Movies

The Lone Female Cop Who Redeems the Police

BBG News

Mickey Fitzpatrick, portrayed by Amanda Seyfried, is unlike most police officers. Her character in Peacock’s ‘Long Bright River’ shares few similarities with those around her. Reminiscent of her Emmy-winning performance as Elizabeth Holmes in ‘The Dropout’, she exhibits a unsettling intensity. This protagonist is a brilliant young woman and a gifted English horn player, who despite her potential, could only manage a year at her hometown Ivy League university, Penn. Now a single mother to 7-year-old Thomas (Callum Vinson), she continues to police the dangerous streets of Kensington, where many women she has known since childhood have fallen into lives as strung-out sex workers. At night, she practices her horn alone.

In her solitude and uniqueness, Mickey represents a well-known character archetype: the noble female police lead of high-end crime dramas. Similar to the complex female cops at the heart of shows like “Mare of Easttown,” “True Detective: Night Country,” “Under the Bridge,” and numerous others, she straddles the line between insider and outsider – closely connected to the community due to her roots, yet distanced because they perceive her as fundamentally different. Like her predecessors, Mickey’s professional life will merge with her personal life, becoming indistinguishable. And just like them, she will grapple with corruption within the very system that employs her. “Long Bright River,” streaming its eight-episode season on March 13, doesn’t break new ground or fall short in this genre. However, in its familiarity, it highlights the constraints of the popular belief that a single extraordinary woman can fix the deeply ingrained flaws of a damaged patriarchal institution.

In the gripping series “Long Bright River,” showrunner, writer, and executive producer Nikki Toscano (known from “The Offer” and “Hunters”) adapts Liz Moore’s best-selling novel. The story finds protagonist Mickey at a particularly challenging point in her life. Her ex, Simon (portrayed by Matthew Del Negro), has abruptly ended his parental responsibilities. She’s lost contact with her former partner, Truman (Nicholas Pinnock), who appears to be her only friend. Her new companion, Lafferty (Dash Mihok), prefers discussing his health complaints over assisting the distressed women of Kensington, a boss’s old friend and not particularly supportive.

Upon being summoned to a potential drug-related death scene, Mickey experiences a chilling moment when she recognizes the deceased individual. However, it is only at the end of the premiere that we learn why this encounter is so unsettling; her younger sister, Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), has been missing for weeks and is an opioid addict with pink hair living on the streets. Fortunately, the body isn’t Kacey’s.

In the novel “Long Bright River,” as more deaths among Kensington sex workers point toward murder rather than accidental overdose, protagonist Mickey finds herself entangled in two interconnected mysteries: who is the killer and what happened to Kacey, her missing sister? Could Kacey’s disappearance be connected to the killings, and if so, could she still be alive? However, this gritty crime drama aims for more than just a whodunit storyline. In one scene, while driving Thomas, a precocious child, to a private school she can’t afford, Mickey plays Liszt’s “Faust Symphony” and shares the tale of Faust’s fateful pact with the devil. “Some decisions you make cannot be undone,” she warns Thomas. “That’s why it’s crucial to make good choices.” The theme that wise choices lead to a prosperous life is repeated throughout the story, but eventually seems to be contradicted in a shallow manner.

This show, despite its potential, fails to surpass the excellence of “Mare.” It’s unnecessarily grim, a hint of dark humor could lighten it up. Like many streaming miniseries, it’s overly lengthy. Some plot twists are effective, but others are either predictable or implausible, serving only as distractions. The child characters, not just Thomas, but also younger Mickey and Kacey shown in flashbacks, are inconsistently portrayed. They switch between infantile and mature behaviors within a single scene, which is disappointing given the talent of the young actors. “River” manages to redeem itself by its authentic depiction of the opioid crisis-era Kensington and the compelling adult performances, particularly from Seyfried, Pinnock, and Cummings, who breathe life into underdeveloped characters.

Despite a crowded TV market filled with murder series like “River,” Hulu’s “Deli Boys,” and Apple’s “Dope Thief” (all of which are set in Philadelphia along with it), the show’s familiarity works against it. It focuses on choice, presenting Mickey’s good decisions as contrasted with Kacey’s poor ones, only to later reverse this dynamic. However, at its core, it’s another story about a female cop tasked with restoring integrity to an institution tarnished by her peers and superiors due to corruption. Toscano and Moore maintain the optimistic view that an outsider, one whose supposed freedom from the cronyism and predatory instincts of the men surrounding her is linked to her gender, can single-handedly reform the system or at least be trusted to mete out justice herself. In the finale, a noble detective (Joe Daru) tells Mickey, “The force needs cops like you. Cops who care.

In my opinion, despite Amanda Seyfried’s efforts to make her peculiar character feel authentic, she still seems to embody a familiar trope that’s difficult to avoid. And it’s clear why this trope has become so commonplace – detective dramas are more popular than ever before.

Even amidst years of political debate about defunding or abolishing law enforcement, the images of police officers shaped by tragedies like George Floyd and Uvalde remain deeply etched in our minds. Perhaps this is why we see characters like Mickey, Mare, and Night Country’s Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Navarro (Kali Reis) so frequently on television – they serve to justify the continued existence of cop shows at a time when viewers who admire strong female leads might not view the typical police officer as a hero.

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2025-03-12 21:06

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