The Company You Keep

Like it or don't like it, but stop whining about how you can't believe a CIA agent could fall for a thief...IT'S ENTERTAINMENT...if you can't suspend belief for a few minutes, you should spend your time elsewhere! As the Joker said, "why so serious?" So far so good. Only two eps in, but enjoying so far...good character actors, lots of eye candy...just waiting for the car chases and a bit of gun play. Nice to see so many powerful women in both good guy and bad guy rolls...I grow weary of constantly seeing men in these rolls.

Someone mentioned the unwatchable True Lies. Now THERE's a disappointment. I couldn't make it past the first commercial break.

For a non MA-rated show, this one is better than most in the category compared to others I have viewed recently. The premise so far is a family of con artists goes after unlikable wealthy targets, for reasons you will see if you watch it. Only a few episodes so far, but the quality cast sells this, and they play it up well together, specifically the Charlie/Birdie/Leo family. Good show for William Fichtner fans, as even though a support character, he is fun here, as expected. The agent romance mixed into the equation is a familiar trope, but good writing and a touch of intrigue is carrying it along just fine. It exercises reasonable restraint for better engagement and doesn't rely too much on the tacky cut-edit action nor overuse of hi-tech buffoonery gimmicks, at least not so far. I find that I am curious and interested to see how each upcoming episode turns out. Hopefully it will keep its momentum.

Con man Charlie Nicoletti (Milo Ventimiglia) comes from a family of cons. Birdie Nicoletti (Sarah Wayne Callies) is his bossy older sister. Fran (Polly Draper) and Leo (William Fichtner) are their parents. They con mobster Patrick Maguire and get conned in turn by Charlie's girlfriend. Daphne Finch (Felisha Terrell) is Maguire's brilliant criminal mastermind secret-daughter behind the throne. Maguire gets arrested and is demanding the Nicoletti family to repay him back and more. CIA agent Emma Hill (Catherine Haena Kim) comes from a political Korean family and finds her boyfriend cheating once again. At a hotel bar, Charlie and Emma hit it off over their mutual bad breakups. They have a fling while keeping their day jobs secret. It turns out that they both have the same enemy, Daphne Finch.

This show has potential. I like the premise. It has some of that Ventimiglia sexiness. I like all the characters. Maybe there are too many characters and too many sections of the show. It has criminal section. It has a family section for the Nicolettis. It has the CIA section. Finally, it has the Hill family section. The show should probably lose the Hill family section. It's juggling too many balls. Emma already has the CIA and she should spend more time there. The start is a bit complicated, but it quickly works itself out. Low viewership has the show canceled after only one half season.

Sadly I'm glad that ABC put this show out of its misery. This is a great cast who had all done stellar work in other series (Colony, This is US, Thirty Something --yes, I'm old:) and to their credit, continued to be engaging in this show. The problem is we never knew exactly what is this show supposed to be: it's way too light for a drama even a light drama because it's totally disconnected from reality and it's ridiculous (a beautiful henchwoman from Stanford leading a band of killers). So even if it's trying to imitate something like USA networks "Burn Notice" where the protagonists always outsmart everyone else and there are no real stakes, it ends up just being head scratching and monotonously time filing.

It's definitely not a romantic show either. Even though my Korean-born wife was a big fan of "This is us" so she loves watching Milo smooching a Korean beauty who just happens to work for the CIA and makes us wonder what does the CIA have to do with domestic crime that should be the sole province of the FBI and a handful of other domestic law enforcement agencies? But that's just one of a dozen questions that are never answered for us as the show treats us like morons.

Why is this Asian American family named "Hill?" That's something that needs to be explained. Also in the political arena why is a US Senate candidate for the state of Washington hanging out in Baltimore, MD or around the DC area when he needs to be back in the Pacific Northwest campaigning? And then when we get to what's supposed to be a blackmail scandal. The writers roll out something that's so weak and uninteresting even a third-rate political Blogger would not bother to mention it; something about an affair some washed up politician had three decades ago. Don't the writers know where we're at politically in this country right now? We are basically immune to scandal. This bombshell isn't even a firecracker.

Anyway to get back to the central plot and tone of the show the writers and producers should have made-up their mind to either go full fantasy like ABC 's "Once Upon a time" and have elves and Pixie dust included or grounded the show a little bit more in reality like Netflix "The Diplomat" which has some snappy dialogue and some real bureaucracy but at the same time giving us a lot of made-for-TV poetic license. Anyway all of these actors are top notch and this will just be a blip on their resumes, and we wish them the best in future projects which are hopefully a little bit better thought out and executed.

Real shame that this series got canceled prematurely. Loved the concept. I just think none of people stayed with it. It is very much a slow burn TV show and has taken 10 episodes to really find its groove. Really thought that the two leads had really good chemistry. But now we will never find out how the series and how Charlie and. Emma will stay together and get out of their predicament. I saw this series as a modern Robin Hood and very similar to the show white color starring Matt Blum. But here's hoping that maybe a nether net work will pick it up for a second season. I think one reason why the company you keep failed with yes, due to poor ratings, but also maybe prematurely canceled due to the writers strike that's going on right now.