A Man. And His Blog.

After all the critics I’ve read for this show, and after the fact that FOX promoted it heavily during the Super Bowl, I was expecting more from it. And maybe it was a mistake to expect anything from a network television show nowadays, since every show either seems to flop in ratings and gets cancelled (LONE STAR and MY GENERATION), or the hype around the show doesn’t justify the quality of it (THE EVENT, maybe NO ORDINARY FAMILY, and definitely THE EVENT. And don’t forget THE CAPE. Did I mention THE EVENT?). After 45 minutes of the pilot on Monday night, I found myself unpleased with it. I’ve read that THE CHICAGO CODE is THE WIRE in light; I’ve read that THE CHICAGO CODE is the stripped-down network version of THE SHIELD. Unfortunately I haven’t found any kind of similarities between those three shows. Which kinda made THE CHICAGO CODE more dull, than it is and how I didn’t want to see the show at the end.

That doesn’t mean that the pilot episode was all bad. I liked the characters, I liked the overall arc about the corruption (though the pilot completely failed in prepping this arc for the series in this episode), and of course I liked the fact that the series is shot on location. Every TV show has some good points with me, when the city of the action is actually the city, which the series is produced in (that’s why you all should love and adore a show like EARLY EDITION). But that didn’t help much in this case.

I was missing some elements in the pilot. First of all, the fact that Teresa (Jennifer Beals) is the first female superintendent in Chicago. The episode could have done something more with it than just the typical “She’s here for six months, and won’t last another six”. Instead she was just one of those good-hearted persons in the force, who wants to kill the corruption of her city. And of course she has some minor friends in the force, who support her work, like detective Jarek Wysocki (Jason Clarke), who is something of a clichéd character and the fact that he is probably one of the greatest cops in the department, and Shawn Ryan doesn’t hesitate to show it here. Moreover, the quite partner Caleb Evers (Matt Lauria) can’t be missed, as well as a family storyline involving Jarek’s ex-wife and secret sex buddy Dina (Amy Price-Francis) and son, his niece Vonda (Devin Kelley), who is a rookie cop, and even her partner. Together with Teresa’s undercover cop Liam (Billy Lush), it could be a great pool of characters, and though the pilot showed its multidimensional characters, there were nothing but stereotypes – which was for me not enough to like them from the start. No, instead Teresa comes over very cold, which didn’t change after she was shot; Jarek is too much of an intelligent hard-ass, which I can’t like at the beginning, and even the “big villain” of the series, Patrick Gibbons (Delroy Lindo), comes off with holes in his character development. And that was the biggest mistake of the pilot: It wanted to sell a big player as a character in the corruption arc, but it didn’t do more than just teasing his enemy status, and telling over and over that Gibbons is behind the murder in Grant Park.

The second problem I’ve had with the problem: the voiceovers. They didn’t just feel like voiceovers (I always thought it was some sort of prelaps to the next scene, until I realized they were voiceovers), but they really felt out of place. I didn’t need the 20 seconds of Teresa as a child, where her father paid off all the good and bad guys; I didn’t need the 5-second flashback of Vonda telling me that she lost her father and is now in care of her uncle. The only interesting part of the voiceovers was Antonio’s (Manny Montana) – and only because the scene, where he and Teresa got shot, was surprising and interesting, with Antonio’s voiceover suddenly stopping and not finishing his share of the story. I just hope the voiceovers were included to introduce the characters (which wasn’t much necessary) and won’t be repeated for the next couple of episodes.

Other than that, the pilot was solid network entertainment. I just can’t see the greatness in it yet, and why the series deserved all the high praises as the “best new television show this year” (which is still TERRIERS, btw.). It has the quality to become the best new network show this year, but the pilot didn’t manage to bring THE CHICAGO CODE this title after 45 minutes. And I still think that the networks should order less crime and cop shows. How about some of the science fiction everybody is talking about? This genre is a dying breed on network television, and cop shows seem to become worse with every year (I’m looking at you, DETROIT 1-8-7).

A not-so-great pilot, which could start a promising and great series. But for now, I’m underwhelmed. 6.5/10

Doing their investigating stuff: Caleb and Jarek

Having an emotional outbreak: superintendent Teresa Colvin