On Jan. 19, NBC dropped the first episode of their new series, The Hunting Party, after an NFL playoff game in a bit of a surprise airing. It took us by such surprise that we didn’t even review it. But it also didn’t seem to make any ripples in the pop culture firmament. After watching the first episode, which will be repeated in the show’s regular Monday timeslot, we now know why.
THE HUNTING PARTY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: As “Something Tells Me I’m Into Something Good” plays, a man under a sheet is transported to a cell.
The Gist: The person under the sheet is actually still alive. He’s unloaded into the cell, which is adorned with drawings of sunflowers. It’s one of dozens of glass-fronted cells stacked hundreds of feet high in what looks like a missile silo. Then, an explosion happens, sending a huge fireball up the silo.
Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), an FBI profiler who had been benched, is recruited from her gig as a casino security executive to come back to the bureau to help find some of the prisoners who escaped the explosion. The prison is a secret federal facility in a former Wyoming nuclear missile silo, and Jacob Hassani (Patrick Sabongui), who identifies himself as a “White House official” but Bex knows is CIA, tells her that the facility is full of serial killers that were previously believed to be executed.
One of those killers is Richard Harris (Tobias Jelinek), whom Bex helped track down at the beginning of her FBI career, when she was training with former agent Oliver Odell (Nick Wechsler). The reason why Oliver is a former agent is revealed in flashbacks, where Bex and Oliver are questioning someone about a missing teenage girl, and the methods he uses are definitely not approved by their superiors.
When Bex and Jacob get to the explosion site, they meet Shane Florence (Josh McKenzie), a former military officer who was recruited to be a guard at the secret prison; Harris was on his watch and he feels he’s best suited to know what he’s currently thinking. The three of them get on a private jet and fly to Colorado, where CCTV footage of Harris snatching a woman is shown. But the woman doesn’t fit the MO he had when he was killing in the past. Bex figures out that he may have unfinished business with Nicole Westin (Beth Lacke), the only person who has survived a Harris attack.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The one-killer-per-week structure of The Hunting Party, created by JJ Bailey, feels like a blatant rip-off of the structure of The Blacklist.
Our Take: Everything about The Hunting Party feels generic, from the premise to the structure to the characters to the dialogue. The first episode is filled with exposition and twists that we were able to predict before they happened. Even the twist in the case of Harris was easy to figure out, and seemed to be projected so early in the episode that it blunted the impact of the plot development.
It’s pretty obvious that, from the start, there is an indefinite number of serial killers that Bex and the team will have to track down, one at a time; the number will likely coincide with the number of episodes this show gets, give or take a couple of two-parters. We’re supposed to believe by default that Bex is a top-notch profiler, but the only evidence we’re given is a block of exposition from her about being interested in serial killers since she was 15.
In fact, there’s a whole lot of exposition in the first episode, despite the fact that nothing about the prison’s purpose, what they did to the serial killers there, and exactly why someone would want to blow it up is revealed. We don’t get any information is about how exactly Oliver got booted from the bureau. It feels like Bailey, who wrote the episode, was busy putting in twists and drops of information that may pay off later in the series at the expense of anything that would make the series feel like more than just a standard-grade procedural.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Bex is informed that someone wanted that “someone wanted those killers back out in the world.”
Sleeper Star: None, really. Starting in the second episode, another member of the team, Jennifer Morales (Sara Garcia), will be introduced.
Most Pilot-y Line: The speech Bex makes about finding out her friend’s dad was a serial killer when she was 15 felt too long and very unnecessary. Oh, and did we mention that Bex has a family member that isn’t what we expected and seemed to be yet another silly plot twist?
Our Call: SKIP IT. The Hunting Party is a generic action series that seems to operate on twists that either aren’t that surprising or are pretty much useless.
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.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Hunting Party’ On NBC, About A Team That Tracks Down Serial Killers That Escaped From A Secret Federal Prison appeared first on Decider.
