In last night's episode on CBS, "FBI" began to showcase Dick Wolf's old magic.
There was none of the tricky kind of shocking opening. The first episode featured a whole bunch of people falling dead after consuming poisoned salad.
Instead, there was a mild scene of a U.S. Senator giving a stump speech.
On the side was his beaming wife.
Then they returned to their McMansion.
However, when they went into the baby's room, simultaneously arrived an email labeling the Senator a liar and demanding a million bucks ransom. Obviously, the house was being e-monitored. The device, it turned out, was in the eye of a teddy bear.
In the place of sensationalism was Wolf's talent in creating a compelling whodunit, with caring law enforcement pulling out all stops to identify the miscreant or miscreants. In this case, there were two main partners supported by a band of thugs.
A brilliant touch was the character from the rough and tumble neighborhood where the Senator has grown up, earned a bundle in construction, and then cleaned up his act. At first the persona of that character was the glad-hander, played well.
He was the bull-shitter who is a stock presence in decaying urban areas. Such protective coloring usually functions to position and package that guy as harmless. Meanwhile, one day the neighborhood wakes up and he's gone with all the church's money.
Then, toward the end of the episode emerged the facial expressions and body language of a man filled with rage and resentment. Among his grievances was that the Senator did not take his call when his son had been arrested for drugs. Soon after, the son committed suicide in his prison cell.
So, yes, the buddy from the old neighborhood was that really bad guy.
Was it corny that the little girl was still alive? After all, it was dangerous to the really bad guy's team to retain the child.
But alive she was found.
The Senator's marriage survived the outing of an affair.
And the happy ending triggered the beginning of bonding among the agents.
However, it looks like it will be a long time before the kinds of relationships develop in the unit which had been Wolf's signature creation on "Law & Order SVU."
Hunch: "FBI" will have a second season.
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