Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Deception’, An ABC Drama About An Illusionist Who Helps The FBI

The history of the network procedural has seen dozens of unusual cop-civilian pairings, but none as unusual as the one in ABC’s new series Deception. This time, an illusionist is helping the FBI solve crimes using his many years of experience deceiving audiences worldwide. Skeptical? So were we. Read on to find out if Chris Fedak and company pulled off the trick.

DECEPTION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A magician (or, as he’d prefer to be called, an illusionist) talking directly to the camera about how the human mind distracts people, and not just when they’re looking at magic. It distracts them into thinking everything is fine when it really isn’t.

The Gist: That talk is the opening shot of the latest television special from world-famous illusionist Cameron Black (Jack Cutmore-Scott). He’s about to pull off a trick so audacious that even his more audacious colleagues haven’t tried it, and he isn’t even telling his crew — producer Dina Clark (Lenora Crichlow), prop master Gunter Gastafsen (Vinnie Jones) and assistant Jordan Kwon (Justin Chon) — about it. When the Houdini-esque escape goes awry and he’s flung through a screen on the Las Vegas stage, he seemingly appears alive and intact in Times Square. but how?

We find out soon enough, when a woman with two different-colored eyes gets into a car with Cameron and they get into an accident. When the cops come to arrest him in Vegas, he tells them that they have the wrong guy: they want his brother Johnathan (Cutmore-Scott).

Yes, for years now, Cameron and Johnathan have been pulling off these amazing illusions because no one knew that Cameron had a twin. Now the secret’s out and he wants to find out who set his brother up. A year later, he sees a plane carrying a federal prisoner from the Mexican cartel explode on TV and he knows it was a trick from a fellow illusionist. He offers his help to the agents on the case, Kay Daniels (Ilfenesh Hadera) and Mike Alvarez (Amaury Nolasco); Alvarez is a fan, but Daniels, who has been on this cartel bigwig’s trail for months, is skeptical. But when he shows her how the plane explosion was staged, she starts to trust him, even convincing her boss, Agent Deakins (Laila Robins) to let him help out. Eventually, he enlists his crew to help Daniels catch the cartel bigwig.

Cameron thinks that the illusionist who set this elaborate ruse up was the one who framed his brother, who is stewing in prison and angry that being “The Disappearing Son” in their father’s act led him to this point.

Our Take: The premise “magician helps the FBI solve crimes” feels like it comes from a “Random Procedural Generator” program, and the Deception pilot feels that way, too. Lots of leaps of faith and clumsy dialogue that made our eyes roll. It’s just about every current procedural cliche you can have: smug male civilian paired up with an uptight, pretty female law enforcement officer who is constantly lobbing insults at this partner she’s been saddled with, doubting boss, elusive rival that will constantly slip through the hero’s fingers. And it just felt like having an illusionist do what the FBI can’t was a step too far even for a network procedural.

This is really disappointing, too, considering the show was created by Chris Fedak who somehow made the idea behind Chuck believable — or at least immensely entertaining — for 5 seasons. Here, though, it feels like the stakes are even more absurd, given the fact that not only is a magician helping the feds, but that magician had a twin brother no one knew about for decades, and they built this amazing act together.

The key to a series like this is the chemistry between its leads, the smug guy and the uptight female cop. In the first episode, that hadn’t been established yet. Cutmore-Scott is likable enough as the super-confident Cameron and his damaged brother Johnathan, but we’ve seen Hadera in much more dynamic roles, most notably as Opal Gilstrap in the Netflix reboot of She’s Gotta Have It. If ABC wants another Castle on its hands, Fedak and his staff are going to have to coax something out of this pair pronto.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Cameron and Kay are on a phone that the feds found at the airplane illusion, it’s the woman with the different-colored eyes who set up Johnathan. Cameron describes exactly where she is by the ambient sound — the Frankfurt airport, where “Frankfurt pumps Muzak Beethoven like they’re afraid someone might forget he’s German.” He senses she’s looking behind her because his deductive skills are so good, and he says “Did you look behind you? Good. Because we’re coming after you.”

Sleeper Star: Who doesn’t love to see Vinnie Jones yelling his way through all of his scenes?

Most Pilot-y Line: When Kay dismissively tells Cameron to “grab your cape” after he briefs her colleagues on the case.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There are better ways to spend your Sunday night. Watch reruns of Penn & Teller: Fool Us (P&T make a cameo in the pilot of Deception, by the way) or stream David Blaine’s last special. Anything is better than this.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Deception on Hulu