Oh!
Oh! Ohh! It's Magic #Deception #ABC #3weekroundup #recap #review
#newseries
I
am back once again with another super-late review. Again, some shows
I'm not even gonna get to review so get off my back. They probably
suck anyway. I'm sorry. That was wrong. I shouldn't have written that
and then not edited it out. I know we all work very hard to be
creative, so saying that something is terrible without even seeing it
is something a troll would do. Let's start this review before I get
totally off track. So, does Deception bring back that magic feeling
or is it a one-trick white guy—uh, I mean pony. White guy.
Whichever. Let's find out together!
ABC's
Deception is the newest procedural that follows the craze of taking
one hardened officer of the law and partnering them with a rather
goofy genius of his trade. Before, ABC succeeded in spades with this
concept by partnering the quirky mystery novelist (shameless plug:
The Man On The Roof on sell June 22nd on Amazon Kindle)
Richard Castle with sizzling, yet dedicated tough cop Kate Beckett on
the show Castle. While it had a great run that saw the pair slowly
fall in love and eventually get married while solving murders and
mysteries together for the better part of seven seasons, it ended
rather abruptly after ABC, in a hugely sexist move, refused to pay
lead actress Stana (happy early B-Day Ms. Katic) the raise she
rightfully deserved, while Nathan got a raise and the idea floated
around that the series could go on with just him at the helm. Yes,
it's been two or three years and I'm still a little bitter at that
non-finale finale that they had (what the hell are we to think about
them both being shot and then suddenly cutting to a scene of them as
a family with two new kids? Was that a dream sequence? Are they dead
or was that real, and they both survived being shot?). I digress.
This time around ABC has decided to pair an FBI agent with a
magician. Yeah, this is gonna be tricky.
 |
| Cameron and Kay |
It
all starts with Cameron's Vegas show he calls Deception. He starts
small by talking directly to the camera about a card trick and
describing the idea behind a magician's setup, his slight of hand and
the prestige. After the trick, he walks to his behind-the-scenes
assistants. We first have Gunter (Vinnie Jones) who seems to be the
props guy. He builds the contraptions for Cameron to use in his show.
We also have Jordan (Justin Chon; happy to see more Asian men getting
some shine) who seems to play the techie behind the more advanced
illusion parts of, uh... illusions. We round out the team with Dina
(Lenora Crichlow; how many beautiful, in-charge women can this show
have. Apparently, only three) who seems to be his business manager.
He handles the magic while she handles everything else.
 |
| The Mysterious Woman and Johnathon |
...end
up in New York's Times Square, having completed the illusion for a TV
special. The trick and show ended, he walks off and gets into his car
with a gorgeous mystery woman played by Stephanie Corneliussen. As
they flirt and go back and forth, and she throws herself at his feet
in hopes of being his next conquest, he notices that she has two
different color eyes. And then they crash. While he is able to get up
and walk away from the crash, he finds that she has been thrown from
the car and is dead on the road. The problem is that when he goes to
check on her, she no longer has two different colors of eyes. It's a
different woman and this new woman has been dead for some time. He
then runs.
The
next morning police come to Cameron's Vegas hotel room/home and try
to arrest him for the accident. The only problem, it isn't actually
him. Nope, this dude pulled a Christopher Nolan's The Prestige and
has lived his entire life with a twin that no one knew about. His
brother is the one that ran. Now, his brother Johnathon, is in prison
for the murder of that woman. He explains what he remembers about
that night and hopes that Cameron can find this woman. Now that their
secret is out, Cameron swears that he will do everything in his power
to find this mystery woman. And then we jump a full year into the
future, and he's made no progress.
Meanwhile,
special agent Kay Daniels and her partner Mike Alvarez (Amaury
Nolasco) are hot on the trail of a big drug-cartel member. She even
is sitting on his private plane, ready to take him in when things go
haywire. As soon as she gets off the plane and is joined by her
partner and the other agents, the other tactical agents' smoke
grenades start going off, sending up clouds of red smoke that fill
the plane hangar. Kay and the others evacuate right before the plane
explodes, leaving a terribly marred wreckage and zero bodies. This
shows on the news. Cameron sees it and recognizes the red smoke as a
signature that he used in a trick where he made a plane disappear on
one of his specials. A take-initiative kinda guy, he goes to the
still-active crime scene and does some charming magician's stuff to
tell them that their plane didn't blow up but disappeared, and he
thinks that the magician that did it specifically wanted him to know
that they did it. He even theorizes that they drove the plane away to
another hangar somewhere close in the middle of the night. Kay is
naturally skeptical about all of this until Cameron shows her the
tracks they used to move the plane and knocks down the false
back-wall that was the door through which they snuck out the plane.
The
plan changes after Kay sees how convincing Cameron's disguise is to
everyone else. He agrees to be used as bait to lure the cartel boss
out of hiding because they know that word will spread that the banker
has supposedly been talking to the Feds. They kidnap the real
accountant and replace him with Cameron, and follow the SUV that
takes him straight to the cartel boss. Cameron is tied up and
blindfolded and nearly killed when he causes some chaos, knocks the
cartel boss's guys out and grabs the wheel of the SUV while still
blindfolded. After a harrowing drive through the city, he and the
boss escape into an alley where the boss is about to shoot him until
he notices that the end of the alley is only a painting. He hasn't
even realized that he walked literally right into a trap, a fake
alley surrounded on all sides by wood. He's already imprisoned. He
still tries to shoot Cameron, and thinks he's succeeded when the
magician goes down. But our guy pops back up and shows the bullet he
caught from the old bullet-catch trick. Really, he just replaced the
cartel guy's gun with a Gunter prop during the chaos in the SUV.
Unfortunately, the guy gives him some gobbledygook about a dragon
when Cameron asks about the evil magician.
We
end with Cameron in a wrap party with the special agents and Kay
unveiling a small piece of evidence she found at the scene of the
plane disappearance. The trick was exactly like his, except for one
thing: a deck of cards was left behind. Cameron takes out the deck of
cards to reveal a one-way burner phone. It automatically calls the
evil magician who is... the mystery woman that Johnathon had in his
car with him that night. The two-colored-eyed mistress set the trick
up on his brother as well. In her best Carmen San Diego impression,
she stands in a Germany airport in all red as she is a
globe-trotting, sexy, magical illusionist. And the game is on,
because it seems like she wants to be caught, or at least pursued.
 |
| Jordan, Gunter and Dina |
Episode
two focused on Cameron and his group's attempt to stay working with
the FBI. While their expertise proved useful for the first crime that
involved a magician's trick aimed specifically at getting his
attention, every crime is not like that. Even more, the FBI doesn't
really care that much about his brother and the supposed “I was
framed” story that Johnathon is telling. But Cameron knows that he
needs the resources of the FBI to help find magical Carmen San Diego.
And unlike Richard Castle who had a legit reason to shadow the NYPD,
not to mention a very close friendship with the mayor who owed him a
favor, Cameron has none of that. So, he decides to audition by using
magical tricks to impress the special agent in charge. Unfortunately,
she is not impressed and while Kay may be semi-open to the idea, she
is not about to bend over backwards to get him privileges.
And
then another murder happens. This time some criminal lawyer who has
worked for the Russian mob for years is murdered during his morning
run. At a stop in his run, some young kid (19) comes and shoots him
in the face with a water gun, yells “got you” and runs away. The
man first thinks that the liquid is just water, but then breaks out
with red splotches on his face and kills over from a poison. The mob
wanted him dead because he had just recently decided he had enough
with criminals after having a child with his foreign wife, and was
working on a deal with the DOJ to rat.
Cameron
injects himself into this investigation by overhearing the breakdown
of the crime, then showing up to the murder scene like he did with
the plane disappearance. He explains that while it was not a magic
trick, this whole thing—the gotchu, the bright blue and orange the
killer was wearing, even the full-framed appearance in a security
camera that caught the murder—is all a performance. He surmises
that this was not just a killing but a well-planned, staged killing.
Kay and Mike decide to see where this could go.
It
goes up to a second floor apartment just outside of where the man was
murdered. A young boy, who always throws paper airplanes out of the
window in the morning, happened to have seen a blue van with a very
distinct business decal sitting outside filming the murder. As it
happens, they spot the van at a park across town and catch the
murderer about to do the same thing to the lawyer's wife and baby.
But when they catch him, the kid thinks he's on a reality TV show and
wonders if he's won the game. The van gets away and they catch the
kid. Cameron thankfully stops the agents from shooting the kid who
doesn't even know the squirt gun is filled with a toxin. They take
him back to questioning and discover that he only just moved to NYC
and was approached on the street by a supposed producer. The
producer, as it turns out, is a Russian mobster who works for the big
boss. If the young boy can tell them more about this guy, they could
maybe get him. The problem: the kid suddenly falls ill with the same
poison while in the interrogation room, presumably for having gotten
drops of the liquid on his skin after carrying the squirt gun around
all day.
Now,
the race is on to find the gangster so that they can find an antidote
to save the innocent kid's life. Even worse, the special agent in
charge has to follow the law which states that the kid is the killer
until they can actually get the real killers behind this plot.
Cameron and the agents go to the square where the kid was picked by
the producer and find a street performer to ID the “producer” he
saw trying to get volunteers for the reality show. But they still
need the kid to ID the Russian in order to get a warrant for his
nightclub.
Cameron,
however, doesn't have to operate by the same rules of law. He and his
team devise a plan to go to the club and speak to the Russian.
Cameron sneaks through the club, uses Dina to help him get into the
private part of the club and gets into a place where he can talk to a
secret VIP bartender to ask where the Russian is. The old bartender
tells him that he shouldn't be there. Still, Cameron pushes farther
and discovers where the blue truck is, but is caught by the Russian.
He does a magic trick where he breaks the guy's phone in half, then
puts it back together before pulling a disappearing act before they
shoot him. Kay and Mike finally show after getting the near-death kid
to ID the “producer.” There's some gun-play and the Russians get
away. But Cameron has a plan.
 |
| Kay and the Special Agent in Charge |
They
go and arrest the guy against Cameron's wishes. But then, as they are
transporting him, their car is hit by one of the Russian's underlings
who, instead of rescuing him, says that the big boss wants him dead,
then squirts him and Cameron in the face with the water gun. As it
turns out, this is a trick. The underling was a very good mask done
by Gunter. The setup is to show Cameron dying from the poison and
convince the Russian that he, too, is about to die from it unless he
tells them how to combat the poison. He does only to realize that the
hospital room really isn't a hospital room but a well-constructed set
and that Cameron isn't dead or sick at all. In a moment of severe
oversight, everyone takes their eyes off of the dude, and he gets up
and holds a knife to Dina's throat. Mike manages to knock him down
from behind and Kay says that they aren't going to arrest him, but
release him back to the mob who will kill him for sure unless he
gives up the big boss. As it turns out, the big boss is the bartender
Cameron met, disguising himself as a low-level worker. Cameron has
helped them throughout the case and the special agent in charge
agrees to keep him on. But he knows that his brother's case will
still not be a priority. Luckily, Kay has already started a board for
his brother's case and has agreed to help him.
In
Episode three Cameron, Kay and the gang had to deal with a Thomas
Crown Affair-style heist (the 1990s one with Pierce Brosnan and Rene
Russo both looking maturely hot). For the first time in three
episodes, this one doesn't open with Cameron doing a magic trick
straight to the camera. Instead, we open with him talking over a
young woman walking through a museum (clearly not the NYC
Metropolitan) and into a special exhibit wing where she notices
something strange around all the paintings. She touches something and
suddenly the gate goes down, and she's trapped inside. This is a job
for... an escapologist!
Cameron
sees this simply as a bad escape trick, and he's done them a thousand
times. All he needs is to figure out a way in, and he'll be good. The
exhibit happens to be sponsored by some big-time billionaire
businessman who shows up with his adult son to complain about the
pictures. Unfortunately, Cameron touches the gate and the guy blows
up one of the paintings. Luckily the woman and the other paintings
are still fine.
So,
time is ticking away, and they need to first figure out a way into
the room. The museum director tells them that only one man has ever
snuck into that room, but he was caught and is in jail. As it would
happen, he's in jail with Johnathon. Johnathon must get the man's
secret by promising him a favor. He tells him that there is a secret
opening through a floor panel. The next thing is that they then have
to figure out how to distract the cameras. Through a simple roll-out
mirror trick, they are able to trick the camera into seeing an empty
floor as Cameron worms his way across the floor to a camera blindspot
(most of the room is in a blindspot). They replace most of the
paintings in 90 seconds but Kay sneaks into the room also and grabs
the final two paintings that are still in the camera frame. They
manage to get out of the room just in time as the man blows the room.
We learn that Kay saved the painting because her sister used to be a
painter and loved this particular artist. Sadly, we learned in the
second episode that her sister died by overdose some years back
before Kay became an FBI agent.
We
move on to see Cameron meeting the museum woman for a lunch after
they are safe, while the FBI have to still find out who was behind
the bombing. As it turns out, they discover the guy behind the
cameras only to find him shot dead in the head. They then discover
that he was the janitor and that this was a total inside job because
the woman was also in on it. But she tells Cameron that it's not what
he thinks right before they get kidnapped.
Cameron
and the woman wake up in the trunk of a car where she explains that
the mastermind behind this whole thing contacted her online, and took
advantage of her desire to be an art restorer and seduced her with
the possibility of money. But he always planned to kill her. She was
supposed to take down all the real paintings and throw them into the
garbage can where the janitor would then take them down to the
dumpster to be picked up later by the mastermind. Well, Cameron
escapes the trunk just as the car stops and rolls into the backseat
and into the driver's seat. They then manage to dress him as the
janitor, go back to the museum and capture the billionaire's son as
the mastermind. He stole the paintings because he was tired of his
father loving the paintings and his “life's work” more than him.
We
end the episode with Dina getting close to Mike, and Kay and Cameron
getting closer through her story about her sister's desire to be an
artist. It's far from there, but it's getting there.
What's
my grade? I give it a solid B+. Yes,
we've seen this show before and its name was Castle. Yes, Castle felt
somewhat like the originator of this modern wave of eccentric
non-police partners with police, and the two leads (hear that, ABC?
Both the man AND the woman led the show) had some serious chemistry)
but since that show has been taken off the air, this show can serve
as a very good child or clone of that one. You have the overly
stylish lead female cop or in this case FBI agent with demons in her
personal past that motivates her to be in law enforcement. Beckett's
mother was a lawyer and was murdered when she was young; Kay's sister
had the overdose, although that is a crime that can easily be turned
into her having been murdered for some reason in later years. Castle
slyly charms his way onto the force and into the good graces of all
the cops around him; Cameron ditto, both impressing and mystifying
his fellow workers along the way. Castle had a rather complicated but
relatable family dynamic in that he was a single dad who took care of
both is daughter and, to some extent, his aged mother, and had money
to burn in order to do it; Cameron, instead of a mother has a brother
who he needs to get out of prison for a crime he didn't commit, not
to mention a team of trusted technicians he must care for and pay,
still with money to burn after one year away from the stage to pursue
his brother's innocence. Speaking of family, we have the highly
intelligent woman in both men's lives—Castle had his daughter while
Cameron has his business partner Dina—and we have the quirky but
dependable sidekick to our lead law enforcer in Mike on Kay's side
(you could choose from Havi or the other guy for Beckett on Castle).
We have the boss who is skeptical, and we even already have a budding
romance between the two side characters that will most assuredly be
complicated in Mike and Dina on Deception, and Havi and the ME on
Castle, literally mirroring the Latino man falling in love with the
black woman. Hell, even the names Kate and Castle, and Kay and
Cameron start with the same letters. If you're looking for a carbon
copy of that show, I guarantee that you probably will not find
another one quite as close as this without them infringing on some
copyright or just straight-up rebooting Castle. But with that said,
there are some flaws in this setup even if you were a fan of Castle.
First,
I don't like the boss. I figured I should just get that out of the
way right now. I don't like the special agent in charge. I think
she's bland, she comes off as too tough and rather emotionless. Where
we had Castle doing some great comedy against Beckett's original
straight-man captain, here she feels more like an energy suck if ever
I saw one. I'm hoping that she gets better and fits more into the
tone of the show, but as someone who has seen that actress before I
will say that I think she mostly belongs in harder-hitting political
dramas than this one, if she wants to stay in political or cop
dramas. But, frankly, she's not a chief concern.
My
first chief concern is the charm of Cameron Black himself. OK, so I
am not sure that he matches the level of charm that Nathan Fillion
had. Don't get me wrong, I like him in the role so far, but he still
doesn't seem quite like the lady's man that Richard was and doesn't
come off as quite as confident. I think this is mostly due to age and
especially his age compared to Kay's (Ilfenesh) age. In Castle, it
was not only clear in the narrative but also just from looking at the
two of them that Castle was at least a good ten or 12 years older
than Kate who he would eventually fall in love with. There was a
goofiness and maturity which only came either from age or from being
a dad. He was dad-goofy, dad-mature and dad-sexy which made them a
perfect match on the chemistry level. They had a playful banter back
and forth that I could see evolving into something deeper from,
literally the second episode, and made me believe that they could
actually be a couple in real life. Here, I can't quite see him ending
up with Kay if that is where the show takes it. Are they both single?
Yes, but he, so far, just doesn't fit. For starters, he still feels
stuck in the goofy stage where he's trying to impress everyone too
hard. Yes, Castle was goofy but you often felt that he was really
only trying to entertain himself and kudos to you if you came along
for the ride. She almost seems too old for him. This might just be my
age/male bias because we've seen so many older men with younger
women, but something doesn't quite sit well here with their
chemistry.
On
the flip side, she is not exempt from this criticism. My partial
criticism with her has also to do with the writing and her acting. I
love me some Ilfenesh ever since really taking a look at her in the
disastrous Baywatch film from last year. I think she could be really
good if she keeps getting work or is able to have steady work like a
weekly show over the span of a few seasons, but here she tends to
switch a little too often. From what I've seen on the show, she goes
from hardened law enforcer at the beginning of each episode to soft,
jovial regular girl at the end of the show. Yes, some of that is
because they've usually solved the case and whatnot, but some of it
is also how she plays the character and how the character is written.
The girl at the end of the show you can potentially see yourself
meeting in a grown folks lounge/bar setup and having a deep
conversation with. The girl at the beginning of the show seems like
she's got kids, a husband, 9 to 5 job and no time for anything
outside of what orbits in her personal bubble. She's closed off and
often not as charming as Beckett. Again this could be just the fact
that the actors are all still getting to know both each other and the
writing staff, and are trying to build character so much that they
haven't taken leeway to build the small quirks of character, so I'm
not saying this couldn't or won't get better over time. But if I'm
looking at the original, Castle allowed Beckett to smirk and smile
and make snide comments back to Castle, feeding viewers a humor
sandwich. He came with the slapstick/goofy/absurd comedy like a
classic Steve Martin film; if you didn't like that, she came with the
sarcastic/sardonic/cutting humor that felt like her showing her
dominance in that field and properly putting Castle in his place when
his britches got too big. They played well off each other. Here, Kay
and Cameron haven't quite gotten to play well off each other. It
feels more like mother or teacher chastising her child or the class
clown, than girlfriend and boyfriend joking with each other. We'll
see how this picks up.
Oddly
enough, everything else feels fine. The pacing is what's to be
expected. They actually make the rather whimsical idea of a magician
consulting with the FBI work (with Castle, and I don't just say this
because I'm a writer, the idea didn't feel as whimsical even if it
was rather novel. (A-tee-hee!) He was a crime novelist who had to
research ways to kill people to write convincing crime novels). The
cast is nice and diverse and each one of the cases has, so far,
supplied enough of a wow factor to keep people's attention. It won't
blow you away as something new and original, but it could distract
for an hour a week.
Should
you be watching? If you are/were a fan of Castle and still feel a
little peeved at that finale or just want to see the old gang solve
more cases, well, unfortunately you're outta luck because I doubt
that show is coming back anytime soon (check back in ten years). But
if you're OK with satiating your thirst for hot law enforcement woman
potentially falls for equally handsome, but very intelligent
goofball, then Deception might be for you. But fair warning, they are
going to expose a lot of magic tricks throughout the series, so if
you don't like knowing how things are done when you go to your next
magic show, then this might not be the best show for you. Yes, not
watching a show because you don't want to know all the magic tricks
sounds crazy, but some of you out there have your reasons. While I
think that this show is far better suited in the Monday time slot
that was previously held by Castle, or even on Tuesday nights,
Deception currently airs on ABC Sundays at 10pm EST.
What
do you think? Have you heard of Deception? If not, do you think
you'll tune in now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? What
did you think of it? Who is your favorite character? Do you think Kay
and Cameron will end up together, and if so by what season? And when
will they manage to catch Carmen San Diego and get his brother out of
prison? Let me know in the comments below.
Until next time, “The trick is to
make hay while the sun is out.”
P.S.
Yeah, my mind totally blanked on something good to say there. I
couldn't even think of a proper magic joke or a good old saying.
Geez, I am mentally out of shape. I've gotta start doing more mind
calisthenics. I'll try to think of a better sign-off next time.
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