'Rubicon' reviews: rescinded

I've decided to stop reviewing Rubicon, which is currently airing on BBC4. There weren't enough comments or page-hits to justify my time with it, and the show hasn't gripped me as I expected it to. It was something of a risk reviewing this AMC drama, as it's been almost a year since it premiered in the US and has been cancelled for almost as long.

I get the impression most people saw Rubicon when it aired in the US, or chose not to bother watching because they knew it has no future. I was hoping BBC4's audience would be larger, so a club of UK-pace viewers would form, but that hasn't happened. As I've resolved to do this year, if a review hasn't made much impact with readers after a month or so, and takes valuable time away from me writing other things that are more popular, that's a prime reason to halt reviews.

I'll continue to watch Rubicon at my own pace, however. If the finale's particularly good, I'll comment on it here. Ditto if it's atrocious, really. But for all intents and purposes... it's Rubigone. Did you see what I did there?

'RUBICON' 1.5 - "Connect The Dots"

This was a much better episode in terms of delivering developments that felt relatively huge, but has it come too late? I've started to wonder why I should actually care about the reason a stranger committed suicide. Or the suspected murder of an admittedly likeable man who only appeared in the show for half the pilot. Rubicon needs to find a way to make me care about Will's (James Badge Dale) investigation, by putting it into more engaging terms. Who or what is actually at stake in the present? I think we need to feel that Will's life is in danger, or there are victims to protect from something.

Some of the mystery was solved by frazzled Ed (Roger Robinson), whose analytical brain has been reawakened by Will and started an obsession with putting the David Hadas puzzle together. Will's face when he saw Ed's wall of clues was a picture. The crossword puzzle was "go code" for a man called Donald Bloom (X) to assassinate someone involved with oil, which fits with what happened back in 1983 when the same code was used in national newspapers. Unfortunately, Will has concerns about Ed's mental health and, for his own good, calls a halt to Ed's homespun research by claiming Donald Bloom isn't a person of interest.

It was also fun to see Will play spy, tailing Bloom across town to the Waldorf restaurant, shocked to see he's meeting with his boss Kale Ingram (Arliss Howard), who noticed Will peering in at them through a window. This immediately raised tension, knowing Ingram's aware that Will's prying into things. Curiously, Ingram may have delivered a threat to Will later ("I strongly suggest you stick to the analysis side of things. I would hate to see you involved in any mayhem"), but he's also refusing to inform Spangler (Michael Cristofer) of anything. Consequently, Ingram's suddenly the show's most fascinating character -- as we're not sure if he's good, bad, or a mixture of both. Ingram's tête-à-tête over lunch with old friend Bloom was also fantastic, knowing the pair have a shared history that appears to have diverged in recent times: Ingram now a desk-bound analyst with a stable love life of "delights", whereas Bloom's assumedly a hired killer who gets his only pleasures from prostitutes.

Will also discovered that so-called "white papers" have been taken from the API archives, later seen being shredded by Spangler in his office, marked "The Houston Problem". Spangler himself was shown to be a bigger threat than expected, when it's revealed he has a bug planted in Ed's house and has been listening in on conversations with Will. Although hearing that he'd rather his men "concentrate on Katherine Rhumor" was a surprise. Is she the bigger threat to exposing whatever they're up to?

It's still hard to feel engaged with Katherine (Mirandra Richardson), who's slowly investigating the circumstances leading up to her husband's suicide. Here she was wondering why he bequeathed her MRQ Alternatives (a clothing manufacturers) mere days before he died, if it's a "bad investment" according to friend James Wheeler. At MRQ, Katherine opened her husband's locked filing cabinet and found a newspaper clipping inside about the suicide of a Professor Bradley. Who's that? Was her husband aware of something was happening that would cause people to kill themselves, rather than suffer another fate? He must have known there would come a time when he may have to take the same course of action. Does the discovery of that four-leafed clover meaning you're marked for death -- at the hands of Bloom? Did this Professor Bradley receive a clover? It was also fun to see Will and Katherine interact at a party, exchanging a pleasantry, as two ends of Rubicon's storylines briefly touched -- both unaware they're investigating the same thing.

Overall, there was certainly plenty to chew on here, but I'm still waiting for a moment where Rubicon shows enough of its hand to make me care about things. Maybe we'll learn who Bloom's arrived to assassinate soon, or how deep this conspiracy may go soon. It's still a little too mystifying for its own good, sadly. It's the kind of mystery that doesn't feel very fun to engage with, but I can't shake the feeling Rubicon could very easily become must-see television once it ditches the vagaries and starts to become more of a Hitchcockian thriller.

Asides

• Bloom's trusty umbrella isn't tipped with poison or anything, is it?
• Did Bloom know he was being tailed by Will? Why else did he go up the escalator, then down another one immediately, if not to shake Will off?
• Tanya has a drinking problem, then. That's disappointing, from a character standpoint.
• The scene where Will confronted Maggie (Jessica Collins) about telling him everything she knows about Ingram was very good, mainly because it was the first time Will's look perturbed by anything. James Badge Dale's much more engaging when he's rattled. Interesting to note that Maggie didn't say anything about the fact Ingram has her reporting back to him about Will's team. Is she loyal to Ingram only?

written by Nichole Beattie / directed by Nick Gomez / 5 May 2011 / BBC Four

'RUBICON' 1.4 - "The Outsider"

This wasn't the big turning point I was hoping for. "The Outsider" took things in a different direction, but in so doing it rested most of the storylines that were already in play. That seems like a terrible decision, as audiences are surely clamoring for revelations and developments not fresh material. Still, it was nice to leave the usual confinements, with Will (James Badge Dale) accompanying API boss Spangler (Michael Cristofer) to Washington D.C, for a meeting with military top brass to convince them their company is still a necessary and vital part of intelligence-gathering that demands heavy financing. Will was the titular "outsider" of the hour; learning that Spangler cherishes the "gifts" of solitude that espionage brings, whereas Will's unconvinced by the lifestyle. Spangler even made attempts to befriend Will (buying him a briefcase, singing his praises to the officials), but is he just playing a game?

Back at API, Will's team had to work to a deadline without their leader, trying to ascertain if it's necessary for the US government to order an airstrike on the hideout of a mujahideen operative, even if it might cause collateral damage that includes innocent children. It was a pretty simple moral quandary, although the interaction of Grant (Christopher Evan Welch), Miles (Dallas Roberts) and Tanya (Lauren Hodges) appears to be coalescing into something fairly interesting to watch. It was also interesting to see how much stock they put in Will, to guide them to the right decisions. It was almost like they're siblings who've been set a tough homework assignment by a teacher, and struggled without their wiz kid brother around.

There were only a few strands that connected to the ongoing story: Will receiving intel from a CIA contact called Daniel, who has researched the seven decoded names Will discovered last week, and discovered six were part of the CIA's Middle East division in the '80s, but only two are still alive; while Katherine Rhumor (Miranda Richardson) received the personal effects of her late-husband, including a cell phone with a threatening voicemail ("if you keep this up, you know what's going to happen"), before getting confirmation her husband's friend James Wheeler knows about the townhouse she was bequeathed because he ordered Chinese takeout from there. Will also noticed that an attractive woman is suddenly noticeable from his apartment window, living n a building close by, so I'm assuming she must be surveilling him.

A strange episode, when all's said and done. Too much of the previous week's storylines were ignored, despite the fact Rubicon hasn't reached a point where a break from the matters at hand would be appreciated. So I'm still waiting for the moment when the story begins to crystallize and it's not so willfully vague about everything. But "The Outsider" also felt a little fresher than usual, and turned Spangler into one of the show's best characters in the blink of an eye (his speech about ties was a little clunky, but delivered so well it worked.) I guess the show's intriguing enough that it manages to keep me tuning in every week, but I'm restless for that moment when the show makes enough sense that I can properly invest in the characters and the situations they're embroiled in.

written by Richard E. Robbins / directed by Jeremy Podeswa / 28 April 2011 / BBC Four

'RUBICON' 1.3 – "Keep The Ends Out"

Before I even started watching Rubicon I was aware it had pacing issues (by design or otherwise), but this third episode was the first time they became a notable problem. This was a glacial hour that tested my patience. A core problem for Rubicon is that, while the slow unveiling of a mystery is inherently intriguing, there are no real stakes to anything -- that we're aware of yet. At this stage I'm desperate for Will (James Badge Dale) to crack a code from his recently-deceased friend David that confirms there's a government conspiracy regarding such-and-such, so I have a reason to care going forward...

This episode expanded the cast slightly. We now have David's son Evan, who didn't have a good relationship with his father and is jealous that Will did, despite apparently having some kind of physical/mental condition that required special attention from his parents growing up. We also saw Will's colleague Maggie (Jessica Collins) with her husband/boyfriend and young son, putting a slightly more likeable face on her character. Maggie's question to Will about whether or not bears "go to the bathroom" during hibernation (originally a question posed by her little boy), was one of the show's few moments of levity. Rubicon's atmosphere has lightened since the dark and moody pilot, but it's still very solemn and slow. I'm hoping the show will break into a comparative sprint soon, as it really needs an injection of something.

The saving grace of the episode was seeing Will find the next big clue left behind by David: a roll of 10-digit numbers on the reverse of duct tape holding the seat of the motorcycle he was gifted for his birthday. The numbers are dates relevant to baseball games, which leads Will to the names "Jeffrey Garcia", "Alfred Bermudez" and "Randy Hobbs". This spy stuff's all great fun, but I am starting to wonder why David didn't just write those names in plain English...

It's also becoming very hard to care about Katherine Rhumor (Miranda Richardson), the wife of the man who committed suicide in the pilot's opening scene. Richardson's the biggest name involved with this show, yet her character's on the sidelines so much her role feels like a way to ensure every scene doesn't revolve around Will. Here, Katherine's seen meeting with her husband's friend James Wheeler, who says he didn't know anything about the townhouse she was bequeathed -- but, in a later scene, Wheeler is seen removing a photo of a seven boys swimming together from said townhouse.

Will also confronted the ominous man who's been tailing him, only to discover it's an FBI Agent assigned to keep tabs on him as part of his company's security measures in light of his promotion. But was the Fed the same man who's been following Will for weeks, or only recently? And we still have those two other men following Will, last seen watching him through a telescope. They're not Feds, they seem irritated that Will's "still digging" for clues, but they're not going to eliminate him?

Overall, it helps that I've been promised Rubicon comes into its own in a few weeks, as I would probably have quit now, if I was watching at the US pace last summer. It's fine to have chosen a gentle pace that's thick with atmosphere instead of mindless chases and explosions, but the whole mystery's hard to get a hook on. And while that's part of the plan (so the audience is just as confused as Will), it means Rubicon's currently a dawdling exercise in watching a quiet man crack various codes, with no idea why it matters...

written by Michael Oates Palmer / directed by Jeremy Podeswa / 21 April 2011 / BBC4

'RUBICON' 1.2 - "The First Day Of School"

The title of this second episode felt subtly significant, as it's beginning to feel like the analysts of the American Policy Institute (API) are children in many ways. In one scene we even see Grant (Christopher Evan Welch) eating a beaker of jelly in the workplace cafeteria, while Miles (Dallas Roberts) revealed that his own kids think he designs video-games all day. It's also a place where your sanity's at risk, too; demonstrated when Miles can't stop watching a TV report about a situation in Nigeria he believes could have been avoided if governments had acted on his intelligence analysis.

"The First Day Of School" was a distinct drop in quality over the murky pilot, mainly because the deliciously thick '70s-esque atmosphere dissipated. Technology even became more prominently used than last week. The changes are probably because the show's creator, Jason Horwitch, actually left Rubicon after the pilot and was replaced by Henry Bromell -- who wrote this episode based on his predecessor's storyline. Episode 2 was also slower than the already unhurried "Gone In The Teeth", which is the kind of obstacle casual viewers won't feel compelled to move past. It helps that I'm prepared for a slow-burn, aiming for episode 4 (a key turning point, I hear), but it's a pity Rubicon's probably losing viewers because there's a distinct lack of urgency.

It was Will's (James Badge Dale) first day as his team's leader, having achieved promotion through dead man's shoes, and he was immediately tasked by API boss Spangler (Michael Cristofer) to identify two men accompanying a Russian missile broker called Yuri Popovic in a photograph, given a tight 24-hour deadline to deliver results. Will's team was briefed about their high priority assignment, but Will was actually more distracted by the coded crossword puzzles he discovered before David's death, so got computer nerd Hal (Manish Dayal) to research the history of similar crossword-codes. Hal's findings being that numerous international newspapers printed identical crossword clues in 1983 -- shortly after the bombing of a marine barracks in Beirut, and a day before the attack's sponsor mysteriously disappeared. It seems more than likely the crosswords are a "go code" for revenge killings...

Will also found strange typewritten numbers in his predecessor David's office, which he brought to the attention of reclusive ex-analyst Ed Bancroft (Roger Robinson), who identified them as an old-school code he created (the numbers relating to pages, lines and letters of a particular book.) This prompted Will to pour through all of David's tomes until he used the road-food guidebook David gave him to crack the code: THEY HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT.

Everything's intentionally vague right now, of course, although I suspect the API itself is a secret society that manipulate world events. The only thing that has me unsure about that is the fact characters like Spangler and Kale (Arliss Howard) discuss the emergence of that crossword-code like it was something beyond their control, so perhaps there are rival groups in a long-standing power-struggle?

Katherine Rhumor (Miranda Richardson) only featured briefly last week, but she was more prominent here, as the widow of the old man who committed suicide in Rubicon's opening scene. After attending the reading of her husband's Last Will & Testament, Katherine was astonished to discover he signed over his company to her days before his death, and has bequeathed her a New York townhouse she never knew existed. And, after snooping around inside the house, there are signs it was a place he frequented. Katherine assumes this was a love-nest where he had affairs with women behind her back, but is assured that's not the case by her husband's friend.

Anyway, I've fallen into the trap of just recounting what happened, as there's not much else to add beyond wild theories and speculation. I liked the twist that Maggie (Jessica Collins) is actually spying on Will's team for her boss Kale, although she's less truthful when it comes to snitching on Will himself. And there were plenty of mysterious strangers lurking around in this episode: a shadowy figure at Will's doorway, who moved away once Will had grabbed a baseball to protect himself; two figures watching Will on the API rooftop, through a telescope from an adjacent skyscraper; and when Will was followed down a street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a taxi when he bent down top pick up his lucky rabbit's foot. Are these strangers tailing Will friends or enemies? I suspect friends, actually -- people keeping him safe from harm. One guarding his house? One nudging him into investigating David's death with the car parked in bay 13? One perhaps ensuring the taxi didn't hit its intended target? Then again, conspiracy-themed shows tend to make you as paranoid as the characters!

Overall, this was distinctly average fare, lacking the pervasive atmosphere of the pilot, but I'm prepared to invest some time in Rubicon. It's the kind of show that feels like there's a purpose behind everything happenings (no matter how trivial it may seem) because it's all been meticulously planned, which helps keep you watching -- dissecting the dialogue and body language for "clues", as they're more helpful than cryptic phrases like "THEY HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT", frankly. We don't really have enough to formulate workable theories yet, just random ideas and predictions about where a show like this could take things.

A quick reminder about the common sense rule governing Rubicon comments. The show aired last year in the US, so I'm sure many of you have seen it. If so, please don't drop spoilers, or hint too much about future developments. If you must comment, keep it very vague, or focused on events that have happened for those watching BBC4. Comments that spoil the fun will be deleted and, in some cases, those who left them will be blocked from posting here in future. Thank you.

Asides

• Why was Tanya retching into a toilet? Is it a drink-related thing, as Maggie's reported to Kale, or perhaps morning sickness?
• The four repeated crossword answers Will discovered are "Bicameral", "Fillmore", "Marsilea quadrifolia" and "Marshall" -- so are they four groups involved in world events, passing messages to each other?
• It looked like Will was contemplating suicide on that rooftop in the opening scene. Is that a subtle nod that he's started down the same path as Tom Rhumor, who did eventually commit suicide? The two men watching him clearly wish he'd jump -- but why? What does he know, or is close to knowing?
• If David knew the train was going to crash, why did he get on it? Another suicide, but in a way that left a breadcrumb of clues for his protégé Will to follow?

written by Henry Bromell (story by Jason Horwitch & Henry Bromell) / directed by Guy Ferland / 14 April 2011 / BBC Four

'RUBICON' 1.1 - "Gone In The Teeth"

Crack the Obsessed With Film code, where I've reviewed BBC4's very belated premiere of AMC's conspiracy drama RUBICON, starring James Badge Dale. Crosswords! Chess! Four-leaf clover!

AMC's Rubicon was acquired by BBC4 last summer, but in the wake of initially frosty US reviews and cancellation, they've only just decided to air it. This presents British viewers with a familiar dilemma: should you invest time in a defunct US TV show, and one with an notoriously slow start and divisive finale? The answer is a cautious yes.

Rubicon is a 1970s conspiracy thriller transplanted to a post-9/11 world; meaning there are mobile phones, but not much reliance on the internet. Will Travers (The Pacific's James Badge Dale) is a prodigiously clever analyst for the American Policy Institute (API), which appears to be a think-tank connected to the CIA, tasked with poring through intelligence files. One day Will notices what he believes to be a clue hidden deep inside the crossword puzzles of various major newspapers, using a four-leaf clover as its key. The clues signify the three branches of government (legislature, executive, judiciary), but what does the fourth leaf/branch refer to? Continue reading...