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People of a “certain age” may remember the 1975-76 series S.W.A.T. for two reasons: Robert Urich and the show’s bad-ass theme song. Forty-two years later, CBS has decided its time for an update of the Aaron Spelling series, starring one of the network’s most popular actors, Shemar Moore. Can Moore make a show about a paramilitary police team watchable?
A Guide to Our Rating System
Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the S.W.A.T. cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.
S.W.A.T.
Opening Shot: A shot of the Los Angeles skyline, which gives way to a patrol car pulling up to a warehouse in South Central, where the cops stumble on an arms deal in progress. When the patrol officers get overwhelmed, the S.W.A.T. team gets called in.
The Gist: S.W.A.T. stands for Special Weapons and Tactics, teams of officers who do normal police duties but are trained to work in high-risk and sensitive situations, like hostage negotiations and counterterrorism operations. When the team gets called in to back up the patrol officers, a chase ensues and the lead officer of the team Sgt. Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson (Moore) is on accidentally shoots a 17-year-old bystander. Given the tense relationship between the cops and the people in the neighborhood, the police commissioner fires the leader and immediately promotes Hondo, over David “Deacon” Kay (Jay Harrington).
There’s a reason for this: Hondo is from the South Central neighborhood his team is assinged to protect. As much as he hates being used as a symbol for community outreach, he realizes he can use his position to help bridge the gap. Of course, his friends and others from the neighborhood question where his loyalty lies. In an effort to find a sniper who kills a white officer and bystander at a community rally, he finds that he has to figure that out as well.
He also has to deal with a new team member, Jim Street (Alex Russel), who is super-aggressive, a rival S.W.A.T. leader named Mumford (Peter Onorati) who would rather arrest random Black people than try to build trust in the neighborhood. Oh, and he and his boss, Capt. Jessica Cortez (Stephanie Sigman), have to deal with the ramifications of the budding relationship they were in before Hondo got his sudden promotion.
Our Take: The best way we can describe S.W.A.T. is this: It’s the perfect CBS show. In fact, it feels like another freshman Eye Network series, SEAL Team, only with cop uniforms in place of miltary fatigues. The team members feel like the same generic characters, right down to the women who are giving the teams their marching orders. Still, there’s nothing about the show that’s terrible, and it had a lot to reccomend, especially if you’re a fan of Shemar Moore’s work in Criminal Minds.
Maybe it’s his gruff voice, but Moore seems to be working at a different level than most of the cast. He brings a gritty authenticity to the role of Hondo, making you believe that Hondo really wants to build trust between the cops and the people in his old neighborhood. Considering how much the issue of police brutality against the Black populations of America’s cities has become a hot-button topic that has spread all the way into the NFL and beyond, there seemed to be a good show in here about an officer’s divided loyalties between his fellow officers and his old neighborhood.
But it feels like this show will never really reach those heights, and just use the racial tension as a means to an end. Something happens, S.W.A.T. comes in, Hondo has to deal with the racial divide, there are lots of car chases and gunfire (thanks, EP Justin Lin!) and then someone gets busted. On a different network, this could have been so much more, but on CBS, it’s more comfort food than anything else.
Sex and Skin: Capt. Cortez gets in the shower a few minutes into the episode, then we see she’s not alone… Hondo is right in there with her.
Parting Shot: As the team gets a call, they pull away from their abandoned mall hangout/training ground, with a new version of the ’70s theme song playing in the background.
Sleeper Star: We like Sigman as Capt. Cortez, because she seemed like the only other character besides Hondo whose backstory we learned about.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Street reports to his first day on the team (after doing wheelies on his motorcycle through downtown L.A.), he tells Hondo he’s there to kick some ass. “S.W.A.T. is not about kicking ass,” Hondo tells him. “It’s about saving lives.” Those crazy kids, right Hondo?
Our Call: Stream It. Essentially, this is the same show as SEAL Team, and we said you should stream that, so it would be tough to tell you to skip this one. Also, Moore’s presence makes S.W.A.T. very watchable, even if all the other characters seem pretty generic. At some point this show may develop (considering Shawn Ryan is one of the EPs, it just might), and Moore will be the one that keeps people watching until that happens.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
