Rubicon
There died a myriad
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilisation.
                    -Ezra Pound
AMC appears to have scored another hit with its new series Rubicon. If you haven’t been watching, it might be a good idea to start now and avoid having too far to catch up. This show is similar to Mad Men in one way: it moves at a languid pace.  Some have complained that the pace is too slow and is making the show dull. But for those who like puzzling out the intricate webs of this story as it spins its twisty way through intrigue and murder in the intelligence community, nothing could be more engrossing.  The pacing of this show is deceptive because it can lull you into thinking that not much is happening, but the beauty of the show is in the details and the small clues, which are actually revealed in quite rapid fire fashion.Â
The characters are as complex and compelling as any on television and the acting is top notch, as AMC has staffed the show with recognizable talent from stage and screen. James Badge Dale (previously seen on The Pacific) stars as Will Travers, a guy who just happened to lose his entire family on 9/11. Coping with that tragedy is made no easier when his father-in-law and boss is killed in an apparent accident. Will is tapped to replace him but begins to discover evidence that the accident was not so accidental.
Is anyone watching this show? If so, what are your theories on where the conspiracy is headed?
Posted on August 23, 2010, in Television and tagged AMC, Rubicon. Bookmark the permalink. 25 Comments.
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I love it. It’s kind of X-Files with less action and deeper characters.
Maybe I’ve missed something that went away, but right now just being on AMC is enough for me to give a show at least three or four episodes before bailing. Somebody there has a real knack for picking tv.
So far I really like it. I think I made the comparison last week to 3 Days of the Condor which is apt.
I wish I could guess where the conspiracy is going but I honestly don’t have a clue. I’ve also had some assumptions proven false:
-The guys tracking Will were from API (or at least working for Spengler. I had for some reason assumed they were from another agency or some other sinister org.
-Ingram and Spengler are in cahoots. The cryptic scene last night with Ingram looking on as Spengler ends his meeting with the buy following Will and Daniel Bloom lead me to believe they’re not that close.
Tim, I thought it was shocking when Will decided to follow Bloom and he ended up going to meet Ingram. It seems like all roads lead back to API. Ingram’s later warning to Will is chilling, and seemed almost a confession that similar actions led to David’s death.
I was hoping that Spengler didn’t have anything to do with the conspiracy, but last night dashed those hopes. Now I think Will is being set up as a patsy by Ingram and Spengler.
Slower than Mad Men? I couldn’t make it through the first season of Mad Men due to slowness. I loved the sets and attention to detail and the interesting implied commentaries on social changes, but it was too slow.
I’m not just talking about the overall story arc. It seemed like very little happened in the individual episodes. Their meeting became more boring than my own rather than a window into the advertising world.
I find your description of Rubicon compelling, but if it is slower than Mad Men I’d have to watch it on fast forward.
It’s different than Mad Men, though. Mad Men is basically a soap opera for men.
While Rubicon is certainly paced very slow, there is a lot that goes on. But let’s just say that things don’t happen in leaps, but rather small steps leading from one clue to another.
And like MCQ said, the characters are very compelling. I would at least ask that you hold out for the episode before last (#3?) which gives a lot of insights into some of the minor characters.
I didn’t say it was slower than Mad Men. It has a similar pace, which feels like a walk rather than a run, like most spy thrillers would be.
The pace is the only real complaint I have heard, which is why I mentioned it. To me, once you get into the story, the pacing is a plus rather than a minus.
I watched the first epi, and decided to quit, then went back and I like it. It’s a little too suspenseful for my wife to get into it (that X-files feeling). I’m two episodes behind. If I think of anything insightful after watching those episodes, I’ll leave it here.
Oh, and it’s not slower than Mad Men, or even as slow. I tried about 6 episodes of Mad Men (widely considered the sweet spot) and couldn’t stand the pacing.
I’m still two episodes behind (I finished the second episode last night). I agree that it’s slow. My only real problem with this show is that if I watch it when I usually do my TV/DVR watching (late at night, after the kids go to bed), it makes me sleepy.
That said, it appears to be a very good show in terms of writing and acting. I like that the characters’ quirks are being revealed slowly. I also like the ominous and paranoid tone. And best of all, I love that it defies TV thriller cliches. For example, if this was a network show, all the intelligence analysts would work in a high-tech, dramatically lit war room that looks vaguely like the commander’s deck of a starship. And instead of watching low-res video of a target and his daughter walking through a security gate at Gatwick over and over, the analysts would be all gathered around a big-screen display, where they would be able to find crucial clues by zooming and enhancing a pale reflection in a window across the street.
So, yeah, I agree with MCQ that it’s a great show. But it wouldn’t ruin anything if they did pick up the pace a little bit. (The Miranda Richardson/Sledge Hammer plotline, in particular, moves so slowly that I lose track of anything at all that happens.)
Totally random tangent: does anyone else find it distracting that the main character looks vaguely like the main character on Glee, who is also named Will? The two shows could not be more different, but I keep expecting a sassy, hyper-competitive colleague to walk into Travers’ office, insult him and call him “Schu.”
I think I’m just overly sensitive to this because I have a son named Will, so I’ve been noticing lately just how many characters in TV and the movies lately have that name. (Ditto for my other son, Henry.)
Will and Henry are indeed popular names right now. My wife constantly says how much Will Travers looks like Will Schuester. I don’t think the similarities are all that great, but hearing you say it, maybe they are.
I really enjoyed the first episode online at AMC, but it looks like it’s not streaming any more episodes there or at Hulu. Or anywhere else vaguely legal that I can find.
Any suggestions?
Ben, it looks like Hulu will have some episodes starting soon. AMC had all of them until very recently. I don’t know why they’re not available on AMC anymore, maybe Hulu requires that if they’re going to be on Hulu, the network can’t show them on their site.
Ben S,
iTunes has it for $2.99 an episode in HD.
Ah, there’s the reason.
Next up for AMC:
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
Yep, I was wondering when the zombie series would come out. Looks pretty zombielicious.
My wife is distracted by the similarity between Schu and Travers. Having just finished watching “The Pacific” all I see in Travers is PFC Bob Leckie.
I think the zombie show could be good.
I was rewatching the earlier episodes of Rubicon last night (on Comcast on demand) and was struck by how many clues there are to the involvement of Spangler and Ingram in the deaths of David and Tom Rhumor from a very early stage.
It looks pretty obvious that Will inadvertently discovered that someone associated with API was using crossword puzzles in prominent newspapers as “go orders” for assassinations. Will didn’t know what the pattern in the crossword puzzles meant (at the time), but David did after Will showed it to him.
Given that fact, I still don’t understand why David would go to Ingram and say that he found the pattern in the crossword puzzles. I assume he was trying to protect Will, but why bring it up at all? Why not just tell Will to drop it?
I also don’t understand why a four leaf clover would cause Tom Rhumor to shoot himself, or why Spangler would consider that good news. I think James Wheeler is hiding something but I can’t decide if he’s protecting Tom or if he’s on the side of Spangler. It remains to be seen how The crossword puzzles are connected with Tom’s death, but there’s no doubt that they are.
My guess is that Spangler and Ingram are running some sort of “off the books” assassination service for US government officials who want to take out certain individuals but don’t want to do so through any official channels. API is just a front for this assassination service, and the service uses crossword puzzles to give coded orders to its operatives.
Tom Rhumor was probably involved in the financing or investment end of this service and he objected to something that Spangler and the others were doing. The four leaf clover was probably the indicator that he was going to be killed, so he either killed himself or faked his own death with help from his friend James Wheeler.
David knew what was happening as soon as he saw the crossword puzzles that Will discovered because he had invented the code with Ed years earlier without knowing what it would be used for. He had been investigating what was going on, but when Will brought him the crossword puzzles, he knew the cat was out of the bag and decided to take the fall for Will and leave clues for him to follow in picking up the investigation.
Why David chose to use a complex code to tell Will “They hide in plain sight” is a mystery to me. Seems like you could say that without using a code, because it doesn’t really tell you anything.
Ingram and Spangler made Will the new team leader in order to keep an eye on him because they suspect him of knowing about the assassinations because he’s David’s son-in-law and they knew about David’s investigation.
That’s my theory on the conspiracy so far. What do you think? What am I missing?
I don’t think Ingram and Spangler are as involved together as we think because of two things:
1. Ingram asked SPangler if he had all of the loose ends tied-up and Spangler replied in the affirmative, keeping Ingram out of the loop a bit.
2. The meeting Spangler had with the guy tailing Will (with Bloom) present was done without Ingram though Ingram was watching from a distance almost in a spying fashion.
Not sure what exactly to make of all of this.
I agree there’s something weird going on there. Don’t know what yet.
I’m deliberately not reading the last few comments because I’m behind a couple episodes still.
I watched ep. 3 last night. I like this show a lot, but still didn’t notice any measurable change in the very slow pacing. It gave me a semi-epiphany: this show is the anti-”24.” For a TV program that is ostensibly set in the same genre, “Rubicon” could not be any more different than the world of Jack Bauer. That’s definitely a good thing in my mind. It’s almost like someone created this as a rebuttal to “24,” to explain what the world of espionage and counterterrorism acts like in the real world.
I like that description Greg. That’s probably right.
FANTASTIC SHOW!
Now we know it’s good.