I’m starting to think that when the marketing folks at TNT say “We Know Drama,” what they really mean is “We Have Analyzed The Fundamental Principals Governing The Hourlong Television Shows Of The Past Three Decades And We Have Learned How To Synthesize Them.” Dark Blue is the latest TNT series to follow The Closer formula: having a familiar face play a reasonably complex, basically sympathetic character in a well-worn genre. In this case, the face belongs to Dylan McDermott, and the genre is “gritty undercover cop story.” McDermott plays Carter Shaw, the headman of what amounts to a Black Ops Division of the Los Angeles police force. His bosses don’t want to know the specifics of what Shaw’s up to; so long as he’s staying within the bounds of the law and making huge collars, he’s allowed to toss out the LAPD employee handbook. Take a pinch of Baretta, a dash of The Shield and a soupçon of The Practice and voila: Dark Blue.
I’ve seen two episodes of Dark Blue so far—the pilot that aired tonight, and next week’s episode “Guns, Strippers And Wives”—and thus far the show strikes me as solid, with a few intriguing elements that could mature into something special down the road. But there’s also more than a little bit of “TNT-ness” about Dark Blue. It’s slick and self-serious, and flashes only a surface edginess. Tough talk abounds, but there’s not much about the show that’s as challenging as its influences.
Dark Blue’s main selling point is its depiction of the specifics of undercover work. In the pilot episode, one of Shaw’s most trusted men—Ty Curtis, played by Omari Hardwick—gives a speech to new colleague Jaimie Allen (Nicki Aycox) about how the longer one pretends to be a thief, a killer or a drug addict, the harder it is to let that cover go once the assignment’s complete. There’s nothing new here; those kinds of speeches and that particular theme have been a staple of undercover cop stories from the pulps to the big screen to the tube. What’s interesting about Dark Blue is how it examines the complicated logistics of the job. When does a cover lose its effectiveness? How much illegal behavior are you allowed to witness before you make your bust? How do you get a message out to your commanders? And how do you supply the money/drugs/guns/etc. for your stings?
Some of those kinds of issues have been handled in undercover cop stories before—most notably in the Infernal Affairs films—but there’s a matter-of-factness to the way Dark Blue handles them that I found appealing, especially in the midst of a lot of the show's clichéd “brooding, soulsick lawman” business. In the pilot, Shaw’s deeply concerned about one of his operatives, Dean Bendis (Logan Marshall-Green), who’s so into his role as an undercover mobster that Shaw’s half-convinced that Bendis has turned. In one tense scene, Shaw and Curtis corner Bendis while the latter’s in the midst of running the mob boss’s SUV through an automated car wash, and the beat-the-clock aspect of the car wash itself both brings energy to the exchange and leaves everyone involved wondering whether Bendis is just saying what Shaw wants to hear so that he’ll get the hell out of the car.
In the end, Bendis helps bring the bad guys down, though in the closing montage, we see him stashing a wad of bills in a secret compartment in his home. Next week, that wad of bills comes into play, once again raising the question of whether Bendis is just making use of the resources at hand in order to do his job, or if he’s become an actual criminal.