NBC’s shiny new object Line of Fire was sitting at the top of my Trial by Stream pile, and I thought this was going to be an easy one.
One episode. One hour. Throw it in the Trash and move on. Because seriously, how many more procedurals do we need, which is pretty much a communal thought when it comes to these things.
The series gives us Peter Krause as Secret Service agent Mike Hollingsworth and surrounds him with an entire family working for various federal agencies. FBI. DOJ. U.S. Marshals. Secret Service. Throw everybody around the dinner table and it sounded suspiciously like Blue Bloods: Alphabet Agency Edition.
I was reaching for the remote almost immediately before we even meet the Hollingsworths. Then the show was basically like, yeah? Watch this. And grabbed me by the collar.
This Isn’t the Procedural I Thought I Was Watching
Line of Fire Season 1 Episode 1 opens exactly the way you’d expect one of these shows to open. There’s a chase, U.S. Marshal Libby Farrell winds up dead, somebody stages the scene, and off we go into another network investigation.
Fine. I’ve been here before.
What I wasn’t expecting was how little I would eventually care about the procedural part of the procedural because
The Hollingsworths are the show.
At first, they’re almost suspiciously pleasant. Mike has Peter Krause’s naturally laid-back demeanor. The kids tease each other. Everybody seems reasonably happy despite working in enough federal agencies to require their own organizational chart.
Even when Micah is bitching about working under his father or Clare is butting heads with Jane, there’s affection underneath it. These people genuinely like one another.
And that’s exactly why the family works. Because they’re also completely full of shit.
Not in some miserable prestige-drama way where everybody sits around glaring at each other while ominous music tells us the family is damaged.
These people laugh together. They call each other while they’re working. Micah and Clare commiserate over Dad and Mom driving them crazy. Russ, Clare and Micah leave a disastrous family dinner together with the entirely reasonable plan to go get drunk.
They seem close. Meanwhile, nobody knows what the hell anybody else is actually doing and that makes it much more fun.
Peter Krause Is Weird Casting — Until He Isn’t
I wasn’t immediately sold on Peter Krause as a Secret Service agent.
Krause has this naturally laid-back, almost happy-go-lucky demeanor that doesn’t immediately scream GET DOWN, MR. PRESIDENT! There’s something about Mike’s personality that actually reminds me a little of Tom Cavanagh — that easygoing, slightly amused quality that never completely disappears even when things get serious (if you’ve watched Cavanaugh in You’re Killing Me, you’ll know exactly what i mean.)
And that’s not a knock on Krause, but put him next to the Secret Service agents television and movies have trained me to expect — Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire (because how can you not think of that movie when you see this show’s title?) or Aaron Pierce on 24 — and Mike Hollingsworth initially feels like an odd fit.
But somewhere along the way, it stopped bothering me. Because Mike isn’t really the square-jawed federal-agent archetype anyway.
He’s a guy who can’t let go of an assassination attempt on the president that effectively ended his career. He’s willing to lean on his kid’s brand-new DOJ job to keep digging into it. He can be warm, funny and genuinely likable and still pull some Grade-A father bullshit.
That’s more interesting than trying to turn Krause into another stereotypical stone-faced Secret Service guy, anyway.
His laid-back quality actually works once you realize Mike is considerably messier than he first appears. And he’s not alone.
The Hollingsworths Are a Beautiful Mess
Clare may be my early favorite.
She’s stubborn, independent and doesn’t give much of a shit about decorum when she thinks she’s right. She keeps digging into Libby Farrell’s death after the convenient explanation doesn’t make sense, and I love what the show eventually does with Jane.
Jane isn’t dismissing Clare because she thinks her daughter is wrong. She already knows Clare is right.
She wants Clare to prove it herself and get the win without Mom handing it to her.
Okay. I like you two.
Micah is over in Secret Service making the spectacularly intelligent decision to fool around with the president’s daughter he’s supposed to be protecting, while Russ discovers that Dad may have had more to do with his DOJ career than he realized — at first anyway because of Dad’s dick move.
Then there’s Jane’s boyfriend Terry. Mike and Jane apparently still have something going on despite being separated. Clare has been dating Logan for six months and hasn’t told him everything about her family.
Everybody has their own little pile of dynamite tucked under the furniture.
The pilot doesn’t stop every ten minutes to solemnly announce HERE IS ANOTHER FAMILY SECRET, either. It just keeps letting them collide.
And that’s where Line of Fire surprised me.
This Thing Has Technicolor Urgency
This show moves.
Not Countdown movement, where people are constantly racing somewhere and somehow the story still feels like it’s standing still.
I’m talking Technicolor Urgency.
Everything has energy. The murder investigation is moving while Mike is digging into the incident that wrecked his career while Micah is getting himself into trouble with Sparrow while Russ is figuring out Dad’s agenda while Clare’s relationship with Logan is cracking open while the entire Hollingsworth family is quietly sitting on things nobody else knows.
And the trick is it doesn’t feel exhausting.
There are shows that throw fifteen plotlines at you and make an hour feel like homework. Line of Fire throws fifteen things at me and makes me want to know the sixteenth.
Even those little character-and-agency title cards when everybody is introduced help. There are a lot of Hollingsworths, a lot of badges and enough alphabet agencies running around here to start a federal softball league. The show knows it has a lot to establish, so it gets on with it.
No River of Molasses here.
By the time I realized how much information this pilot had actually dumped on me, I also realized I hadn’t been bored.
That’s a hell of a difference.
And Then Jack Walked In
I’m not going to regurgitate the entire ending because that’s not why it works.
What matters is that the pilot spends most of its running time quietly changing what you think this family is.
Jack, Mike’s son from his first marriage and Clare’s brother, supposedly died five years ago — except he didn’t, apparently.
And suddenly all those family secrets that were entertaining me aren’t just relationship drama anymore.
Because Mike and Jane seem to know he’s alive, or at least strongly suspect it. Clare, Micah and Russ apparently don’t — or maybe they do. This show throws a lot of curveballs at you to keep you on your toes.
I don’t particularly care whether the federal case of the week gets wrapped up with a bow, I want to know what happened in this family five years ago.
Why does Jack’s family think he’s dead? Why do his parents know otherwise? What the hell has he been doing? And how much of everything we’ve just watched connects back to him?
That’s a much better hook than family of federal agents solves crimes together.
🔥 Our Verdict: WATCHABLE
Well, F me right up the river. I really thought I had an easy Trash coming.
Instead, Line of Fire may have pulled one of my favorite Trial by Stream tricks: making me eat my assumptions before the first episode is even over.
No, it isn’t reinventing the network procedural. The murder investigation, federal agencies and mysterious assassin are all familiar territory. But that’s not really what hooked me off the bat. The Hollingsworths did.
They’re funny together. They feel like siblings, parents and exes rather than characters assembled to fill different spots on a procedural flowchart. They’re genuinely close while simultaneously lying their asses off to one another, and that contradiction gives the show something I wasn’t expecting when I hit play.
And the whole thing has Technicolor Urgency, which as you know, I really don’t hand that out lightly.
This pilot doesn’t just stay busy. It keeps changing. Every time I thought I had figured out what kind of show I was watching, another piece shifted underneath it. That’s why an episode carrying this many characters, agencies, relationships, investigations and secrets never felt like homework.
I went from wondering whether Peter Krause was believable as a Secret Service agent to wondering what Mike is hiding from his children. I went from making Blue Bloods jokes to actually liking this ridiculous alphabet-agency family. And I went from waiting for an excuse to throw Line of Fire in the Trash to: Holy Shit! at the end.
Fine, NBC. You got me.
I’m watching Episode 2. You and Hallmark can go have a drink together on me.
P.S. Dear Hulu, Your obnoxious overloaded commercial interruptions are still trash but they didn’t bother me as much here. So, maybe I need to see if R.J. Decker climbed out of the bin after our last Hulu DVR experience.
Read All Our Line of Fire Season 1 Coverage
We’re still working through the season, so check back as we continue our coverage.
- Line of Fire S1E1: Pilot
- Line of Fire S1E2: A Bigger Picture
- If you want to read about other shows we put to trial, visit our Trial by Stream hub.
