Back in the day (I mean really back, like 49 BC) the Rubicon, a 29-kilometer river in Northern Italy, was considered a line of demarcation that if crossed by general and legion (like, say, Julius Caesar) constituted an act of war according to the Roman senate.
(More at Wikipedia, which despite it's rep is pretty correct on this one.)
From this sprung the idea of crossing the rubicon -- going "a bridge too far" so to speak, another famous quote from another war, this one World War II and the quoted (allegedly) being Daphne du Maurier's husband the British Lieutenant Frederick Browning. And yes, that eventually became the name of a book and then a film based on the book.
Also Wikipedia, this link.
So, crossing the rubicon, going a bridge too far, putting one's self in harm's way, these are all the things that should be happening in the new spy series from AMC starring James Badge Dale, Arliss Howard, Miranda Richardson among others.
It continues the Sunday at 11 from the "sneak peek" that has been posted here at this blog (here it is again, click this then click at the bottom of the player for the full screen mode) and which ran last week after the season premiere of Mad Men on the cable channel and will run again this Sunday at 8 before a new episode at 9 (times eastern, west coasters might be able to catch this all earlier if they have the AMC HD east feed coming in through their cable co.).
Many have seen the first hour already and it's ... slow. However I've been promised by reviews (including Tim Goodman at the SF Chronicle (LINK) & David Bianculli on Terry Gross' NPR series Fresh Air, click here to hear his comments) that it picks up and holds you starting in the second hour.
More after the jump.
In his review Goodman does make the case for slow doesn't equal bad. And it doesn't here (at least in the first hour, which is all I've seen, I don't seem to be on AMC's screener radar). He says:
Besides, when did "slow" become shorthand for "bad"? Viewers are bombarded in just about every hour of prime time with shows that are breaking their backs to blow stuff up and cause the kind of visual chaos that enables producers to cover plot holes and character development.
Okay, I'll give you that. Still, you want stuff to happen, and besides the self-inflicted shot to the temple that kills the uber-wealthy and impossibly named Tom Rhumor (damn, they killed Harris Yulin, above, in the first hour) and then the death of Will Travers' (the aforementioned Dale, image right) mentor at the American Policy Institute in a Metro North train collison north of the Institute's almost nameless definitely faceless Manhattan headquarters ... not a lot happens.
Still compelling, though and not just for the really well-photographed funeral scene in the snow that was so ironically lovely.
Maybe I'm just used to spy stories having a bit more whiz bang, or I'm just used to being inundated with sensory infomation to the point of overload.
The rest of the hour is rumors about Rhumor (and what's with the four-leaf clover anyway and why would this fabulously wealthy guy off himself in the first place?) and Travers ruminating with his co-workers including his assistant Maggie Young (Jessica Collins from 2008's ABC series The Nine) who seems to "have a thing" for Will ... or maybe she's just trying to get close to glean information (?!?) about the last thing he gave to his now dead boss/father-in-law David Hadas (Peter Gerety, who I think we'll be seeing in flashbacks along with Yulin's character, hopefully).
(Meet the characters through the eyes of the actors playing them in a clip from AMC by clicking this link.)
If there's one thing that rubbed me the wrong way in the first ep it was the plot point that Travers wife died on the top of the WTC on 9/11 as she were supposed to meet Will or her father Hadas or ... anyone wanna jump in here? Anyone? Bueller?
I just still can't fly with 9/11 being a plot device in fiction, it smacks of irreverence.
That last thing, btw, is what's getting me to the second episode tomorrow at 9 eastern (before Mad Men, set your DVR now). Will, a crossword puzzle junkie naturally, has found some patterns in the city's papers' puzzle answers that he thinks might be something to be concerned about, but only Hadas his boss seems to know that it connects to the Tom Rhumor suicide in some way.
And then he was dead along with a bunch of people on a train in Westchester County.
So, I'm hoping we find out more tomorrow night and from the preview clip AMC provides (LINK) I know we find out something but with even more questions attached to that information we should be, as Bianculli promised in his review, hooked by the end of the second episode.
I hope so. With serialized dramas like Lost or FlashForward going out of style on the broadcast nets it would be nice to see a new one pop up that fills that gap.
Created by Jason Horwitch (NBC's 2004 drama Medical Investigation and FX Network's movie The Pentagon Papers) who has since left the show and has been replaced with Henry Bromell (HBO's Carnivale, NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street), AMC has ordered 12 episodes for this first go-round, this first episode was directed by Allen Coulter (Nurse Jackie, HBO's upcoming Boardwalk Empire) but I can't find a director credit at IMDb for the second ep, the new one you'll see tomorrow.
Hey, as long as it isn't Alan Smithee I'm okay with that.
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