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The camera is ever present in our society, more so now than ever before.  No matter where something or happens or what time it occurs, you can’t be all that surprised when it ends up on YouTube.  Cell phones, still cameras, hell even gaming devices can now take pictures, if not video.  I’ll give you that.  But that doesn’t mean that everything that ever happens is caught on video – especially if it’s nothing important.  Random people just walking around?  No one’s taking video of that.  Cars driving around?  No one’s taking video of that.  Expand out beyond just individuals and include institutions and the government.  More cameras, sure.  Video cameras might record ATMs when someone stands in front of it.  They might record parking lots in low resolution, grainy ways.  Government buildings, various lobbies, ok, fine.

But in the world of the television (or film) cop, everything is recorded all the time.  Watch Law & Order and you’re bound to come across the ATM camera.  No, the criminal didn’t rob it, or use it, he just happened to walk behind it while someone else was using it.  Good detective work has the cops pulling the tapes, I guess, and lazy writing has the bad guy glaring at the camera at just the right time.  Let’s not even go into the fact that the camera is most likely trained and focused on someone within two feet of the lens, yet somehow the bad dude five feet further in the background is crystal clear too.  We’ll address that on another day.  Parking lot cameras and storefront video displays always catch the bad guy at some point and, wouldn’t you know it, the storekeeper keeps his tapes for weeks, if not months!  Not even police cruisers keep random, no event tapes that long.  Most are taped over the next day.

No show in the history of the camera has abused this notion more than 24. No season of that show has been quite as bad as this one.  Literally everything that happens in America is being recorded this season.  They’ve got an excuse though – drones.  Magical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that are constantly swarming New York and recording hotels, streets, and residential areas.  Now I’m not going to deny that UAV’s exist.  Hell, they might even fly over New York.  But the real world (oops) logic (double oops) of it is that, while cameras are everywhere, we’re not constantly being filmed.  We’re being filmed more often than ever before, granted.  But not to this ridiculous extent.  Have a crime happen in a hotel?  Check the street cams!  Filter the drones!  There, a perfect, high resolution, stable image of the suspect.  Where did he go?  Activate the satellites!  Process filters!  Enhance!  There, we have some how managed to access a database of video of every fucking thing that has happened in New York with perfect clarity!  The bad guy went into this house!  I will forward the video to your Sprint cellphone!

Give me a break.  The year isn’t quite 1984 in political terms just yet, so back down on the magic video.  There has got to be some other way for your story to connect the dots than just floating video cameras.  This is the mother of all writing short cuts.  The bad guy did something, the good guy has to find him.  But how?  Luckily that camera shop across the street records video all day and stores the tapes!  For what reason?  I don’t fucking know, but they do!  Let’s go make an arrest.  It’s getting old, Hollywood.  Which is strange, so it’s really only just started.  How much worse can it get?  I hate to imagine aerial drones recording ground level stuff and creating composite 3D images, but that’s probably on tonight’s episode.  All I’m trying to say is ditch the constant video coverage.  There is no overarching watchdog system that catches and catalogs every event, all day, every day.  We’re willing to suspend belief for lots of crazy stuff, but this constant super-spy camera work needs to quit it.  If you don’t think I’m serious, just check YouTube – there’s probably a video of my past my boiling point.