Wow, I can't believe you guys liked this one. I hate to be That Guy, but I really thought this was...
OK, I can't do it. I thought that if I were the one person who didn't like it then Steve would have to mention me in the episode feedback. But I actually thought this was one of the top ten EP episodes and probably Steve's best reading ever.
The story was fun and funny and disturbing all at the same time. The character of Bull was fascinating. He wasn't just a dog or even just an uplifted dog, he was an uplifted police dog. He was overly loyal and subservient, but did not hesitate to threaten to arrest his human partner. Whenever he described someone he would go from "he smelled nice. I like that" to "he was a male Caucasian, 6'1'', about 210 pounds with a green shirt, leather jacket, and blue jeans" without missing a beat. He had an innocent exuberance, but at the same time lived in a violent world and couldn't stop thinking about boning Goldie.
If I must have a complaint it would be that I thought the name Terry Stringer was a little over the top. I knew where the author was going and didn't need to be hit on the head like this. But there were enough layers to the story that this was a very minor distraction.
Since I am one of the first guys to complain when a story has an insufficient level of SF-ness for my tastes, I want to also state that this is the kind of SF story that I enjoy. It had several cool SFy ideas, it was pretty realistic, and it featured social commentary without being preachy. You could probably shoe horn it into a non-SF setting, but it would lose so much as to be a different story.
I got to thinking about how plausible believable the People's Justice idea was. I thought it was interesting and chilling that, sense it was popular and the police secretly liked it, no one was stopping it. Also they were good at concealing where they were shooting, and could broadcast it on the internet from anywhere. I wonder though if the police would be so complacent about The People's Justice encroaching into their power. Also I think at some point the Feds would get involved, and even if you couldn't find where they were shooting, their sponsors would probably be easy to track down. This isn't a complaint about the story. I completely accepted The People's Justice in the story, and Sully could probably explain all this if he had wanted to, but that would have bogged down the action. I just think it's an interesting thought experiment.