There are two series in NBC's new
drama Line of Fire: the one that the previews and advertising leads you
to think you're getting – a competent Blue Bloods type procedural set in
DC instead of New York – and a show that
seems determined to remind you of the worst parts of everything associated with
Scandal and House of Cards. Having seen the first three episodes
there's a part of me that wonders if the writers started out with the first
idea and perhaps because so much of network drama is done in the influence of
Shondaland felt an obligation to throw in a serialized – and totally
unnecessary – subplot that I think even Olivia Pope and her Gladiators would say:
"Yeah, this is just too ridiculous!"
The much stronger show is the
family dynamic. It centers on the Hollingsworth family, which involves a family
that is involved in nearly every part of the federal justice system. Mike
(Peter Krause) is one of the legends in Secret Service, Jane (Hope Davis) is a
U.S. Marshal, Claire (Kat Cunning) is an FBI agent, Micah (Tommy O'Brien) is a
secret service tagged to the President's detail and Russ (Taylor Bloom) just
got started in the Justice Department proper as a probationary.
So the first impression would be
that of the Reagan clan but when they sit down to family dinner in the Pilot,
it's the first one they've done in five years and none of the children seem
happy to be in the same room with their parents. With good reason. We've
already seen Mike bully his son as part of the detail and emotionally blackmail
Russ so that he can information he can't access normally. Jane calls in Claire
for backup on a case of a Marshal being killed to buttress her opinion but when
Claire tries to take it further Jane essentially demonstrates no motherly
instinct and honestly seems determined to ignore her.
At the start of the series Mike
is about to retire and its clear he doesn't want to do that. (The show
naturally forces him to stay on active duty for reasons I'll have to get into
later.)Both he and his wife don't have any problems using their son as a font
of information to due their own jobs and are perfectly fine using his brother
and sister as leverage to get what they want from him, even if they have no
capability to do it. This is a pattern with both parents: they may serve the
government and the law but both truly feel that the rules of agencies get in
the way and are perfectly capable of leveraging any professional or personal
relationship they have in favor of their own means.
You get the feeling that all of
the Hollingsworth children have been emotionally exhausted by their parents lives
and that they all might have gone into law enforcement as a way to try and
either win their approval or even spend time with them. And after three
episodes I wouldn't put it above either parent for pushing their children into
these fields with the promise of emotional affection but really playing the
long game and having resources they can use when they eventually exhaust all
their friendships and personal contacts. Both Krause and Davis are very good in
playing the kind of overbearing people both professionally and personally who
know that they are on the right side of things and will never let anyone, least
of all their own children, forget it.
The result is a dysfunctional
family where the siblings will often get drunk and relate just how they've
inherited the worst parts of both their parents and it's killed them professionally
and personally. The best part of Line of Fire are the times the family
is capable of working together towards a better goal and showing those signs of
affection. We see this when Mike says he proud of how Micah managed to stop an
attack on the President by doing the kind of work he wouldn't have done or when
Jane admits that some of the worst parts of Claire's tunnel vision came from
her side of the family. And when Russ admits he told his boss about taking
documents home he says: "Someone in our family has to do the correct thing
instead of the right thing.) That implication hits home with Claire who
says that this is why Russ is the best of them.
All of these are good elements
and I could see a competent, possibly very good, procedural if the writers
would follow it. The problem is that in the final ten minutes of the Pilot the
writers essentially bury all of their good work with a series of revelations so
ridiculous you genuinely wonder if they were thinking when they put them in.
In the Pilot Claire is about to
introduce her family to her current boyfriend Noah who she's been seeing for
nearly a year but hasn't introduced them to her family. She ends up taking him
against her will and it unfurls in a disastrous family dinner in which Noah
asks about one of their brothers. We're told he's Jack and that he committed
suicide five years ago. This leads to Noah and Claire having a huge fight and
Noah storms out.
So far, so good. The problem is
Noah comes back to Hollingworth home at the end of the pilot and starts looking
around suspiciously. Then he unfolds one of the family pictures and sees Jack.
It turns out Jack is his next door neighbor. He then turns around to see Jack
who cold-bloodedly kills him.
We don't even have time to
process this when the agent in charge tells them there've been a series of
killings of law enforcement officers and that as a result Mike's retirement has
been postponed. Then Jane shows Mike a small-folded crane and tells them that
Jack did this and that they've been lying to their family about this.
This in itself is a lot to take
in. But then in the second episode we learn that Noah was in fact a deep cover
CIA agent who'd been called to get close to Claire. We've also learned from
various contacts that Jack was undercover and had been lying to his parents
about how to find him and that the last contact he had was a year ago when he
committed suicide. At the end of the episode we see Jack taking pictures of Claire
with the agent in charge.
Then we learn that there are clearance
issues as to why Noah was doing and why and in the midst of all of this we see
Jack going to an AA meeting, meeting someone, then trying to get a job at a
doctor's office in the same strip mall where an undercover investigation is taking
place. And by this point I'd wondered what the hell the writers were thinking
with this storyline.
Even with Scandal and 24,
the writers were very careful with how they did things in their bigger
storylines. Even Shonda Rhimes didn't start the B613 storyline until Season 2
and was smart enough to limit her 'game-changing revelations' to one or two an
episode. I don't know of any cable or streaming drama in twenty years that
forces the viewer to reveal so much is a deception in the first episode and
then keep building on the incredulity. I don't even think the most outlandish soap
opera would put this many twists in a single storyline.
And what aggravates all the more is
that Line of Fire doesn't need this to be a good show. The individual
stories are fascinating enough. (Well, except for the fact that Micah seems to
be having an affair with the President's daughter he's detailed with protecting
which very well could be a bridge too far there.) The way that the writers
deals with individual stories – the killing of a U.S Marshal and her prey involved
with a cartel, an armed robbery that leads to a suspect who hasn't committed a
robbery in three years, last night's story about grand jury intimidations that
have led to two murders – are all strong plots on their own. And the way the
Hollingsworth's either collaborate or clash can be brilliantly done and often
quite funny. When Claire is at home working on the grand jury links and then
first members of the pool and then the entire family end up all helping her, it
has a genuine comic snap. And all the more so when Russ introduces his new
girlfriend (who naturally he's been keeping hidden from everybody) and she
takes it all in stride, because she's from a family of lawyers. "Most
families have board games nights," she says as the chaos builds with a
shrug.
Krause and Davis are also very
good at showing how while they are separated they can't quit each other. While Jane
has spent much of the last several episodes in a relationship with a Senator
(Campbell Scott) and seems to be on the verge of moving in with him in the
Pilot, Mike makes it very clear this is a bold decision "considering last
night the bed you woke up in was mine."
The problem is that this entire
ridiculous subplot seems to have been dragged in for the sole purpose of making
the Hollingsworth family come together again when a smarter writer would have
been able to do so without putting in so many ridiculous twists. When the
family dynamics play off it almost works but then the writers bury it with another
ridiculous plot twist.
I'm not prepared to give up on Line
of Fire just yet. If it can get through this ridiculous storyline and move
forward, it could be the solid procedural it clearly wants to be. I saw this
play out after the laughably bad first season of Alert: Missing Persons Unit
ended and one got a much better second and third season once they decided
to try and forget about it. There's enough good stuff in it to make the show
watchable, even if I can't recommend it to my readers in good conscience. In
other words I'll keep getting in the Line of Fire but other people
shouldn't at least, not yet.
My score: 2.5 stars.
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