'The Chicago Code' Shows Dramatic Improvement

A few weeks ago, I wrote a less-than-complimentary blog post about Fox's new urban crime drama, The Chicago Code, which stars Jennifer Beals and Delroy Lindo. Fortunately, I kept watching the show, and three episodes later, I'm happy to report that I've changed my opinion. Rather startlingly, in fact.

I'm not going to blame my initial screed on an adverse reaction to medication, a la Charlie Sheen. The first episode, truthfully, wasn't that hot. But TV is a protean art form, and the best series continually evolve and explore new possibilities. The Chicago Code is evolving more rapidly than most. In the space of a few episodes, it's gone from mediocre to very good and seems on its way to becoming a worthy successor to predecessors such as Hill Street Blues and The Wire.

What initially irked me about The Chicago Code was what seemed like a frustrating waste of a really promising premise -- an embattled woman police chief locked in a battle against the entrenched civic corruption for which the City of Big Shoulders is legendary. I was even more disappointed because the show has a strong cast, led by boomers Beals and Lindo, and because it is produced by near-boomer (age 44) Shawn Ryan, who was the creator of F/X's powerful, provocative cop series The Shield, and show runner for last fall's brilliant but short-lived Terriers.

Beals, an under-appreciated actress best known for her early flirtation with stardom in the 1980s film Flashdance, seemed painfully miscast, and the writing was so generic that with the substitution of huli-huli pork for deep-dish pizza, it could have been a script for Hawaii 5-0. (The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-area publication, even created this drinking game, in which viewers are required to imbibe with each gratuitous reference to Chicago sports teams or mention of the long-defunct Chicago Irish mob.)

But over the next three episodes, remarkably, The Chicago Code steadily morphed into the urban noir that I had hoped it might be. Beals, after a shaky start, seems to have gotten her bearings. As police superintendent Teresa Colvin, she has a new edge in her voice and tension in her body language, especially in the ramrod-stiff, tightly wound manner that she struts around the edge of crime scenes in an ill-fitting department-issue nylon jacket, as if she's struggling to maintain her patience with both her institutional wardrobe options and her underlings' shortcomings. Her manner is decidedly less deferential and more authoritative, especially when it comes to dealing with her former partner and present go-to guy, detective Wysocki, portrayed with appropriate volatility and macho animus by Jason Clarke.

Kudos to Ryan -- who, according to IMDB.com's show credits, seems to be doing most of the writing himself -- for giving Beals some better material. In last week's episode, she had a great scene in which she exploded in rage and despair after learning that the chief of staff forced upon her by the mayor had sought a bribe from corrupt alderman Ronin Gibbons (Lindo), who then exposed the chief of staff publicly to tarnish her regime. Last night, she was forced to congratulate her nemesis, Gibbons, in front of a hostile crowd for thwarting his own assassination attempt. Beals infused her character with a brittle, barely cordial demeanor that made the interaction crackle with intensity.

Ryan also is giving Lindo, a masterful performer whose gift for conveying nuances of emotion is sometimes obscured by his hulking physical presence, plenty of opportunities to show what he can do. As alderman Gibbons, Lindo pulls off a feat comparable to what James Gandolfini did so famously with Tony Soprano. The difference is that while Tony Soprano was a slave to his fickle emotions, emotional weaknesses and carnal desires, Lindo's Gibbons is a paragon of discipline and self-control. He seems to have no personal vices, other than his penchant for wearing excessively elegant suits and pouring big glasses of 18-year-old Scotch, from which he only sparingly sips.

Both Lindo's acting and Ryan's writing skills were on prominent display in last night's episode, "Cabrini-Green," which you can watch in full on Fox's website. The episode has an intricate, shifting-perspective narrative that jumps back and forth between two jarringly unconnected story lines -- based on real events and Chicago history. Half of the episode was devoted to Wysocki's pursuit of a serial mad-bomber, determined to hit the remainder of the targets on a list composed four decades ago by a now-defunct radical antiwar group (modeled after the actual Weather Underground).

That subplot was juxtaposed with a second, more complex story, which itself jumped back and forth between the external point-of-view depiction of an assassination attempt on Gibbons in a neighborhood barbershop and the internal monologue going on inside alderman Gibbons' head about his impoverished childhood in Chicago's infamous Cabrini-Green projects. It was a gimmicky approach, the sort that would get blue-penciled in a John Truby screenwriting seminar, but in Ryan's hands, it clicked. We saw not only the impetus for Gibbons' prideful obsession with power -- his dream of bettering the lives of people in his community -- but also how easily noble motives, when coupled with a "by any means necessary" ethic, can become inextricably intertwined with cold-hearted depravity. That it works so convincingly on screen, though, is a measure of Lindo's nimbleness as an actor.

If The Chicago Code (Monday, 9 p.m. Eastern) keeps heading in this direction, I'm going to keep watching. You should give it a look, too.

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