AND THE MISSES KEEP ON COMING: As a fan of The Shield, The Wire, and many other adult-drama, hard-boiled, or faux hard-boiled cop shows that trace their lineage more or less directly to Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice, it was inevitable that Dark Blue (TNT, Wednesdays, 10/9C) would get a few hours of my time this summer. I had high hopes that it would turn out to be something worthy, gritty, and complicated, but those hopes are waning. Two episodes in, I hope it’s not too early to offer reflections and solicit input from anyone else who has been watching.
For the most part, on the positive side, Dark Blue looks good. Literally. It is visually compelling, if perhaps over-reliant on stubbly machismo among the male leads. Long shots, tight shots, quick entrances, pointedly lazy pans into obscure shadow are deftly juxtaposed in a dramatically dim and pulpy palette of dingy browns and night time blues and grays. These all serve to heighten an expectation of moody drama, gritty intensity, complicated emotional states, that, on the negative side, the scripting and staging of the show and the one-dimensional relationships between the characters have (so far) failed to deliver.
Diplomatic parentheses aside, I’m more concerned that I’m being too easy on this one than too hard. Stubbly suggests gritty, but it doesn’t get you there. Chemistry between the leading characters is lacking. In many respects the first two episodes have felt like a collection of focus grouped half measures.
For example, one simple strategy for simultaneously heightening tension and establishing the character of a single episode bad guy is to have said bad guy shoot an underling. For disloyalty. For incompetence. For being FBI. Whatever. It’s fast and the message is hard to misunderstand, but it’s not very subtle or interesting. It’s the modern equivalent of holding a mortgage on the farm or tying the eldest daughter to the railroad tracks. Two episodes in, it’s already been used twice too often.
Another trope they’ve obviously got a fully paid royalty-free worldwide license for is A Method For Tying A Variously Tough And/Or Desperate Guy To A Chair And Subjecting Him At Gunpoint To Threats And Interrogation. Lines of dialogue for said threats and interrogation seem to be under third-party license as well, likely from the Internet Underworld Figure Loyalty Test Emulator. In the preview for next week’s installment, sure enough, a desperate looking guy, very possibly an underling, was shown tied to a chair.
Internet Underworld Figure Pre-Deal Banter Emulator and Internet Undercover Cop Perp-Baiting Emulator have also been given a vigorous work-out, to similar effect. It’s bad enough to be a party game: During the (dramatic?) pauses that are inserted to lend gravity to the dialogue, you may repeatedly find yourself able to guess the next line from the antagonist or protagonist in time to speak it aloud with the character in question. “There, was that so hard?” Just for example. (No, it wasn’t.)
A notable exception this week was a single jarringly incongruous scene that might have redeemed the whole episode if it had been played for laughs instead of straight-up. In said scene, a homicidal gun runner (he killed an underling) with a stripper girlfriend begins commiserating with a stubbly under-cover cop (who is tied to a chair) about his paramour’s intimacy issues while the boss is out of the room. There is no point to this scene whatsoever. It is nothing if it is not funny. It is not funny. Instead, we are invited to experience a moment of suspense as the undercover cop strains in his bonds towards the emotionally distracted gun runner’s weapon. We decline the invitation.
The longer-term character issues they’re setting up for the season are being handled with similar delicacy. One cop loves his wife. Another keeps weapons, drugs, and bales of hundred-dollar bills in a hidden compartment in his bedroom. A third is a recovering drug addict. The marquee lead, Dylan McDermott, wears sunglasses indoors and mumbles. It might be enough, if it were better executed, but at this rate Dark Blue has maybe another ninety minutes to captivate me. If it doesn’t have me tied to my chair by then, I’m gone.
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