Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Irrational’ On NBC, Where Jesse L. Martin Is A Behavioral Scientist Who Solves Murders By Using People’s Irrationality

Jesse L. Martin is one of those actors that could stand on an empty soundstage and read his text messages and be utterly charming. In his new series, the Law & Order alum plays a famous professor of behavioral science whose skills are called upon to solve crimes.

THE IRRATIONAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As we see a young couple go over a drop on a roller coaster, a voice says, “People are irrational, but predictably so.”

The Gist: Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) is a professor of behavioral science at Wylton university, and he’s so well-known that the university has given him the funding to form his own institute. He’s often called in by the FBI, most notably by Marisa (Maahra Hill), an agent who also just happens to be his ex-wife. We see his skills during a hostage situation, where he sides with the man who is holding a baby and her mother at gunpoint, making him think through his irrational decision to hold them hostage and demand a helicopter.

At the university, he has two research assistants: Phoebe (Molly Kunz) and Rizwan (Arash DeMaxi), the latter of whom has just started studying at his institute. In the intro class he teaches, he tells a lie about how he got the burn on the right side of his face. In fact, he was burned over 60% of his body when a church exploded over 20 years ago. The truth he tells when Rizwan asks is that he doesn’t quite remember just how it all happened, which wracks him with guilt since he was the only survivor of the explosion.

The town’s mayor (Lauren Holly) asks him to consult on a murder case; a former Marine war hero and the son of a powerful state senator has confessed to murdering his ex-girlfriend. She knows the suspect and thinks he didn’t do it. After interviewing the man along with detectives, there are things in what he said that don’t make sense, including not remembering the kind of gun that he shot the victim with. But why would he admit to a murder he didn’t commit?

A 5-year AA sobriety chip found at the scene leads Alec to take Rizwan to the AA meeting place where the suspect and victim met, under the theory that when people overhear the victim’s name, they’ll come over and talk about her. He also runs an experiment with his assistants to see how easy it is to get them to confess to something they didn’t do. From there, Alec needs to get the suspect to trace his steps that night; he thinks he had a slip and woke up from being passed out, but Alec thinks there’s more to it.

What’s also going on is that the man arrested for the bombing is coming up for parole; police and prosecutors were never able to pin murder charges on him because Alec, as he tells his younger sister Kylie (Travina Springer), he couldn’t place the bomber at the scene. So he’s just in prison on hate crimes and charges on building the device. In fact, the aftermath is how he met Marisa, as she was investigating her first case as an FBI agent. He knows he needs to be at the parole hearing, to make sure the man stays behind bars. But a surprise at that hearing shows both Alec and Marisa that the bomber may not be the lone wolf he was always thought of being.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Irrational is a detective show along the lines of Medium or The Mentalist, where a civilian with particular skills helps law enforcement solve crimes.

Our Take: The Irrational falls into the same traps that most network procedurals fall into: Mysteries that are hard to follow and/or not particularly interesting, logic errors, and contrived ways that the civilian at the center of the show keeps getting involved in murder cases. One of the other contrivances here is that Alec somehow has to get Marisa involved in every case, despite the fact that she’s FBI. In the first episode, he brings her to the murder scene because “the mayor said the FBI was involved, so I called the FBI,” to which she responds, “you called me.”

There are other logical problems. We have to assume that Alec is around the same age as Martin, which is 54. A sign on the church shown in a flashback on the day of the explosion indicates that the explosion happened in 2002. But, for some reason, a different actor plays the younger Alec, despite the fact that Alec was in his thirties at the time and could have easily been played by Martin. Hill is shown as Marisa when the two of them met, so we’re not sure why Martin couldn’t play himself in 2002.

But it’s that backstory, with what seems to be a lot of twists, that’s going to keep our interest in the series. It’s part of a formula that kept people watching shows like The Mentalist; if it weren’t for that show’s continuing Red John plotline, it likely would have ended much sooner than it did. The cases of the week are going to vary in how well-written they are, as they tend to be in these kinds of procedurals, but if the “mythology” story is solid and twisty, the variation on the cases of the week won’t matter as much.

The other thing that helps shows like these is the chemistry of the regular cast. We know how damn charming Martin is in pretty much any role he does, but there’s a good chemistry between him and Hill, as well as the few scenes he has with Springer. Alec and Marisa may be divorced but they can’t seem to stay out of each others’ orbits, and when he gets injured in the process of catching the real killer in the case he’s working, she visits him at the hospital and shows how much she really still loves him. The more the show explores that, the better it will be.

Sex and Skin: There’s a network-safe sex scene as the suspect describes the fact that he had sex with his victim before she got shot.

Parting Shot: Alec and Marisa are outside the courthouse after chasing the man who spooked the bomber at his parole hearing. They realize someone else was calling the shots.

Sleeper Star: Travina Springer’s character Kylie seems to be best positioned to call Alec on his crap, so we’ll give her the sleeper award.

Most Pilot-y Line: For some reason the prosecutor, who is at the murder scene, points out that the bullet hit some pressurized mousse cans, which ended up exploding and shattering some glass. That was designed to be a bit of a red herring, but it wasn’t a very good one.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Irrational works mainly because of Martin and the backstory he has with Hill’s character and the bombing case. The mysteries themselves are pretty bad, but that will matter less if the continuing story is good.

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.