Parents' Guide to

Dark Blue

By Will Wade, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Complex show about undercover life is exciting but violent.

TV TNT Drama 2009
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What's the Story?

Carter Shaw (Dylan McDermott) operates a secretive unit of undercover LAPD cops who get in deep and stay there for days, or even weeks, at a time. Their record is impressive, and his team has brought down some major criminals, but the work takes a toll on all of them. Pretending to be someone else -- essentially living a lie -- requires the dedicated officers to become someone else. And to maintain their cover, they sometimes have to tread a fine line between breaking the law and blowing their cover. Even when their assignments are over, they often find that it's not so easy to leave their fictitious identities behind.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
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DARK BLUE examines the thin line between cops and criminals. When an agent spends too much time on an assignment or seems to be doing too good a job maintaining cover, Shaw and his colleagues sometimes start to worry that he or she might have flipped completely. It's an intriguing gray area that makes for complicated moral questions and exciting television. As Shaw explains to a teammate, "There's going under, and then there's stepping over. I get scared when I don't know the difference."

Unlike other cat-and-mouse police dramas that alternate between showing the bad guys and their pursuers, Dark Blue focuses on the criminals' world. This is an environment where nobody trusts anyone -- a point made even clearer by that fact that one member of the crew is secretly an undercover cop. As such, there's plenty of casual violence, and many scenes that feature callous, calculated brutality. Some of it is tough to stomach, but it often seems realistic considering that the main characters are trying to get as close as they can to some of the city's most dangerous mobsters and gang lords.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about living undercover. Do you think it would be hard to work as an undercover cop? Do other movies or TV shows address this issue? What would you do if your assignment required you to commit a violent crime or risk exposing your identity?

  • How does the show portray both criminals and law enforcement officials? What separates the two groups -- why is one heroic and the other villainous?

  • How do the cops on this team differ from those in other police shows? Do cops work together more effectively on other shows that focus on more traditional units?

TV Details

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