Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Company You Keep’ On ABC, Where A Con Man And A CIA Agent Fall For Each Other

Ever watch a show that you openly hope gets better? You know there are glaring flaws, but you keep watching because you find the cast appealing, or see nuggets of good story, or just think that the writers will get it eventually and eliminate those flaws. A new ABC series starring Milo Ventimiglia is definitely in that category.

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man stands in front of a mirror, practicing sleight-of-hand tricks with a playing card.

The Gist: Charlie Nicoletti (Milo Ventimiglia) is trying to complete a warehouse deal with a known organized crime kingpin, when that kingpin’s advisor, Daphne Finch (Felisha Terrell) says something is suspicious. Charlie convinces the kingpin to sign; right after he transfers $10 million in crytpocurrency to Charlie, the FBI show up.

Only, it’s not the FBI; it’s the rest of Charlie’s family, who completed a con selling a warehouse they don’t own. Charlie and his sister Birdie (Sarah Wayne Callies) have been doing this “family business” with their parents, Leo (William Fichtner) and Fran (Polly Draper) for as long as they can remember. A new addition is Charlie’s fiancée Tina (Bridget Regan); the two of them are set to get married the next day.

Meanwhile, CIA agent Emma Hill (Catherine Haena Kim) has been tracking down an illegal fentanyl ring; her work is interrupted when she gets an alert on her phone, and she finds her boyfriend cheating on her.

Back at the bar the Nicolettis own, Charlie goes to transfer the crypto to their offshore account and finds his engagement ring instead; Tina conned the con artists and ran off with the cash.

After each having a really bad day, Charlie and Emma find themselves at a swanky hotel bar and strike up a conversation. They both have fun with the outrageous lies they make up about their lives, and the chemistry is palpable. They get drunk together, go up to his unused honeymoon suite and spend the night together — but not in the way you’d expect.

They actually spend the next 36 hours together, talking about personal stuff that doesn’t reveal their jobs. Emma comes from a political family where her brother is running for Senate; their aim is to become an Asian-American version of the Kennedys. The two even reveal what their real professions are, but they both find it as ridiculous as the lies they told.

After being MIA to his family during that time, Charlie tries to make up for it by finding a big score; a televangelist (Doug Savant) seems to have lots of donation money despite declining audiences. He’s obviously laundering money, and they try to intercept it. At the fundraiser where they attempt the heist, Charlie encounters Emma, who’s there with her family. They connect again, but when Birdie reminds him to focus on the job, he tells Emma that he’s not interested. Of course, that’s not true or the series wouldn’t exist.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Company You Keep feels very much like White Collar, even if the partnership between criminal and fed is a romance in this one instead of a bromance in the old USA show.

Our Take: The Company You Keep, created by Julia Cohen and Phil Klemmer based on a Korean series, is a show that we actively wanted to see get better over the two episodes ABC provided for critics. It’s got a great cast, led by Ventimiglia, a dual-family story that can lead to a number of fun storylines and a caper-of-the-week format that gives the overall arc of the story structure.

But the first two episodes just couldn’t get there, as far as its storytelling was concerned. In fact, the second episode was even more disjointed than the first, as essentially the Nicolettis work a job in order to start paying back Daphne, who represents the crime family with its leader in prison.

One of the problems is that the least effective and interesting part of the story is the romance between Charlie and Emma. Sure, there’s some intrigue in that they can’t tell each other what they do, and they’re going to intersect a number of times and barely escape finding each other out, but scenes like that lack tension. The chemistry between Ventimiglia and Kim is OK, but when Charlie makes a speech to Emma about how he thinks about her all the time near the end of the first episode, we wanted him to be making that speech as Jack Pearson on This Is Us. In fact, it feels like that speech was lifted from the hit show precisely because Ventimiglia is so good at doing them.

We would love to see a show that’s all about the Nicolettis and how they do their job. Layered in the “family business” aspect of it is the fact that Leo is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, but he and Fran don’t want to burden their kids with carrying on the business. So they keep working, despite Leo’s failing memory. Either way, watching the quartet play different roles during their jobs is a lot of fun, as we saw in episode 2 where Leo pulls out an old photographer character he seems to revel in playing.

We’d also love to see a story about Emma’s family, where her parents Grace and Joseph (Freda Foh Shen, James Saito) and son David (Tim Chiou) are trying to establish a multi-generational political dynasty, with Emma being the “black sheep” who works as a “data analyst.”

Those would be great individual shows. Tied together with this improbable romance, both sides get simplified and fall flat because they’re not given enough time to get into any sort of depth.

Sex and Skin: Whatever sex is in the first episode is network sex, so it doesn’t show much.

Parting Shot: Daphne tells Charlie and his family that they owe her the money they stole, and that he’s not going to be able to talk his way out of it.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Shaylee Mansfield, who plays Birdie’s daughter Ollie. She’s hearing-impaired, and it’s integrated quite well into the story, with ASL subtitles floating on screen and Birdie being horrified that Daphne is learning ASL in order to ingratiate herself to Ollie.

Most Pilot-y Line: One of the questions Charlie asks Emma during their 36 hour first encounter is: “Beatles or Stones?” She replies: “Stones. All day.” He says, “Every day.” First of all, that is incorrect. But seriously, though, when will “Beatles or Stones?” stop being a cliched question characters ask each other to find a shortcut into their personalities?

Our Call: STREAM IT. As our parents might have said, we’re not upset with The Company You Keep, just disappointed. The first two episodes feel like a missed opportunity, given the cast. But what we’re hoping is that things will get better as its first season goes along, and there’s enough there to keep us interested while hoping it gets better.

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.