The truth is out there, man.
Review by Brandon Wolfe
David Duchovny has always possessed a unique presence for a star. Charismatic while perpetually monotone, funny while dry as the Sahara, Duchovny’s quirkiness and ability to engage are not impeded by his clinical, manbot exterior. On The X-Files, Duchovny found the perfect conduit for his skills in Fox Mulder, a character who, like Duchovny, had a square outer layer incongruously concealing the eccentric charmer underneath. That this suit-wearing stiff with the Ben Stein vocal inflection could also be a crackpot who believes in every paranormal anomaly under the sun summed up the strange juxtaposition inherent to the actor, that surprisingly smooth marriage of rigid and wild.
In Aquarius, the new NBC crime series, Duchovny is handed a character that isn’t nearly as tailored to him as Mulder. He plays the awkwardly named Detective Sam Hodiak, a no-nonsense brute of a cop working the beat in 1967 Los Angeles. And though Duchovny’s Joe Friday qualities always fit neatly into the portrayal of a law enforcement official, Hodiak doesn’t offer the actor much room to allow his offbeat side to breathe. Hodiak, you see, kind of IS the sort of square that Mulder only seemed to be at a passing glance. He has no patience for longhairs, his ideas about race relations could use some work and his haircut is all right angles. He’s also a man totally at ease with beating a confession out of a suspect, which requires Duchovny, a man of intellect far more than brawn, to essay an imposing tough guy, which isn’t his strong suit.
The crux of the story is this: Hodiak is called up by his ex-girlfriend (Michaela McManus) to locate her missing teenage daughter Emma (Emma Dumont), who ran off with her sorta-boyfriend one night and, after finding the young man cheating (in a concealed flash of fellatio that actually did feel a bit daring for NBC), she finds herself being seduced by the poetic-nonsense-spouting Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony) and brought into his secret harem. Hodiak, in his investigation, crosses paths with young undercover narcotics officer Brian Shafe (Grey Damon), whose age-appropriateness and mop-top the older cop sees as a key advantage for infiltrating the hippie subculture that a square-jawed conservative like him could never walk among freely.
Aquarius drops us into a ‘60s landscape that never feels fully authentic. The way everyone speaks and looks has an illegitimate quality where you are always fully aware that these are contemporary people playing dress-up (I mean, maybe people in the late ‘60s were saying things like “He gets more ass than a Ferris wheel,” but I tend to doubt it). To combat this weakness, Aquarius leans heavily on the soundtrack, pumping in so many ‘60s hits that I fear they will run out of tunes for the entire decade by Episode 8. To give a sense of how obvious Aquarius’ musical choices are, the show waits less than ten minutes to bust out Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” that ultimate anthem of “this is the 1960s” flower-power. By the time Manson bloodies up a man to the accompaniment of The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer,” the cultural signifiers have grown so blatant that you might as well be listening to K-Tel’s Sounds of the ‘60s.
The cast is uniformly blah as well. Damon as Shafe is a nondescript pretty boy whose chemistry with Duchovny is in no danger of reaching Scully levels (and the fact that so many other characters pop up with similar hair and beards occasionally gets confusing). Anthony’s Manson sure says Manson-sounding things, but never exudes the ominous nor charismatic qualities that one would expect any incarnation of Charles Manson to possess. Nobody else in the cast makes enough of an impression to bear mentioning.
That pretty much leaves Duchovny as the only person in Aquarius worth watching. While the character isn’t anything special – and the issues surrounding his AWOL military son and estranged wife in the second hour of the premiere are dead on arrival – occasionally the actor gives a sarcastic line that Duchovnian spin that shows he’s still got it. And there are some faintly intriguing hints in that second hour of Hodiak’s unscrupulousness in getting confessions out of suspects that affords the character some modest bite. I also enjoyed how Hodiak can never remember how to read suspects their Miranda rights, though that is perhaps solely due to it reminding me of Channing Tatum’s similar quandary in 21 Jump Street.
Aquarius has the distinction of being the first network series to have its entire first season released immediately online and On Demand, in an attempt by NBC to dip into the Netflix binge-watching paradigm that’s all the rage these days. This is an interesting experiment, but I tend to think it will be the only thing history will remember about the series. There’s nothing in these first two hours that makes a viewer hungry to tear straight into Episode 3 and beyond. Its ‘60s trappings and the presence of Manson as the show’s overarching Big Bad (which presents a problem as Manson was, you know, a real person who committed real crimes, and whose documented history threatens to straightjacket the series unless it pulls some Inglourious Basterds-level revisionism) are the only things that distinguish it from any other network cop procedural. Some adult content and bleeped profanities are present to give the show some mild premium-cable edge, but to little effect. David Duchovny is a terrific actor, but his gifts find little purchase here. Fortunately, he still has Mulder waiting in the wings.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJohnFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe at @BrandonTheWolfe.
Comments