DARK BLUE “Pilot” Review

I had the opportunity of seeing an advance copy of the pilot of the new TNT series DARK BLUE starring Dylan McDermott airing Wednesday July 15, 2009 at 10 PM.

DARK BLUE is a new crime drama centered Carter Shaw (Dylan McDermott), a undercover cop who runs a crack team of undercover police officers who operate under the radar of the authorities to take down some of the most dangerous criminals in LA.

The pilot episode starts with a pretty strong scene of an undercover FBI agent being tortured by a gang of criminals who also happen to have an undercover LAPD officer Dean Bendis (Logan Marshall-Green) currently in their mist. The episode revolves around Carter trying to take down the gang while at the same time protecting Bendis from being discovered by the FBI (who suspect Bendis of being corrupt).

While I am usually a procedural fan, I have to admit that I was somewhat perplexed by Dark Blue.

On the one hand, I really liked how the characters are set up. Dylan McDermott as the mysterious and somber undercover chief is very believable and the supporting cast is pretty solid . On the other hand, I was a little underwhelmed by the lack of originality of the storyline. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a boring story but it was soooo predictable. The idea of an undercover cop who might have been turned is not new and certainly not what I would expect in the pilot episode of a new TNT series.

I expect that some folks will like this formula and some won’t. However, I am hopeful that there will be more compelling stories down the line and the show will move away from any cliches that we typically see from unoriginal crime dramas. Just so that we are clear, here is a short list of storylines that I consider to be cliches:

- An undercover cop is in too deep and has turned rogue (Hmmm, what does that remind me of?)
- The new rookie girl cop is going undercover as a prostitute and then her backup is suddenly unavailable, so she has to fend for herself. (Seriously this story has to die a slow death)
- One of the team members is suspected of murder and is being harassed by Internal Affairs, only to turn out that they were innocent all along (oh please save us from that one)
- An undercover cop is married and is also having an affair with a girl who doesn’t know that he is a cop. (I think that we might be on the bubble on this one since there were some hints of that in the pilot episode)
- An undercover cop starts doing dope to prove to some bad guys that he is not a cop and suddenly gets hooked to the dope (But he can handle it of course)

I can go on but you get the point.

While Dark Blue doesn’t suffer of most of these cliches, I am hoping that the great casting and stronger plots will save it from them. Fingers Crossed. I’ll be watching for more.

You can watch a sneak peek of Dark Blue here.