Somewhere along the line the kingship of cable dramas was lost by HBO and picked up by FX and, more recently, AMC. This is the network’s third show after Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It centers around a Washington DC think tank, the analysts who work there, and the fallout from the death of one of their key members. That’s as strong a plot synopsis as I can give because, after three episodes, that’s as much as we know.
Rubicon is an intensely cerebral and deliberate show. It probably would make for better viewing all at once season by season because it spends time with the characters and on minutae, because minutae is what these people are looking for in their work. They analyze travel patterns, credit card purchases, known associations, etc. in looking for patterns and trends that can fuel their recommendations. None of the actors are recognizable to me from previous work and I’m not even sure why the series is named after the Italian river that Caesar crossed to begin his war with the Roman Republic. On paper it sounds intensely boring, but there’s something compelling here. It’s the same kind of a large mystery vibe I got off of shows like Lost and The X-Files, but grounded in total reality. I find the characters interesting and I’m intrigued as to where things are going to go. That being said, they need to pick up the pace a bit. This is more of a telenovel than it is episodic TV so far, but to spin out your story so delibrately shows a lot of confidence in the eventual payoff. AMC continues to impress with their dramatic efforts and their next series is the adaptation of the zombie/horror survival comic series The Walking Dead so you know I’ll be all over that. Rubicon is intriguing. Download the pilot off of iTunes or Video on Demand and see what you think. From what I’ve seen roughly a quarter of the way into season one, I’m on board.
7.75/10
Killing Time 