Going Deep

Okay, I wasn't planning on mentioning anything about TNT's latest drama Dark Blue, but it's the only thing to have premiered lately and I'm feelin' a little bloggy (which sounds only slightly worse than it is).

As with so many of the latest shows on TV, the writers out there appear to be pretty desperate to find a new angle on the standard cop show/procedural. Writers have been scouring pretty much every nook and cranny of the job looking for ways to change things up and hopefully present something new and different to viewers. Here we have the latest incarnation. Dark Blue centers around the dark, seedy, dangerous world of undercover work. As far as fishing for new material is concerned, I've certainly heard of worse, so I went in to this show with a bit of optimism.

All told, it wasn't a bad pilot, but where the writers have striven (which is actually a word) to find a fresh approach to an old conceit with their focus un undercover agents, it ultimately uses a whole bunch of the same elements, character traits, and storlyline motifs that so many other cop shows have in spades. Fortunately for this viewer, I don't watch a lot of cop shows (and only a few procedurals), so while I could clearly recognize a lot of the same stuff I'd seen before, it's not the kind of premise I watch every week, so it didn't wear on me as it likely could have.

Dark Blue centers on Dylan McDermot's character Carter, the leader of a super secret (basically black ops) undercover team that infiltrates criminal organizations, gang, and crime syndicates in an attempt to take them down from the inside. The pilot centers around a member of Carter's team who, it is feared, has gotten in too deep and is believed may have turned. It's a dynamic that isn't explored all that often in my usual line-up of shows, so in that sense, the deep cover angle did manage to make this particular cop show refreshing. The psychological impact of this line of work is largely unparalleled and the fear that simply doing the job well could lead to your own teammate turning against you is a compelling dynamic to explore. The ways in which this line of work affects who a person is, how they do their jobs, and what their family and friends have to endure is something I haven't really seen a lot of, so it genuinely was a more unique angle than I expected.

That said, I'm not sure the execution of this concept was expertly carried out and I have to wonder about the long-term viability of the conceit. Along with the more interesting and uncommon psychological, professional, and interpersonal dynamics of the show, it also offered a healthy dollop of the usual fare. In standard badass cop show fashion, Carter is the leader of a rag tag group of undercover cops who do their job better than anyone else, blah, blah, blah. You know, the kind of cast that walks down a dark alley in slow motion (you wouldn't believe how easy it was to find a picture to back this up). What would lead Carter to this line of work? Well, as per usual, his wife was killed or something, which we learn, I kid you not, as he watches old home videos while drowning his sorrows in a dark, empty apartment. Also, the pilot very un-subtley points to aspects of addiction in his life and his total "the job is all I have to live for" lonerishness. McDermot does a decent enough job with the role, but the writers doled out way too much of his character right off the bat and didn't really leave me wanting to know more.

I found the supporting cast to be much stronger, even in spite of some pretty obvious archetypal characters. We have the glasses-wearing, yet still attractive command center operator, the rebel who pushes the boundaries and breaks the rules, the dutiful, yet flawed operative who tries to do right by everyone, and of course, the new recruit (because if there's one thing this kind of show needs, it's a newbie who acts as the audience's window into this new world--basically just an excuse for plot exposition). Oh, and she's blonde and sexy, lest you think they'd break the mold. She's a cop with a checkered past or something, so Carter seeks her out and brings her into the fold or whatever... You know, the usual.

Anyway, in spite of the standard character constructions, the supporting cast actually did a pretty good job with the roles and did a fair job making the characters their own. I thought Logan Marshall-Green (who plays Dean, the rebellious undercover cop who might have turned) did the best job, although granting that he clearly had the most to work with. It took me a while to figure out who he was, but as it turns out, he played Trey Atwood on The O.C. Had his character in Dark Blue killed of some sort of ersatz Marissa, I'd have been beside myself with O.C. nostalgia. :) No such luck, but he certainly had the most compelling storyline and the most engaging psychological situation. His relationship with Carter (a kind of father/son, mentor-ish type vibe) added even more layers. The look on Carter's face when presented with evidence that Dean has turned was one of the best scenes in the pilot. He plays your typical bad boy, but he does it with panache and quite a lot of charm.

Officer Good Cop and New Recruit Blondie (whose names I can't remember) round out the regular cast, and for what they were given, did a decent enough job. Officer Good Cop elucidates the struggle between an undercover cop's personal and professional lives (and clearly has a difficult time separating the two) and New Recruit Blondie takes on the role of enthusiastic newbie, a character we've all seen before. To the character's credit, she's not quite a doe-eyed as usual and certainly less useless, but I still didn't find her all that engaging. I was actually quite glad to see her jump right in to her new position and actually do it well. It was a nice change of pace from the rookie who screws everything up, but she still struck me as a stock character through and through. It'll take quite a few more episodes for these two to make a splash, but in and of themselves, they're decent enough and serves their respective purposes well.

In terms of the episode-to-episode progression of the story, I'm just not sure how a show with this concept is going to work. It can't really be a procedural, given that each undercover assignment requires weeks, months, and even years at a time, so unless the show skips around in time an awful lot, the audience is going to be presented with story arcs that take an awfully long time to pay off. Depending on what approach the writers ultimately take, this could be disastrous or awesome. I've never been too fond of procedurals that wrap everything up in a nice little bow at the end of the hour, but at the same time, I don't know that I want to watch an undercover agent slowly trying to worm his or her way into a group of criminals over the course of an entire season. It's a problematic conceit from a standard TV format point of view, but that doesn't mean they can't make it work. I'll be giving this one a few more episodes to really establish itself, but after having only seen the pilot, I'm more uneasy than anything else. The show has a lot working for it, but it also has a lot of logistical nightmares to grapple with. Personally, I'm hoping the writers establish some of the criminal elements in such a way that the audience, along with the cops, has a hard time deciding whose side they want to be on. That's not an easy thing to do, even if I think it would be the most compelling way to run the series, so the writers on Dark Blue definitely have their work cut out for them if that's the angle they take.

My only other major concern with the show is in terms of tone. The pilot was very dark and even a little disturbing at times (the show literally opened on a scene of a guy being tortured with electro-shock--not really my cup of tea). I love my hard-hitting dramas as much as the next person, but for a show on TNT, particularly one paired with the light-hearted revenge caper Leverage, I'm just not sure that's going to strike the proper chord with audiences. The pilot premiered to a good-sized audience, but it's darker and more sobering than TNT's usual fare. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's a heavy way to end an evening, especially after the goofy antics on Dark Blue's lead-in. It almost felt like the show was trying very very hard to be dark for the sole sake of being dark, rather than as a natural extension of the subject matter. All in all, it felt a little forced.

At the end of the day, it was a pretty well-made pilot and has some decent bones to work with, Jerry Bruckheimer's involvement notwithstanding. The base concept has merit, but I'm not sure it's being showcased as well as it could be here. I'll be giving Dark Blue a couple more weeks to really find its footing, but so far, it's take it or leave it.