The whimsical world of oddball ops.
By Matt Fowler
Amazon’s Fall 2015 “Pilot Season” is underway in the US, UK, and Germany. The way it works is that those with Prime memberships can stream a handful of new pilots for free, and the ones that wind up getting the best audience feedback have a chance of getting a first season pick up. Past pilots that have been picked up for series include Transparent, Bosch, The Man in the High Castle, Red Oaks, Sneaky Pete, and Mad Dogs. You can check out the current Pilot Season episodes here.
Modern “Intelligence” satire can range from this past summer’s The Brink on HBO to John Cusack’s War, Inc to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (the latter, of course, being the apex of the genre). But the pilot Amazon’s Patriot, starring Wonderland’s Michael Dorman and Lost’s Terry O’Quinn, is the first time the dangerous world of covert ops has been given a quirky “Garden State” treatment. And it’s an admirable experiment. It doesn’t work, but it’s admirable.
Instead of getting a protagonist who’s blank and bare due to over-medication though, Patriot’s John Tavner wanders around in a stupor due to PTSD. And having been stretched way too thin in the world of undercover work by his well-meaning Head of Ops father (O’Quinn). He’s seen so much bad stuff that it’s left him hollow, with only folk music as his outlet (containing very specific, confessional classified intel lyrics). John’s just sort of a reed in the wind and his saint of a wife, Alice (Aliette Opheim), just hopes he’s okay and will eventually come home at some point. You know, for a day or two before he’s sent back out into the fray.
The “hook” of Patriot, which was created by director Steven Conrad and actor Gil Bellows (who also has a small role), is that John’s new mission involves an N.O.C.(non-official cover) with an American piping firm. A job that would allow him to travel overseas in order to sporadically tend to a bribery op that’s meant to thwart an Iranian election. So his undercover work begins on domestic soil. By faking his way into a job he’s not even close to being qualified for.
For the most part though, Patriot is as closed off as its lead, opting for non-traditional visuals and approaches in order, I suppose, to showcase the lunacy of John’s work. I brought up Garden State earlier because of John’s numbness. And because, at times, the camera will just pan in on his face while all noise drops out and a song plans. Detailing just how damaged and detached he’s become. But there’s also an element present that apes FX’s Fargo. Or other properties that try to do “light-dark.” Because Patriot is violent. And it’s violence, no matter how zanily it’s depicted, still stands in stark contrast to the overall tone. Whether it’s John casually pushing someone in front of a speeding truck or smashing a wooden palate over a guard’s head, Patriot lets these dark acts (including murder) done in the spur of the moment, for the good of the mission, slide on by as if they were as silly as the rest of goings-on.
Even given the vast differences in genre of the new slate of Fall Amazon pilots, Patriot is still able to stand out. It’s suitably different. Just not in a sustainable way. Story-wise or interest-wise.
