Rubicon (TV series)

Rubicon
Created by	Jason Horwitch
Starring	James Badge Dale Jessica Collins Lauren Hodges Dallas Roberts Christopher Evan Welch Arliss Howard Miranda Richardson
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	10 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Jason Horwitch Henry Bromell Josh Maurer
Producers	Leslie Jacobowitz Kerry Orent
Running time	45 minutes
Original release
Network	AMC
Release	June 13, 2010 (2010-06-13) – present

Rubicon is an American television series created by Jason Horwitch and produced by Henry Bromell that is broadcast on the AMC television network. The series centers around an intelligence analyst at a national think tank called the American Policy Institute (API) who discovers that he may be working with members of a secret society that manipulates world events on a grand scale. The series stars James Badge Dale, Jessica Collins, Miranda Richardson, Dallas Roberts, Christopher Evan Welch, Michael Cristofer and Peter Gerety.

The series debuted on AMC on August 1, 2010 as a two-hour, two episode block. With two million viewers, the August 1 premiere set a record as the most watched debut of an AMC original series.

The series is influenced by conspiracy films of the 1970s such as All The President's Men, Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View, which find an innocent character caught up in, and slowly unraveling, a major conspiracy.

Production

Concept

The shows title refers to the river Rubicon in northeastern Italy, more specifically to the famous idiom "Crossing the Rubicon", which means to pass a point of no return, and refers to Julius Caesar's crossing of the river in 49 BC, which was considered an act of war, because crossing it with an army was forbidden by the Roman Senate. Executive producer, Henry Bromell comments in press releases about the historic event, "They were always afraid that the Roman army would someday take over, which is exactly what happened," and continues "And that's when the republic ended and the empire—which is a dictatorship—began."

Creator Jason Horwitch conceived the show upon conspiracy films of the 1970s such as All The President's Men, Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View inspired by their slow-paced action and complex stories. However, he left the show before production even began due to "creative differences", and executive producer Henry Bromell was promoted to sole show runner after the pilot episode. With Horwitch off-board the production began on 29th March in New York City.

Characters

• Will Travers (James Badge Dale): A brilliant man with a knack for pattern recognition, he is the team leader for a group of API analysts the story follows. His wife and daughter were killed in the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks—an appointment Will was late for—and the tragedy keeps him distant from other characters. He discovers a pattern in a newspaper's crossword puzzle, which is dismissed as meaningless, but gains the attention of his supervisors at API. After the death of his mentor and father-in-law, David Hadas, he is promoted to David's old position as team leader and finds himself slowly unraveling a major conspiracy.
• Katherine Rhumor (Miranda Richardson): The wife of businessman Tom Rhumor, she was left a widow following her husband's suicide. Determined to understand her husband's recent suicide, she turns to his best friend for help. Upon realizing that he can not be trusted, she is forced to investigate her husband's death on her own.
• Kale Ingram (Arliss Howard): Will's mysterious supervisor at API. He has tasked Maggie with reporting on Will and the rest of his team, and is in regular contact with Spangler. His actions are cryptic as he guides Will through his early days as team leader. Although it is hinted that he appears to be involved in the conspiracy, he also helps Will by providing him with leads in his investigation, and warning him that his home and office are bugged. Although he is very secretive about his personal life and past, he invites Will to have dinner with him and his apparently live-in boyfriend at home. He mentions on two occasions he was formerly CIA "black ops", and involved in a series of assassinations in Beirut in the 1980s.
• Margaret "Maggie" Young (Jessica Collins): Will's assistant. She appears to be romantically interested in Will, but has been unable to break through his emotional distance and attract his interest. She has a daughter named Sophie, and is estranged from her husband, though he is attempting to reconcile with his daughter. She is trying to help Will, but also works for Kale delivering information about Will and his team. Eventually, Kale recognizes that her feelings for Will could compromise the information she provides, and he tells Will that she has been spying on him. Will, who was on the verge of asking her out, confronts Maggie and refuses to work with her any longer, though Kale assures Maggie she will remain at API.
• Miles Fiedler (Dallas Roberts): A member of Will's team. While an MIT graduate with a genius-level IQ, he is the most distracted and nervous member of the team, with a fixation on conspiracies. He is recently separated from his wife and children, but has kept the truth from his coworkers. He respects Will as a boss, and clashes frequently with Grant.
• Grant Test (Christopher Evan Welch): The oldest member of Will's team, he resents being passed over as team leader in favor of Will. He clashes frequently with Miles and Tanya, using his seniority to bully the two on occasion. He is married with two children; the marriage is heavily strained by the demands of his job.
• Tanya MacGaffin (Lauren Hodges): The newest member of Will's team. She is the least experienced of team and consequently the most insecure, but very intelligent and also the most ambitious. She appears to have a drinking problem, regularly coming to work hungover and keeping small bottles of vodka in her desk. Kale is made aware of the problem by Maggie, and he passes that information to Will. She also has problems with substance abuse which comes to the attention of Spangler, after she fails to pass a biweekly urine test. Instead of being fired, as she feared, Spangler reassures her that the agency takes care of its own and offers her the help of a special drug rehab facility set up for "the intelligence community".
• Ed Bancroft (Roger Robinson): A former API analyst, who retired when "the codes cracked him" according to Will. Although retired he remained a long-time friend of David, and was still updated about the events at API. After David's death he begins to help Will solving the mystery surrounding David's death.
• Truxton Spangler (Michael Cristofer): The head of API, Spangler is zealously devoted to maintaining the institute's independence from the government. He is in regular contact with Kale, and supports his decision to appoint Will as the new head of the team, later bringing Will to a series of meetings in Washington, D.C. to defend API's sovereignty. He is shown to be involved in the conspiracy, with ties to both Tom Rhumor's company Atlas Macdowell and the men hired to follow Will.
• David Hadas (Peter Gerety): Will's father-in-law and the original head of Will's team. He is preoccupied with superstitions and numerology, particularly bad luck and the number 13. After showing the crossword puzzle to Kale, he is killed in a commuter rail accident, an accident Will suspects was arranged to murder David.

Episodes

Main article: List of Rubicon episodes

The series debuted on AMC on August 1, 2010 with a two hour broadcast of the pilot followed by episode 2. The pilot episode was given two preview showings; once after the season 3 finale of Breaking Bad on Sunday, June 13 and again after the season 4 premiere of Mad Men on Sunday, July 25.

Reception

Critical reception

Rubicon has received generally favorable reviews, with a Metacritic score of 69 out of 100, based on 28 critic reviews. Most of the critics praised the show's cast and atmosphere, but many have criticized the lack of action, humor and answers about the puzzles in every episode. The show has often been compared with AMC's other shows, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, because of their success and originality, Entertainment Weekly′s Ken Tucker ended his review with such a comparison saying "Rubicon doesn't have the glossy panache of Mad Men or the in-your-face confrontations of Breaking Bad, but I think that's a good thing. It establishes Rubicon as its own distinct creation from AMC". About the lack of action on the show, Scott D. Pierce for the Deseret News wrote, "For a show that's supposed to be a spy thriller, there aren't a whole lot of thrills in "Rubicon", Maureen Ryan from the Chicago Tribune commented on this, "This pleasantly low-key drama has little trouble creating an atmosphere, but the pace is sometimes slack in the first four episodes." However, some critics find the lack of action as smart and creative, as Entertainment Weekly′s Ken Tucker wrote: "Rubicon does it by creating an eerily quiet world in which small moments can generate great suspense. The discovery of a spy's clues planted in crossword puzzles, or Will's insistence that a guy is following him while we are shown that two different men are tailing him — these carry more dramatic weight than a score of car chases or martial-arts fight scenes." At the other end of the critical spectrum, popular blog GuiltyFeat ridiculed various elements of the show including Katherine Rhumour's name. Lampooning the entire premise of the show GuiltyFeat wrote, "When every action is foreshadowing, when every object is a macguffin and when every comment is a clue, plot becomes meaningless."

International broadcasts

The BBC has purchased the series for broadcast on BBC Four in the Autumn/Winter 2010/11 season.

External links

• Official website
• Rubicon at IMDb
• Template:TV.com
• Rubicon-TV.info