Stream It Or Skip It: ‘FBI: Most Wanted’ On CBS, A Spin-Off Of ‘FBI’ Featuring A Unit That Tracks Down People On The Most Wanted List

After Dick Wolf’s FBI became a solid hit on CBS last season, it seemed pretty obvious that the Law & Order and Chicago PD/Fire/Med impresario has found a new franchise to expand. This new series, introduced as a backdoor pilot on FBI in the spring, concentrate on the Fugitive Task Force. Read on for more…

FBI: MOST WANTED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A doctor is called in his office to see his next patient. He puts on his lab coat and goes to the exam room.

The Gist: It turns out the doctor, Justin Brock (Henry Thomas) is a pill-pusher, prescribing opioids in exchange for cash, no tests given or questions asked. When he goes home, he sees an intruder rifling through his desk and shoots him dead. Then he sees his wife on the kitchen floor, shot twice but alive. While 911 listens on, he finishes the job with the intruder’s gun. That 911 eyewitness report lands Brock on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

The call comes into the Fugitive Task Force that Brock has landed on the list and is on the run. Special Agent Jess LaCroix (Julian McMahon) is called away from his daughter Tali (YaYa Gosselin) to start chasing after the bad doctor, starting in Newburgh, NY. The Fugitive Task Force is an elite unit that travels around the country in a tricked-out, high-tech bus that serves as their rolling office; they travel wherever the evidence leads to catch people who are on the Most Wanted list, especially after they get tips or a new person lands on the list.

As they chase Brock between New York, a clinic he created under a different name in Pennsylvania, and where his daughter is going to college in Virginia, we find a little bit about the team. LaCroix’s wife, for instance died in Afghanistan four years ago and he’s been raising Tali alone with the help of the dad of his colleague Clinton Skye (Nathaniel Arcand); short-tempered agent Ken Crosby (Kellan Lutz) has been dealing with anger management issues that still come out when he or his team are threatened; second-in-command agent Sheryll Barnes (Roxy Sternberg) has a young daughter at home.

But for the most part, everyone’s energies are put towards capturing Brock, especially when LaCroix finds out he hid over 2 million dollars in 529 accounts that only his daughter has access to.

Our Take: It’s a bit of a risk for FBI: Most Wanted to dive headfirst into a case instead of trying to give us even a cursory introduction to the main players, but in the case of FBI: Most Wanted, having them work a case from the jump explains exactly what this show is all about. It also helped that the team was featured in a backdoor pilot during a spring episode of FBI.

FBI: Most Wanted is a perfect CBS procedural. Are you going to learn a lot about LaCroix and his team? Probably in dribs and drabs as the season goes along, but it’s all about finding the fugitive and getting him or her off the Most Wanted List. So we’re going to have the procedural staple of the team going from location to location, witness to witness, finding their way to their target more quickly than real-life investigators do. We’ll see evidence materialize out of nowhere or pop up on a computer screen that answers key questions. We’ll see lots of yelling and lots of varied levels of acting and dialogue.

It would be pointless to say that FBI: Most Wanted is a terrible show, even though a lot of the first episode is pretty terrible, because the case-of-the-week format will be very satisfying to a lot of viewers. And it helps that McMahon and Sternberg are a steadying presence on the show; they both ground some of the show’s silliness in something resembling reality, even when they’re spewing dialogue that would have seemed corny in 1987. But what Wolf and Rene Balcer need to make sure is that the cases the task force is following make sense. When you’re not doing a ton of character arcs, if the case of the week is hard to follow, the viewers will tune out. And, despite the sleazingly charming presence of Thomas, the first story was so hard to follow it emphasized the first episode’s inherent silliness.

Sex and Skin: Nothing here.

Parting Shot: After the case is over, Jess and Tali commiserate over the absence of her mother and his wife. “I miss mom,” she says through some tears.

Sleeper Star: Here’s a good place to mention Keisha Castle-Hughes as Hana Gibson, the tech specialist of the group. Do you remember she was nominated for an Oscar for Whale Rider when she was 12? That’s all I have to say about that.

Most Pilot-y Line: Lots of clumsy lines, but this takes the cake because it’s paired with broadcast network standards to make it truly awkward: When questioning the motorcycle gang leader Brock was working with to sell the pills he was prescribing, LaCroix gets nowhere with him and is frustrated that the DA gave him a deal for the information. “This charade, that he didn’t know Brock hired one of his men to kill his wife? It’s bull!” A second later, he calls the gang leader “A piece of dirt!” Let’s hope you don’t kiss your daughter with that mouth, Agent LaCroix!

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you want procedural comfort food, FBI: Most Wanted will fill the bill. It certainly isn’t the best procedural out there; heck, it’s not even the best show with FBI in its title. But the cast and the potential for the show to get better is more than enough to forgive some of the awfulness of the show’s first episode.

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.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

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