State Of Affairs Series Premiere Review: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

State of Affairs steps in for The Blacklist, which will move on to a Thursday timeslot after Super Bowl Sunday. One can see the aspects of State that might make it a compelling replacement for The Blacklist, what with its international intrigue, top secret agents and ever-shifting loyalties. Basically, it’s got everything The Blacklist has except James Spader chewing the scenery weekly. The show will depend on some human element to keep people coming back weekly, and the obvious choice would be the working/personal relationship between Heigl and Woodard’s characters.

Now, Woodard can no doubt carry the gravitas of an occupant of the Oval Office, but there’s a bit of a disconnect between her and Heigl so far as projecting a familial relationship between a mother and the woman who was going to be her daughter-in-law, presumably a relationship that would get closer after the death of Aaron. Maybe there was just no room to get too far into it in week one, but Tucker and Payton’s talk at the end of the episode felt more staged than organic, a fact trumped by Heigl’s very strained reading of the line where she declares that she’ll kill all those involved in Aaron’s death.

The relationship stuff can be massaged over in the coming weeks though, a by-product of the cast getting comfortable with each other. One thing that might not be so easy to duplicate is the zip in the action provided by Joe Carnahan, who punches up the cliche and acting challenges in the same way he did for the pilot of The Blacklist. He beautifully captures the desperate helplessness of Tucker’s flashback to Kabul, and he makes you race to keep up with Tucker’s efforts to combat the CIA Director’s subversion of her analysis. If nothing else, those scenes made you appreciate that Tucker is a capable agent, even if it made high-ranking agency personnel look less than capable, refusing to see what’s obviously there because Charlie is obviously right and the writers need to create drama.

And yet, there’s probably enough to State of Affairs to make it worth sticking around for a couple of weeks and seeing where it goes. There’s some compelling details in the story of how Aaron died, and a fascinating implication that Tucker may, in fact, be responsible in some way because Fatah was her own asset. Why did he turn, and how much it turns out Tucker is responsible for the attack – the thing she was hiding from herself according to Charlie’s therapist – will make for interesting ongoing mysteries. There’s also the new guy, Lucas Newsome (Adam Kaufman), who seems to be the Director’s new favorite on the briefing team. He seems to have mysterious motives and allegiances, so where does he fit into the puzzle? Time will tell if ratings allow.

State of Affairs has a lot of promise, and with the real life realm of espionage and world security not getting any less murky, there’s a lot of inspiration for a show like this to dine off of. The cast is good, the material is decent, and with a little bit of hard work and some luck, State of Affairs might easily take The Blacklist’s place as NBC’s Monday night anchor. Assuming, of course, it doesn’t go into Homeland levels of insanity and dubious moralizing. Even Katherine Heigl knows that Carrie Mathison levels of being unlikable is not where she wants to be.