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Did you know that in the Marines, lawyers do triple duty? They can act as either defense attorneys or prosecutors, depending on the case. And they investigate their own cases. That dynamic is seen in The Code, a new CBS procedural. Will it be interesting or boring?
THE CODE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Dusk at a Marine base in Afghanistan. An officer has a video chat with his wife and kid back home before he’s called to bring back one of his men, walking aimlessly towards the base’s fence.
The Gist: The Code is about the Marine Corps law division, where the lawyers in it act as both defense lawyers, prosecutors and investigators. In the pilot, Captain John “Abe” Abraham (Luke Mitchell) is prosecuting that private who was wandering toward the fence; in front of six eyewitnesses, he stabbed his CO, who just happened to be a close friend of Mitchell’s. Even though Abraham’s CO, Colonel Glenn Turnbull (Dana Delany) assigns Major Trey Ferry (Ato Essandoh) to the case, Mitchell insists on being co-council, because he promised his buddy’s wife he’d take the case.
Defending the private is Captain Maya Dobbins (Anna Wood), who plans to plead not guilty. Why? Because the private had significant brain injuries and could be suffering from CTE, causing personality changes. In order to get the outcome right — “outcomes over ideals”, is what Mitchell says — all three lawyers investigate, and they find out that the base commander in Afghanistan ordered that, due to troop shortages, no one should fail the Corps’ concussion protocols, so marines get tested repeatedly until they pass.
We could talk about the rest of the case, but it’s a CBS procedural; does it really matter?
Our Take: What can we really say about The Code that’s going to shed any light on what it is. It’s a CBS law drama, only this time the lawyers are marines, the trials are court martial proceedings, and the crimes are military in nature. There was a show that was similar to this 20 years ago, a little ditty called JAG, which begat NCIS and all its spinoffs. The difference here is that everyone’s a marine. That’s about it.
It doesn’t mean that The Code is awful. It’s just kind of meh. There’s some good chemistry between Abraham and Dobbins as colleagues who are friends but are extraordinarily competitive; the office’s admin, Warrant Officer Rami Ahmadi (Raffi Barsoumian) is a chatty know-it-all who likely secretly believes that he’s smarter than his superiors; and of course Dana Delany is there, which is always a plus (more on that in a bit). But there’s nothing about it that stands out, unlike other CBS law procedurals that revolve around a charismatic character (Bull) or a police procedural that has some gross evidence and intricate clues.
It’s also quite jargony, as SEAL Team was when it debuted last season. Hopefully, creator Craig Sweeny (Limitless) cleans that up as the season goes on.
Sex and Skin: Nothing.
Parting Shot: After the case ends, Mitchell and Dobbins look at each other with a look that’s more than just between colleagues and friends. She wishes they had opposed each other in the case (the doctor hired a former marine that’s known as “Princess” to represent him). “All in good time,” says Mitchell, as he puts on his hat.
Sleeper Star: Barsoumian’s role as the talkative Rami might be a bit like a human version of Data, but it was the only aspect of the pilot that seemed creative or entertaining.
Most Pilot-y Line: We hope that we see Delany more than the two pilot scenes she was on (she replaced Mira Sorvino, who played the CO in the original pilot). When you get Delany, you use her — she’s been a TV star for 30 years at this point. Not sure why the writers had to put her in a party dress in one of the scenes she was in; it felt like she could have done that scene in uniform.
Our Call: SKIP IT unless you have a lot of laundry to fold or are cleaning your sneakers or something equally tedious and you need something mindless to watch.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
