I could tell you what I thought of last night's Rubicon sneak peek...but then I'd have to kill you.
You're thinking, way to open up a review of AMC's new conspiracy thriller with a lame, tired cliche. But I'm trying to make a point here. Secret codes, faked deaths, shadowy figures in trenchcoats, powerful men inexplicably driven to suicide, games of chess both metaphorical and literal, sinister plots unraveled though newspaper crossword puzzles - all tropes found in your average conspiracy thriller and all packed into the pilot episode of Rubicon.
Will Travers, a bushy haired 9/11 widower and walking Wikipedia, works for the American Policy Institute. Doing what exactly, we don't know - beyond assisting his colleagues with obscure crossword puzzle answers. Apparently neither does he, which is why he's beginning to question what he's doing with his life, anyway.
Through the course of the one-hour pilot, Will cracks a code that utilizes crossword puzzles found in several different newspapers. He approaches his supervisor, David Hadas - and the father of his wife Natalie, who he lost on 9/11, with the info and his quickly dismissed. The next morning Hadas suspiciously dies in a train collision. Will begins to ask questions about the accident and is pulled deeper into the inner circle of API.
All of these expository moves are well played. The problem, which many genre pilots of late seem to get snagged on, is to what end and why these moves matter. It's astonshing that Travers is able to crack a code laid out in crossword puzzles in different newspapers, but what does it mean? Why aren't we as breathless and anxious about this discovery as our protagonist is?
The pilot opens on a wealthy man, eating breakfast and reading the morning paper. He sees a four leaf clover on one of its pages, goes to his office, looks out on his wife playing with their children and then shoots himself. Powerful stuff - if we had any idea who this man is and what drove him to end his life, beyond a tiny flower usually associated with good fortune.
One thing Rubicon does establish successfully in its first hour is the tone, feel and look of the show. The pace is slower than you might expect for a one-hour thriller and the characters we do meet all seem like the type you'd enjoy getting to know over the course of a season. It's the larger conspiracy plot oddly enough, that holds the least appeal in the pilot. Give us a presidential assassination, a terror plot, a military cover-up, hell, even aliens! Just something to make all this code cracking, security clearances and deaths, both real and otherwise, matter.
Lets hope Rubicon's second hour, which premieres after a re-airing of the pilot on August 1st, let's us in on its secrets. And if you missed last night's sneak peek check out the full hour below.
