Rubicon on AMC

I get the impression that some people are not enjoying it that much, but this show is right in my wheelhouse. I love 70s/80s slow-burning espionage films, spy thrillers ... the main guy bugs me a little, and some of the character choices and dialogue are a little cute for my tastes, but overall I am definitely on board. Anyone else?

whats it all about

didn't catch last night's. the first two were just....too slow. also the dialogue seems to be mixed really low so I had a hard time hearing what anyone was saying.

The series centers around an intelligence analyst at a national think tank who discovers that he may be working with members of a secret society that manipulates world events on a grand scale.

I love slow!

i think they are making a mistake by frontloading all the personal problems of these tired analysts and doling out the conspiracy codebreaking stuff one clue per episode. it's just not a good use of the first three hours of a series.

i guess i'm curious but i don't see this surviving tbh

Sort of wonder if David Simon's still going to do his CIA series after this.

So far I'm enjoying it. Last night I was sure we were going to learn the neurotic analyst was that way because someone had kidnapped his wife and child. On one hand, bad that it was actually just another cliche, but I guess that was better than guessing it right off

I think there pretty much has to be one series of this ilk going on all the time, so this has the niche to itself, right?

Despite wanting very badly to like this (it's really nicely shot, and definitely has that Pakula/Redford/lolseventies vibe down) the story and characters just aren't pulling me in yet. Nice to see Clay Davis at the end there though. Sheeeeit.

I liked the pilot quite a bit and have the other two episodes sitting on my laptop right now. Crossing my fingers that the rest of the show can hold up.

It seemed very State of Play (insert BBC conspiracy thriller of your choice) to me from the pilot. I'm going to keep at it.

Apparently the ratings have been pretty bad so far.

'big conspiracy' shows are kind of boring imho

They tend to work better as mini-series def.

i think i've just had my fill after watching x-files, lost, etc just slowly circle the drain

like you said, if there's a finite end in site, there's potensh, but if it's a 'regular show' and they just want to drag it out forever... lame

Show is better on mute.

Yeah I think a lot depends on how well drawn the conspiracy is. The big problem with the two shows you mention is that the creators were creating (or at least heavily adding to) the conspiracy as it went along... which is never a good idea.

Cosign the too much emphasis on cliché character problems, but overall i'm really loving it. I dig its atmosphere.

But yeah, not much hope for it surviving since they've got the Walking Dead as well as (I think) two other series coming around.

are aliens going to show up on this? I have the distinct feeling that they aren't. which makes me care less.

the opening scene was real cliche w/guy gazing at his family then slowly raising the revolver - and it had corny score - as far as i got - prob give it a shot tho - luv spy shit

am behind on this, but just watched the first two episodes...I'm loving it. Codes and conspiracies and spies and whatnot, I'm eating it up with a spoon. I don't mind the character cliches, I'm glad so far it hasn't distracted too much from the overall mystery of what's going on. I'm enjoying the way it's playing out so far. I mean, granted early days, but I'm a total nerd for this stuff.

Hm.. Just watched episode four, which was the episode that was supposed to hook me, according to the NPR (p)review that got me interested. But it was all just context -- setting up the environment, fleshing out (not very successfully) some of the secondary characters. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but now I am starting to feel it's too slow as well. We need a big reveal or a murder or something.

SO BORING

and the bad guys are also SO BORING

a show like this needs to have the feeling of a great, dark secret smarter-than-you conspiracy, not boring bumbling bullshit. spangler? please.

i've only made it through the first two episodes. they were okay, but...

1) why so ugly? muted browns and blues and greys? works well in a period piece a la 'the informer' but not as an overall 'look' for the show. also the characters are supposed to look 'gritty,' i guess, but they just look sort of... haggard

2) blah blah blah conspiracy is too wide. state of play, life on mars, x-files, twin peaks, whatever 'secret guys' show you can think of had a good, solid 'hook.' i seriously don't care about any of the mysteries on this show. if they were – hell – looking for fucking atlantis, or discovering a star chamber in the U.N. or whatever i might be interested. as it is, however, i am just kinda bored. veronica mars had mysteries that were way better than this.

3) character clichés over the top.

the conspiracy looks like it's supposed to be too 'realistic' to even be interesting. like, rich white guys who want to control everything? say it ain't so. for the dead father-figure dude to have left all of these specific clues all over the secret at issue should be a little wilder.

i'm basically done with this, there's too much dead space. how many seconds of my life have gone by watching all of these pregnant reaction shots to nothing much at all.

I don't feel strongly about the show either way yet, but I also like most of the things people are complaining about (the color scheme, the score, the slow pacing). Seems like all the other conspiracy shows these days lean sci-fi, so imo it's kinda refreshing to have something more realistic where you still don't really know yet what direction it's headed in.

also it bears mentioning that this Jessica Collins lady is ridiculously hot

yes she is a freaky moonface looking individual and i'm into it

like you said, if there's a finite end in site, there's potensh, but if it's a 'regular show' and they just want to drag it out forever... lame

― snooki stackhouse (s1ocki), Tuesday, August 10, 2010 6:39 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hate you so much for "potensh"

Ed's 'what is the narrative' rant felt pretty meta. Seems to be picking up though.

can't be bothered wit this now, it just lost me after the second episode, can't make myself go back.

it's coming together maybe. it's certainly becoming more enjoyable.

I'm going to give the show until the end of the season. I think it's earned that much. But it's true that not much has happened so far.

Uh, it's just a miniseries I think.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/Rubicon/about

Even for AMC, it's gotten poor ratings, I'd be surprised if it gets renewed. But I've been wrong before.

I wonder how it's doing compared to Season 1 of Mad Men.

I tried to look that up yesterday but to no avail. If they didn't have more series already underway than I think it might have had a chance.

Jim Emerson finds a parable about film criticism in everthing

Mitya otm above re ep 4 being a bit nothingy given how many previews said that it was the one to hook people in. Do find the bad guys quite interesting though, between Ingram's costco-Kevin Spaceyisms and Spengler's demented elderly Bobcat Goldthwaite routine they're a truckload of fun to watch.

The team of analysts just bore the shit out of me though. They're too central casting: Kooky alcochick, obnoxious stuffedshirt and especialy preoccupied genius with the patchy beard need to gtf pronto.

To echo pretty much everyone else on the thread, I'm sticking with it - but I don't know for how long.

The team of analysts just bore the shit out of me though.

Yeah, they feel pretty stock so far. I think beignet guy has the most potential of the three of them. Poor man's John Ritter and drunkie are pretty boring.

I like the ideas around the research team (nerds in a room determining assassinations and grappling with the consequences) more than the execution.

i think it makes sense that the fourth episode would have been touted as a key one, but on the basis of some of the posts in this thread it sounds like people might be expecting interest from the wrong places.

when spengler (with a kind of passion unexpected by everyone in the room, and apparently not being disingenuous) gives his little speech to the nsc partway through episode four, i think it's meant to underscore a lot of the dramatic themes that had slowly been being put in place through the first four episodes. he tries, and apparently succeeds, selling them on the value of his agency on the basis of the off-kilter sounding idea that it's best if intelligence work proceeds—all on the same side, within the u.s. government—on the basis of transactions between people who deliberately have no relationships to one another. (which on the face of it is a little weird when one agency is trying to get in the good graces of those others, but i guess that's why it was important for him to be able to haul in an analyst they didn't know and point to him in order to demonstrate the fact of compartmentalization.) i couldn't really tell if his little comparison between travers and the general's (?) wife was somehow meant to imply that travers' judgment or objectivity would obviously be intact or not compromised by personal relationship, or maybe just to imply that he would give it to the general straight (regardless of the objective quality of the intel) because of that, as opposed to the wife who was imagined to have all kinds of reasons to flatter or mislead the general unbeknownst to him (even reasons that might have been to his benefit).

then, cut in with the d.c. scenes, we get the team (with assasination virgin who's anxious about it and shown moving from booze to pills) forced to work up a report on whether to assassinate someone, pointedly without travers, and ordered to come to a unanimous recommendation either way. although we see them working and agonizing a bit, mixing a slight bit of professional-competency grist in with some exasperation and expressions of relative jadedness and such, i don't think that stuff was the main draw (which explains why it's not bad that it wasn't this great drawn out moral struggle). i think the drama was meant to be generated mainly by the contrasts between the different zones of compartmentalization, and of the general reactions (mood, etc.) predominant to each one. for the team members, it's a big ordeal, especially for the drunk. when grant goes in to deliver his report he still thinks it's a big deal, but ingram's nonplussed, got his own business, either didn't even take notice of the importance grant attached to the report or affected not to from the start as part of the elevated position he occupies.

then the next morning travers comes in to meet the team strangely chipper—hard to tell from what exactly, since it could be the bit with the secretary, or his success in washington, maybe a bit from his covering over any real details about what went on there, or the moment he shares with spengler after the meeting about 'the separation, the solitude', understood differently now that he's back in the fold and not fumbling to connect with his next-door neighbor who he's 'separated' from in a rudimentary way—and the contrasts between the compartmentalized zones is hit again. they had implied that it was important for travers to be there to make the decision, write the report, and maybe he would have made them more effective (found conclusive evidence to make the decision less agonizing?), but i think there was also some implication that as the more practiced (barely) hand and the relative leader, he would have somehow made it easier to finalize the decision by mediating between the analysts and the higher-ups. but as he comes in late it underscores his matter-of-factness about it being done and distant and out of their hands.

when spengler talks with a bit of wonder in his voice about 'the separation, the solitude', it seems like he's speaking from an analyst's experience of doing the same kind of thing we're shown the low-level analysts or the old mentor doing, where the emphasis is not on the effectiveness of the intelligence work or on its importance at protecting american security or saving lives or whatever, but on the flashes of insight into piles of data and, in particular, puzzles (often literal puzzles and codes) that they seem to accept as making good on the unpleasant, and far more common, stretches of being lost, stuck, etc. (i think it's significant that they choose to depict the intellectual labor that way rather than more literally as grinding through data, building cases, looking for patterns—more often they just find patterns in things that we're not given any possibility of seeing patterns in before they're announced.)

this has the air, perhaps, of being a sign of the dignity or trustworthiness of spengler, since it also has the air of something that travers exhibits earlier on when he's singled out, in lots of lonely scenes, as the one who notices the crossword puzzle code; or the air of something that travers' dead mentor, for now the absent spiritual/moral center of the show, might have appreciated. so i take it that more significant motions in the ongoing drama were generated in the fourth episode than the earlier ones just because it's much more ambiguous now whether we're to take travers' rise in the organization as on the whole good or bad, what it means (to him or us)—in part because we can't even tell what he thinks of it, for example what his reponse is to what he heard from spengler.

it's probably good to note some things that the show doesn't do since that might show by contrast what it's trying to do. there's only very minor use of computers, for example, and none of the information-gathering is covered in real time. the emphasis is on face-to-face meets conducted within a trial-by-pitch or portfolio-assignment framework, and, like i said, sharply compartmentalized from one another (stratified, mainly, though there's always the possibility of there being teams in parallel); so apart from showing action within such compartments the main sources of conflict or dramatic uncertainty will come at the interfaces between the compartments (travers being the main character who travels between the different compartments: his analysts, his office including secretary, his boss, spengler and the nsc, interactions with outside agents) or at moments of their transformation (boss' death, travers' ascension to his role) or compromise (potentially, via the drunk's breakdown, beardo dude's personal problems, grant's envy or kind of aggravated malaise, being sold out by the secretary, though she is at an extra remove from the analysis work). the way the higher-ups have tried to groom the others calls attention not so much to fit-in-to-win conformity as to professional prudence—ingram chides travers about not wearing a tie, spengler recommends a serious briefcase so that people take travers seriously, i.e. so that he's more persuasive in the many social transactions he'll have to perform. and so that's another thing, that so far interactions between people have involved something like normal human reasonability, attempts at being persuasive, at making themselves understood, at getting people to do things in ways that don't immediately try to exploit coercion, blackmail, power differentials in excess of the employer-employee hierarchy. (there was a bit of coercion with ingram and the secretary's informing, but that's why they're marked out as shifty, because we see their willingness to transact on those terms.)

although we see enough about the analysts' deliberation to get roughly why the drunk caved in, i wonder if it's significant that in fact we AREN'T shown what tips her from 'supposed to say yes but i can't', to actually saying yes; we just get a cut to grant trudging in to ingram's office with the envelope. because earlier on in the deliberations, apart from the fact that they jump right into things, apparently working under a relatively well-shared understanding of what goes into deciding to ok an assasination order and sifting through the evidence to decide whether it warranted their decision to do so, there are gaps, again. they're pretty innocuous—i don't mean to suggest anything much by them, they mostly seem to serve to elapse the time—but their effect is to show the decision as in the end one arrived at by a process obscure to us rather than as one having an argument in favor of it (bits of reasons on both sides, but not put out front). this might serve to put the viewer in the viewer's special spot vis-a-vis knowing the characters and being involved in the various compartmentalizations, the most extreme of which would be the viewer's window into travers when depicted as alone (staring off into space, walking, morning coffee). a different espionage show might hit the surveillance theme more centrally, but this one doesn't seem interested in it except in its normal plot-connected uses; not even, so far, as a means for very much heightening of affect in the viewer (as e.g. a bourne movie or any descendant of 'the conversation' might). but dramatically, visually, what it does do a lot of is showing us characters not know much about each other, and show them to us in ways which don't disclose much knowledge of them to us—which would be as spengler says during his centerpiece speech and adds the grace note to with his bit about 'the separation, the solitude'.

oh word

'cisco telepresence'

Am I the only one who thinks this show gets better each week?

halfway through ep9 now - kale is a CIA mole set to sniff out the Atlas-whatever junta. right? things have picked up a bit, but still don't feel the whole thing working enough to write a five paragraph analysis like j. last month. e.g. the nod to three days of the condor this ep was, ok, acknowledge the heritage but poor execution, because as a joke it wasn't funny

thanks cozen

http://i.imgur.com/0H7ej.gif

liking this show more and more. sort of for the same reason I've been enjoying Intelligence. really low key subtle stuff. my one gripe is the drug problem story. Kale fuckin rules.

Great episode tonight!

I really love this show now. It's not longer 'something to do before Mad Men comes on.'

Unfortunately there's no way for it to live up to my expectations of Truxton's face when Will turns up.

yeah, great episode. Still no word on this coming back next year, eh?

Well, waiting until episode 11 to really grab people is probably not the best strategy for getting renewed. Only two more eps to go before this season ends, as far as I understand.

i was grabbed by episode 3!

your complaining doesn't completely make sense given that you've watched at least nine episodes of this show, mitya.

i've watched all 11, in fact, and *i* enjoy the show perfectly well. I also enjoyed Invasion and Twin Peaks and lots of other shows that not "enough" other people have liked. Look at all the people saying "boring" at the top of the thread, or the volume of comments generally (see "3 weeks pass..." above). Just saying I don't think it's going to get renewed, partially because it's been glacially slow.

It won't because of ratings, which is probably because of the glacial pacing. AMC would probably like to renew it.

ok, didn't mean to be touchy. i guess i didn't like your comment about 'five-paragraph analysis' before. i mean, is our culture really so pathetic now that popping off five paragraphs in response to four hours worth of tv is seen as an onerous undertaking, or that people can't bear to spend a few hours on something that doesn't gratify them in the first forty-two minutes? sigh. i may have to become an elitist if this keeps up.

actually, i've been thinking that i would have liked to see the relationship with the neighbor unfold more SLOWLY. it's very weird; but once they take up together it's hard to recall just how weird it is because it progresses rapidly.

this show is good but flawed. it would be a mistake to say there is a lot of nuanced Mad Men type shit going on just because it is slow-paced and involves a lot of scenes that consist of a character staring into space while thinking. I really like the atmosphere, but the story doesn't seem worthy of the time it has taken to discover it. I mean, I'm sure most people figured out what was going on by episode four, so it is a little frustrating to watch this dude trying to put the pieces together. Maybe it would have worked better if they had made it harder for us to figure out. Also, the characters kinda suck. Kale is the one character on this show I would really miss if it got canceled.

yeah, now who is saying that?

didn't mean to be critical, j. just contrasting my own level of inspiration

i agree about the speed of the neighbor relationship (annie parisse! just realized why i recognized her this week), although i guess you could argue that running headlong into a stranger's arms is kind of a normal reaction in this situation (see again 3 days of the condor, yawn). i haven't decided whether we've really seen the last of her or not.

damn, annie parisse!

the pace of the plotting makes sense, i'd just like the texture of their on-screen time to be more leisurely.

at one point he's like, 'i didn't used to be like this', and you're kind of like... when was that?

this show guys.

Bitchen episode.

If this show gets canceled I'm gonna be bummed.

should have started with this ep! not with a guy being hit by a train.

if they wanted to, they're in a position to do a wireish thing where they focus on a different institution but keep the old players around to make for more complex stories in a new season, now that they've spent a season focused on the intelligence analysts.

Arliss Howard is fantastic in this.

Arliss Howard is fantastic in this.

^^^^ on this. Great episode!

Grant: "They have a lot of stuff. How come we don't have stuff?"

I guess this was bound to be somewhat underwhelming, but hoo boy I'm really not happy that its renewal is a long shot.

man, fuckin clay davis

PICK UP THE DVD!

Yeah, yeah. Did he pick up the DVD or not? I couldn't see anything (would someone really not do that in such a situation? I find it hard to believe, especially since it wasn't like he ran off)

I just read that Mad Men's 1st season averaged only about 900k viewers (!). Rubicon gets slightly better numbers than that, so maybe its chances aren't so poor after all?

But Mad Men wasn't leading into Mad Men...

Also true. I'll be v. depressed if this and/or Terriers gets the axe.

Ran across a recent news items that might be of some interest...

HOUSTON -- A four-mile stretch of the Houston Ship Channel remained　closed to marine traffic Monday after a barge slammed into a tower supporting a high-voltage electric transmission line, threatening to topple it into the channel.

Coast Guard officials said a towing vessel named Safety Quest was pushing three barges loaded with scrap metal about 6 a.m. Sunday when it smashed into a Baytown power line, which remained upright only with the support of one of the barges.

Officials said the section from Crystal Bay to the Blackwell Peninsula would remain closed until at least Tuesday night.

The closure means the bulk of the Houston Ship Channel – about 19 miles – will be blocked to incoming traffic.

"The situation is a little bit unstable right now," said Capt. Marcus Woodring. "The lines are sagging and we cannot allow any vessels to pass underneath with the unstable situation and chance of those lines falling in the water."

No injuries were reported, but the six-member boat crew moved to another vessel and to safety.

CenterPoint Energy officials said the power had been shut off to the line because crews had previously been working on a nearby tower. They said no customers had lost electricity following the crash.

Eighteen inbound vessels attempted to get into the port early Tuesday afternoon, and many remained anchored off the coast of Galveston. Twelve outbound commercial ships were also stuck.

The 25-mile waterway is lined by the nation’s biggest complex of petrochemical plants. The Port of Houston ranks first in the nation in foreign waterborne tonnage and imports and second in U.S. export tonnage and total tonnage.

"Anytime you see something like this, you hate it, because it’s affecting people and how they make their money," said Richard Zeno, a tugboat captain who was not involved in the crash but watched the teetering tower as he was fishing with his family Sunday.

Coast Guard officials said the ship channel handles more than $320 million in cargo and crude daily, meaning the Port of Houston could lose about $1 billion if the waterway stayed closed until Tuesday night. On average, between 30 and 40 vessels cross the channel daily. But it would take at least a week for the closure to begin impacting supplies to the numerous area refineries, a situation that would lead to greater economic consequences.

Goddamnit, Walking Dead has been renewed already how about a sign here?

The fact that there's been no word yet gives me...vague...hope?

Cancelled. ;_;

Oh well. I kinda like where it ended anyway.

sorry, "Declined to Renew". :( :( :(

season averages:

Walking Dead (5.03 mil, 2.6 in 18-49)
Mad Men (2.27 mil, 0.7 in 18-49)
Rubicon (1.26 mil, 0.2 in 18-49)

surprised at the Walking Dead showing there

Oh, well. Congrats to the showrunner + cast, they did a fantastic job of redirecting the series' attention and turning it into something v. watchable.

Nice interview with the creators of Rubicon's opening titles: http://www.artofthetitle.com/2012/01/10/rubicon/

I still really miss this show and basically everything about it.

I do too! Really sucks. :-(((

hay guys remember that show with the dude from 'the pacific' and the gay boss and the almighty shadowy cabal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U94litUpZuc

lotta trains too

I liked this show a lot when it was on and then it kinda vanished like AMC didn't even want to admit they'd ever made it, but it's available for purchase on Amazon now.

I've revisited somewhat recently...certain aspects now seem a bit creaky but I still wish this had gotten like 3-4 more seasons