'Shades of Blue' Premiere: 11 Times JLo Was The JLo-iest Cop in Brooklyn

Jennifer Lopez can do almost anything. She can dance; she can sing; she can assess the vocal talents of Denver teens; she can exude more star quality than a luminous sphere of hot plasma careening through an expanding universe. What Jennifer Lopez can NOT do is portray a character that is not Jennifer Lopez. Just look at her acting resume: What began with immersive character work in things like Out of Sight and Selena and especially In Living Color suddenly became a laundry list of hilarious miscastings where Jennifer Lopez tried and failed to portray ordinary folks. Jennifer Lopez as an FBI agent in The Cell? Nope. Jennifer Lopez as a hotel worker in Maid in Manhattan? Absolutely not. Jennifer Lopez as an ordinary suburban mom in The Boy Next Door? Still LOL-ing. The sad truth is, Jennifer Lopez hasn’t seemed “real” since “I’m Real,” and while it’s not exactly an insult — Jennifer Lopez is AMAZING as herself — her star quality is VERY distracting when it comes to her new NBC cop show, Shades of Blue.

Related: ‘Shades of Blue’ Review: JLo Gets Low-Down

I’m definitely not saying that glamorous, gorgeous women can’t be Brooklyn cops. I’m merely saying that Jennifer Lopez can’t be a Brooklyn cop. Her Detective Harlee Santos is meant to be a gritty, headstrong, corrupt cop who gets swept up in an FBI operation to root out the even more corrupt cops in her midst (including Ray Liotta), but really she’s just Jennifer Lopez with a frizzy cotton candy hairdo and a cowboy walk. Directed by one of the creators of Homicide: Life on the Street and feeling very much like a brighter-lit network version of The Shield, Shades of Blue desperately wants to be edgy and compelling. On the upside? Story-wise, it kind of is! As long as you are willing to believe that a Brooklyn everywoman cop looks like this:

1) Like, sure, Jennifer Lopez. That badge on your belt definitely makes us forget that you’re Jennifer Lopez.

2) In what was supposed to be the pilot episode’s first big shocking scene — Jennifer Lopez’s young partner accidentally shot an unarmed man, so Jennifer Lopez had to arrange the crime scene to get internal affairs off their backs — all of the edginess was undone by Jennifer Lopez’s flawless skin and bone structure! It’s just kind of hard to be outraged by police corruption when it looks this fabulous.

3) Here was Jennifer Lopez having an impromptu chat with her teenage daughter. Because YUP, Shades of Blue ALSO wanted us to believe that Jennifer Lopez could be the mother of a teenage girl. NICE TRY.

4) For a minute it appeared as though Jennifer Lopez might actually be serious about her boxing regimen, but her Frederick’s of Hollywood unmentionables did not seem very gym appropriate! Oh, J.Lo.

5) Even when Jennifer Lopez was getting grilled by Internal Affairs she was giving such defiant cheekbone action that you could almost hear a four-four dance beat starting to kick in.

6) I mean, look at this posture. Jennifer Lopez’s biggest acting choice in bringing this cop character to life was putting her hands in her pockets a lot. This might have helped her intimidate local bookies into cutting her in on their profits, but it was not going to convince us that this wasn’t Jennifer Lopez just striking a pose again.

7) Even when after she’d been nabbed in an undercover sting and forced to turn evidence against her inner circle of corrupt cop friends, Jennifer Lopez still looked dewy and fierce. Like, come on.

8) But cop Jennifer Lopez wasn’t ONLY about striking power poses and looking slightly mussed in a glam way, she also occasionally stumbled into soft lighting so that she could look proud of her daughter for playing a flute solo or whatever. See, that is the look of a woman who has a lot going on in her life, but those things are mostly to do with sexin’ on younger backup dancers and maybe trying to decide which private jet to take to Barbados.

9) Just as an aside, during this pilot episode I used about 30 percent of my brainpower to follow the storyline and the remaining 70 percent wondering whether Jennifer Lopez was wearing a wig or not. Because if so, it was QUITE a wig! But if not, wow, credit where credit’s due: Jennifer Lopez was getting BRAVE in the Hair and Makeup trailer.

10) At one point Jennifer Lopez had to cover up a lie she’d told about her daughter getting in a car accident by going out and crashing her daughter’s car herself! And as you can see from the above GIF, Jennifer Lopez shed some tears about what her life had come to. But I think we can agree that she was either thinking about Marc Anthony or just the residual trauma of having to hang out with Steven Tyler for two years.

11) You know? Obviously not a hairdo Jennifer Lopez would have in real life, but that just made it all the more hilarious to see her wearing it.

I realize this sounds like I’m making fun of Jennifer Lopez or I’m saying that she shouldn’t attempt to play blue collar characters. She should! She’s fun to watch in any context. Mariah Carey may have impressively committed to her role in Precious, but I’d rather watch her play herself in Glitter any day. Shades of Blue is no Glitter… It’s just a very solid, if poorly timed cop drama (not sure I want to see “good guy” cops being openly corrupt for the greater good these days) which happens to star a woman with an all-consuming star-shine that renders everything around her bleached out and irrelevant. That’s more than most other shows have to offer! I just wish Shades of Blue would get real and rename her character to “Jennifer Lopez” and recast her partner with Ja Rule. Now THAT would be real.

Shades of Blue airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.