Quite a few of the most
consistent actors throughout the era of Peak TV have been those who have
managed to portray the everyman. They include just stand outs as Peter Krause and
Joshua Jackson and to a certain extent, Dominic West and Martin Freeman, who
can do it just as well with multiple accents. In that mold one would have to consider Milo
Ventimiglia, who is a slight outlier in this group in that he has worked in
some of the greatest series on TV for more than two decades and almost never
left broadcast television.
From his start as Jess
Mariano, the bad boy so many people wanted to end up with Rory on Gilmore
Girls to his stint as Peter Petrelli, the younger brother on Heroes to
what would seem to be his role of a lifetime as Jack Pearson on the recently
ended This is Us, in which he officially took the mantle of the TV
father we all wish we had. Given that series ended less than six months ago,
one would hardly blame Ventimiglia if he’d wanted to take a couple of years off before his next project.
Instead, it’s been less than six months and he’s back on television as Charlie
Nicoletti on ABC’s The Company You Keep in a character that is both an
amalgam of so many of the characters he’s played over the last twenty years and
yet completely different.
Charlie is the son of a
family of con artists. In the opening minutes of the pilot, they seem to have
pulled off the con of a lifetime in which they managed to steal ten millions
from an Irish criminal enterprise. Unfortunately for Charlie, the woman he was
planning to marry ran off with the fortune – which is also bad for his family
in so many ways.
What I find interesting
about the Nicolettis is that, in many ways, they are pretty close to the Pearsons
in their devotion to each other as well as having a similar moral compass. As
we learn very quickly, the Nicoletti clan is as close to Robin Hood as you can
possibly see – they only steal from those who have managed to gain their
fortunes through illegal and criminal processes and they give much of their
earnings back to the poor and the community at large. They are also loyal and protective
of each other, through good times and bad. The writers have assembled some of
the better actors throughout television in playing the Nicolettis. Birdie,
Charlie’s sister and the mother of a deaf child (the series does a good job at
showing them all remembering her every time she’s in the room) who has been
famous for her work in Prison Break and The Walking Dead. Fran,
the mother, is Polly Draper whose career in television stretches all the way
back to thirty-something (she still looks great by the way). And the
pater familias is that master craftsman William Fichtner, one of the greatest
character actors in history, capable of doing drama and comedy so well that
this role seems a natural for him. It is the father for whom the con was pulled
– he is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s though it’s still easy
to hide for most people.
If the series had just
focused on the Nicolettis and everything they did, it would be enough of a
reason for me to watch. But the same day everything goes to hell for Charlie
and his family, something goes just as wrong for Emma Hill (Catherine Heena
Kim). Emma works for an analysis firm which is a cover for her job at the CIA.
That day she finds out her fiancée has been cheating on her. She and Charlie are
at the same bar nursing their broken hearts. Emma asks Charlie his job and he
tells her he’s a yoga instructor. She tells him she’s a pageant queen turned
rocket scientist. They spend the next hour getting drunk, and Emma says: “Tell
me something true.” Utterly serious, Charlie tells her he’s a criminal. She
tells him she’s CIA. They immediately laugh it off, but you get the feeling
that the first time either’s been interested in the other.
Charlie goes to his
hotel room, Emma follows him, they start making out… then they pause, watch
movies, tease each other and fall asleep on the couch. When they wake up, then
the crazy sex comes (and honestly it’s the most erotic sex I’ve seen on
broadcast television in a very long time). They spend the next thirty six hours
sharing more of their secrets (though not their biggest ones) before they go
back to the real world. Then when the family’s pulling their next con in DC, he happens to
run into Emma.
Emma has family issues
of her own. Her father was a Congressman but her mother was the power behind
the throne and is now pushing her son to fill his father’s seat. Emma is clearly the black sheep of her
family, and not just because she’s never told them what they do. (In the second
episode, she confides in her brother about her job, and it’s clear they have
the same kind of relationship that Charlie and Birdie do.) Charlie decides that
he wants more than a rebound, and Emma slowly becomes won over. What neither of
them know is that both of them are dealing with the same problem in different
ways.
In the pilot, the CIA
managed to arrest Maguire and one of his capos, known as Daphne, managed to
walk away clean. She then showed up at the Nicolettis bar, demanding repayment
of their debt plus interest or she’d kill them all. (When Charlie asks what
guarantee they wouldn’t be killed even if they paid it off in full, she didn’t
even bother to offer one.) Emma has been pursue the Maguire clan in regard to fentanyl
trafficking and is certain Daphne is involved.
This should come across
as heavy-handed, another complication that will end with the two world’s
colliding and indeed, there’s a scene in Daphne’s hotel room where that nearly does
happen. But The Company You Keep is smarter than that, particularly as
it shows that while Daphne is capable of outmaneuvering law enforcement, she
has underestimated Charlie and his family’s capabilities. At the end of the
second episode, the family realizes that Daphne is Maguire’s daughter and then
try to use it in a subtle way. The next time Daphne shows up at the bar
demanding payment and threatening to use Connor, the Maguire son, Charlie
calmly offers to call him for her – and for the first time, Daphne retreats. By
the end of the episode, the Nicolettis have the same measure of Daphne’s
activities than the feds do, and anonymously inform Connor of it – and learn
Daphne is hiding her identity from the Maguires. They have planted a flea in
Connor’s ear that I lo0k forward to seeing pay off.
Considering all the
balls that The Company You Keep has to keep in the air, I’m surprised
that none have come even close to dropping. Indeed, the series is working on
almost every level – as a romantic comedy, as a family drama, as a caper of the
week drama, and as a psychological study. It’s inevitable that the truth about
Emma and Charlie’s careers is going to come out, but it doesn’t seem like it
would matter that much because you can see ways that the series could continue
to work in either fashion. And I do admire the writers for not thinking the
audience is stupid, like too many broadcast series do.
Last night’s
cliffhanger came with Charlie being abducted and thrown in a truck. The teaser
for the next episode showed him going through a polygraph. Now by this point in
the series run, the viewer is pretty certain who’s giving the lie detector test
and why, and because of how network TV works we know Charlie will emerge
unscathed. The tension therefore comes
from what Charlie will think when it’s over – will he think this is a power
move by a scared Daphne or the Maguire? Will he think that local law
enforcement is catching up with his family at last? What will happen when he
tells his family – the Nicolettis are honest with each other if nothing else?
And will any of this cause them to fall suspicious of Emma? Last night, the
Nicolettis met Emma and it went over well- but Birdie took some time to win
over. She is by far the most protective of the family, so how will she react?
ABC has been on a hot streak
the last year when it has come to producing both superb comedies (Abbott
Elementary and the more recent Not Dead Yet) and masterful dramas (Will
Trent and the just returned Alaska Daily). The Company You Keep is
another fine continuation in this trend for the network. It’s well position for
success on Sunday nights coming after American Idol and its competition
on Sundays nights is fairly weak. Hopefully ABC will have confidence in this
show and find out its worth keeping on the air. (Puns not intentional. Favorable
review, is.)
My score: 4.5 stars.
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