Flashpoint (TV series): Difference between revisions

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''Flashpoint'' is a show about an elite group of officers within a Canadian metropolitan police force, call the Strategic Response Unit or SRU. They're called in when the situation escalates beyond the ability of ordinary officers to handle, particularly hostage situations, armed criminals and bomb threats. Unlike a show like SWAT, the show isn't about the glamor and gunplay of the unit, but rather the personalities and conflict-resolution skills involved in running a group that has to deal with the tense situations they confront. Team leader Sergeant Greg Parker, along with veteran officer Ed Lane, lead their team in an attempt to make sure that ''everyone'' gets home alive -- officers, victims, and perpetrators.

A show with a remarkable amount of emotional appeal, character development, and complex webs in each episode.

 

* [[Action Girl]]: Jules, later joined by Leah Kerns.

* [[Affectionate Nickname]]: Samtastic

* [[All Your Base Are Belong to Us]]: Invoked by {{spoiler|SRU veteran Rangford}} in "Haunting the Barn," who shows up at the SRU to get an old case file, but ends up barricading himself in the base when his request is refused.

** Has expanded to include a paramedic and a ''second'' dispatcher as minor/recurring characters in the early third season.

* [[Asshole Victim]]:Often used.

** Inverted in "Collateral Damage", where the death of a baby is the impetus behind the events of the episode.

* [[Badass Bookworm]]: Spike

'''Ed:''' He's not a geek, okay? He's a geek with combat skills, that's why the ladies love him. }}

* [[Bald of Awesome]]: Ed Lane and Greg Parker.

* [[Black Dude Dies First]]: {{spoiler|Lewis Young was the first person of the team to die}}.

* [[Break the Cutie]]: Attempted on Tasha Redford, in the first-season episode "Attention Shoppers", but Jules gets to Tasha [[Interrupted Suicide|before she can jump.]]

* [[Catch Phrase]]: Parker's reminder to "keep the peace" whenever the SRU starts a mission.

** Also "I have the solution," meaning a clear shot at the aggressor, not a way to solve a problem.

* [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome]]: Remember when the show had a forensic psychologist? For about three-four episodes?

* [[Dark and Troubled Past]]: Alluded to with Sam and his experiences in Afghanistan. ''He'' doesn't worry about it too much unless he's forced to think about it, but it gives Ed reason to doubt him in "Element of Surprise":

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Sam.

** "Nice post-incident reflexes, guys."

** Spike, when {{spoiler|fellow team member and friend [[Black Dude Dies First|Lewis Young dies]] after [[Land Mine Goes Click|stepping on a land mine]].}}

*** By extension, ''everyone'' on the team breaks down at this point. Ed and Greg are very good at hiding it, but watch Ed's jaw, and watch how Greg comforts Spike. Spike is just the closest and most visible.

** Given that SRU is a life-saving organization, not a life-taking organization (just like real SWAT-like teams), any time a member of the team has to take a kill shot, it affects them badly. This includes Ed, the almost-gruff veteran, who, {{spoiler|during the pilot episode, after killing the hostage-taker, has to be talked down and visibly has difficulty for the rest of the season}}.

* [[Hostage Situation]]: And how! <ref>But not as many as you'd think: the show is just as much about talking violent offenders down as it is about saving people.</ref>

* [[Human Shield]]: See above.

* [[I Call It Vera]]: Spike (the team's demolition's expert) and "Babycakes," his anti-bomb robot.

* [[I Never Got Any Letters]]: In a season four episode, the estranged mother and grandmother of a hostage discover that they have both been writing letters to each other for years, which were intercepted by the hostage's grandfather.

* [[Overprotective Dad]]: In "Jumping At Shadows", the father is shown to be [[Properly Paranoid]] when his daughter was a witness to a crime and was placed under witness protection, yet the people after her still managed to find her.

* [[Papa Wolf]]: Once Ed Lane had enough suspicion that an investigator was specifically targeting Parker in her investigations about the team, he immediately went to warn Parker, breaking rules to get to him, even [[Death Glare|death-glaring]] a cop who tried to stop him.

** In "The Good Citizen", when the [[Vigilante Man]] was going after drug dealers and holding one of the main drug lords hostage, the drug lord's brother (also a drug lord himself) is offering money and anything, just as long as the vigilante [[Even Evil Has Loved Ones|lets his brother go.]]

* [[Police Are Useless]]: Subverted and averted by the SRU team. But also played straight in certain cases, like in "Jumping At Shadows" where the team finds out the guys after a little girl found her house (which was under Witness Protection) because they bribed a police officer.

* [[Pregnant Hostage]]

* [[Precision F-Strike]] / [[This Is for Emphasis, Bitch]]: Parker, after a tense moment where it looked like the hostage-taker might shoot Ed. Fortunately, the team came in just in time and Ed got to safety. His exact words were "son of a bitch", with emphasis via smacking the table.

** Subverted in Wordy's case, because although the character was written out of the squad {{spoiler|due to early-stage Parkinson's Disease}}, he still shows up whenever the SRU team deals with his new department, or when they all get together for a social event in the fourth season finale.

* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: Invoked for [[Absentee Actor|Amy Jo Johnson's]] pregnancy when her character, Jules, is caught in the line of fire.

** A later episode has two men working together to kidnap a girl to get her wealthy, estranged, and dementia affected grandmother to pay a ransom, but the mother intervenes and is taken too. The leader orders the other to take the mother and kill her, but he fires into the ground and sets her free. Later, he frees the teenager rather than use her as a hostage, and is killed for his efforts.

* [[Red Herring]]: Season 3 episode 2, "Severed Ties", opens with someone taking pictures of young children at a playground shortly before one of them is kidnapped, and the photographer is quickly identified as a recently paroled sex offender. It's just a coincidence, and one of those pictures helps identify the real kidnapper.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: The best friend of a boy who was killed by a cop hijacked an entire activist group of rioters in order to get revenge, delivering the killer to her friend's grieving father.

** The wife of the head of a mob family attacks the family members of the under cover cops who betrayed them with the accidental help of team's leader, who drunkenly revealed their names to a guy with a friendly attitude and a "pawn-shop cop ring".

* [[Sacrificial Lion]] / [[Land Mine Goes Click]]: {{spoiler|Lewis Young at the start of the back half of the second season}}. After [[Oh Crap|stepping on a landmine]] and [[Badass|keeping his foot held down firmly]] as [[The Stoic|the rest of the team evacuates a college campus around him and tries every angle possible to save him]], he [[Tear Jerker|calls his family to say goodbye]] and [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrifices himself]] by deliberately lifting his foot off of the trigger. Cue team-wide [[Heroic BSOD]].

* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Connections]]: Councilman Malone's father is revealed to have done this in "Coming To You Live", though for reasons that are not unsympathetic.

* [[So Proud of You]]: Parker says to his team in "Acceptable Targets", after a particularly grueling and difficult mission.

* [[The Profiler]]: Doctor Luria, until she was removed from the series. Parker also fulfills this trope with regularity, although pretty much any SRU member can contribute ''some''thing to a profile.

** Jules seems to be shifting more towards this as the series progresses.

* [[The Squad]]: But of course.

* [[Title Drop]]: Never mentioned by the characters, but one of the show's producers, Anne Marie La Traverse, said that she hoped the show would take viewers to their "own personal flash point."

* [[Traumatic Haircut]]: Tasha Redford. (See [[Break the Cutie]] above.)

** If you haven't figured it out yet, except in ''very'' rare cases, the people who SRU have to deal with are rarely clear-cut villains. Which is why the job is so hard on the members of the team.

** A drug rehabilitation "expert" who honestly wanted to keep his patients safe from the outside world by killing them because he was dying of cancer and he was certain they couldn't survive without him. Ironically if he'd just told them what was up they'd probably have gone along with it.

** The Russian nanny in "The Fortress" is taken off the scene by paramedics, but we never hear if she lives or dies.

** The cop that shoots a suspect in "Perfect Storm" is verbally berated by Parker, and then we never hear anything else.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Canadian Series]]

[[Category:Cop Show]]

[[Category:Crime and Punishment Series]]

[[Category:Flashpoint]]