Rubicon, one of AMC's first generation of original series from 2010 was based around the political thrillers of the 1970's including "The Parallax View". One of the many complaints about the series was a distinct lack of action. The episodic arcs are punctuated by action...but sudden action. There are no fight scenes, no struggles involving hand to hand combat. In fact most *action* happens off screen. The suspense is in the mundane. Walking to work, office politics and general issues of trust and the human relationships. The series is meant to address the issues of the feeding cycle of private and public and the use of intelligence for private profit reasons and the lengths that people will go to protect the moneyed interests.
Some thought the plot was slow to develop but to me the tediousness of the plot adds to the suspense and the sense of unease and stress. The uncovering of a conspiracy is difficult and the series portrays the difficulties involved especially as part of a private contractor in the intelligence division. The human relationship drama is the core of it all and the series concentrates on that. There are no action heroes...that isn't this story. The internal conflict and drama isn't overwrought like in shows such as SCANDAL and the like.
The personalities never quite get enough time to develop where the viewer is invested in the characters. This is of course the horror of the mundane...fairly Kafkaesque with the frustrations of the analysis teams and the layers of bureaucracy and territorial gate keepers that frustrate and foil attempts at genuine good will and effort.
The show isn't tedious to me, rather it is deep and thoughtful. I would say that most people don't have the attention span or curiosity intellectually to even desire to process all that goes on. Most dramas are filled with actors being large hams (a la nicholas cage). They are volatile, flawed in grossly obvious ways and have skills that accentuate their vulnerabilities. In Rubicon the characters give off the initial appearance of being relatively well adjusted...slightly distracted but otherwise stable. Sure they have some self-destructive tendencies (pomposity, drinking/drug related issues, social preoccupation, or lack of self confidence) but their redeeming qualities are also mundane. They care about their jobs, they work hard and they suffer daily of the same agonizing things that are common to anyone else in a stressful occupation with failing relationships and they are consumed by it. That same consumption is part of their internal drive to exceed and analyze. They don't ham it up on screen. There is some light situation comedy with the big boss having his smoke filter fan die so he has to crack a window. Even the man at the top has his addiction that he needs to satisfy...his vulnerability. Not much is made of it, but in the intelligence world personal habits are a good thing to catalog.
The show deserved a second season perhaps with the main character starting at the CIA or NSA proper as the head of some international desk. The plot could have extended into international conglomerates and even more shadowy market manipulations. The rabbit hole is lovely dark and deep...On top of it by the third season we could return to the good ole US of A for a look at election season politics and how that shows up in intelligence analysis. Much could be made of think-tanks, NGO's (election observers) and various domestic extremists.
Sadly again this requires of the viewer a good attention span and focus. The plots are thoughtful rather than overstated and the drama is written on the character's faces rather than spoken aloud. It is about what goes unsaid more than what is said and I have a feeling that the show needed something more to hook the viewer. The drama might have appeared to be too mundane or the cracks didn't show enough. The truth is that people hide their cracks...even the most mentally disturbed people can put on a convincing facade for short periods so when someone in a drama melts down it makes no sense unless the pressure is immediate and acute. And the realism behind Rubicon delivers too little in the way of hammed up drama because no one is passing the idiot ball. Everyone is a rational actor and isn't screwing up left and right simply due to overwrought character flaws.
Shows like Revenge and Scandal are overwrought hammed up shows. And we see they get many many seasons and people are engrossed in these fantastical characters. Show them a real person with a deep and thoughtful personality (perhaps with a quirk of melancholy or pensiveness) and you get a shrug of apathy. Quite sad. Rubicon deserves another go now four years later.
