hypotheticalpoliceprocedurals:

PREMISE: It was the best of thyme, it was the worst of thyme… good thing these two cops can tell the difference. Thyme Cops follows the adventures of two police officers who are experts at identifying whether or not a particular herb is, in fact, thyme. The series was cancelled after just one season, as many viewers were disappointed that it was not about time travel. Viewers’ confusion was compounded by the fact that the show was advertised exclusively on the radio, and was almost never mentioned in print.

CHARACTERS: Kendra Zucco is a veteran detective and a thyme traveller–a thyme traveller being someone who travels in social circles with other people who really like thyme. Her partner is Vic Quail, a rookie cop who was has become lost in thyme–which is to say he spends every waking hour thinking about thyme because he likes it so much. Viewers rightly complained that the show’s creators seemed to be going out of their way to mislead people into thinking that the show was about time travel.

NOTABLE EPISODE:  In the pilot, Zucco and Quail have to use Zucco’s new invention, a thyme machine, to travel back in thyme to prevent a thyme paradox from causing a tear to appear in the very fabric of thyme. “Travelling back in thyme” refers to walking backwards through a field in which thyme is being grown; a “thyme paradox” is what Zucco and Quail call it when you get confused and your head starts to hurt because you can’t even understand why you like thyme so much; the “tear in the fabric of thyme” was a reference to the crimes of a rogue thyme enthusiast who was sneaking onto thyme farms to rip up all the plants; and Zucco’s “thyme machine” turned out to be a DeLorean whose trunk was filled to the brim with dried thyme. Viewers who had closed captioning turned on realized what the show was actually about immediately, but it took most people until the end of the episode to catch on, as the word “thyme” was only spoken, not shown, until the graphic with the show’s name appeared in the end credits.  (S01.E01 – “The Land Before Thyme”)

CATCHPHRASE: “It’s go thyme.”/“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the… thyme.”

TRIVIA/MISCELLANY:  The show received excellent reviews, even from those who stopped watching. In the words of one disgruntled viewer, “It was actually really good, I just felt tricked.”

See also: #012 Time Cops

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Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #puns #oh my god #I’m in the middle of reading the Hypothetical Police Procedurals archive #quality stuff #read it in chronological order for full effect #(this is the *third* show that tricked people into thinking it was about time travel) #(but the others didn’t do it as beautifully as this) #(wait sorry this is actually the second of the three chronologically) #(I only read it third because I didn’t start off in chronological order) #(but anyway this is great)