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wood-tongued spooks
Slick, fast-paced fantasy only hurts when they talk
By Elizabeth White
The last thing primetime needs is another cop show, and that works in favor of NBC’s "UC: Undercover."
"UC" is more of a "Mission Impossible" fantasy.
The Justice Department’s elite undercover team has a seemingly limitless budget, which it spends on fast cars, nifty surveillance gadgets and fancy costumes for the agents.
The crimes that drive the plot are typically secondary to the style in which the undercover team gets to solve the case.
The only thing keeping "UC" from being entirely a sleek spy show is that the undercover agents bust run-of-the-mill drug dealers and bank robbers, rather than play baccarat for the nuclear secrets of France.
The advantage is that "UC" is able to focus on its more interesting team members instead of developing convoluted international plots.
This allows "UC" to quickly establish its male and female leads, Jake Shaw (Jon Seda) and Alex Cross (Vera Farmiga), as complex and skillful liars.
Their undercover scenes are suspenseful, and when their characters return to being cops, the actors deftly show traces of the rough transition between criminal and cop.
"UC" underscores this point by quickly cutting back and forth between criminal and police scenes, showing how the two groups, the cops and the bad guys, must think alike in order to stay ahead of one another.
All of that is enough to make "UC" a fast-paced and enjoyable hour, with characters who have the potential to show deeper emotional complexity.
But "UC’s" emphasis on style over substance comes at a price.
The dialogue is particularly awful, often bordering on the same trite one-liners found in action blockbusters. It is never worse than when it attempts to explore the personal problems of its macho cop characters.
The show is at its best when the characters are pretending to be other people, usually ones who don’t talk much.
The show’s editing also frequently veers into the self-consciously stylish, the camera jerking around and turning on a slant to the beat of rock music, as if "UC" were a half-hour program on MTV.
In a prime example, the show’s trademark move for Shaw is a slow-motion pulling of two guns from his overcoat that looks like self-parody by the second episode.
So far, audiences haven’t been very forgiving of such flaws, especially against the tough competition at 10 p.m. of "The Practice" on ABC.
In its second outing on Sunday, "UC" dropped over 20 percent in both its household and adult 18-49 rating from its premiere episode, and the show lost 28 percent of "Law and Order: Criminal Intent’s" lead-in audience.
"The Practice," meanwhile, nearly doubled "UC’s" ratings on Sunday.
"UC" is also hurt by the presence of "Alias" on Sunday night. The ABC show is more stylish, much more intelligent, and will be the viewer’s choice for an action-filled drama on the night.
"UC’s" only hope for success--a slight one at best--is that the audience's appetite for such shows expands to two hours on Sunday nights.
October 9, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Elizabeth White is a staff writer for Media Life.
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