The Irrational Review: Jesse L. Martin Plays Mind Games In NBC's Stubbornly Mediocre Procedural
Fall TV season is here! Well, sort of. The ongoing Hollywood strikes — hey studios, feel free to pay your writers and actors anytime now, thanks — have reduced this fall's network lineups to a depressing mix of reality TV and acquired imports. So as one of the only new network dramas debuting this month, NBC's The Irrational (premiering Monday, Sept. 25 at 10/9c; I've seen the first three episodes) has our full attention. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite deserve it. It's not bad, exactly, but it's not good, either: a stubbornly mediocre procedural that actually has a half-decent hook, but squanders it with thin characterization and too-convenient plot twists.
Jesse L. Martin stars as Dr. Alec Mercer, who is the classic TV Detective Who Blanks, meaning he's a detective who does something cool and weird to solve cases — hopefully enough cases to hit the 100-episode mark. In Alec's case, he's a professor of behavioral science who uses his years of expertise in human behavior to help the FBI crack tough cases. Alec is obsessively interested in why people make bad decisions, and he employs an array of psychological party tricks to gather clues, digging into criminals' psyches to reveal their dark motivations.
Alec's crime-solving methods do add some fun psychological wrinkles to the procedural formula, and the pilot written by Arika Lisanne Mittman (Elementary, Timeless) is straightforward but effective. But the plots and character arcs are clogged up with clichés, beginning with Alec: He's a quirky loner who drives a vintage car and is nursing a past trauma, indicated by the mysterious burn scar on his face. He was badly burned in a church bombing twenty years ago, and those behind it still have not been brought to justice. That means, of course, that there's a shadowy conspiracy for Alec to unravel bit by bit in each episode — but the mystery isn't nearly compelling enough to keep us interested.
Martin has been making TV shows better for decades now, from Law & Order to The Flash, but The Irrational doesn't play to his strengths as a leading man. He's at his best when he's playing a smooth talker with a warm heart, but Alec is smug and coldly detached, in the Dr. Gregory House mold. (His insistence on bringing up obscure psychological concepts in every conversation is borderline obnoxious.) Martin dominates the screen here, too, with the rest of the cast just blending quietly into the background, from Alec's FBI agent ex-wife (played by Delilah's Maahra Hill) to his tech-savvy sister to his eager teaching assistants. None of them have much in the way of discernible character traits; they're all just witnesses to Alec's stunning genius.
Episode 3, which centers on the seemingly intentional crash of a passenger airliner, is the strongest of the bunch, but for the most part, each week's case takes a few predictable twists and turns before Alec inevitably solves the puzzle. And my God, the bad guys here are such blabbermouths! They spill their guts to Alec just in time for him to save the day before we hit the 42-minute mark. It's all a little too easy, and a little too formulaic. Maybe I'm expecting too much because of Martin's presence (and because there's precious little else out there this fall), but The Irrational needs to dig a lot deeper if it wants to make a real breakthrough.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: NBC's The Irrational puts a fun spin on the procedural formula, but it's dragged down by clichés and convenient plot twists.