ABC pumping up drama on Sunday nights
Even with time-shift and on-demand viewing, some television scheduling traditions still matter, such as the importance of Sunday night. That’s why ABC is making a strong effort this year to counter the CBS block (“Madam Secretary,” “The Good Wife,” “CSI: Cyber”) with two new dramas starting Sunday, Sept. 27. One, “Quantico,” has hit written all over it, while the other is a thinly disguised retread of one of TV’s greatest nighttime soaps. “Blood & Oil” may be set in North Dakota, but it’s still “Dallas.”
A young woman is unconscious in the rubble of Grand Central Station at the start of “Quantico.” Flash back nine months, as she prepares to leave her home in Oakland for a trip to the East Coast. On the plane, she meets a guy, tells him she’s with Doctors Without Borders, and they end up hooking up in his car.
Later, Alex Parrish (Pri-
yanka Chopra) will walk into the FBI training facility in Quantico, Va., and encounter Ryan Booth (Jake McLaughlin) again. They are members of a class of 50 that also includes a Muslim woman named Nimah Anwar (Yasmine Al Massri), a wealthy young heiress from Georgia named Shelby Wyatt (Johanna Braddy), a gay New Yorker named Simon Asher (Tate Ellington), a cocky young hotshot named Caleb Haas (Graham Rogers) and Eric Packer (Brian J. Smith), a young Mormon recently returned from his mission in Malawi.
The recruits are put through their paces by FBI Deputy Director Miranda Shaw (Aunjanue Ellis) and her assistant, Liam O’Connor (Josh Hopkins).
The training is rigorous, and there’s no room for alsorans in the group. The recruits’ first big test is to uncover secrets about each other, and there are plenty of secrets among the core group of trainees. Before she left, Alex removed a small packet from a secret hiding place in her room and tucked it into her bag. We don’t know what it is or why it’s so important to her. Simon has staged a selfie kiss with a guy he’s never met before and displays the photo in his room at Quantico. Nimah has stopped at a convenience store and removed a cell phone hidden in the tank of a restroom toilet.
But that’s only the half of it. Before the pilot episode is over, we’ll get answers to some of the personal mysteries, but others, even more disturbing, will be presented to us.
The series was created by Joshua Safran and Mark Gordon, and although ABC has provided only one episode to critics, it’s enough to see what can make the show work. The plot is intricate and compelling, the characters magnetic and mysterious at the same time. There’s a spy somewhere in Quantico, but it’s not as though there is a lack of suspects. Everyone seems to have a secret, and that knowledge only heightens the constrictive sense of paranoia that Safran and Gordon use to hold our attention.
Chopra is the show’s primary asset. She’s perfectly suited to play the part of a tough, no-BS young woman who is driven by events in her own past.
“Blood & Oil,” created by Josh Pate and Rodes Fishburne, isn’t in the same league as either the original “Dallas” or the more recent, updated version on TNT. But maybe it doesn’t have to be.
It’s the story of a dysfunctional family, headed by oil tycoon Hap Briggs (Don Johnson), as much of a cowboy as J.R. Ewing was. He has a ne’er-do-well son named Wick (Scott Michael Foster), who has little use for his old man and even less use for his second wife, Darla (Amber Valletta).
Billy LeFever (Chace Crawford) and his young wife, Cody (Rebecca Rittenhouse), are on their way to North Dakota to open up a laundromat when their truck veers off the road, smashing their washing machines and, for the moment, their one hope to make it big.
Billy gets a job as an oil rig worker, impresses Hap and soon hatches a scheme with Cody to become a player in the oil business. He isn’t related to Hap, but he may as well be. Hap even says he wishes his own son had Billy’s drive, intelligence and integrity.
You see where all of this is going, of course, but no one is out to surprise viewers with “Blood & Oil.”
This is a soap opera. It may not last as long as either “Dallas,” but it’s working the same territory. As long as the well hasn’t run out, it has a modest chance of catching on.