A&E lets loose a many-headed ‘Beast’
If there is a cop-drama cliche writers Vincent Angell and William L. Rotko overlooked while creating the first two episodes of A&E;’s “The Beast,” we can be fairly certain they will nail it in Episode 3.
From the moment the gun-slingerish soundtrack rises around the opening image of Patrick Swayze silhouetted against a naked-city-revealing window and tucking a gun into his pants before he strides into the night, you know subtlety is lying somewhere in the room behind, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. Indeed, a few scenes later, a toothpick will be chewed.
Swayze is Charles Barker, an adversity-weathered deep-undercover FBI agent who, in a unique dramatic twist, plays by his own rules. He likes his coffee black no sugar and is given to making tough-guy comments like “Yes, there’s a line. So we know where to cross it.”
He has, as you can imagine, a cocky new partner, name of Ellis Dove (Travis Fimmel), a sleepy-eyed charmer who thinks he understands FBI procedure but manages to almost get himself killed because he doesn’t know nothing about the job. Still, Barker handpicked Dove because, we are told by Barker’s control agent (Kevin O’Connor), Dove reminds the older agent of himself 20 years ago. Of course he does.
In the pilot, Barker attempts to teach Dove a thing or two even as they plot to take down a highly implausible arms dealer with an even more implausible sting operation (many accents are involved, including Hollywood Russian and Hollywood Southern; also, there’s the firing of a jet launcher into a city street, where it manages to destroy one car and nothing else).
Dove comes to reluctantly admire his grizzled boss, but before you can say, “No television maverick goes unpunished,” he discovers that this admiration is far from universal.
Barker, we learn, is the subject of an internal investigation by a truly strange and “Matrix”-like team who try to enlist Dove’s help.
And so it goes. Cloaked in one of the bleaker cinematic visions of Chicago (I have it on good authority that the sun does occasionally shine there), Dove struggles with loyalty and the dating problems of a deep-cover FBI agent. Meanwhile, Barker does what he does best -- give drive-by lectures on the nature of the Beast (it will devour you, in case you were wondering).
“Who can you trust?” Barker barks at the Dove. “When you work undercover, you can trust your damn case file and me.”
The writers should have taken their own darn advice. Swayze, his face worn craggy by age and his battle with pancreatic cancer, remains a noble figure despite the ridiculousness that surrounds him. With the bearing and the mien of a man who is fighting for the survival of his own humanity, he clearly could have done much more with less.
Indeed, if the creators would turn down the soundtrack a notch and pull the narrative back for three seconds -- in the pilot there were so many ancillary plot lines it felt like every cop drama you ever saw having a collective nervous breakdown -- Swayze, his health permitting, still might be able to salvage something of the show.
As it is, “The Beast” is like watching a hero struggle in vain against bonds of his own making. Which is a cliche in itself.
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‘The Beast’
Where: A&E;
When: 10 tonight
Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)
