Does police brutality affect your enthusiasm in watching cop TV shows or movies?

[Cyke]

Not really but I am more aware of when cop characters are acting out of line.



Speaking of which, do you think Time Force and SPD have aged well in this regard?

I need to rewatch them but it's interesting that non-police mostly teams kill monsters outright while Time Force and SPD capture instead. Time Force's approach was about capture, hence the badges and the Vortex Blaster, and Ransik even redeemed himself in the end. SPD is much more traditional with policing (unlike Dekaranger, which was sanctioned execution-on-the-spot), but it's interesting that Jack is a criminal who, rather than be sent to jail, was given the opportunity to reform himself outside of it. Those two approaches are very much different than an attitude of authoritarian, might-makes-right, threaten with violence, us-vs-them mentality in modern-day policing (paradoxically, practicing restraint in applying force). Plus, SPD gave us the first real corrupt cops of the franchise (I mean, Bulk & Skull were part of the Jr. Police, but their hearts were in the right place, so no, they don't count), who did things out of greed, practiced excessive force, betrayed their service, and tried to protect each other from accountability -- and that was 15 years ago. It would've been unthinkable to have that storyline in MMPR.

Then I'd have to go back and see how Time Force handled race, something many of its successors, and naturally most childrens TV, won't cover, because race relations are intrinsically tied to the history of policing. But narratives change. Looking back, I'm so fond of X-Men: TAS because it dealt with issues in my youth that wouldn't have been dealt with in the 70s and 80s -- I doubt the writers were trying to really push a moral agenda (or Claremont and others, for that matter), but it's also possible that they did so unwittingly because conversations shift and change, and the #1 rule of writing is that writers write what they know.

I've said it elsewhere but it's also really telling that while Dekaranger was technically a procedural, its sequel 10 Years After started off with police conspiracy and brutality (of course, until the Big Bad reveals himself, on par with sentai). That could be chalked up to changing times and the evolution of news, and/or the idea that its audience are now more mature, going from kids and teens to teens and adults because of the 10 year premise.

And then I post all that in the acknowledgement that there are just some tropes and traditions that you expect PR/Sentai to do, especially as a kids show.

So yeah, I'd have to give them a serious rewatch to determine whether or not they've aged well, but above all else, they're Power Ranger shows more than they are cop shows, which muddies things.