Probably not Friday Night Lights or The Second Coming of The Good Wife but ABC ‘s Will Trent may be my favorite broadcast network drama of the year. What I appreciate most about the Karin Slaughter adaptation is how quickly it builds up relatively unique characters, locations, and premise elements. The show scrambles to become what it wants to be. Keep. Over two lengthy episodes, The Company You Keep becomes a promising rom-com with thriller elements and an interesting family background – not a fully realized series, It’s a series with some potential.
The company you maintain
BOTTOM LINE The chemistry between the leads carried the show through a clumsy opening. 2016
The show it wants to be is basically The Catch, a Shonda Rhimes production Comedy heist romance, ABC developed, redeveloped and redeveloped the truncated in 2016- two seasons. But if anyone at ABC doesn’t have the institutional memory to remember that they’ve made this show, who am I to bring it up?
This version is ostensibly adapted by Julia Cohen and Phil Klemmer from the Korean series My Fellow Citizens!
Our hero: Charlie Nicoletti (Milo Ventimiglia), a gifted con artist in a family of criminals. Together with his extremely cautious sister (Sarah Wayne Callies (Birdie)) and parents (William Fichtner (Leo) and Polly Draper (Fran), he plots a big win, but only for Those who really deserve it, because that’s how con artists work in movies and TV shows. They’re also eyeing “one last scam” which will allow them all to go straight to the target, but the lucrative game against Irish mobsters turns pear-shaped.
Emma Hill (Catherine Haena Kim) is an aspiring Asian American member of the Kennedy family. I know this because in the second episode , a character says that Emma’s mother (Freda Foh Shen) wants them to be Asian American Kennedys. Her father (James Saito) is a former governor and her brother (Tim Chiou) is a senator. I know this is Because in the pilot, someone said to Emma at the party, “Your father is a former governor and your brother is a senator, what are you?”
EVERYBODY Think Emma works in data logistics, but she actually works for the CIA, albeit in a weird secret CIA outpost, hidden behind a front called Pattern Logistics – but you know it’s actually CIA Agency because someone added an insert with a close-up of her very prominent “CIA” badge. Why doesn’t she even keep her career a secret from her family, and why is her job/skill so unique that she doesn’t have to Not working in a mysterious and hidden office? I don’t have the faintest!
Anywho!
Emma in her personal life Problems in , leading to her sitting alone in a hotel bar, where she meets Charlie after his job goes wrong. They flirt (joking about how they lied about their respective identities). They spend time together 20 Hours. Have feelings.
But Charlie is a liar! Emma is a CIA agent! How are they going to find out An appealing way to flirt while maintaining respective professional cover?
The Company You Keep presents a very, very clumsy Undoubtedly busy but definitely uncomplicated conceit.
My previous suggestion was The Company You Keep It takes a long time to get Get used to its actual structure and pacing, but it could be easy because it doesn’t take enough time.Charlie’s talent is mentioned in one character after another, but I’ve watched two episodes and everything he does isn’t very smart, Not to mention talented. Emma’s own talent is established through one of her Sherlock Holmes quick-reads to a stranger, but the show doesn’t bother to establish the personal life that leads to her meeting Charlie in a hotel bar element, and didn’t ask you to believe in the psychology of that meeting.
These are the things the show has to present and pass in order to move on Something that kind of like establishing a ridiculously flimsy effort at exactly where this show takes place. I think some of them are Baltimore and some of them are DC, but they don’t have any connection to the look or feel of the real Baltimore and DC. It’s all just Generic Glossy American City, with Generic Jaunty Heist music and Generic Jazzy Editing. I never found myself hatingThe Company You Keep, but I did find myself cringing at the delivery of the message and wishing that almost every background detail could be as the kids say An email.
Maybe halfway through the second episode, The Company You Keep take all this stuff up. Well, not all of them. There is much elaboration still to be made. But this show came out decent, or as I keep saying, has the potential to be decent, since I’ve only watched 20 minutes of it.
The parallel of the two families, and thus the legal and the illegal con, is interesting. Clearly, more details are needed. I’ve already mentioned how bad Nicoletti’s first con was, and the second one, while much better, was more of an opportunity for Fichtner to play tricks than anything else, and Hills is one of those Politicians in vague TV ways, which are completely non-ideological and therefore border on nonsense.
But I like the care taken to give the family and its interactions a similar shape. I love the seeds of acting and characterization, especially the warmth of the older cast, all of whom are talented enough to contribute far beyond the nuances on the page. In the case of both families, the character development of the uncharacteristic siblings is the least, although at least Callies’ Birdie hints at a meaningful relationship with her deaf daughter (Shaylee Mansfield), which I’d love to see unfold.
Most important is the general chemistry between Ventimiglia and Kim. It’s not the sort of combustible chemical that drives the short-livedWhiskey Cavalier, another semi-recent attempt by ABC to mix a similar foamy concoction, but they play well together, they Everything in the first two episodes comes together in a beautiful and glossy fashion that is extremely engaging. When they’re together, they’re more interesting as performers than when they’re sharing scenes with the rest of the cast. For a show like this, that’s actually exactly what you want. If you’re not disappointed by any time Charlie and Emma don’t flirt or dress up — both of whose jobs require a lot of grooming — then you’re not investing in a show like this in the right way.
It remains to be seen whether this show The Company You Keep will be sustainable after the second episode toned down. You can only use the weekly disadvantage structure as a long-term device if the disadvantage is better than it has been so far. You can only expect viewers to care about an irrelevant political race — Emma’s senator brother is up for re-election — if politics has substance. And, most importantly, relationships built on key secrets can be kept in suspense and confusion for a while, but not indefinitely. There’s enough here, I’ll give it a little more time. 2016
