Angie Tribeca

I thought this series was a drama until I watched the commercials again. Rashida Jones plays a Los Angeles police detective. At first, I took her seriously. This series is spoofing and parody of crime dramas. That's one of the reasons I enjoy it so much. I'm tired of crime dramas that become redundant. Angie TriBeCa is an entertaining show with Jere Burns as her boss. There are familiar faces too like Kerry Kinney, James Franco, and others as well. Dean Cole is funny as her partner. They solve murders, ferret smuggling, and other crimes. It's a show that gives plenty of laughs and mocks the crime dramas. Nancy Walls and her husband Steve Carrell are executive producers too.

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.

After a satire of tough female role and blatant product placement in just five minutes, it's clear that Angie Tribeca doesn't follow normal procedural rule, or any coherent rule for that matter. However, it does follow in the footstep of Naked Gun, while this is nice since the slapstick comedy hasn't had any addition for a while, there are some lingering crude moments that might just be too unsavory for the comedy to properly work.

This is a psychical comedy in heart, mocking the cop shows in an unapologetic fashion. Honestly, it's rather expected that a parody of CSI and the likes would appear. Angie Tribeca has some good moments, it's nice to see this kind of brash humor once in a while. The nifty parts offer funny approach and commentary of the typical more serious shows, a few surprising guest stars like Lisa Kudrow or Alfred Molina is oddly appreciated.

The main problem is the jokes used are heavy-handed and repetitive. This might be fine if said jokes hit the mark, something like the bits with the dog might be fun to watch, but if it fails then audience is left with one or two long minutes of seeing the same joke ham-fisted over and over again. Most of the humor comes from physical, played in the exaggerated manner to draw any interest or attention, but also inconsistently thrown out there.

Angie Tribeca mainly has a few ideas of humor and shoots them wildly and eccentrically. When it hits, it could be highly entertaining, but if it doesn't audience is left with graceless drunken exhibition of slapstick, but the all-in attitude might just work in their favor.

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.