Recently I have been feeling a kind of television fatigue. A lot of this rests on the shoulders of Battlestar Galactica, and the almost tiring march to the end, but I’ve been following more series than usual this year and doing my best to keep up with them all. The finales of BSG, Life, and Sarah Connor Chronicles bought me some reprieve, but there is, of course, Lost which I’m eagerly enjoying. Other series that I enjoyed at the beginning of the year – House, The Mentalist, even Bones – have failed to engage me much lately and while I’m enjoying Castle, there’s something a bit off with the show that I can’t quite put my finger on.
This television fatigue is why I was surprised to find myself watching ABC’s new cop show, The Unusuals. I chalk it up to being a sucker for shows about quirky people and a willingness to follow actors like Harold Perrineau (who I think got a little screwed on Lost) and Adam Goldberg. It also helps that I saw Amber Tamblyn in a few scenes and she surprised me with her portrayal of police officer Casey Schraeger.
The Unusuals is a bit formulaic in its setup. It focuses on the NYPD’s 2nd Precinct and the unusual cops who work there. Each person has his or her thing – Perrineau’s character, Leo Banks, is afraid of dying and always wears a bulletproof vest, Goldberg’s character, Detective Delahoy, has brain cancer but won’t get treatment or tell anyone, so he risks his life in the line of duty. There are other secrets, too, and a few characters with dark pasts.
While the individual episodes are interesting, usually dealing with an “A” storyline, and a more humorous and lighter “B” storyline, there’s also an overarcing “mystery” of sorts. The precinct’s Sergeant feels that things aren’t quite kosher in his department and he brought Detective Shraeger in to help clean it up. This plays up the usual tension of Shraeger having to ingratiate herself in the department while simultaneously investigating her fellow officers.
In addition to the quirkiness of its characters, The Unusuals succeeds for its portrayal of its police officers. These characters are corrupt, imperfect and damaged. They don’t always do the right thing, they’re not always stand-up people. But they are cops and they put their lives on the line, often for each other. Impressively, these imperfections only serve to make the characters seem more admirable and depicts a cost to a job that most people wouldn’t want anything to do with.
So The Unusuals is now on my DVR for as long as I still have cable. Though with ABC’s move to Hulu, I hope to be able to watch the rest of the episodes of this first season(only 10 have been ordered so far). Anyone else watch it?
Rising Tide, the sequel to Falling Sky, was released on October 6, 2015. 
Falling Sky, my first novel, came out October 7, 2014 from Pyr. It's an adventure story set in a post-apocalyptic future with airships.