Hail To The King (And Maxwell) – S1Ep1&2

Ex-Secret Service, At Your Service.

I was a big fan of The Closer, and am a big fan of Closer Jr. (aka Major Crimes) on TNT.  With very few exceptions, I really love all the original series TNT is putting out there for their counter-programming summer lineup.  Major Crimes basically picks up where the Closer left off (it’s essentially the same exact show), Perception is interesting (if not a bit pretentious), Leverage was fun (but extremely goofy), and Monday Mornings was… well, let’s just say there’s a reason why everyone hates Mondays.  So when I saw ads for the new series King & Maxwell, I was interested, but still skeptical if I would like the show or not, despite TNT’s decent track record.

King & Maxwell takes a page (no pun intended) from the other TNT buddy crime-solver drama Rizzoli & Isles and is based on a series of books by author David Baldacci about two former Secret Service agents who team up together to be private investigators and solve crimes.  Unlike Rizzoli & Isles who spend all their time in Boston and Major Crimes which is all about LA, King and Maxwell have their stomping grounds in Washington D.C. and its surrounding areas, so there’s a lot of government-centered crime and intrigue for them to get durty with.  Being the literary philistine I am, I had no idea these books existed and thus never bothered reading them before watching the show, so I can’t compare what I’ve seen to the books.  For all I know, in the books, Maxwell is some fat, balding dude instead of one of the most gorgeous chicks on the planet, so I can’t really nerdfanrage over anything that might not be a good adaptation in the series.

I was convinced I was going to hate this show from the opening sequence of the pilot episode.  We start off with Maxwell (played by the gorgeous Rebecca Romijn (no longer Stamos)) in a car chase with a bus driven by a man in a Beaver costume as it tears through the streets of Washington D.C. to the dulcet tunes of the Black Keys “How Ya Like Me Now?”  Through the magic of plot, the bus’s tires are blown out and it flips over, and the guy in the oversized Beaver suit finally (FINALLY) takes his stupid beaver head off so he can run away from Maxwell (apparently he drives better with his Beaver mask on?  Though, from all the cars he ran over, that may not be the case).  Maxwell gets all Action Janet on him and chases him down until the dude pulls a gun on her.  Suddenly, Beaver boy gets a phone call from King who fakes him out into giving himself up by pretending his pocket laser-pointer is a laser scope on a rifle.  Turns out the Beaver guy had incriminating photos of a Senator’s wife who is into the “Furry Fetish” (people who like to have sex while dressed up in plush animal costumes) who planned on blackmailing the Senator with the pictures.

So aside from the fact that the opening sequence to the pilot was a hackneyed mess with a stretchable premise, once King and Maxwell finally get together on screen things start really jelling.  Jon Tenney, who I best know as Brenda’s put-upon FBI husband Fritz from The Closer, plays Sean King, a former Secret Service agent turned drunk turned lawyer turned Private Investigator.  (I know, I know, bear with me here.)  King is an affable loser who doesn’t like to shave (apparently) or carry a gun, but the dude comes through when it counts.  I was a bit worried that Tenney’s charm from The Closer wasn’t going to translate to leading man status, but I’m happy to say I was wrong, his portrayal of Sean King is awesome and I immediately liked the dude and got on-board with him carrying his own TV show.  Though he out-acts Rebecca Romijn every chance he gets, she’s infinitely better to look at, so each one brings their own strengths to this party.

We quickly learn that King allowed for a target he was protecting as a Secret Service agent to get assassinated, which led to him being kicked out of the agency and spiraling into a drinking problem (ah, drinking problem, the tortured lawman’s easiest characterization trait!).  Apparently King is a crappy drunk because he winds up in some trouble but is saved by a good-hearted lawyer who helps him get cleaned up and inspires him to become a bar-certified attorney in the state of Virginia, which eventually leads him to becoming a private dick (um… somehow).  Maxwell is in a similar situation, where she allowed one of her targets to get kidnapped right from under her nose, and is dismissed from Secret Service duty for her incompetence.  It’s unclear what her self-destructive characterization trait is as of yet, or how she partnered up with King, but I’m sure this is all stuff we’ll find out eventually.  Needless to say, Maxwell is the muscle while King is the charm, and they both bring a good amount of brains to the equation.

The first episode centers around the death of King’s lawyer friend, who was doing a pro-bono case defending an accused serial killer named Edgar Roy, a huge, scary, mountain of a man who also happens to be a high-functioning autistic with 100% memory recall.  Because he’s supposedly a serial killer, the FBI gets involved in his lawyer’s death, and soon King & Maxwell are at odds with the feds.

Once we get into the crime-solving proper, we actually get to see a lot of intelligent storytelling on display here.  The fact that King & Maxwell are not cops or with a federal agency means they are limited in resources for their crime-solving efforts, which makes for an interesting twist on a crime drama.  So they rely on their wits and street smarts to find out what they need to know without getting killed or thrown in jail for doing so.  And though I have a tough time buying Rebecca Romijn as a believable tough chick (I’m constantly afraid she’s going to break a nail in the fight scenes), both characters bring unique skills and personality to the table.

One of the things I really liked about the show is that even though King and Maxwell are platonic partners who respect each other, the fact that Maxwell is essentially played by a supermodel is not ignored.  We get hints that King would totally throw one into Maxwell if she gave him the opportunity, but she never will, so he doesn’t pursue it.  It’s these little bits of reality which make the show actually stand out from a dumb cable crime drama.  Stupid scenes are actually EXPLAINED in this show, as opposed to just done for the hell of it.  For instance, in the pilot, Maxwell takes a shower at the office with the door open, so King gets glimpses of her totes amazeballs body (along with the audience).  The entire time I’m watching this scene, I’m thinking “Thank you, show.  But why the heck is she showering with the door open?”  And as if on cue, King asks that EXACT SAME QUESTION.  And Maxwell responds “There’s too much steam and it fogs up the mirror,” which I TOTALLY understand because we all hate it when that happens.  So even though we got gratuitous Romijn semi-nude shots, the show actually bothered to justify why we got them, which is amazing if you think about it.  Therefore, no matter what questions may arise about the logic in a King & Maxwell episode, the writers are smart enough to actually give the reasoning and answers to them, which I really appreciated.

Okay, so back to the episode.  King and Maxwell quickly start digging into the lawyer’s death and find out that the serial killer business is actually connected to some big government cover-up concerning national security and shady government contractors.  While this might seem silly at first, it’s set up in a totally believable way.  Eventually, they discover…

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Edgar Roy is not a serial killer.  He’s a super genius who the NSA has been using to monitor satellite feeds for intelligence purposes.  A rival contractor frames Roy for murder so he can swoop in and outbid his competition who is useless without Roy’s super-memory.  King and Maxwell expose this and clear Edgar Roy’s name, while making a new friend with him.

Episode two now shifts focus from King’s past to Maxwell’s, as a Georgian politician Maxwell butted heads with while on Secret Service duty is the victim of a failed assassination attempt and the FBI thinks Maxwell has something to do with it because she has an axe to grind.

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Edgar Roy comes back and is hired by King and Maxwell to be their resident office genius who can help them do, well, pretty much anything because Edgar Roy is one of the most awesome characters ever invented for TV.  Seriously, this guy is like one of my favorite characters on TV now.  If they were to do a spin off series with him and Johnny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes I’d never leave my house ever again.

Anyway, the Georgian politician is hated by Maxwell because he raped an underage girl during her watch and then swept it under the rug while getting her in hot water at the Secret Service when she cried fowl about it.  As the investigation progresses, we discover the Maxwell is being set up to take the fall for the  assassination attempt.  The reason for this is because the Georgian Rapist politician is trying to reinvent his tarnished image and thinks almost getting killed will give him a boost in the polls, and Maxwell is an easy scapegoat.  So the politician sets up his own botched assassination, which is then exposed by the clever detective work of King and Maxwell (not to mention Edgar Roy, who did I mention is awesome?).

So between episode 1 and 2, we get a really good sense of who King and Maxwell are individually, but more importantly, how they work together as a team.  And I gotta say, I loved it!  Over-all I was pleasantly surprised by this show.  It doesn’t seem to have any political overtones considering it takes place in D.C., which is nice.  The writing is clever and well done.  The acting is great (with the exception typically being Romijn), and the characters are fun and interesting.  This show is off to a great start and I can totally see myself becoming a fan if they keep up with this level of quality.

If you’re looking for another fun show to watch on Monday nights, give this one a shot.  It’s worth the time.