Spoiler: Southland premiere - "Every once in a while you get to take a bad guy off the street for good"

Tonight was the night for NBC premieres. I already posted about Parks and Recreation and now it is time for Southland. It is a cop drama that follows three groups of police officers - those who handle gang violence, a group in charge of missing children cases and the cops who are on the streets day after day. I really enjoyed the show for two main reasons: there is more than one storyline happening at once and, on a similar note, the cops cruising the streets were shown responding to more than one crime scene. These are two things many other cop shows, namely Law & Order and CSI, don't do. On these shows they usually only focus on one case at a time and on this new show there is more variety within each episode.

At the heart of this show is a rookie cop who is still learning what to do and not to do when responding to disturbances. The other cops, throughout this first episode, give him a hard time for being rich. One of the female cops who is also frequently picked on tells him that it isn't personal. When responding to a call, a superior officer on a power trip pulls rank on the new cop, which leads to the superior being shot and the rookie shooting the shooter. This is also the first time the new cop has shot and killed a person. He is torn up about killing someone and this is when his partner utters the line we have seen in previews for the show for weeks: "You're a cop because you don't know how not to be one."

After watching the show, I must say that I do not yet feel any real connection to the characters but maybe that will change and we will get to know them better in the coming episodes. I really did enjoy the show and may continue to watch in the future. Did you watch and enjoy it as much as I did? What did you like or dislike?