Two
LAPD cops, Detective Mitch Preston and Officer Trey Sellars, both from the Central Division, are paired for a television police reality show and run into trouble with a crime lord. Mitch shoots a news camera after a failed confrontation with local drug dealer Lazy Boy, who escapes by using a custom-built armor-piercing gun. Maxxis Television, the network that employed the cameraman, decides to sue the police department for $10 million, but will drop the lawsuit if Mitch agrees to star in the police reality show, which Trey soon calls
Showtime!. Trey is an LAPD officer who struggles with the department's investigator examination and is an aspiring actor. He pays a friend to snatch the purse of the show's producer, Chase Renzi, then retrieves it after a staged fight scene. Although the deception is embarrassingly revealed, Chase is impressed and signs Trey anyway. It is quickly revealed that the show's producers have little interest in filming an actual police officer's existence; they build a mini-movie set in the middle of the station, and replace Mitch's nondescript personal car with a
Humvee while Trey drives a
C5 Corvette. They also hire
William Shatner (who once played
T. J. Hooker) to give both men tips on how to act. But while Trey is eager to learn, Mitch is merely annoyed. Despite all of this, Mitch tries to investigate the mysterious supergun, which is subsequently used by arms dealer Caesar Vargas to kill the drug dealer and his girlfriend. Through a clever ruse by Trey, they can get the arms dealer's name from Re-Run, the dead dealer's henchman. However, Vargas is less than cooperative, which causes a brawl at his nightclub. Trey and Mitch defeat him and his henchmen, and they have a relatively friendly conversation on their way home. However, Mitch's good humor evaporates when he finds that, in his absence, the
Showtime! producers have drastically remodeled his house and have given him a retired
German Shepherd police dog, Powder, as a pet. Vargas and his squad assault an armored car and kill the crew, and devastate the police who respond. Trey and Mitch arrive and are pulled into the shootout. When the attackers flee in a garbage truck, Mitch gives chase in a police car. In the ensuing mayhem, the car is rammed by the garbage truck, which crashes into a construction site. Mitch survives by jumping from the police car to Trey's sports car (he had previously denounced "hood-jumping" as a useless skill). In the wake of the disaster, the police chief pulls the plug on the show, suspends Mitch from duty, and demotes Trey back to patrol. With the show ended, Mitch's car is returned and his apartment restored (though he refuses to return Powder, which he has grown fond of). While watching the final episode, Mitch phones Trey and apologizes for his actions, offering to help him study for the investigator exam. However, while doing so, Mitch sees one of his police colleagues at Vargas's nightclub. He and Trey investigate and find that Vargas is selling the weapons at a gun show at the
Bonaventure Hotel. Vargas flees with one of the weapons, taking Chase hostage in the process. The duo can rescue her via a pocket pistol concealed in a Maxxis camera, but the ceiling of the room is shot. It is located just below the pool, so it floods, and Vargas is washed out the window to his death, but Trey and Mitch barely survive after handcuffing themselves together. They end up suspended from a broken beam outside the hotel. Trey is promoted to detective, and he and Mitch are now partners and still working together on a new case. There are hints of a romance between Chase and Mitch.
Showtime! is revived for a second season, this time with two attractive female officers who are just as antagonistic as Mitch and Trey. ==Cast==