals, but they are hit-and-miss in huge chunks of the country. The world just wasn’t ready for Cop Rock.
Now
If you erased the original from history, I think Cop Rock would stand a real shot at being successful. Police procedurals are more popular than ever. Shows like Hamilton and Glee have made Broadway more accessible. The only issue is the reputation the original show has as a joke.
Let’s Reboot It!
I wouldn’t reboot Cop Rock, but it has a lot of lessons you could translate into a similar project. I’d use Cop Rock as inspiration, and a potential cautionary tale, to launch a musical reboot of The Shield. Make it three seasons, tighten up the storylines, and put it to song. Hell, you can even have Michael Chicalas reprise his role. He’s a good singer!
BITS AND BAUBLES
The cops take the stand to defend themselves for the raid. I went back and checked, and their testimony does not match what we see in the cold open.
The judge says the last time he signed a warrant for these cops they trashed the wrong house. Why’d he sign this one then?
I spotted Ernie Hudson, Winston from Ghostbusters, as Commander Warren Osbourne.
Loved how the Police Chief used a tragedy to get them to build a new prison. For a real-life example, see the Iraq War.
It was weird to see Patty, the mom, smoking in the police station lobby. Even weirder to see her keep smoking after they hand her the baby. It wasn’t a weird sight then, though.
ARBITRARY SCALE: 9,500 out of 11,000 bucks from the Baby Merchant