• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 2, 2017

Plausibility -- if not reality itself -- takes a holiday in the new CBS cop series “Training Day.” Whether or not this presents an obstacle to anybody enjoying this show is up to them. It was not a particular barrier even for me, and I possess an acute sensory perception for finding fault with TV shows. 

In “Training Day,” everything that happens takes on farfetched dimensions -- like looking at oneself in a funhouse mirror.

For example, in Thursday night’s premiere episode, a shootout with a gang of heavily armed hoods in broad daylight in the middle of downtown Los Angeles results in six police officers shot dead. 

If this happened in the real world, it would qualify as one of the Top 10 news stories of the year. But in “Training Day,” this story’s effect on the world outside the insular scope of the show’s three or four main characters is not acknowledged.

It’s as if no news media exists at all. Instead, the only reaction to this terrible tragedy is the one articulated by the show’s grizzled “unorthodox” cop character who vows revenge through clenched teeth. 

This is the character played by Bill Paxton (seen at right in the photo above), the veteran LAPD detective described in the CBS press material as “one of the finest investigators the department has ever produced.”

This is typical: On CBS dramas, characters are never just ordinary. Instead, they’re brilliant, or first in their class, or the best anywhere at what they do, bar none. 

As such, the stakes involved in everything they do are exceedingly high. For example, in the first episode of “Training Day,” it is not enough for the cops to be facing off against the single most powerful and deadly drug gang in all of Mexico -- but two such gangs. 

And in a subsequent episode CBS provided for preview, the cops take on the vicious and ruthless Japanese mafia known as the Yakuza.

One gets the impression that “Training Day” intends to blow its way through all of the various ethnic, organized-crime groups episode by episode. Does this still include the Italians? Stay tuned in the coming weeks and you will likely find that out.

“Training Day” is a TV adaptation of the 2001 movie of the same name that starred Denzel Washington as the grizzled police vet and Ethan Hawke as his young trainee. 

Beyond this description, I have no familiarity with this movie whatsoever. CBS describes this “Training Day” TV show as taking place “15 years after the events of the feature film.”

The names of the two main characters -- the unorthodox detective and his young partner/trainee (played by Justin Cornwell, above left) -- are not the same as the characters in the movie.

Nor is their race. In the TV show, the idealistic trainee is African-American and the “crazy” cop who breaks all the rules and is suspected of being corrupt is white.

The unorthodox-and-possibly-corrupt cop character is one we have seen before. Michael Chiklis in “The Shield” comes to mind, and more recently Clayne Crawford in “Lethal Weapon” on Fox (also a movie adaptation). The “Lethal Weapon” character is “crazy,” but as far as I know, not suspected of corruption, just serial rule-breaking.

In the “Training Day” TV show, the two main protagonists work as part of an “elite unit” that is also common to CBS dramas.

In this one, their cohorts include a sexy female cop described as “a formidable officer with killer aim and a dark past” and a male team member who’s “a former pro surfer.” They might have added: “With his long, flowing locks, he’s like a young Fabio.”

And naturally, this unit is not required to house itself at the dreary headquarters of the LAPD. Instead, they have a cool loft outfitted with, among other things, a pool table.

With all of its clichés, storytelling gaps and characters we’ve all seen before, you might now be asking: After all is said and done, what made this show bearable to watch?

The answer to that is Paxton, yet another movie actor who has now gravitated to television. Maybe these movie actors develop this trait from years of moviemaking, but somehow Paxton manages to rivet your attention in every scene he’s in – no matter how ridiculous and unbelievable the situation.

This is the kind of show that I would customarily predict won’t catch on. But almost every time I make this prediction about a CBS show, I wind up wrong. So let’s just surrender to the inevitable here and predict that this show will probably be a hit too.

“Training Day” premieres Thursday night (Feb. 2) at 10 Eastern on CBS.