Why RUBICON Won't Make It Past Its First Season

Would someone please
shoot at this guy or
something?

Fair warning: Spoilers are rife in the below.

A few weeks ago, AMC sneak-previewed (“snuck previewed”?) the pilot to their upcoming conspiracy thriller series Rubicon.  If you want to get a head-start before the official premiere on August 1, the episode is available online at the AMC site.

Everybody likes a good thriller, and AMC has produced nothing but quality since entering the “scripted” market with Mad Men and Breaking Bad (more on those another time).  So I was rooting for this show.  But what a disappointment.

To explain, a brief summary of the ep:
Will, our hero, cracks codes for a government think-tank, when he stumbles on a cross-word puzzle that may be the key to Something-Big-and-Secret.  He informs his boss, who tells him to ignore it.  Days later, the boss dies in a freak train crash.  Will investigates and finds a series of clues (left by the boss) making him believe the crash was no accident, and that sinister forces are at work.

So far so good.  Sure, I had things to nitpick.  Like, why are there only two women in the entire office?  Who are both 27?  One even has a kid!  When exactly did she have time to get her PHD?  Good grief.

But casual sexism aside, a couple of specific issues stood out, which together reveal problems on a deeper level.

In several scenes, the writers simply don't milk the maximum effect out of a given situation.  For instance, early on it’s necessary to establish that Will’s boss is highly superstitious.  (It’s related to the clues he will leave later.)  How is this achieved?  Will walks into the boss’ office where a broom hangs on the wall.  Strange, right?  The boss recounts how a janitor was sweeping the other night, but accidentally brushed the broom against the boss’ foot.  Apparently this means death (nice foreshadowing), and the only way to undo it is to spit on the broom.  Consequently, the boss bought the broom from the janitor to do just that.  Will laughs, and they move on.

So.  Superstition established, right?  Well…

One of the oldest clichés in screenwriting is “Show, don’t tell.”  It’s a cliché because it’s true.  There is no reason why we the audience couldn’t have seen that run-in with the janitor happen, rather than it just being told to us.  What if Will had walked in at precisely the moment the janitor hit the boss’ foot?  We could have witnessed the boss haggle for the broom – knowing he’s being ridiculous, yet unable to stop himself.  It would have established the same information, but in a visual, fun way.  Instead the “told version” was visually unexciting and cold.  The scene would have been 15 or 20 seconds longer (time is tight in pilots) and yes, you would have had to hire an actor for a day to play the janitor.  But as soon as I saw the scene – or rather, heard it – I was instantly suspicious the writers didn’t know what they were doing.

"Calm down," you may say.  "Why go off like that on one little moment?  So a scene or two could have been more interesting.  So what?"

The scene here is symptomatic of larger problems, that go beyond mere aesthetics.  If we had seen (and not just heard) the exchange above, my bet is we’d have liked the boss more.  In fact, I can’t think of a better way to build an emotional connection to the character.  And this connection is needed.  The guy is going to eat it 15 minutes later, and we’re supposed to care about that – or at least understand why Will-the-hero does.  And I didn’t, partly at least because of that missed opportunity.  Rather than us feeling Will’s grief and cheering him on to catch the boss-murdering bastards, we end up having to accept that something is being done for purposes of plot.  That’s can't have been the reaction the show’s creators wanted us to have.  Not showing that janitor-exchange had a real ripple-effect, felt way beyond the scene itself.

...

But that’s not the worst of it.  A friend of mine once joked (about a different movie): “I like a little more suspense in my suspense thrillers.”  It sounds almost silly to say, but thrillers should be… thrilling.  Seems logical enough.

How is this done?  9 out of 10 screenwriters would say: “Put the hero in jeopardy.”  In thrillers, we want to see the hero in danger of imminent death, or – at the very least – great physical harm.  The very cornerstone of the genre is the audience wondering how the heck the hero will get out of some sticky situation with his life intact.

There are exceptions.  The current BBC Agatha Christie adaptations for instance.  We don’t expect anyone to try to bump off Ms. Marple or Poirot (though that actually does happen once in a blue moon).  But I’d argue that those aren’t true thrillers, but more what’s in the novel world called “cozies” – i.e., stories designed to be cozy and comfortable, where we know up front nothing really bad will happen to the hero.

And that's Rubicon's biggest problem: At no time in the entire pilot is Will ever in any danger whatsoever!

His boss dies, yes, but Will isn’t on the train with him.  And yes, there is a sequence where a shady guy watches him on a deserted train-platform.  But Will doesn’t look particularly bothered by it, he hardly notices, and the guy slinks away without doing anything.  In fact, the scariest moment in the whole thing is when Will gets promoted and is handed a new access-card.  Shudder.

…

Maybe Rubicon had all the above elements at some point, but they got lost in development and re-writes.  Who knows.  TV pilots are notoriously difficult.  In 47 minutes, they have to present the key arc of the story to come and set up some characters the audience will care about enough to tune in next week.  That’s a tall order.  Which is why most pilots (and even initial few episodes) tend to focus on plot rather than character – simply to say “look how exciting this show is” and draw people in that way.  Lost is a prime example.  A bunch of cool stuff happened in the first few episodes, but it wasn’t until episode 4 that we got the first great character moment: When we learned that Locke had been in a wheelchair. … But I digress.

I’m saying I understand the job is tough.  But the mistakes here (a no-thrills thriller without emotional stakes) aren’t just mistakes.  They’re beginner mistakes!  I hope I’m wrong – I’ve been before – but I’ll go out on a limb (my first on this blog) and make a prediction:

Unless the above issues are addressed quickly, Rubicon will get canceled after its first season.

And if that happens there’ll be one reason.  It was the script, stupid.