The eighty-second TV show: #591 Waking The Dead
When this came out of our bucket, we were quite excited by getting a show we've been looking to (re)watch for a long time. Waking the Dead follows a squad that investigates cold cases (often, but not always murder) that have had new leads discovered. They investigate, following a bunch of standard procedural leads, but as often eschewing the standards for other options. What helps is that we have a team with distinct disciplines here, a forensic scientist and psychological profiler who both work as major parts of the team (rather than being called in, as on so many other shows, or their work being done by regular detectives.
Now, for spoiler reasons, I've only covered the first team from the first four seasons - the change at the end of the fourth season (which I don't know about) is apparently a big change that I wouldn't want to know yet. This initial team, however, feel strong. Boyd feels like the tough cop at times, as the lead character he seems to have to be wrong, but moves forward to get things resolved. Grace and Frankie, the aforementioned psychologist and scientist are probably the two more interesting characters, and the ones you're rooting for. Slightly outside the chain of command, they're opinionated, less led by the needs of the case but more by the situation they see in front of them. They feel like strong personalities and the interaction between Boyd and the two of them often works really well. Mel, as the recently promoted cop, gets the brunt of the bad times, and so seems less secure - she seems less likely to call the others on their things or assert herself, which gets her in trouble at times. Spencer... is a bit of an old time cop, but he's mostly the work horse to get chores done, I never quite felt he was as distinct a character as the others.
The cases themselves have quite a mix too. Some are standard murder plots, though one where the different skills all tend to get used. Others are already solved murders, revisited for various reasons. I don't feel like there's always a twist, although some are there, and are good, and in fact it sometimes eschews the expected procedural twist. Then there are psychological explorations, where finding the culprit is not the most important thing, and the psychology behind the victims becomes more important. Breaking Glass, for example, was one of the episodes that won the show its international Emmy, and it the investigation into the mind of the victim, how he got to where he was, felt more interesting and important than finding the perpetrator, with even the final scene revolving around that. It feels far more natural.
There's a definite difference between season 1 and later seasons. Boyd becomes more tender, not just the angry cop from before. Mel seems a bit more certain. More important, the banter between the team becomes a lot better - it's a lot more natural and the show relies on it more to convey information. There's not as much lecturing and it's a lot more entertaining to watch. It feels like the heart of the show that really elevates it beyond just a procedural.
Still, I have many more episodes of this to watch and I'm looking forward to it - they're decent chunks of content that require more concentration than other shows, but have enough levity to not make it heavy viewing that would put me off.