First Impressions: CIA (CBS)

CIA “Directed Energy”
Created by Dick Wolf, David Hudgins, Nicole Perlman, David Chasteen, and Warren Leight
Written by Mike Weiss
Directed by Ken Girotti
Airs Mondays at 10pm ET on CBS

Back in the mid 2010s, we didn’t realize how good we had it; as the flagship Law and Order and CSI series floundered and sputtered, the procedural drama shifted, to be less about instruments of institutions, for the Savant Drama. Yeah, it got repetitive – from The Mentalist to Unforgettable to Scorpion to Elementary – but that shift offered a much more diverse, even occasionally eclectic (like Limitless, which I’ll get back to reviewing soon) array of series. At times, that new approach to the formula even became something beautiful; though it took a two dozen shows like Numb3rs to get one Hannibal, networks were still tossing out series like Person of Interest, Grimm – and even latter-era series like Evil, though the latter admittedly came during the genre’s last grasp.

Some of this Savant Syndrome has persisted through the network procedural, but it’s mostly been relegated to medical series like Best Medicine, Brilliant Minds, The Resident, or God forbid, The Good Doctor – and those are more byproducts of something like House, M.D. than being inspired by the “cop and rescue” genre. In recent years, there’s been a noticeable shift back to featuring institutions over individuals, presenting bland and blander casts in blander and blander series – which has increasingly become an excuse to needlessly franchise everything into the ground, from the One Chicago line, 9-1-1, the re-emerging Law & Order universe (somehow back up to three shows), and everyone’s favorite copaganda universe, the FBI series – which gains another milquetoast, easily forgettable series in its growing mini-universe, with the latest Dick Wolf co-created spinoff, CIA.

CIA is, at most, an unfortunate waste of Tom Ellis, whose last long-running series, Lucifer, offered one of the best examples aforementioned special, quirky little twists on the procedural in the 2010s (and also, one of the best cross-network cameos of recent memory, in The CW’s Arrow-verse Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover) across its six-season run on Fox, and later, Netflix. On CIA, Ellis slips effortlessly into the Wolf-ian world of CBS’s FBI series – which I’ve not experienced much of, but if the brief, bookending lifeless cameos by main series star Jeremy Sisto in “Directed Energy” is any indication, CIA‘s thoroughly middling, by-the-numbers approach is going to quickly join FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International on the sidelines (though those spinoffs somehow ran for five and four seasons, respectively).

All the personality Ellis was offered as the titular Lucifer is completely snuffed out by the complete lack of energy and ingenuity that drives the heart of “Directed Energy”, which begins with a rather unsettling scene (an urban take on Havana syndrome, of sorts) and then proceeds with the most boring, straightforward investigative pilot of recent memory. Ellis’s Colin Glass is purported to be a gruff individualist, a personality trait that only comes in the few scenes he shares with his new partner, Bill Goodman (yes, Goodman), a role to which Nick Gehlfuss brings an equal lack of energy. Glass does what he thinks works, Goodman gets mildly annoyed by following the rules… it’s a tired dynamic, and one CIA isn’t really even interested in trying to make intriguing; the two trade a couple incredibly lame, soft barbs at each other, solve a case with an incredibly straight narrative thoroughline (the biggest twist is a dude on a motorcycle who fires three shots at the pair and their CI) that brings about precisely zero personality from its leads – and can’t even generate a pulse for the supposed dramatic parts of its pilot episode, immediately dooming this show to be 42 minutes of mindless background noise to doom scroll to.

CIA can’t even stop licking boots long enough to commit itself to the one half-interesting, thoroughly cliche line that’s tossed in halfway through the episode: “we don’t see color – everything we do is gray.” “Directed Energy” can’t even engage with this idea; the whole plot involves an arms dealer from Venezuela running around New York, a CI who is bipolar for no apparent reason – and in my favorite moment, a chase scene that is literally Ellis slowly walking down a side street. It’s hilarious thin, and seemingly disinterested in any of the questions that would make this an inherently interesting premise (law enforcement dudes measuring dicks and clearance levels, commenting on each other’s hypocritical, self-serving policies about privacy and honesty) – even its attempt at the end to serialize the show around a supposed mole feels half-hearted, a tacked-on idea that doesn’t so much operate as an exciting hook for an ongoing series, as it does a creative afterthought laying bare just how heartless the construction of the entire series feels.

There are middling series, there are filler dramas… and then there is CIA, a pilot so lifelessly constructed and delivered, it represents the nadir of a long-standing drama – just with the added pain of wasting someone with such energetic charisma as Ellis, in a thankless, superficial role, on a series with a thoroughly obvious reluctance to engage with anything but the easiest, most streamlined version of itself possible. Even entering with low expectations, it’s hard not to be incredibly underwhelmed by CIA‘s first hour.

Grade: F