Everything Also Complain

From ‘Bomb scene’s a joke’, 11 June 2011, Life! Mailbag

(Alan Tan): …The Singapore Police Force already suffers from a poor public relations image because of the handling of a lame escapee – and this drama series (C.L.I.F) is indeed a cop-out.

Consider the bomb blast in the yellow rubbish bin in episode one. The rubbish bin does not have any burn marks consistent with a bomb blast or any melted parts. There are no burn marks on the grass patch below the bin; instead the ‘demolished’ bin has zig-zag and straight line cuts consistent with a technician using a blade or sharp scissor on it.

What do the producers take us for? Buffoons? Ask any NS infantry soldier about bomb blasts.

Expelliarmus!

History tells us that all local cop drama serials ever produced to date are really glammed up recruitment ads for the police force. The fact that you need to buff up these shows with celebrities and pyrotechnics means there’s less budget to spend on forensic consultants to make every scene as accurate as possible. I think what’s most unrealistic about such serials, other than the likelihood of things blowing up in rubbish bins, cars flipping over and other action set pieces which involve officers jumping out of the way of explosions with anything more than a scraped eyebrow, is that they feature good-looking leads, not how much damage a rubbish bin should sustain. Remember, television drama caters to the reptilian brain, not the part that reads ‘Where’s Wally’ or plays Sudoku, and anyone who spends their free time using the latter should stay away from such dramas altogether, before they apply their attention to microscopic detail to every consistency blunder from  where bullets land to how smoke should billow from a wreckage.

This explosion is rubbish

I took it upon myself to view the first episode in its entirety.  Fine, I was willing to suspend any cynicism over the introductory subtitles of ‘They control evil’ and how our police ‘put their lives on the line’, but was floored by the  opening sequence of Tay Ping Hui beating off a mob with a black stick, in a SUIT, reminiscent of a Crazy 88 gangster in Kill Bill than a police agent. There are a couple of scenes of rioting to compensate for the lack of more creative stand-offs, which subscribes to the film theory that if you have nothing clever to say, fill your screen with angry extras.   The controversial exploding bin aftermath, though, is barely 2 seconds long and I’m amazed by the complainant’s shrewd, geeky attention to detail here. But the job at stake  is not the scissor-wielding special effects wizard responsible for an inadequately exploded rubbish bin here, but that of the scriptwriters, for seducing young men and women into an occupation where they’re more likely to deal with paperwork and petty neighbour complaints over flowerpots than running around raising your weapon like you’re ready to infuse it with the power of Grayskull. Similar inconsistencies in the depiction of police from the eighties below (SBC dramas give the wrong impression, 28 Sept 1989, ST), though this complainant went down to the gritty detail of how policemen wear their socks. I guess if smart viewers want less eye candy or dumb action and have instead bomb debris and bloodstains described in sexy, intimate detail,  they should just watch C.S.I instead.

Filed under: 1980s, 2011, Dress sense, Local actors, Local TV shows, Police officers, Violence Tagged: | dress sense, Local actors, local TV, police, Police officers