Whatever caused the incident, he’s definitely involved. The highschool-aged son seems to owe these men money, which is why they came collecting. Hanson and his partner are called to the palatial home to interview the family who were robbed.
And those that try are killed on the job. The cops are too scared or too hamstrung to do anything about it. The thugs are black, they’re armed, and they’re ready to burst into your suburban mansion at any time. We’re only five minutes into my nostalgic childhood and already 21 Jump Street has positioned itself for its white middle class audience. It’s not like the good old days of policing when they were allowed to go to town on suspects, now they might be up for an assault charge.Īs well as establishing that Hanson is a rebel and a maverick, we also establish that his father was killed on the job. Policing is ‘scientific’ now and, faced with the kind of violence Hanson just described, the cops will and should simply run away. We don’t police like this anymore, explains his world-weary partner – only a few months from retirement and therefore definitely about to be murdered. While he doesn’t spell it out, the dialogue in this scene links us mentally to the one before this: in our head the armed thugs are already black and the innocent woman begging for help is a white suburban housewife. He wants to dive into the fray and protect innocent women from armed thugs. Officer Hanson wants to do ‘proper’ hands-on policing. These continue into the next scene where we meet young rookie cop Officer Tom Hanson (Johnny Depp). The acting is almost as bad as every part of this coding: the cliche of black urban violence reaching into the white suburbs due to inadequate policing – a narrative that very much underpins the white middle class support for aggressive racialised policing.įrom the beginning of its very first scene, 21 Jump Street – despite its representative cast – is busy selling well-worn racist narratives.
Produced in the same year as the police murder of the unarmed black man, Anthony Griffin, this episode starts with heavily-armed black men terrorising a white suburban family gathered around the breakfast table. Well, the two-part pilot of 21 Jump Street starts with a cold open so problematic that watching it from 2021 is almost shocking. It’s in the latter that I expected the show may fall down but I was nonetheless looking forward to diving back in. I do remember it having a slightly after-school special vibe but also being an action-packed ensemble drama with black and Asian leads, a strong female character and an emphasis on current social issues. No, what I remember about 21 Jump Street was in fact its earnestness and its progressiveness. It spawned in 2012 a ghastly film version and an even more ghastly film sequel – 21 and 22 Jump Street respectively.Īt the time they aired, I did not feel the films captured what I remembered most loving about the show (and no I don’t mean Dustin Nguyen on whom I had a huge crush – as much as or even more than my crush on Ben the Vet who was in Australia’s long-running soap opera, A Country Practice around the same time). Starring a baby Johnny Depp – presumably, at this point, sane – and an equally-young Peter DeLuise as well as Richard Grieco and Holly Robinson, the show ran for five seasons and was definitely one for which I have some youthful nostalgia.
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