Unfortunately, Backstrom‘s apparent plan to set itself apart is simply to commit an excessive amount of time to painting Backstrom as a completely irredeemable bastard. In the pilot episode alone, the detective tongue-lashes a grieving woman, hurls racial slights at his Hindu doctor, verbally demeans most, if not all, of his co-workers and mocks an apparent suicide victim, taking undisguised pleasure in soon declaring the case a homicide (at first, the only reason he does so is to get a free lunch). Subsequent episodes find him up to similar tricks.
The immediate issue with his characterization, though, is in how absurdly over-the-top it is. Hanson clearly felt that he had to swing for the fences in order to make Backstrom (and Backstrom) stand out, and that aggressive approach borders on desperate. Not for a second does Backstrom feel like a living, breathing person; his particular brand of surly, self-destructive mastermind will only ever exist within the confines of network television.
That kind of larger-than-life persona could work well for Backstrom if he were assigned to cases that required someone with his particular gifts. That’s where Hanson falls short, though – the most striking thing about Fox’s newest crime procedural is how dull and predictable each week’s case turns out to be. In one episode (already, they’ve blurred together), Backstrom tackles the case of a college student who appears to have died from a forced heroin overdose. The usual suspects are rounded up, Backstrom has a sudden realization that cracks the case wide open, and the killer is revealed as the same person all attentive viewers thought it was all along. Big whoop – the show needs to work much harder if it wants to set itself apart from the billion other detective shows out there.
That said, if Backstrom is going to make any changes to improve itself, its attentions should certainly be focused on the supporting players, all of whom currently possess a single personality trait. Fellow detective Nicole Gravely (Genevieve Angelson) is “principled,” while forensics guy Peter Niedermayer (Kristoffer Polaha) is “enlightened.” Dennis Haysbert’s Detective Sergeant John Almond is the charismatic one of the group, and Beatrice Rosen’s Nadia Paquet, a civilian helping the detectives, adds a dash of levity to a series that seems determined to match The Killing‘s levels of depressing downpour. None of them leave the faintest impressions outside of Haysbert, whose charm occasionally peeks through the generic scripting.
So Backstrom has some work to do. As it stands, the series isn’t terrible – in particular, Wilson’s performance is entertaining – but it is bare-bones. At one point, Gravely berates Backstrom for “only ever seeing the worst in people,” calling him out on his constant rudeness toward everyone. “I don’t see the worst in people,” he says with the slow intensity of someone about to make a breakthrough. “I see the everyone in everyone.” Really? That’s Backstrom’s big statement?
At this juncture, he’s all “anti” and no “hero,” hardly the protagonist that Fox intended for Hanson to create. And on top of that, if the detective can’t even regularly demonstrate the “genius” part of his “toxic genius” identifier, Backstrom may deserve to get carted off in a body bag sooner rather than later.
