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Series Premiere: The Enemy Within

  • Writer: Jeremy Costello
    Jeremy Costello
  • Feb 26, 2019
  • 4 min read

A TV show that is a clinic for a what a premiere episode needs to be. It had it all. And the show has the potential to be a TV version of 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier.'


I'm not going to lie to you. When I first saw the trailer for The Enemy Within, my interest immediately piqued for one reason and one reason only.


Jennifer Carpenter is in a new show.


Carpenter remains one of the most underrated actresses in all of television. She rocked as Debra Morgan on Dexter, one of my favorite shows ever. The trailer gave us a clip of Carpenter talking with a man on the phone who was threatening the safety of her own daughter. Carpenter immediately melts into a panic as she shakes holding a phone with a live video feed of her daughter.


That trailer was a good gimmick.


The episode was a fantastic hook.


The Enemy Within is a show about FBI and CIA agents working to take down a man named Tal, a huge threat to our country. They're partially successful, too. Agents worked together to stop a massive coordinated attack that led to the diffusing of four bombs set by Tal and his crew. Carpenter plays Erica Shepherd, who apparently is widely known as a traitor to our country. We find out why; It was Tal who had her daughter during that phone call, and he wanted the names of the agents who diffused those bombs and stopped his plan.


She gave him those names.


What a scenario. Shepherd sold out her own agents for the safety of her daughter (what parent wouldn't?), which led to national headlines that buried her reputation with the likes of Benedict Arnold. She was imprisoned for three years Hannibal Lecter-style (there's even a shameless reference to that in the episode). The entire episode left me wondering why Shepherd simply wouldn't tell everyone why she ratted out those agents.


In a touching scene, Shepherd gets her chance to explain herself to agent Will Keaton (played well by Morris Chestnut). Keaton's fiance was one of the four agents Shepherd named to Tal, so he's got motive for wanting Shepherd locked up.


But now, in a classic twist of irony, the agency wants Shepherd on their side. Three years after Shepherd was imprisoned, another set of coordinated attacks leads the agency to believe that Tal is active once again, and Shepherd may be their best chance at stopping him.


"If I have to work with the devil to catch Tal, I will," Keaton said at one point.


You quickly could sense the tension when they bring her in wearing garbs she wore in prison to the FBI's intelligence level. But she quickly proves she belongs. She shows off some tricks, like explaining how Tal is ripping phones instead of just cloning them, or how Tal and his crew use a cutout map trick that was once used by the Soviets; this trick involved fake signals and two different maps with the same layout, one of which was a decoy.


Heck, Shepherd was smart enough to block the signal from a mechanism the FBI implanted around her artery to make sure they knew were she was at all times, and she escaped anyway. She wanted to get away just to see her daughter (now three years older since the last time she saw her) as she was coming out of school. The police quickly tracked her down and arrested her again, but that wasn't the point.


Shepherd clearly is going to be redeemed. She doesn't care that everyone thinks she's a traitor. She told Keaton in that touching scene she didn't tell everyone the truth because she didn't want to put her daughter at risk by revealing Tal's schemes. Okay, it's not the easiest sell for this whole "victim characterization" angle, but it'll do.


The premiere was perfect because smaller story threads were started subtly (one agent seemingly has a crush on Keaton, for example). But the grand story arc involves why Tal targeted Shepherd and her daughter in the first place. Shepherd was onto something big: there is a legion of traitor agents planted throughout each of the U.S.'s intelligence agencies. We now know there are thousands of agents who can't be trusted, but no one knows which ones. It's Hydra infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier all over again (coincidentally my second-favorite MCU movie)! We already know one agent who is a liar. It's fun when the audience gets to peek behind the curtain and know what the characters don't. There's an added level of tension that brings tons of drama.


Maybe the show's one flaw is its predictability. I did nail like four or five reveals before they occurred. Then again, I am pretty good at this....yeah, the show is too predictable.


Doesn't matter. I'm in. It was a great premiere, and I'm excited to see what they do with this show.


The wife's 2 cents: I like it. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.


 
 
 

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