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'Wanted', more arresting
drama
TNT's new high-energy crime series has style, not substance
By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff
July 30, 2005
Some of the sets on TNT's ''Wanted" could double as backdrops for a
Details magazine fashion spread. With their industrial-warehouse grit and
carefully messy graffiti, they'd bring a slick ambiance to the latest in
torn-jeans non-couture couture. They scream CK urban jungle.
But style alone does not a good cop show make. ''Wanted," which premieres
tomorrow night at 10, is an LA-based drama that relies too heavily on
finesse, and not enough on the nuts and bolts of crime plotting. It's a
quick hour of pumping music and fast-and-slo-mo shots signifying nothing.
About yet another ''elite team" of TV crime fighters, the show breezes
through its weekly roster of brutal murders and bad-guy captures without
offering the viewer the details of the cases. The crimes are faceless and
generic, and so are the criminals.
The good news is that the cops on ''Wanted" aren't generic, and they'd
probably thrive as a TV ensemble if they had more artful scripts to work
with. Pieced together from federal and local agencies to chase the city's
100 most wanted, they're a memorable collection of TV cop characters who
look suspiciously like the criminals they're tracking. They're roguish in
that they don't play by the rules, but then, unlike some of the guys on
''The Shield," they clearly have moral centers.
Gary Cole, in a goony Harrison Ford buzz cut, plays the leader of the
pack, Lieutenant Conrad Rose from Metro SWAT. He's the father figure, the
one with integrity and leadership skills. Ryan Hurst plays a gawky,
extremely religious virgin who also happens to be a passionate gun expert.
Rashida Jones is the female Naval Intelligence officer who has to work
twice as hard to earn the guys' respect. Josey Scott (of the band Saliva)
plays a techie who looks like a Hell's Angel.
Next week, Lee Tergesen amps up the chemistry when he joins the cast as
greasy-haired US Marshal Eddie Drake. Tergesen has done strong work on
''Oz," as convict Everyman Tobias Beecher, and on ''Rescue Me," as the
cross-dressing firefighter. On ''Wanted," he brings his freckly wryness to
the fore, providing a welcome and comic counterpart to the sometimes
off-putting righteousness of Cole's Rose. When he's not shrewdly working
cases, he's all about pushing his colleague's buttons and losing the team
personality contest. He's the guy who never hesitates to drink the last
beer in the case.
Like characters in search of an engaging story, these officers sneak
around the back alleys of Los Angeles exploding evildoers -- and an
inordinate number of windows -- to bits. The ''Wanted" writers try to add
distinction to the drama by fitting in a few subplots about the team's
personal lives, but they fail to be original there, too. Rose --known as
Connie -- is a separated father who loves his two kids but can't seem to
find time to parent them. It's very old material, as Dad is too busy
tending to a young rape victim to go to his son's school. Next week, we
learn that one of the team members has slept with Connie's wife, Lucinda (Dedee
Pfeiffer). These flourishes -- like the tricked-up camera work --
ultimately fail to distract us from what's missing, from what's wanting in
''Wanted."
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.
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