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Katey Sagal
The new ABC drama Rebel boasts an incredible cast, led by Sagal, who is a force of nature in whatever show she’s been in over the past four decades, whether it’s Married With Children, Sons of Anarchy or The Conners. It’s also being led by a steady creative hand in Krista Vernoff, a veteran of Shondaland who had two different stints running Grey’s Anatomy. All the elements are there to make the show a big, bawdy network drama that has case-of-the-week elements along with the overarching story about Rebel’s fight with the pharma corporation. But is it good?
REBEL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A polo ball being whacked by a player on his horse. As a shareholder reception for a Big Pharma company starts, a woman in a slinky dress walks in, looking for the CEO.
The Gist: Annie “Rebel” Bello (Katey Sagal) is an advocate for people who have been wronged by major corporations like the company whose investor party she’s attending; she got an invite by buying stock, then selling it, so she’s not crashing. But when she gets there, she confronts the CEO, Mark Duncan (Adam Arkin), lecturing him about how his heart valves are making people sick, then has a group of victims push into the country club and start a protest. Among them is Helen (Mary McDonnell), who was not only sickened by the valve she got, but whose daughter will likely lose her baby because she got the same valve. Helping with the protest is her youngest daughter Ziggie (Ariela Barer), who thinks what Rebel does is completely bad-ass.
Rebel has been doing bold moves like this for decades; her exploits often get her arrested and splashed across news broadcasts and websites. In this case, she gets sprung by another one of her daughters, Cassidy Ray (Lex Scott Davis); Cass is a lawyer for an advocacy firm run by Julian Cruz (Andy Garcia), who was married to Rebel’s best friend. Both Cruz and Rebel are mourning the death of Cruz’s wife, due to the same heart valve.
Oh, did we mention that Rebel’s personal life is pretty complicated? She’s currently married to Ziggie’s dad Grady (John Corbett), but he’s becoming distant; after she finds a business card in his wallet, he gets her friend and investigator Lana (Tamala Jones) to look into it. Meanwhile, Cass’ father (and Lana’s brother), Benji (James Lesure), swoops in to try to get his daughter to work with him, even though he represents the big corporations. Another ex-husband, Woodrow Flynn (Matthew Glave), is a cop; he helps Rebel and Lana during their investigations. Nate (Kevin Zegers), the son Woodrow and Rebel had together, is a doctor; like his sister Cass, he’s more embarrassed than proud with Rebel’s exploits, but will defend her and help her whenever he can.
As Rebel presses to find out more about the company behind the heart valves, she also pressures Cruz to take the case. He repeatedly refuses, and we find out eventually that it’s because he doesn’t want to relive the pain of his wife’s death. To convince him, Rebel has victims show up at his office, and after he talks to them, he reluctantly agrees.
Back to her life: She’s been married to Grady the longest out of all her exes, but right before he shows up for an anniversary gathering, she finds out just who the person is he was seeing. He’s not cheating on her; he wants a divorce.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Rebel is reminiscent of the film Erin Brockovich, only 20 years later. This makes sense, since Brokovich is an executive producer of this series, and it’s based on her life today, as a graphic at the beginning of the episode indicates.
Our Take: The pilot for Rebel has to handle its title character’s complex story, rife with exposition, along with both the procedural story and set up the ongoing story arc. It does so in clever ways, like when Rebel tells a woman who stabbed her boyfriend while he choked her to call Cass for help. And we also enjoy the fact that Rebel’s such a dynamic person that all of her exes still hold a bit of a candle for her; they just don’t want to be married to her.
But because of all the exposition, the pilot gives us moments of speechifying, mostly by either Rebel or Cruz, who is speechifying in response to Rebel’s speechifying. It needs to go through all that to establish who everyone is, and despite the clunkiness, we have a good idea of that by the end of the pilot. There was a sense, however, of all of these fine actors straining to make some of the dialogue into something they could work with.
If anyone can pull off being a stand-in for Brockovich today, though, it’s Sagal. She’s a powerful presence and can handle all of the funny and serious situations Vernoff throws at her. But its heartening that Vernoff surrounded her with vets like Garcia, Jones, Corbett and Lesure, people she can spar with and not look like she’s the only actor in the scene. Even the guest roster, featuring stellar actors like McDonnell, Glave and Arkin, make for credible scene partners for Sagal.
What does that all mean? It means that Rebel has room to improve, but it has all of the right pieces in order to do just that.
Sex and Skin: Besides Rebel’s slinky dress in the first scenes, there’s nothing.
Parting Shot: As Cruz finally accepts the case, and the two of them talk about their mutual grief, Rebel tells him, “Let’s crush those bastards.”
Sleeper Star: While the characters of Rebel’s three kids need the most development, we’re most intrigued by Barer as Ziggie. She’s the youngest, but also the only one of Rebel’s kids who wants to be like her. She’ll definitely be a big part of her mother’s protests and advocacy going forward. She’s also in recovery, which gives her character that extra little “oomph”.
Most Pilot-y Line: In trying to convince Cruz to take the case, she tells me that his wife Sharon told her that “your fighting spirit and an ass that wouldn’t quit” was why she married him. That feels like a line that came straight from Grey’s Anatomy, doesn’t it?
Our Call: STREAM IT. The cast of Rebel is the biggest reason to tune in (and we do mean tune in, because it’s on ABC). With Vernoff at the helm, the show should even out its rapid-fire pace and become an entertainingly rollicking and sprawling network drama.
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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
