Tag: police academy

“New officers, let me be the first to congratulate you on graduating from the Police Academy For Teevee Cops. You’ve made everyone so proud, especially your dead family member whose tragic and unsolved murder led you to join the force, and whose story you will tell in a dramatic monologue sometime around Awards Season.

“I’ve just got some logistical stuff to go over before I let you go, mostly about assignments. You all need to know which of the city’s enormous, well-lit, and architecturally-fascinating police stations to go to in the morning. There are some new stations, actually. We have one in a semi-converted aquarium. Incredible production value in that place, but there’s no place to hold the prisoners. We tried keeping ’em in the penguin enclosure, but the ACLU started screaming. There’s also a station in a haunted church that was improperly deconsecrated. Lot of adventures gonna go on there. Tough to get your paperwork done, but there’s just so many narrative possibilities.

“Most important thing to do today is find the right nemesis for you. Really take your time choosing, because you could see these folks once or twice a season for the next decade. We’ve got a whole panoply of villains to pick, so make sure there’s a good connection. We got all types: Super-genius plotters; personal obsessives; crazy fuckers; you name ’em, we got ’em. And remember that it’s always an option to link up your nemesis to your dead family member whose tragic and unsolved murder led you to join the force. That’s being a Teevee Cop 101 right there, folks.

“We’ll also be issuing you families today, unless you’re on a Law & Order franchise, in which case you will receive no personal life whatsoever except what you mention in passing over terrible coffee while discussing the latest case. Please, pease, please: Do not get attached to your families. If the ratings decline, they WILL BE killed off. Or written off. Same difference in the end, really.

“Last thing: When you choose a Medical Examiner, please remember to specify what type of sandwich they’ll be eating while they dissect a corpse and update you on your latest case. A lot of folks forget to fill out that box, and then it’s just pandemonium.

“Good luck, everyone, and you might want to think about talking to each other to set up your crossover episodes. Stay safe out there.”

Of late, our nation has embarked on a great discussion about race, kicked off by the killing of George Floyd. The crime–and the recording thereof–sparked protests that may very well lead to systemic change, and one of the reforms that a majority of the country wishes to see is over the question of “When is a police officer permitted to take a life?” As always, public opinion is spread along a spectrum: the furthest-out positions are taken by socialists, antifa, and all the newly-empowered warlords of Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, who believe that No one should be murdered by the cops, ever; and the cops, whose argument is We’d prefer to keep murdering people without consequences, forever.

To settle the debate, TotD now lays down the law. These are the categories of human that cops are allowed to shoot in the face, and maybe even get a commendation in their personnel folder for doing so:

ACTIVE SNIPER It is immoral NOT to take the shot on an active sniper. Can’t have a guy on the roof of the chemistry building firing into the Quad, not in a functioning society. Completely unacceptable. You are absolutely allowed to put the largest bullet available to you into the frontal lobe of someone in a belltower with an Enfield.

RAMBUNCTIOUS WEREWOLFS I know a werewolf who, when the full moon transforms him into a hellish creature of sin and fur, hangs out on the couch with his wife and watches the Late Movie. Police cannot murder that werewolf. But the one who comes into town and tears the food court a new asshole? Gotta put that doggy down. Although, obviously, you’re gonna need silver bullets. Plus, he’s gonna turn back into a human as he dies, so you really should hope that someone filmed the event, cuz otherwise you’re just standing over a naked guy riddled with bullets that you brought from home, and that’s gonna generate an unbelievable amount of paperwork.

REINCARNATED HITLER Tell me that cops can’t blow Reincarnated Hitler away, I dare you. I DARE YOU to say that to me. I refer back to the active sniper situation: It is one’s moral duty to murder Reincarnated Hitler on sight. He will cause trouble! That is what he does!

SIN EATERS The cheese is greed. On the nipples; the cheese goes on the nipples. These are the lessons we have learned, learned from the wise. Put the roast beef on his dick; I will eat the roast beef off his dick; the roast beef is wrath, transubstantially; o, such lessons from the wise. Where are the crackers? Theomasticulation branfitty branfitty, wine? Shlorp! Thulp! Tumor loeave, and toother thwillows and then BANG two in the head and his blood’s all over your Ivy League suit. The Sin Eater must not reach the border; give his picture to the cossacks.

SPAGHETTTI & MEATBALLS If spaghetti & meatballs comes to life, then cops can shoot ’em. I’m good with that. No one needs sentient Italian cuisine roaming around; it would freak people out, and the economy’s shaky enough as it is.

This is where I stop you, generally.

For good reason. The post has become gibberish.

Become?

It was vaguely comprehensible at first.

For a very vague definition of “vaguely.”

Oh, sure.

• Seven of ’em.
• Plus two teevee series, one animated and the other live-action.
• So next time you wanna make fun of the youths for the Fast & Furious franchise, shut the fuck up, Boomer.
• Plus, none of the Police Academy films star Vin Diesel.
• The best amount of Vin Diesel is none whatsoever.
• I would rather not even be reminded of the homunculus’ existence.
• Anyway, I’m on the fourth one and it’s gonna be the last in this series of posts.
• This is Steve Guttenberg’s final appearance as Mahoney and, as the saying goes, When you’ve lost Guttenberg, you’ve lost America.
• I watched the second and last night/this morning.
• Wait.
• “Watch” is too strong.
• The movies played in my home.
• I was present at the time.
• Occasionally, I would glance up and think “Huh. A jet-ski chase. That’s a way to end a movie, I guess.”
• Or just revel in the glory that was Bobcat Goldthwait.
• The 80’s were Bobcat Time.
• In Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, he played the city’s gang leader.
• In Police Academy 3: Back In Training, he joins the cops.
• Kinda like how Smokey became the Bandit in the third entry of that trilogy.
• This was Bobcat, Younger Enthusiasts:
• 
• And that was most of his act.
• Also, he yelled.
• The stand-up comedy boom was so profitable in the 80’s that there was room for two performers whose acts consisted mostly of screaming unintelligibly.
• (AN ASIDE: If he were alive today, Kinison would be the Trumpiest motherfucker on the planet.)
• Mr Goldthwait would, upon closer listening, be revealed as an intelligent and insightful man who…
• Wait a minute.
• Police Academy 4 just made me laugh.
• Out loud.
• Not ironically, nor was I laughing at the film.
• An according-to-Hoyle hard chuckle.
• Not a guffaw.
• Let’s not get absurd here.
• But a good, stiff chortle.
• As you know, the declarative of Police Academy 4 is Citizens On Patrol.
• (The two cases of movie titles are nominative, which is the name of the series and goes before the colon, and declarative, which describes the particular episode and follows the colon.)
• The cops are, as you would imagine, trying to get the inhabitants of their unnamed city to join the auxillary.
• So they’re having a meeting.
• Establishing shot of the community center showing a sparse crowd; a lectern with a cop standing behind; several officers seated next to him, some sad red balloons.
• Close-up of Mahoney.
• He says something about wanting to develop a better relationship between the police and the community.
• CUT TO: The other cops playing with the balloons.
• Y’know what?
• Show, don’t tell.
• Set-up:
• 
• Detail:
• 
• Punchline:
• 
• THEY PUT THEIR COP HATS ON THE BALLOONS!
• That’s my aesthetic right there.
• The guy with the hidden face is Bubba Smith, who won a Super Bowl with the Colts before becoming an actor who specialized in playing “guys who look like Bubba Smith.”
• Anyway, now some skateboard punks, one of whom is played by a young David Spade, are on trial and for some reason the evil cop is also the prosecutor.
• Luckily, he bends over and Michael Winslow makes a fart noise, and that means the judge has to release David Spade.
• The city where Police Academy takes place runs on an entirely different code of justice than the rest of America.
• Is it Napoleonic law?
• I don’t think we’re in New Orleans; gumbo has not been mentioned.
• HOLY SHIT, SHARON FUCKING STONE IS IN THIS?
• She’s a lady reporter.
• She thinks this whole “citizens on patrol” fooferall is balderdash.
• Or something.
• Really, she’s there to be Mahoney’s girlfriend.
• Out of all the cast members, Michael Winslow is to be most respected.
• He did all seven pictures, plus both teevee series.
• If someone was willing to pay Michael Winslow to wear a cop costume and make funny noises, then Michael Winslow was available.
• None of that “artistic integrity” bullshit for the guy who made really convincing fart sounds.
• It is impossible to overstate how lazy the series has become by the fourth one.
• They do the Blue Oyster Bar gag again, wherein the “bad” cops get sent to the gay biker bar, but don’t even bother to set it up.
• It just cuts to the “bad” cops walking down the alley, and then entering the bar.
• (I put “bad” in quotes because the antagonists of these films aren’t real bad cops. They don’t choke a guy to death for selling loose cigarettes  or anything. They’re just hard-asses to our wacky cop friends.)
• Jesus, there’s Sharon Stone again.
• Wax my ass and paint it with KISS makeup.
• Sharon fucking Stone.
• I feel bad for her.
• Not as bad as I felt for Howard Hesseman when he was in the second one.
• This was Sharon Stone’s first major motion picture; it was a big break for her, even if it was a shitty sequel to a shitty movie.
• But Johnny Fever deserved better.
• Plus, you could just see how sad he was.
• The second and third flicks did have Art Metrano as “bad” cop, though, and Art Metrano used to do this routine on chat shows:

• That’s a good routine.
• And now the citizen cops have been made official police officers or something?
• I dunno.
• And there’s a multi-national cop convention going on?
• Along with ninjas.
• Hey, let’s give the series some credit: it took four movies to get to ninjas.
• TotD’s Rule of Ninjistics: As the number of installments in an entertainment series grows larger, the probability of ineffectual ninjas getting involved approaches one.
• Books, teevee, movies, whatever.
• Eventually, you’ll get ineffectual ninjas.
• The rockyroll equivalent of ineffectual ninjas are black-up singers.
• Kiss me, Kate, it’s the climax.
• A hot-air balloon chase.
• I guess maybe the producers watched the jet-ski chase finale from the third feature, and said, “We can top that,” and that both did and didn’t.
• You must admit that ending a movie with a hot-air balloon chase is both better and worse than ending a movie with a jet-ski chase.
• Some of our heroes are not in hot-air balloons, but old-timey biplanes.
• Which they know how to fly.
• Y’know what?
• I’m mad at myself for even having that thought.
• I was like that pedantic asshole from Cinema Sins.
• “Pssh. When did Tackleberry learn to fly a plane? That’s not been established in canon.”
• The fuck is wrong with me?
• This is nice, though:
• 
• This was pre-CG, so they just dangled a guy from a balloon a few thousand feet up and filmed it.
• Very similar to Howard Hughes’ techniques.
• Anyway, it’s over and we’ve learned nothing.
• Let’s all of us go fuck ourselves.

• No one asked for this.
• Literally no one.
• I put it out there, and no one bit.
• Nor did anyone warn me away from the decision.
• There was an unspoken communal decision to ignore my idea, and pretend that it hadn’t been brought up at all.
• But here we are.
• FUN FACT: Most films set up their premise through action, or dialogue, or a combination of the two; Police Academy just flashes some text at the beginning of the movie.
• Kinda like Star Wars.
• The standards for joining the police force have been eliminated, and so now literally anyone can sign up.
• Got it?
• They’ll even take Mahoney!
• Who is a ne’er-do-well if I’ve ever seen one.
• Or a fat guy!
• Or someone who makes noises!
• Of course, Mahoney does not want to be a cop.
• He is forced to join up by an angry black police captain.
• Even comedies in the 80’s had an angry black police captain.
• I once watched a documentary from 1986 about giraffes that had an angry black police captain.
• “OFFICER SPLOTCHY! YOU’RE OFF THE CASE! NOW TURN OVER YOUR BADGE, YOUR GUN, AND YOUR LITTLE NUBBIN HORNS!”
• John Mayer thinks he knows how to drip.
• 
• Meyers doesn’t have the balls.
• He thought that Madonna tee-shirt shit was cute, but we all know that it was pussy bullshit.
• If he were a real man, then Josh would wear that for Summer Tour.
• Every show.
• And he’d also bang Kim Catrall.
• Takes a real man to satisfy a Catrall.
• The whole family is renowned for the effort it takes to get ’em off.
• Gotta warm ’em up first.
• Sweet-talking, flowers, that sort of thing.
• Can’t just go charging at a Catrall’s genitals like you were the Light Brigade.
• Did it end well for the Light Brigade?
• Not according to the Iron Maiden song about the event.
• And here is where we come to the most tedious portion of the evening: evaluating a three-decade-old piece of schlock on its relative wokeness.
• Police Academy doesn’t do too badly, to be honest.
• The good guys are a diverse crew of multiple races, genders, (implied) sexualities, and body types.
• And the bad guys are all Trumpers.
• Now, sure, this was 1984 and there were no Trumpers, but trust me on this one.
• Of course–sticking to the modern discourse of wokeitude–it must be mentioned that all cops are bastards.
• No one’s rooting for anyone to be a cop, at least not in a comedy, in 2020.
• But again: this was 1984.
• Were cops bastards?
• Oh, yeah.
• But they looked like this:
• 
• Whereas now cops look like this:
• 
• Which is less humorous.
• (Don’t get me wrong: that guy in the shirt-sleeves would absolutely drop a bomb on your house. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the MOVE bombing.)
• Police Academy does also bring up the immortal comedy question: Are gay panic jokes ever funny?
• I say that they can be, but only if they’ve got a musical cue as perfect as this one:

• And, it should be noted, the two seemed to enjoy their experience.
• Maybe Police Academy is about acceptance.
• Maybe the reboot could feature the Lone Ranger shoving a peach up Timothee Chalomet’s asshole.
• Maybe maybe maybe.
• Saddest word in the English language, according to some.
• Others think the saddest word is penicillin.
• Mostly people who allergic to penicillin.
• Contrary to popular opinion, Elton John did not think that “sorry” was the saddest word.
• He said it seemed to be the saddest word.
• Elton was making a comment on the chasm between appearance and content.
• The first one was a hit, making $150 million worldwide off a $4.5 million budget, so they made one a year for the next five years.
• ONE-POINT-TWO BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS.
• Adjusted (very roughly) for inflation, the Police Academy series made $1.2 billion dollars.
• Imagine having that much money.
• Jeff Bezos would laugh at you, and have his goons give you a wedgie, and you’d deserve it for being poor.
• Oh, is it the third act already?
• The City (never named in the series) has broken out into a riot.
• Not an actual riot.
• A fun, multi-cultural riot that kicks off due to a misunderstanding.
• Gosh, I hope our trainees can settle this rabble down.
• They are roused, this rabble.
• Although, rabble is rarely calm, cool, and collected.
• That’s just a peaceful gathering.
• Gotta be some agitating for the “rabble” label to be applied.
• Luckily, the mob is doing very little property damage.
• Just running down the street with sticks.
• Almost like the production couldn’t afford to break any windows.
• No.
• Wait.
• We have looting.
• Aaaaaand the climax of every Police Academy film, wherein all the characters do their thing.
• Gun nut Tackleberry shoots his guns,
• Whisper-voiced Hooks yells real loud.
• Bubba Smith punches through a wall or some bullshit.
• Enthusiasts, I am gonna come clean with you: there is not enough material in these movies to continue this bit.
• I suppose that I could go tangential, and use the Police Academy series as a jumping-off point to discuss Gramsci.
• But no one would enjoy that.
• I’ve let everyone down here.
• I can’t apologize enough.
• Perhaps it’s time for an organizational reshuffle.
• New blood in the C-suite.
• Oh, good, Mahoney got to bang Kim Catrall.
• That’s how you knew a movie was over in the 80’s: the lead actor banged Kim Catrall.
• It was a simpler time.