Not All Conspiracies Are Theories

I am certainly not one of those pretentious critics who thinks AMC programming is the greatest thing to hit television since the invention of color. Don Draper is a douchebag and there is no entertainment value in hearing the dad from Malcolm in the Middle cough a hundred times in a forty-two minute episode. Yet I found their third try at a series (which is always the charm) engrossing.

When the network schedules where unveiled back in May, many thought it would be The Event that would take the torch from the retiring Lost and 24, but it was Rubicon that beat the show to it with a deep conspiracy so detailed you probably should have been taking note.

The concept was benign enough to start (or as benign as a show that started out with two deaths can be) focusing on an analyst tasked to keep tabs on a potential terrorist as he reeks havoc in the eastern hemisphere. Jack Bower Will Travers is not. But if 24 was a shoot ‘em up video game, Rubicon was a thinking man’s chess game of a television show.

Which may have also been the shows biggest weakness in that, where chess players stare at the board for minutes at a time, the show sometimes took way too long to unravel its plot. The two main leads to half the season before even meeting and even then it was a while before they could be considered intertwined.

But when Will starting putting two and two together, Rubicon kicked into high gear with edge of the seat thrills that rivaled any action packed show. Even though it was quite obvious that everything would tie together neatly by the end (there are rarely coincidences in television shows like this) it was fun to watch Will piece everything together and go deeper into paranoia with every layer he pulled back.

If Will was the brains of the show, his co workers were the heart. His trio of underlings could always lighten the tension of the main plot between Miles’ squirreliness, Tanya’s drug addledness (who saw her as a relationship writer?), and punching bag Grant. And who figured Cale as the show’s white hat, if there is a second season we really need to know more of his back story.

In the end, Will found the smoking gun that linked Spangler to the terrorist plot with plenty of twists along the way. I never saw the connection between Tom and David coming, although how does Will not see the DVD in her hand and she collapse. That better show up in a second season. Also didn’t see Will’s neighbor from across the way as one of the good guys, I long suspected her being placed in that apartment by the antagonist and was quite shocked when Katherine came knocking on her door. And we learn (I think) the purpose of the four-leaf clover, it is a message that your time on this Earth is coming to a close.

Which brings us to a potential of a second season. Will Truxton take his own life like previous four-leaf clover owners (his daring of Will to publish his story leads me to believe so)? What was the connection between Tom and David? How does the neighbor fit into all of this? It seems like there is an underground network working against Atlas MacDowell. Is Cale part of the network, and if there is one, how far down does it go? Here’s hoping they get to answer them.

Rubicon gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.