Angie Tribeca

Angie Tribeca (Rashida Jones) is a member of the Really Heinous Crimes Unit in the LAPD. DJ Tanner (Deon Cole), Jay Geils (Hayes MacArthur), and canine David Hoffman are her fellow investigators. Chet Atkins (Jere Burns) is her boss. Monica Scholls (Andree Vermeulen) is the medical examiner.

This is an outlandish network cop show spoof from TBS. It's extremely silly done with a straight face. It's cute. It's fun. It's got a great cast led by Rashida Jones. It's CSI done with Airplane! sensibilities. It's nice.

I like parody. Like pizza, even when parody is mediocre, it is still good enough to consume. I did not have high hopes for this show.

But, I was pleasantly surprised. There was a nice mix of word-play, physical humor and total absurdity. Sure, it seems as if it was derived from David Rasche's SledgeHammer series, down to the superior officer who yells all the time. And, a lot of the gags seems to come directly from the Police Squad series. Making fun of cop shows will give you some overlap.

The character of Angie is funny enough. The running gags of the police dog and the vomiting rookie give you some laugh out loud moments. My recommendation: Watch them in order.

This is a TV comedic series in the fashion of movies such as Airplane! and The Naked Gun.

The jokes cover a broad range of humor, from subtle to caustic to plain ridiculous.

Most of them are idioms or metaphors that the characters meant literally (like "-This case stinks. -No it's me I ate garlic."). Lots of spoofing and puns delivered in deadpan face.

Sometimes you have to really pay attention to get the meta-humor like in the 8th episode where around 4:00 the series does some very deliberate continuity goofs to mock single-camera shows where the 2 characters talking change clothes, background action and even the ...actors (by exchange them with lookalikes) from one edit-cut to the next.

If you know Brooklyn-9-9 (which by the way might share the same police precinct/stage) Angie Tribeca is 100 times more quirky and surreal.

The cast is capable but in my opinion Alfred Molina's performance is the one that stands out, in a small but funny role, playing an M.E.

There are some well known guest stars including Bill Murray and James Franco but they seem like haven't got too much (of a script) to work with.

The first 3 episodes seemed like more organized and inspired. Later the writers turned to a rhythm one-joke-every-second that might be overwhelming for most viewers.

Overall: Like the movie genre which is the inspiration for this (The Naked Gun franchise) you either love it or hate it. Personally I will keep watching.

This show is so funny that I have, lit'rally, lost my breath from laughing so hard. This show is a farce of the highest level. It should not be taken seriously by anyone at any time. The great thing about it is that the only ones that do take it seriously are the characters in the show that don't know they're in a farce. They think they're in an episode of Law & Order:Criminal Minds New York...Blue. And any topic is fair game. From the autopsy procedure with M.E. Dr. Scholls to the extreme stereotypes in every cop partner relationship with Tribeca and her partner, Jay Geils, to the secondary cop whose partner is a German Shepherd that barks like a dog but is understood like a regular human. Add to that every double entendre in the book and insanely bizarre and outrageous undercover scenes. Oh, and since this is a commercial free binge-a-thon, the blatant product placement is a riot in and unto itself. I love it, and this is just 5 episodes in!!

Remember those movies like "Top Secret" and "Airplane", where you actually had to pause sometimes to catch all the jokes that were thrown at you from the screen? Well, "Angie Tribeca" is a proud follower of this tradition.

This show is a little like the American version of "A touch of cloth", which aired in 2012 in Britain and made fun of British police procedural series. "Angie Tribeca" here, correspondingly, is an absurd parody of the stereotypical American detective shows, and is probably a bit lighter in the mood than "A touch of cloth".

Rashida Jones plays a detective who represents every possible cliché: she's a tough cookie, a lone-wolf, who hates team-work yet somehow develops feelings for her newly assigned manly hot-headed partner, she talks exclusively with phrases out of typical cop shows, and strangers compliment her on her appearance saying it's a pity she wastes it working as a detective. Together Tribeca and her partner keep their city safe, dealing with very silly cases in a lot of very silly ways.

The cast don't shine with charisma, but they are reasonably pleasant to look at, especially Rashida Jones, whose features are not just beautiful in the usual sense, but also lively and interesting, which is a very good thing for a comedy. And of course there's the dazzling smile some of you might remember from "Parks and Recreation". As for the others, they perfectly fulfil their main task, - which is to parody the stereotypical characters from cop shows.

If you've seen at least one show like "Bones" or "Castle" or "CSI" or "Law and Order" or - you name it! - give "Angie Tribeca" a try.

P.S. A piece of advice: if you watch it, don't be lazy. This isn't one of those shows you can watch while cleaning the house, throwing a glance at the TV now and then. Catch every frame, look at every street sign, because jokes are hiding everywhere.