It’s a forgiving approach, one where the density of the jokes should make the hits outweigh the misses. Combined with a consistent tone, a healthy dose of ingenuity, and an unwavering commitment to silliness, this sort of spoof ultimately transcends its source material (like Young Frankenstein or Airplane!). With neither, the entire enterprise drowns in its own flop sweat (like the short-shelf-life parodies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer). It takes at least three episodes for Angie Tribeca to figure out that balance, making TBS’ binge-viewing strategy look all the wiser. But after that, it’s still another two or three episodes until Rashida Jones has a firm grasp on the title character.
Jones’ best comedic performances are ones of reaction: serving as down-to-earth counterpoint to Leslie Knope’s latest Parks And Recreation scheme, or correcting Paul Rudd’s Jamaican patois in I Love You Man. But she can’t do that here, lest Angie Tribeca give up the illusion that its detectives are treating, say, a ferret-smuggling ring with anything but the utmost seriousness. And so Jones starts off a bit adrift, while co-stars like Jere Burns, Andrée Vermeulen, and Deon Cole carry the show’s deadpan torch. (Vermeulen is especially good as the unit’s unflinching forensics technician.) Eventually, Angie Tribeca meets its star in the middle, allowing Angie to lower her defenses and show some feelings. With help from an expanded emotional range and myriad flashbacks, Angie opens up to let Jones in.
The show around her finds its footing sooner if only because those steps were already laid out by the likes of Police Squad!, Sledge Hammer, and Get Smart. Sometimes it follows those examples a little too closely: The second episode, “The Wedding Planner Did It” takes the “Let’s say a new merchant moves into the neighborhood” right out of Leslie Nielsen and Alan North’s mouths. To be fair to Angie Tribeca, that type of gag was already in mothballs in 1982; to be fairer, subsequent episodes see the show staking out its own territory along the fine line between stupid and brilliant. Lampooning TV cops from the current century, the title sequence puts an inspired spin on CSI: Miami and its Roger Daltrey scream, and Angie’s ever-mutating backstory is a clever comment on primetime procedurals’ yen for tortured childhoods and on-duty trauma. The character names, meanwhile, suggest that someone on staff spends a lot of time combing through bargain-bin LPs, old TV Guides, and supermarket circulars.
Angie Tribeca isn’t going to receive any special commendations for originality. This type of comedy has been done in this setting before, so updating the technology or building a blue-tinted lab for Vermeulen and recurring player Alfred Molina is the least the Carells and crew could do. But the hits-to-miss ratio is weighted in Angie Tribeca’s favor, thanks in large part to the cast’s go-for-broke energy and a roster of guests—including Bill Murray, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kerri Kenney-Silver—tuned into the show’s looney wavelength. That relentlessness is sure to grow wearying over the course of 25 hours, but no one is likely to watch the premiere marathon from end to end. Given the number of jokes piled on jokes in any given episode, though, season one’s best offerings—“The Famous Ventriloquist Did It,” “Ferret Royale,” “Tribeca’s Day Off,” and the Guy Ritchie send-up “Inside Man”—are worth a second look.
