Round Two: Rubicon

Rubicon: Season 1, Episode 2 “The First Day of School” (B-)

To be fair, I only watched the second hour of this two-hour premiere since the first episode aired way back in the middle of June. Perhaps the experience might have been more fulfilling if I had taken them both together. I would still posit that while a first hour can be full of mysteries and introduce numerous unsolved threads (see: “Flash Forward”), the second installment should at least start to clarify some of what’s going on and provide a clearer sense of where the show is ultimately headed. While the terrific music kept me just as awake and excited as in the first episode, I was scratching my head the whole time and not gaining any sort of clearer sense of what was afoot. A show can only be intriguing to a certain point before it starts to reward viewers for tuning in. Two episodes is absolutely way too early to start giving up (that’s why I suspect some people disliked “Inception” – they gave up trying to figure out what was going on and settled for being frustrated and angry), and therefore I’ll stick with this show for a bit. I don’t think I mentioned in my review last time how excited I am to see Dallas Roberts in the cast, who’s playing the same kind of nerdy spy Christopher Gorham is playing on “Covert Affairs.” Roberts was a great addition as nanny Angus in the third season of “The L Word” and also has a great breakout role in the little-seen film “A Home at the End of the World” in 2004 with Colin Farrell. A strong cast is what will help make this confusing show work, and hopefully Roberts and his fellow ensemble members will be given the chance to shine in coming episodes.

In good news for this show, the two-hour broadcast was the most-watched original drama series premiere ever for AMC. Not too shabby.