The Inside

Network: Fox; Genre: Crime/Mystery; Content Rating: TV-14 (for strong violence, gore, language and deviant adult and sexual content); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Seasons Reviewed: Complete Series (1 season)

Rebecca Loche (Rachael Nicols) is a gifted criminal profiler who has been recruited by Peter Coyote's Web to be part of an elite Los Angeles FBI team that solves the most horrific and deviant of crimes. The subtle twist here is that instead of being a profiler of the killer, Loche's talent is to profile the victim, under the assumption that with the right bait they can ensnare the killer. Hints are given about a traumatic event in her own childhood, once a kidnapped child herself. Web believes in the rookie. "She has a gift - forged in pain" Coyote tersely barks to convince the team to take her in. The team also including Adam Baldwin ("Firefly") and Katie Finneran, who stole the show in "Wonderfalls" now kept straight and dry here. Jay Harrington ("Coupling") gets saddled with the "I-believe-her" straight-man role that the show goes to when it can't have a women step in to save the day.

With TV now slowly becoming an assembly line for crime/detective shows and each one a dime a dozen, it seems the latest way to differentiate yourself from "Law & Order" and "CSI" is to crank up the violence and gore. This, along with last Fall's "Numb3rs", looks to be the first of several new shows about a team that goes after only "the most brutal and gruesome crimes". I know Fox throws up Viewer Discretion warnings like they're going out of style, but everyone - particularly parental activist groups who somehow got the idea that everything on TV should be tailored to kids - heed it on this one. As "The Shield" is the most brutal show on cable, "The Inside" is the most brutal on network TV. So far.

A 2 episode arc where Coyote is fired and we suspect him to unhinge and compulsively begin his own killing spree marks a high point and shows us how well this show could keep us guessing - and how attached we'd become to the ensemble. Then there is "Everything Nice" (involving a child who gutted a classmate in a gated community) which is downright chilling - and a little manipulative. "Inside" is deadly serious stuff, with Finneran dropping a dry one liner every now and then. I do find it almost comical how quickly and recklessly the team members draw and brandish their guns.

On the surface, there is not much about "The Inside" that breaks the crime series mold. But the show has an all-star pedigree behind it, created by Tim Minear ("Wonderfalls", "Angel") and Howard Gordon ("24") for Fox's favored Imagine Television. Within the framework it is well done. The crimes are inventive and the killers are nasty. There is a thoughtfulness and attention to pace, detail in the unfolding story that we usually don't get in procedure-oriented crime shows. It is dark, slick, stylish, but now show-offish and wickedly entertaining.

What I appreciate most is the care that is taken to unfold the story so that there is time in the 3rd act for a real rollicking climax. When Loche becomes the bait and finds herself in a harrowing, appropriately milked set piece on a subway, drugged in a bathtub or held hostage by a killer's monologue, it takes more than the simple quick-fix shot to the head (that so many other shows tiresomely use) to get her out. Nichols really gets put through the paces here. Let's just say, there is a little hint of David Fincher misogyny coursing through the show. She is quite good. Someone to watch in the future.

Back to the monologue in question, from "Pre-filer". I know it may sound cliché, but when delivered by guest star Michael Emerson (who has played this role perfectly since "The Practice") I will lap it up every time. "Pre-filer" is the best of the lot, featuring a serial killer who hunts potential serial killers. It is just the kind of terrific twist that could have been this show's hallmark.

If this nasty stuff sounds as juicy to you as it was to me, you'll know why I like this show. "The Inside" was part of Fox's "Summer Season" which, to me, always felt inappropriate scheduling given the tone of the show. "The Inside" is a twisted atmospheric thriller best viewed on a cold winter night, tucked under a blanket with the lights off, not in the care-free vacation heat of summer. Fox should have also known it would have been swallowed whole by their "So You Think You Can Dance" - a shameless capitalization of ABC's dance-themed, summer remake hit "Dancing With the Stars".

I had high hopes for the Fox network with the departure of Gail Berman as Entertainment President and the installation of Peter Liguori, who is credited with helping make FX the juggernaut network it is today. Berman's tenure at Fox consisted of it's own reign of terror, a bloodbath that buried every creative scripted show she could find before anyone noticed it and replaced it with mindless, cost effective reality shows with the goal of temporary ratings gold at the expense of any future commodities. Liguori's first act at Fox was to renew the ratings starved "Arrested Development" for another season. A gritty crime series, "The Inside" looks more like an FX show then a standard network series anyway, so it appeared that things where turning around.

But no, once again we've seen that it is "Arrested Development" and only "Arrested Development" that is given the benefit of network support. And Fox is back into it's usual habits, once again vehemently defending it's reputation as the most inept, intellectually bankrupt, short-sighted and audience-insulting network on the air today.

* * * / 4

Fox is, I gather, legendary for canceling shows. This one where all the episodes were not even sent is at present doing its second complete run over here, first TV3 and now TV6 – Sundays at 9 pm. Although the plots with a captured Rebecca Locke were a bit repetitive, they were nevertheless well executed and played with a peculiar somewhat alienated intensity by Ms. Nichols, who is not only beautiful but obviously has considerable acting potential, as she also showed in Alias. The rest of the cast were quite good also, and the show should have been given at least two full seasons to develop such things as the relationships within the group of investigators including their weird leader. For the series was developing, and the last episodes had a greater directness and also better scripting. The series might well have made better in the ratings had it been aired in the autumn, for example. As it is, one suspects Fox to have a very strange policy of producing shows they don't believe in and then doing their damnedest to ensure their non-success. It can't be a good business strategy.

Was there any doubt this show would get canceled? After all it had 2 things going against this series from the get go. First and for most it played on FOX which is famous for and that would be keeping cartoons and reality shows for great shows, which is why I avoid the FOX network like the plague.

The 2nd would be it was too sophisticated and required the viewers to actually use their brains more than a 1/2 hour at a time 2 things fox Viewers don't have. They prefer The Simpson's, American dad, The Cleveland Show and Family Guy instead of shows such as The Insiders and Justice I hope many read my comments before you decide next time to watch a complicated shows like the Insiders on FOX, heed my warning steer as clear away of it. That way you won't ever be disappointed when its AXED also while your at it NBC is just as bad as Fox when it comes to yanking great shows off the air that have serious depth to them.

Just a small comment on this show it was a brilliant and it was a well written show that should of lasted more than 13 Episodes. This show makes any of the CSI's look like a poorly written sitcom. This was a show that just had to be watched weekly, few shows can even come close to this one and yet only 13 episodes were made. It such a shame to lose it I'd give it a 20 out of 10 if I could but I can't so I gave it the next best thing, a perfect 10.

I thought that the first episode was very promising. Kind of a cross between CSI and Without a Trace. There was also a small trivia bit when Adam Baldwin's character said he was in the marines and tried to give himself a tattoo. Baldwin of course played Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket and was a Marine. There are way too many shows of this variety out, but this one in my opinion is the better of them. It is also somewhat like Silence of the Lambs without Hannibal Lector. Rebecca Locke is very much like special Agent Starling, and the killers are much like Buffalo Bob. Fans of the Lector movies will like this show. In all, the show should hold it's own during the summer, but it might get hard during the fall, if it lasts that long.

The mercurial FBI Agent Virgil Webster (Peter Coyote) leads the L.A. Violent Crimes Unit. After losing an agent, rookie agent Rebecca Locke (Rachel Nichols) joins the group. As a 10 year old, she was held prisoner for 18 months and escaped. It's a past that only Webster is purview to as he tries to use her experience from The Inside.

The obvious question is why this show crashed and burned while a similar show like 'Criminal Minds' keeps going and going and going. It has to be both the show and what Fox does with the show. For Fox, this was nothing but a summer burn-off. They aired the episodes in a jumbo and dump them like dirty laundry. The show has a bit of serial element and showing the episodes out of order doesn't help. Criminal Minds is an easy to digest police procedural. There is hardly any serial element to the show and CBS actually supported it.

The central aspect of Locke's past is a bit too fake and the show is trying to make her too special. She is still a rookie after all. As for the look of the show, it is very stark and somewhat dark. The visual is almost drained of color. In fact, the most color in the show comes from some dream sequences. The show makes a basic mistake that some of these serial killer show at the time makes. The dark material convinces the showrunner to film it darkly. The material is dark enough that it doesn't need to be starkly filmed. It drains the life out of the show. With a few tweaks and actual support from Fox, this could have been a successful show.