“Ring-a-Ding-Ding”
October 13th, 2010
Terriers is the best new show of the season, but “Ring-a-Ding-Ding” is a fairly dangerous outing.
I don’t mean to suggest that the show is doing anything particularly risky, but this is a thematically homogeneous episode in a way that presents distinct challenges for a serialized procedural of this nature. The episode is all about marriages, as each of our main characters grapples with the prospect of marriage while the case of the week deals with a marriage in its final hours.
For a show which is trying to establish itself as something more than a P.I. procedural, this homogeny – which would normally be commonplace in low rent procedurals – has the potential to go off the rails, but “Ring-a-Ding-Ding” is a satisfying and successful hour. Instead of using the marriage theme to simplify the storytelling, the show uses it as a point of conflict, offering a noir-ish take on procedural storytelling befitting the young series.
Cultural Learnings 