"The bad guys are a bunch of guys running around with guns. The good guys are a team of guys running around with guns."
—Dan Stark "$3.52"
The Good Guys is a 2010 summer Buddy Cop Show starring Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks, from the creator of Burn Notice. The Pilot aired as a sneak-peek on May 19th of that year, and the series began its first season on June 7. Unfortunately, the show struggled with low ratings via something of a cult audience, and was cancelled after one season.Dan Stark (Whitford) is a former brilliant detective who still works as if life were in The Eighties, while Jack Bailey (Hanks) is his By-the-Book Cop partner. The show's tone is very much like Burn Notice, but unlike Burn Notice's adherence to Awesome yet Practical, The Good Guys runs on distilled Rule Of Cool. Over-the-top shootouts and car chases are a regular occurrence, and in general, the show's writers seem to plan the plot purely around what's fun.Much like Glee, The Good Guys tends to use its Troperiffic premise to build up subversions of the genre's conventions. And, also much like Glee, this gives the frequent impression that the show doesn't know if it's a parody, a deconstruction, or a reconstruction at any given time.
Badass Mustache: Dan Stark. The mustache even got its own billing in some of the promos.
Batman Gambit: The villain's plan in "Hunches and Heists", using a bank heist as a feint by setting up one inept, unarmed crew so he can get the cops on the wrong side of the river. Then he detonates explosives on the bridge and sends his real crew after a jewelry store. It works perfectly except that Dan and Jack get there and scare the jewel thieves off, but they still don't manage to catch them.
Berserk Button: As Dr. Laviolette found out, Stark hates it when another man sits in his desk.
Big "NO!": Dan lets out three of these when his trailer blows up.
Bland Name Product: In the show, the local paper is called the Dallas Daily News. The actual local papers in Dallas are the Dallas Observer and the Dallas Morning News.
Blatant Lies: In 1x03, Dan is forced to put a toy gun to Gemini's head since his is in the car. Gemini holds up his hands, then looks in the anti-theft mirror.
Gemini:That's a toy gun.
Dan:It's not! It's an orange gun!
Brick Joke: Played straight... and literally, in the episode "$3.52". At the start of the episode Dan vows to take down the drug smuggling ring with the $3.52 in his pocket. Fast-forward to the last minute of the episode, when everyone believes that the brick of Heroin is long gone. In comes Dan with a flashback to where he buys a brick for three bucks and a nougat bar for fifty cents, loses the two pennies somewhere along the line, and swaps the bricks.
Perry, played by Wayne Knight, spends his appearance getting verbally abused by cops, criminals and even children.
By-the-Book Cop: Jack. Initially, anyway - the longer he spends with Dan, the more he bends the rules. He's still far more by-the-book than his partner.
Character Filibuster: Dan spends the last two minutes of the final episode calling all CSI techs stupid and how his method is more fun. Bittersweet when you realize this show is getting canceled while the forensic genre of cop shows still is going strong.
Dirty Coward: Kyle, complete with instant loss of all audience sympathy. It didn't help that he blamed all of his cowardice on Jack. This later bites him in the butt when Liz realizes that Jack would have never acted in such a cowardly way and breaks up with Kyle
Drunken Master: Dan can take on the world's second best assassin in a gunfight while heavily drunk. Which is handy, because he's heavily drunk at all times.
Dynamic Entry: Dan tries to kick down a door in 1x03, "Broken Door Theory". His technique is horrible; he keeps kicking the door too high, on the hinge side of the door instead of the handle. And then, of course, Jack just pushes the door open.
And, of course, any time they drive a car through a wall.
Lt. Ruiz gets one in "The Whistleblower". She appears from behind a tree and clotheslines a guy hard enough to flip him over.
Epic Fail: Jack empties two clips at his opponent at point blank range and manages to miss every shot. The assassin shrugs and comments, "It's harder than it looks."
Exact Words: After being told not to get within a mile of a case, Dan and Jack wait at a drugstore exactly 1.01 miles from the criminals house.
Every Car Is a Pinto: Subverted hilariously when we find out the guy who was in the trunk of a car pushed off a cliff was not blown up. But he was pissed. What was his Madness Mantra again?
Justified in one episode when Dan shoots at a van full of explosives using his "SundayGun".
Fluffy the Terrible: The Georgians' muscle, Sasha, is treated like he's a cherished pet.
Friend To All Children: Dan. He has kids doing exercises and pushups as part of a community outreach program, and they love him for it. They apparently join the police force at a rate that Lt. Ruiz can only describe as "Alarming."
Fun with Subtitles: Similar to Burn Notice, it features rather snarky informational subtitles. As with Burn Notice, later episodes start to have more fun with them such as making them a part of the scene they show up in and interact with objects.
Genki Girl: Sam's habit of skipping around the Dallas PD and waving her arms around, not to mention her "getting into the moment" and greeting Liz like a best friend, definitely qualifies her as this.
Gentleman Thief: The Tech Bandit who just does that for a living to support his real love, blogging about food.
Grammar Nazi: Apparently, Jack got partnered up with Dan because he couldn't resist informing the captain that there's no "statue of limitations" while in front of the Chief.
Guns Akimbo: Pedro is highly trained and very good at trick shots so he can pull this off. When Jack tries this it results in the Epic Fail of missing with every round from only a few meters.
Jack: Not even one?
Pedro: It's not as easy as it looks.
Hello Attorney: Liz, the Assistant District Attorney and Jack's ex-girlfriend.
Hideous Hangover Cure: Dan's cure for hangovers is a "Guacamonut" (a cinnamon donut dipped in guacamole).
Hitman with a Heart: Pedro, the world's second best assassin. He's got two kids and is a pretty nice guy who frequently tells people that he doesn't want to have to kill them.
That's most likely why he's the world's second best assassin.
Hypocritical Humor: In 1x03, Jack and Dan are in a store when the suspect walks in. Dan asks where Jack's gun is; in the car. Dan chews him out for it, then is asked where his gun is. It's in the car.
Jerkass: Assistant Chief Guthrie of Internal Affairs is this full stop, since his Pet the Dog moment at the end of the episode in which he first appeared occurs rather begrudgingly and up until that point he was a completely unlikeable Smug Snake.
A.D.D. Gordon and Dr. Laviolette.
Karma Houdini: Liz's BF Kyle in the whistle-blower episode. He does get dumped by Liz for lying to make himself good (and Jack look bad), though, so he doesn't go completely unpunished.
Karmic Death: In one episode, the villains get away because Jack and Dan's ride is totaled, but then they kill each other in a shootout.
Le Parkour: Done by a graffiti tagger who Jack and Dan are chasingattempting to chase in the opening sequence of "The Getaway".
Magic Plastic Surgery: Played with in the pilot. Escalante demands that the plastic surgeon make him look exactly like Erik Estrada. The surgeon is somewhat afraid to tell him that it doesn't work like that.
Male Gaze: Liz as a hooker and US Marshal Justine Marino.
Man Child: The Governor's son. Doesn't help that Dan still sees him as the child he saved all those years ago.
Memento Macguffin: When trying to convince Frank, who had tossed everything from his and Dan's partner days away, to help him save the governor's son, Dan notes there's one thing he didn't get rid of... his mustache. This is what convince him to help.
Meaningful Echo: Much of the scenes in "Silence of the Dan" between Jack and Hodges mirror the first few episodes of the series. You have the uptight, fastidious, by the book cop (Hodges) with a more senior partner (Jack) who reminisces about stuff their old partner did.
Ms. Fanservice: Liz is this though to her credit, she is also more than just fanservice. But her hooker outfit from "Common Enemies" is this even in-universe, as it renders Jack unable to stand up. Samantha is as well, though more along the Nerds Are Sexy line.
Most of the female guest stars seem to be aiming for this as well.
Noodle Incident: Stark and Ruiz blowing up a taco truck (implied that it contained evidence) and whatever Stark tried to do with the Dallas Task Force's battering ram.
Stark: You wanna make a movie about lab wienies or do you wanna make a movie about cops?
Shown Their Work: Very accurate regarding North Texas geography and life. The working title, Code 58, is the real Dallas PD code for "routine investigation."
.Dan Stark (Whitford) is a former brilliant detective who still works as if life were in The Eighties, while Jack Bailey (Hanks) is his By-the-Book Cop partner. The show's tone is very much like Burn Notice, but unlike Burn Notice's adherence to Awesome yet Practical, The Good Guys runs on distilled Rule Of Cool. Over-the-top shootouts and car chases are a regular occurrence, and in general, the show's writers seem to plan the plot purely around what's fun.Much like Glee, The Good Guys tends to use its Troperiffic premise to build up subversions of the genre's conventions. And, also much like Glee, this gives the frequent impression that the show doesn't know if it's a parody, a deconstruction, or a reconstruction at any given time.
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