2 hours ago
3
Two things that you can pretty much count on from TV shows based on novelist Carl Hiassen’s novels: They’ll show Florida in all its strange glory, and the detective at its center will be laid back but have a checkered past. That’s what we get with the new ABC series R.J. Decker.
R.J. DECKER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “Fort Lauderdale.” A man sits on the steps of a courthouse, looking at an Almond Joy.
The Gist: A woman approaches the man, R.J. Decker (Scott Speedman) and asks him if he’s going to eat the candy bar through the wrapper. This is when he goes into why he’s there; he’s on trial for assault; he’s a photojournalist, and he hauled off and beat up a 20-year-old kid who was stealing his photo equipment from his car. But because the kid is a member of the influential Ochoa family, he knows he’s going to prison, where Almond Joys won’t be easy to get.
The woman responds by going to his car where they have a quickie. Little does he know that her name is Emi Ochoa (Jaina Lee Ortiz) and she’s about to testify against him.
Two years later, Decker is out of prison and has started working as a private investigator, doing things like finding stolen dogs and using his camera to take pictures of cheating husbands. He lives in an RV that’s teetering on the edge of a massive sinkhole in a strange trailer park. He often hangs out at the bar owned by his former cellmate, Aloysius “Wish” Aiken (Kevin Rankin). He’s still friends with his ex-wife Catherine Delacroix (Adelaide Clemens), who is now married to FLPD detective Mel Abreu (Bevin Bru), who is no fan of Deckler’s.
When a woman ends up being found strangled in the trunk of a stolen car, he’s convinced it’s the work of Clay Gregory (Hunter Burke), who was a person of interest in the death of his wife, a colleague of Decker’s at the newspaper where he used to work, but was never convicted. However, he has a seemingly airtight alibi, and Decker isn’t convinced he didn’t have anything to do with it.
Photo: John Merrick/DisneyWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Robert Doherty and based on the main character in Carl Hiassen’s 1987 novel Double Whammy (Hiassen is an EP), R.J. Decker is Bad Monkey combined with Will Trent.
Our Take: The first episode of R.J. Decker starts out bumpy, with a ton of exposition in the first scenes, and the whole idea that Emi Ochoa decides to have sex with Decker before testifying against him. But as we settle into Decker’s post-prison life and his obsession with bringing Clay Gregory down, the show becomes a very watchable, character-driven detective series.
Yes, it leans on the “Florida is weird” trope pretty hard. There’s a scene, for instance, where Wish lets a big man drink for free because he proved he was the “Florida man” in an article about a person who chewed through a pair of handcuffs. Then again, pretty much any show that’s based on Hiassen’s novels leans on that trope; what separates the better ones are if the characters are people we want to spend time with, and if the Weird Florida stuff doesn’t dominate.
There definitely is a lot of plot manipulation going on in the first episode, like how Decker comes to live in Catherine and Mel’s poolhouse, how Wish ended up owning a bar soon after being released from prison, and why Decker even went off on the kid stealing his equipment, landing him in prison to begin with. Somehow or another, Emi reenters his life, helping him with his case, and she’ll likely stay around as an on-again/off-again love interest. But even how that’s explained felt awkward.
Photo: Dana Hawley/DisneyPerformance Worth Watching: Scott Speedman embodies the charming mess that is R.J. Decker, and makes him very easy to root for.
Sex And Skin: Besides Emi and Decker steaming up the windows of Decker’s vintage Jeep Wagoneer, there isn’t any.
Parting Shot: As the Elvis Presley song “Fort Lauderdale Chamber Of Commerce” plays, Emi throws Decker an Almond Joy bar, saying she owes him that from their first encounter.
Sleeper Star: Bevin Bru’s Mel Abreu is going to be the cop that helps Decker out the most during his cases, and we wonder how many episodes it will take for her to stop rolling her eyes at the fact that he’s an ex-con, still friends with Catherine, and uses some unorthodox investigative methods.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Take it from someone who’s actually been to prison; guys like who you’re pretending to be don’t do well,” Decker says to a suspect who claims to be a serial killer. That line was unconvincing, given Decker’s laid-back vibes. He certainly doesn’t come off as a hardened ex-con.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Once awkwardness of setting up R.J. Decker‘s puzzle pieces ends, we see the potential for it to be a fun, quirky case-of-the-week detective series that will concentrate on its characters’ stories as much if not more than the weekly case.
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.
English (US)