‘Shades Of Blue’ Is Delightfully Insane, Yes, But Also A Very Necessary Show For Portraying Working Women On Television

The first time I saw the posters for Shades Of Blue on the subway, I have to admit, I was thrilled. Jennifer Lopez and Drea De Matteo are two of my favorite famous women, and a police drama billing them both was what I never knew was the exact combination of things that was missing from my life. Not even a bloated Ray Liotta (who, let’s be real, looks like he’s been soaking in water for the last decade) could dampen my enthusiasm.

Shades Of Blue, which can be watched on both NBC.com and Hulu, is exactly as you would hope it to be: insane. It’s the kind of overly dramatic, excessively theatrical cop show that’s probably going to wind up with a ten season run despite making little to no sense from one moment to the next. But that’s not the point. The point is that despite its elementary plotting and soap opera acting, this is a show about tough, non-conformist women–a majority of those being women of color. How many crappy cop shows, procedurals and disjointed dramas are there, analogous to, or even more terrible than, Shades Of Blue, devoted to their troubled male leads? Shows like Burn Notice, The Blacklist, Arrow, Elementary, and Second Chance, to name a few, are all middling at best–and all male-centric.

Despite being of average quality, Shades has that addictive guilty pleasure quality that that kept or keeps the aforementioned male-led shows on air. To give you a quick run down: Shades’ protagonist is dirty but complicated cop, Detective Harlee Santos (Jennifer Lopez), who has been pegged by FBI agent Robert Stahl (Warren Kole) to expose her even dirtier cop boss, Lieutenant Matt Wozniak (Ray Liotta). She has a daughter (it’s no mistake that it’s a daughter and not a son), Christina (Sarah Jeffery), who is her primary motivation for everything she does, including both being a dirty cop, and subsequently agreeing to cooperate with the FBI.

The pilot episode opens with Harlee in conversation with her new rookie partner, Michael (Dayo Okeniyi) about lilies, of all things. Speaking about the bi-sexuality of the flowering plant, Harlee clarifies: “They screw themselves,” a heavy handed foreshadowing of what’s to come for the characters of Shades. We learn early on that Harlee is a dirty cop, involved in an illegal ring of cops trading products and favors, but who have an honor among thieves, family first type policy when it comes to their ethical responsibilities to one another. The other woman in the group is Detective Tess Nazario (Drea De Matteo) and, from the outset, both women appear to be on equal footing with their male counterparts, in so far as their propensity for skimming the system, boozing, working hard and talking tough.

Harlee, like many male characters before her, is driven by an arbitrary sense of morality that revolves around honor and family but that doesn’t extend to stealing and illegal cover-ups, which seem to get a free pass as “family” activities. For instance, when rookie Michael messes up on his first day, shooting and killing an unarmed man by accident, Harlee immediately takes control, calmly organizing the crime scene–and casually shooting Michael in the arm–to create a false scenario in order to absolve him. Like any Liam Neeson joint, Harlee is motivated by her desire to protect her family, and in Shades, that family is both her immediate police cohort, and her sixteen year old daughter, who exist both separately and as one. Harlee lies to protect Michael, who is her “family”, and Michael must submit to that lie in order to protect Harlee’s daughter, now his “family”. Indeed, on multiple occasions in the pilot, it’s expressly stated by both Harlee and Wozniak that Christina is everyone’s daughter.

But being a mother doesn’t diminish Harlee’s autonomy. It actually makes her work harder for it. Like any down-and-out male protagonist with nothing to lose but the ones he loves, there’s no limit to how far Harlee will go to protect her daughter. Harlee doesn’t take the submissive path–siding with the FBI in exchange for immunity–but looks for the path that will allow her to keep both her professional independence and her family. She’s being buffeted by the forces around her, pushed and pulled between right and wrong, law and loyalty, but still attempting, as any male character would, to create a world that suits all her interests. It’s rare to see a female character, especially a mother, so fiercely protecting her professional and social world, which is what makes Shades so infinitely watchable–Harlee responds to her context with the kind of belligerence we’re used to seeing only from men.

Similarly, there’s an un-sexualized aggression in Shades that mimics the performative testosterone of male dramas. In the pilot, Harlee boxes–and sleeps with her boxing instructor–to let off steam. She also walks away non-committally post coitus, and in Episode 2, “Original Sin”, Wozniak tells an interested male detective “She has an effect on everyone: don’t worry about it,” as if she were some kind of gruff and unattainable heartthrob. Meanwhile, Tess smashes a glass over the head of a woman who is sleeping with her husband (who she may have also weirdly raped, in a strange twist that involves Tess pretending to be her husband to have sex with his mistress from behind–see I told you this show was batshit!), which, again, is something we’ve watched thousands of frustrated men do on screen before (hello, Detective Elliot Stabler!). The other women we’re introduced to in Episode 2 are Molly Chen (Annie Chang), a sassy, intelligent FBI agent, and Gail Baker (Leslie Silva), a demanding FBI superior agent, passing orders onto Stahl’s. Both these characters are women of color, and both appear decisive, inquisitive, and capable, set up as essential to the future narrative, rather than as incidental to it.

In the pilot, Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “No Church In The Wild” plays throughout the episode, and takes on its own life when you consider that the church is a patriarchal institution. You see, Harlee is actively disrupting heteronormative ideals of gender roles and family, upending the church of male-sanctioned law, both procedural and familial. In Episode 2 (“Original Sin”), we learn that Harlee framed her abusive ex-boyfriend for murder, and with the help of Wozniak, got away with it. In a flashback to him interviewing her over the framing, Wozniak calls her “A woman pushed past her limit,” which is yet more slap-you-in-the-face foreshadowing. Harlee is a character that refuses the hand she’s been dealt, and Shades sets up a strong narrative for a woman who is going to have to rail against a masculine machine–both sides of it–in order to come out on top. It might seem like B-grade silliness, but Shades Of Blue is essential in the evolution of the popular television cannon to include more women’s stories (and intersectional ones at that), which makes it more than worth the watch.

[Stream Shades Of Blue on NBC.com or Hulu]

Kat George is a writer and a Fast & Furious obsessive. Follow her on Twitter: @kat_george.