What defines a show as a ...
Question: What defines a show as a "procedural"? I keep hearing the critics say there are too many of them now. I remember the days when shows were in two basic categories: comedy or drama. Then someone coined "dramedy," and started coming up with subcategories: Western, medical, police, sci-fi, horror, etc. Can't we just put everything back in two categories: good and bad?
Answer: Well, there's good
and bad in each of these categories, which are better known as genres, and each has its own conventions, trademarks and ardent fans. The "procedural" tag really caught on in the wake of the franchising of
Law & Order and, later,
CSI. It typically refers to a crime drama in which each episode deals with the solving of a crime, usually a self-contained story each week, and has minimal soap-operatics. There are variations on the formula — some are high-end like
Homicide: Life on the Street and the short-lived
Boomtown, and some (like this season's wretched
Killer Instinct and
Criminal Minds) exploit the formula with little that's new beyond grisly content and mannered, clichéd characters. I seem to be in the minority on
Criminal Minds, which CBS has picked up for a full season: I hate it.
