What's usual about the new cop show "The Unusuals?" There's a scene in within the first 20 minutes that's lifted from "The Wire." The opening scene of the last season of the great HBO show, two cops wire up a kid to a copier and tell him it's a lie detector machine. The pages come out with the words "True" and "False" where ever it suits the cops. At the end one cop sets up the tenor of the entire 5th season saying "The bigger the lie, the more they believe" or something like that. 
One the premiere episode of "The Unusuals" ("The Wacky" was taken) two quirky cops pull the same stunt on a suspected criminal. They do the same thing. For some reason he doesn't confess. He sees the results, but doesn't confess. Maybe he has HBO.
You can say "Well, maybe it's a common practice for police to do that trick.." But it was first done a year ago on a show that's considered to be one of the best ever. If you are aTV writer or cop show producer - you should've picked up that it was done before.
The "The Wire" show does it better of course. Not only does it work... but they set it up nicely. Also that scene has meaning. It's not just quick joke to show how crazy these cops are.
Here's the "The Wire" clip.
1 comment:
Actually, "The Wire" ripped it off from "Homicide: Life On The Street", a scene which included the infamous Richard Belzer screaming "We're gonna neutron this bastard!!".
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