‘Flashpoint’ (2008-2012): A Review

 (originally published July 3, 2018)

A friend of mine, posted a comment on how awfully reactionary most police procedurals are, and largely, they really are, which got me thinking about Flashpoint.

Flashpoint was a Canadian-made Police Procedural TV Series that ran for 5 seasons from 2008 to 2012 and, while it followed many of the standard tropes of the police procedural genre, it also diverged from them - and frequently refuted them - in quite remarkable ways. Flashpoint focused on the members of the Strategic Response Unit (SRU), a fictional rapid response unit within the greater Metropolitan Police Department of Toronto. Their mission was to respond to dangerously volatile situations and deal with them strategically using the enhanced skills and equipment available to them.

So let’s start with the ways in which the show adheres to standard procedural tropes: It’s centred on an elite team within the regular police force made up of high skilled, exceptional officers with greater caveat to go beyond standard procedure when dealing with exceptional situations... all very standard cop show formula as seen in shows as diverse as The Shield, SWAT or the remake of Hawaii 5-0. In addition, there was the usual fetishistic depiction of ‘tactical’ police operations - the militaristic look of the team, the black 4WDs, the focus on the work of police snipers and cutting-edge technology, and the rappelling, oh dear gods, so much rappelling! Plus, of course, like almost all cop shows not produced by David Simon, the focus is largely on the concerns of a largely white, middle-class audience. So far much very much, a to-the-formula cop show. But now we get to the places where it diverges.

At the heart of Flashpoint is the idea of People In Crisis. The show will usually open in media res, with an extremely dangerous or volatile situation (the titular flashpoint) before flashing back to show how we got to this situation. In many cases, this will have very little to do with the cops, as we witness the sequence of events which drive ordinary people into extraordinary situations. This is important, because it’s very rare for the antagonists in an episode of Flashpoint to be straight-up bad guys. Usually it’s the sort of characters we’d regard as “good people in bad situations” or “good people who made bad decisions”. Sometimes, there are characters who are actively malicious and cruel, but they tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule, and there’s often at least one person in their orbit who, through making bad decisions or bad associations, has been drawn into a terrible situation. This focus on and empathy for the antagonists is one of the key differences in Flashpoint’s approach. These are situations need to be resolved, involving people who need to be understood, not just ‘bad guys’ to be defeated or ‘dealt with’.

A side effect of this, and another area in which Flashpoint diverged from the standard cop show formula was the way it dealt with information. In most police shows, the cops are the viewpoint characters, and we as an audience usually discover information at the same time as the cops. Because Flashpoint would often focus so much time on the antagonists, we were often privy to a great deal of information the series’ protagonists were not. This was often most obvious at the point when the episode’s main narrative caught up to the opening scene. Suddenly, we’re seeing the same situation, but this time, through entirely different eyes. People who initially looked to be villains were revealed as victims, people who appeared hateful and dangerous could be seen as frightened and desperate, and situations where there seemed to be no way out would suddenly have new unforeseen options or approaches. What initially appeared very simple was suddenly tremendously complex and increasingly volatile.

It’s this sense of volatility which is at the heart of Flashpoint’s greatest divergence from the standard TV cop show formula, and is probably my favourite thing about the show. All of the SRU’s considerable resources - the 4WDs, the Sniper Rifles, the Breaching Charges, the Rappelling gear, and all of the team’s training in tactics, negotiation, surveillance - is dedicated to DE-escalating volatile situations. Probably the most eloquent expression of this idea is the show’s opening title sequence. The opening shot is of a finger on the trigger of a sniper rifle, followed by the usual cop show montage of people in tactical gear, with riot shields and helmets, explosions, etc..., but the final shot, after all of that is a thumb replacing a hammer, the rifle un-fired, the situation resolved without loss of life, which is always the team’s number one concern.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/iihqFGITCGc

'Flashpoint' opening title sequence

In a world where there are frequent concerns of the increased militarisation of police forces, Flashpoint shows the values of restraint, de-escalation, control, discipline, level-headedness, empathy and professionalism. The SRU is shown to have tremendous access to skills and resources, but the members are all extremely aware that, in the words of Stan Lee, “With great power, there must also come great responsibility.”

When a situation is beyond control and lethal force must be used, it’s almost always a single shot from a sniper rifle - one shot, one kill. This is almost always depicted as a final resort when all else has failed, and the show’s creators take pains to show officers turning over any firearm that’s been discharged for ballistics testing and situational review. When violence by the officers is shown, it’s almost always with an eye towards containment - quick, efficient, professional and effective - and always with the goal of minimising further harm.

One area in which the show conforms in some ways and diverges in others is in the make-up of the team... and that concept of ‘team’ is a big one. While Enrico Colantoni (who’s a vastly talented and underrated actor) as Greg Parker and Hugh Dillon as Ed Lane tend to have a marginally larger share of the spotlight by virtue of their leadership roles within the unit, the emphasis is very much on the ensemble, and there’s not really a ‘star’ of the show. Each member of the team brings valuable resources to their operations. 
This is especially notable in Parker, the unit commander whose speciality is crisis negotiation, and Michelangelo ‘Spike’ Scarlatti (Sergio Di Zio) who plays the team’s technical specialist. One extremely widespread trope in police procedurals which I despise is anti-intellectualism. While this would seem to be counter-intuitive given the genre’s emphasis on investigation, there’s a lot of regard given to ‘gut reactions’ and ‘cop instincts’ which posits that an officer’s initial, instinctive response will be the correct one, and that this will be later borne out as the facts come to life. Flashpoint already undermines this idea with its standard plot structure, but re-emphasises this with its treatment of these characters. Parker’s training as a psychologist is not only crucial to his work as a negotiator, but also as a team leader, as he can more readily see and respond to signs of stress or psychological factors which could impact team performance and cohesion. This is highly unusual in this genre as psychologists are normally regarded as ‘ivory tower intellectuals spouting nonsensical jargon’ and as having ‘no connection to the real world’, with cops expected to just ‘tough it out’ rather than seek help for mental and emotional problems. Meanwhile, Flashpoint deals squarely and with tremendous sensitivity with issues of mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the wear and tear of human minds under constant stress on a great many occasions. 
With ‘Spike’, the subversion is subtly different. As the most overtly technically-minded member of the team, he is often relegated to The Van, the nerve centre of SRU operations, but he is always shown as a team member. The usual approach TV cop shows take to characters like Spike is to present them as colourful eccentrics with limited social skills (See Abby Sciuto and ‘Ducky’ Mallard in NCIS, Spencer Reid and Penelope Garcia in Criminal Minds or pretty much any character in ‘Bones’ not played by David Boreanaz), which emphasizes the idea that smart people live in a kind of detached intellectual fairyland. Meanwhile, Spike is depicted and treated by his teammates as a full member of the team and his skills are valued as an essential part of unit operations. On the other hand, despite this, the team is overwhelmingly white and male, with Amy Jo Johnson’s Jules Callahan is, for a large percentage of the show’s run, the sole female member, and Mark Taylor’s Lou Young initially as its only non-white member. The producers would address this (to a degree) in later seasons, briefly replacing Amy Jo Johnson with Jessica Steen during her pregnancy, and adding Oluniké Adeliyi and Clé Bennett as team members in later seasons.

As far as mainstream cop shows go, it’s not perfect, but in presenting police as flawed, but competent and professional and the situations they find themselves in as complex, nuanced and by presenting police acting with discipline, restraint and with a focus on de-escalating stressful situations, it’s definitely the sort of show that might serve as a timely reminder in a world where ‘Black Lives Matter’ is seen as a controversial statement.