Crime Shows

Do you watch crime shows?  I do - NCIS, Criminal Minds, SVU, Elementary, Sherlock, Bones, MI5… I used to watch CSI but gave that up years ago when the bug guy left.  Over the last few weeks I’ve started looking at why I watch them. 

Is it because I want to be horrified?  No.  The shows do horrify me, but the part that really grosses me out is the images, so I generally do a crossword puzzle or play Sets or Killer Sudoku or something while the show streams.  I don’t see the gore that way.

Is it because I get off on watching people get hurt?  No.  Again, I can’t actually watch any of it happening and often have to turn down the sound during the violent scenes.

Do I enjoy watching women be victimized over and over and over?  Do I somehow like that they put sexy women in horrifying situations?  No. 

Is it because I want to be scared?  No.  I actually have nightmares sometimes after watching these shows, but I keep watching them.

I don’t like the answer I came up with.  It’s because there is always someone who takes these horrible situations and resolves them.  No, they can’t fix a problem – 10 people were murdered on Criminal Minds, but they saved the last person abducted or they saved the last few people.  They put the pieces together, though, they pick up the victims and say it won’t happen to them again (even though the cops or FBI or whatever they are happen to know that this will happen again, even if it doesn’t necessarily happen to those victims again).

And that pisses me of.  SUV tells rape victims that they should tell the police and promises to catch the killers and rapists and bad guys and put them away.  Criminal Minds tells the victims that their lives can be put back together now.  Hell, I just watched an episode where one of the FBI agents (a single woman with no children) tells another woman who is grieving her dead daughter how to interact with her remaining child, a son.

What is wrong with these writers?  A woman is grieving her daughter’s death in a fire and then is almost killed by a serial killer only to have an agent then tell her how to talk to her son?  A cop catches a killer and tells the children that they’ll be ok now and that they have closure because they found the killer from a case that happened two decades ago.  A freaking crime writer solves cases that the cops can’t and a heroin addict trains a doctor to catch killers better than a cop?

Now that I know, what does all this mean to me?  Do I stop watching?  Do I continue watching and start analyzing the shows?  What do I do?