A whole generation of baby-boomer American boys grew up watching Western sheriffs, cowboys, and freelancers save the day by the simple one-two trick of shooting straight and always doing what’s right.
It was not the worst lesson that those boomer boys picked up from popular culture, which is one reason it has resurfaced in thousands of incarnations over the last seven decades.
The latest is Deputy, a crime drama series that premieres at 9 p.m. ET Thursday on Fox and makes no apologies for being a Western in modern Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department uniforms.
Stephen Dorff, who has the handsome and slightly grizzled look of a classic Western hero, stars as Bill Hollister, a fifth-generation LA sheriff.
Like a thousand renegade television law enforcement officers before him, Hollister cares more about nailing the bad guys and protecting the innocent than in following the letter of regulations.
This puts him in the bad graces of, among others, Sheriff’s Department official Jerry London (Mark Moses). London notes, for starters, that Hollister’s refusal to carry out roundup raids for ICE could cost the department millions of federal dollars.
So what, says Hollister. There are plenty of known bad guys out there. Let’s go after them, not people who probably have done nothing except try to make a better life for themselves.
This doesn’t make Deputy or Bill Hollister an advocacy voice in our real-life immigration debate. It does underscore how difficult it can be to get a consensus on the right thing and how the right thing can often not be the easy thing.
As we join the story, Hollister is chasing some cartel-connected bad guys, which involves trading more than a few rounds of ammo. Minutes after the chase ends, he learns that the sheriff has suffered a fatal heart attack and some quirk of ancient statutes makes Hollister his replacement.
Talk about every frustrated employee’s dream message.
It will be 114 days before a new sheriff can be elected. So Hollister has 114 days to shoot straight and do what’s right.
Deputy gets him off to an action-packed start on the shooting part, with two major gun battles in the first episode. Fortunately, as often happens in these battles, the bad guys do not shoot straight. They get off hundreds of shots and barely hit a thing.
That leaves Hollister alive to assemble a sort of loose, informal team that ranges from his driver/bodyguard Brianna Bishop (Bex Taylor-Klaus) to the young rookie Joseph Blair (Shane Paul McGhie).
It also includes his wife Dr. Paula Reyes (Yara Martinez), who works in the local ER and thus often has patients who have been involved with her husband.
As this might suggest, Deputy is as much character drama as procedural. While good guys constantly pursue bad guys, we also soon realize that everyone who’s been in the law enforcement game for more than 20 minutes has a story that incorporates deep trauma.
That premise doesn’t make Deputy unique. It does give the show several levels on which to attract viewers – though in the end, Westerns traditionally have risen or fallen on the appeal of their main character.
Dorff has the chops. He also has an admirable philosophy. Renegade with a conscience. The question is whether in today’s crowded TV universe he can get the buzz.