So: Did you watch Rubicon last night? Whether the first-episode preview lived up to the hype you had in mind, it boasted one quality we can all agree on: Jason Horwitch's show promises more than just an little bit out there. Thank goodness for Movieline's Rubicon WTF? Factor, a handy metric deriving each episode's most quizzical matters on a scale of 0 to 30, broken down byt the degree of difficulty to understand, the developments' plausibility, and Horwitch and Co.'s execution of each. Together, we will get our heads around this show. At least until it introduces a Smoke Monster, at which point I got nothing. (Needless to say, SPOILERS AHEAD.)
· WTF?: Four-leaf clover = Kill yourself
Context: Nice of Horwitch to drop the always-reliable Harris Yulin into the mix for about three brooding minutes before driving his character to suicide. While the wife (Miranda Richardson) and kids are playing outside in the snow, Tom Rhumor unearths a four-leaf clover tucked into his Sunday New York Times. The discovery nudges his obvious funk into a more reeling despair; Rhumor silently walks over to an end table, withdraws a pistol, and blows his brains out.
Thinking it Over: So basically the entire show (or at least the first season) is going to be about unraveling the meaning of the clover and its role in Tom Rhumor's life. Not to mention that of his wife, who, by all appearances, seems to have not known anything was amiss in their snow-dusted manor.
Degree of difficulty: 10, considering, well, it's the first scene and viewers know exactly nothing.
Plausibility: 6. A half-inch leaf prompting suicide gets discovered on top of the Styles section? That's a stretch. I would have at least gone for Week in Review.
Execution: 8. After that last scene of Breaking Bad, there is _no way I would have guessed AMC would go from black to blacker in consecutive scenes on separate shows. Surprise!
Total WTF? Factor: 24
· WTF?: Intrigue by way of crossword puzzles
Context: When we first meet Will Travers (James Badge Dale), it's just another morning at the American Policy Institute in New York -- and his colleague Tanya (Lauren Hodges) needs help figuring out the clues to that challenging three-down in the NYT crossword puzzle: "What lucky lepidoptera larvae eat." Er, OK. Much mumbling ensues about four-leaf clovers, bicameral legislatures, Grateful Dead, Fillmore, 13th president... as does lots of intense musical scoring moments later when Will's racing mind discovers that OMG the three daily newspapers have the same clues. This requires the attention of David (Peter Gerety), Will's immediate boss -- and father-in-law.
Thinking it Over: Hoo boy. Maybe we should break this up? Nah. David clearly knows something is going on here, shrugging it off as a puzzlers' inside joke before taking the papers down to black-eyed API middle-manager Kale Ingram (Arliss Howard). His death stare when David says he's the only one who saw the clues in the "three initiators" says pretty much all anyone needs to know about the big, bad consequences forthcoming.
Degree of difficulty: 8. It's a little easier to diagnose a conspiracy when you've got conspirators. Not that the conspiracy makes any sense yet.
Plausibility: 8. Crossword puzzle editors do play gags and inside jokes kind of frequently. What's to stop them from taking a payoff to drop this insane clue all at once?
Execution: 6. As noted above, the premiere was fond of overlaying various "thinking cap" music for texture when Will is basically doing nothing but sitting around contemplating to himself. This will get very old very fast. And you_still_ have to deal with the awkward expository dialogue anyway.
Total WTF? Factor: 22
· WTF?: API chief Spengler eats corn flakes every day -- for lunch
Context: Will joins co-workers Tanya, Miles (Dallas Roberts) an Grant (Christopher Evan Welch) in the cafeteria, where they watch their big boss Spengler (Michael Cristofer) enjoying his customary mid-afternoon cereal break. What begins as a quirky curio deteriorates into workplace pathos as Will is discovered to have lost his wife and daughter in the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11.
Thinking it Over: What is it this year with director Allen Coulter and 9/11? First came the maudlin Remember Me, and now we've got Rubicon's condensed lunch-break revelation. Is this part of the conspiracy, too? And how did we get here from a mysterious bureaucrat eating corn flakes by himself?
Degree of difficulty: 7. Is it too early to write it off as a MacGuffin?
Plausibility: 8. Some people like their corn flakes any time of day!
Execution: 8. I kind of loved that little note of workplace voyeurism depicted as lunch-break people-watching. Not sure if the downturn at the end totaly worked, but you take what you can get.
Total WTF? Factor: 23
· WTF?: The Putnam affair
Context: The night before he plans meet Will for breakfast to go over a few API-related oddities, David gifts Will a motorcycle bearing the note, "Drive away, don't look back, it's time." The next morning's scheduling conflicts notwithstanding, Will considers the offer. But no sooner has the sun risen than David gets on the train at Putnam Station and a genuinely shocking train crash occurs. That's the end of David. Later that night, after a visit to David's old colleague Ed (whom we'll get to in a minute), Will spies his father-in-law's car in the train station's parking stall #13 -- the one number of which the superstitious David was most traumatically afraid. That would never happen! And who's this big stranger watching him at the station, anyway?
Thinking it Over: By now the viewer knows a key point about the crosswords that Will doesn't: He's in danger, and David's attempt to protect him cost him his life. But that doesn't explain how a commuter train jumps the tracks on cue, or how David's car wound up in the 13th stall, or who Stalker Dude is. If no one at API knows Will has an idea about the crosswords, then maybe David hired someone to keep an eye on will if anything happened to him? Head, meet headache.
Degree of difficulty: 9. And this isn't even counting the matter of Ed Bancroft woven in here as well.
Plausibility: 5. Now we're getting into more convoluted TV-thriller territory that the first half-hour eschewed with grace and not just a little guts.
Execution: 10, for the train crash alone. Never mind the underwhelming VFX; the shock of it all more than compensates for it. It was as if Horwitch and Coulter said, "Well, Lost already did the plane crash, and we're on an AMC budget, so... green screen?" It was just about perfect.
Total WTF? Factor: 24
· WTF?: "From one pawn to another"
Thinking it Over: Whew! Give Dale some credit for mostly pulling off the hard art of thinking for the camera, particularly in a setting where pretty much nothing makes coherent sense. It's not so hard to follow, but the actor successfully navigates the same cryptic streams as the viewer. And when he can no longer push through, like Rosie and Charlie in The African Queen, he knows to wait for the flood that'll get him moving again. That doesn't make Gale's presence or Ed's unease any more explainable, but hey. If advanced fellas like David and Ed were mere "pawns," one can only imagine -- and wants to imagine -- the appropriate metaphor for Will.
Degree of difficulty: 8. Easy to follow, impossible to parse.
Plausibility: 9. Honestly? This kind of crap probably happens every day in no fewer than a dozen government agencies and offices. The only troubling thing was whether or not Will knew the chess board was inside the globe. It sure looked like a convenient TV "Oh, hey, lookie here" discovery.
Execution: 8. This guy Gale Ingram could be one of the worst baddies in television history if this keeps up. And he didn't even have to say anything! If it weren't for the previews of upcoming Rubicon episodes featuring Ed Bancroft, I'd have worried Gale went ahead and killed him just because.
Total WTF? Factor: 25
· WTF?: Spengler and the power brokers
Context: Will decides at the last minute not to resign from API, instead taking Gale up on his offer to inherit David's position. Sent upstairs to meet Spengler, Will arrives in a long blue corridor in which the boss's bow-tied assistant upgrades his security clearance. He's told to meet Spengler back at API at 9 a.m. sharp; he has left for the day, alas. But Spengler has stuff to do out on Long Island -- like meeting a weird cabal of white dudes sipping brandy and lounging around in a library. (Coulter likes his extreme long shots!) Spengler wants to know for sure that Tom Rhumor is dead, and one man, played David Rasche, says he saw the body: "He blew his brains out." This is a big relief. Spengler closes the door and they get to work on... something.
Thinking it Over: OK, now we're getting someplace. While Spengler's corn flakes Twin Peaks-ian office setting hints at the perplexing characterization to come, a good-old fashioned oligarchical powwow ripping off the last shot of The Godfather is just what _Rubicon needed to ground it in a little real-world conspiracy intrigue. They mean business! That said, you're going to have to wait 'til August to find out who "they" are and what their "business" is.
Degree of difficulty: 6. More cliffhanger-y than outwardly challenging. Though what this means for Will -- who is taking over the role that literally killed his father-in-law (unless David was just unlucky, which is always a possibility considering where he may have accidentally parked his car) -- is more than a little perplexing.
Plausibility: 9. Rich, crazy white people with ambitions toward privatized world conquest? Get out!
Execution: 9. Excellent mood and exposition moving into the cliffhanger. See you in August!
Total WTF? Factor: 24