20+ years on and this one still has seasons to run.Camera crew follows the beat cops around until they find either a crime in progress or get the call. Been on so long now that my description seems repetitious already.Each show used to feature one city but now it jumps around. And in the old days you saw a little more violence on TV. Shootings, fire, and even the occasional corpse. But it's toned down now.Nowadays, we get mostly car chases, drug stings, and wave after wave of domestic violence calls. And women are getting hauled off as much as the men now.Repeated shouts of "Let me see your hands" and "Get on the ground now" are pretty much in every show. But the best laughs are the crazy excuses we hear. Or the sudden grab for the pockets that leads to the inevitable impromptu wrestling match.Its lost its edge but can still be interesting.

Since this show first premiered back in 1989. I considered it a real treat (especially the episode where they hog tied and stripped that muscular hunk down to his underwear), but as for how it is nowadays----pretty bad. Every time I watch, it's just ultra-skinny druggies or alcoholics getting busted , people totally on the edge of society with feeding their addictions the only meaning they have in life. Yeah, sure we should pity these types for the sad road they took in life, but I think COPS goes overboard in depicting that. I mean, I could easily bring my camcorder down to skid row in this city and easily record what the program is showing nowadays. It's just that simple, and goes to show how lame and mild it is towards the audiences of today.

Cops has been on TV almost all my life. In fact, it's on right now, on TV in the background, as a police officer busts a guy driving with drugs in his car. For years watching dozens of the shows in syndication, episodes much like these, I was struck by how every episode, in essence, is the same. An officer may stop someone on the road, come up to their house, chase after them, and they always get their man or woman. Race isn't even as much an issue as it is the essential point of the show, almost to the point of redundancy- the cops, according to this show, don't lose. But the irony is, someone like myself who becomes occasionally disgusted by the antagonistic (to a point) and superiority-driven nature that underlies those who serve and protect, is constantly re-watchable. But a fact that I didn't know for quite a while was put to me about the show, an important point- the people who appear on the show getting arrested *agree* to allow their faces and likenesses put on TV. Somehow the relish is almost at times interchangeable.If anything, Cops over a decade and a half is almost like a kind of quasi-anthropology turned to ratings. It's not too surprising that if you happen to walk into a police station at a given moment they may be playing this their TV's. And despite the disclaimer at the start of the show, "those arrested are innocent until proved guilty in a court of law", if one were to incorporate the media-is-the-message idea, these people are practically all guilty in their own way by being subjected to not only the rule of the law (90% of the time in just cause) and by their own flaws under the gun (no pun intended). The fact is, Cops was and remains one of the pioneers of reality television, capturing a kind of base level of how life really is when under the lens of a professional hand-held cameraman. There is no contest or money at stake for the participants, it's capturing the suspects/arrestees at their most ashamed (or dazed, crazed, what have you) moments, and the law as the unfettered, collected, and "professional" beings on the planet. The premise of the show, and a good deal of the time its execution, is brilliant in its own way, as a real documentary-style show that is entertaining in its own willful manipulation of the reality. More often than not, even as I feel the some episodes have me cringing in my seat, it is a genuinely interesting piece of the crude side of humanity we either can't look away from or would rather not see at all. And the show becomes very subjective- how you may or may not think the law really helps you or others will effect how you see its worth in the TV landscape.

"Cops," which is a Saturday Night staple on FOX (Along with "America's Most Wanted"),is like driving by a REALLY BAD car accident: you just can't help but look to see what's up."Cops" follows police officers in various cities and countries. The viewer can see that a officer's job is not an easy one. They have to deal with situations that range from the ordinary, the outrageous, the dumb (A woman flagged down a police officer to complain that she was ripped off while trying to buy crack cocaine!), to the tragic (Officers finding a suicide in a park). By the end of the episode, you gain a little more respect for the men in blue.As for the narrator's comments, "All suspects are considered innocent until proved guilty in a court of law," you begin to doubt if this is really true. The camera actually catches people in the act (A man arrested for DWI has the evidence on him. In this case, a joint behind his ear!). If you watched the show long enough, you can pretty much get the feeling who is about to take off running from a cop, whether by foot or by wheels. Finally, the excuses that some of the bad guys come up with are incredibly hard to believe (How could someone slip heroin and cocaine down your pants without you knowing it?).One of the best reality shows around.