The typical
police procedural positively runs on the notion of the
cops either hunting the
criminal and solving the
crime (despite the bad guy's efforts to evade detection), or better yet, stopping the criminal before they are able to culminate the crime, saving the putative next
victim through their detectional
heroics. But there are occasional
episodes in various series wherein, despite the
dramatic efforts of the fictive cops portrayed, in the end their work turns out to be all for show, as the turnout of events is pretty much what would have happened had the cops sat home and watched
soap operas instead of digesting public resources through the chase.
There are two scenarios which I am especially concerned with here.
Scenario I: Criminal plots elaborate
kidnap/
murder/
heist, integral part of such being that it
culminates in his own capture or death. Exemplary of this is the movie
Seven -- for all of the heroism displayed by the detectives played by
Brad Pitt and
Morgan Freeman, the end result -- the "capture" and killing of
Kevin Spacey's
sin-themed
psycho (which is not really a
capture at all, as he walks into the
police station and
surrenders himself). That, it turns out, is all part of Spacey's plan, as is being on the receiving end of a
bullet to the
brain pan. On a small-screen scale, there's an episode of
Criminal Minds which featured a man who kidnapped three
high school girls and kept them locked in a cellar for several days (all the while, the team frantically tracking down leads to his whereabouts); finally, the kidnapper instructs the captives: they must select one among them to die, and the other two must kill the third -- with
sledgehammers. Do the cops solve the crime in time to prevent this death? Nope, but they do find the two surviving girls.... because the kidnapper drops them off
in the alley behind the police station. But, at least, they're able to figure out who the kidnapper is (not hard, once the girls, who have seen his face, have been essentially handed over). Which, naturally, he expected. When they get to his house, he's sitting in the cellar with the remaining body, calmly awaiting the arrival of the
authorities. The "Criminal Minds" super-brilliant
FBI team wasn't needed to solve this caper at all -- had they
never shown up, things would have gone down just the same, except maybe the bad guy would've had to sit in the cellar a wee bit longer.
Scenario II: Criminal's elaborate plot is thwarted by the intended victim; cops, having slaved away the day to figure out the whole thing, show up
just in the nick of time to.... clean up the mess left behind. Where this happens in films, it's usually because the struggle of the victim is the actual focus of the film. Maybe the investigators will even show up just as the victim is preparing to wreak revenge upon her captor (yes, it's just about always a "her" in these instances) and talk her down from exacting rough justice. Another Criminal Minds episode highlights
this case. Two brothers have been nabbing stranded motorists and hauling them out to Idaho deep country, there to hunt them like
The Most Dangerous Game with
bows and arrows. But, while the law enforcement types are still trying to piece together the
modus operandi at play, the hunter-killers' latest victim has already turned the tables on them -- gut-stabs the younger brother in a way that will very shortly turn out to be fatal; then goes up a
tree to launch herself
A-Team-style at the older brother. Oh, and she stabs him too, clearly causing injury, and totally could have killed him with a few more plunges of the knife (if television was logical), but instead runs away. Fortunately the team shows up just then to kill the would-be-hunter. Except, seeing as how he's already been stabbed, while his victim remained pretty much unscathed, he'd not have been able to keep up with her anyway, while she could have doubled back anytime to finish him off. All they succeeded in doing, for all their efforts, was moving up the time of death for the
last brother standing.
Where these sorts of plots happen in episodic crime-solving television, it's usually a way to throw a bit of a
twist into the episode. The crime scene readers still get to show off their
chops, following the
clues to track down the bad guy. But once there, they either find the bad guy sitting over his dead/dying victim, asking, "what took you so long?" or they find the victim sitting over her dead/dying bad guy, posing the same
query.