What’s the name of the show? State of Affairs
When does it premiere? Monday, 17 November, at 10pm ET, on NBC
What is this show? Charleston Tucker …
Wait, is that, like, the world’s most made-up name? Well, yes, but if you’ll allow me to continue …
OK, what is this show? Charleston Tucker (Katherine Heigl) is a woman who drinks too much and sleeps around to dull the pain of her life as a CIA analyst who gets involved with some people who may be terrorists. She’s also mourning the loss of her fiancé, who happens to be the president’s (Alfre Woodard) son.
Is this show Homeland? No, she’s not crazy, she just has some PTSD. Plus, Heigl’s blowout is way better than Claire Danes’s.
Is this show Scandal? No – Olivia Pope is having an affair with the president; Charleston Tucker was engaged to her son. But the president does play a big role in this show as well.
How many presidents are there currently on network television? Three: there’s this one, the one on Scandal and the one on Madam Secretary.
Wait, is this show Madam Secretary? No, Katherine Heigl can’t do husky like Tea Leoni. Plus, she’s at the CIA, not the State Department. But they’re actually pretty similar.
What’s the show’s pedigree? Joe Carnahan, who directed the A Team movie with Bradley Cooper and has written and directed a number of episodes of NBC’s big hit The Blacklist, created the show. In August, Ed Bernero – who was chosen to run the show – left, reportedly because of creative differences with Carnahan. That’s never a good sign.
What happens in the premiere? Charleston Tucker is in charge of creating the President’s daily briefing book, which tells her all about the greatest threats to the nation on any given day. “Charlie” has to choose between telling the president about possibly catching the terrorist who killed her fiancé or saving the life of a doctor who has been abducted in Africa and might be beheaded. Oh, and it just happens to be the first anniversary of her fiancé’s death as well.
Is this show any good? How do you feel about Katherine Heigl? Yes, she’s gained the reputation for being “difficult” because she does things like call out Hollywood heavy-weights she used to work with, like Shonda Rhimes and Judd Apatow. Her movie career as of late seems to have suffered because of this and public perception of her. Now she’s back on TV playing a majorly unlikeable character. Is it possible that hating Katherine Heigl could be an asset to this show?
Not really. The problem is that we’re told that Charleston Tucker (I’m sorry, I can’t get over that name) is a PITA – that stands for “pain in the ass” – but all she really does is yell at people and interrupt their lunches. If you want a real CIA PITA, we have Carrie Mathison, who behaves so outrageously that it would make you want to quit watching Homeland forever (if only it weren’t so good). Heigl is actually decent in the role, but it’s hard to come across as great in a show that just seems to be a bunch of other shows about presidential intrigue, covert affairs and international espionage put in a Vitamix and set to puree.
There is a mildly suspenseful chunk in the middle where Charleston Tucker runs afoul of her boss and is banned from the CIA, and she has to go on the run and pull some hijinks to get the president back on her side. It’s like three episodes of Homeland boiled down into 10 minutes. The rest of the episode, however, seems slow and muddled and full of all sorts of mysteries that are hard to care about because we don’t have enough of the facts to point us to why we should care. The episode ends with Charleston Tucker having a conversation with a former spy in her kitchen and they’re talking about “what they did”, but it’s so obfuscated that it’s hard to really care what the outcome is. That’s a bad place for a pilot to leave off.
But the worst thing about it is how low the stakes seem. Most of the drama circulates around which pieces of information Charleston Tucker will or will not put in a book to give to the president. It’s hard to care about that. This woman’s job is to talk to the president each morning. Yes, but how important is this book really? And when the information she does pass along is acted on, it’s by troops on the ground who we don’t know. This is really a show about paper-pushers and supervisors, and there is a reason why no one has ever made a drama called Middle Management.
Which characters will you love? Alfre Woodard is amazing in everything including, somehow, this. Adam Kaufman plays Lucas Newsome, a newbie briefer who we meet on his first day of the job. This differentiates him from all of Charleston Tucker’s other co-workers, so maybe we will get to love him too.
Which characters will you hate? I repeat, how do you feel about Heigl?
What’s the best thing about it? I do appreciate that this is a show about women in power dealing with other women in power. There is something strong and different about that message, which we don’t see a lot on network television.
What’s the worst thing about it? There are a few things. There is the way that everyone says “POTUS” all the time. There’s the way that everyone is always ripping up pieces of paper because the information is so classified that they have to tear it up, even though they burn the paper later. There’s the way the show displays text messages on screen that will make your eyes want to take a Xanax.
Should you watch this show? How do you feel about Katherine Heigl? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t watch this either way.
