Instinct
With new shows hitting the airwaves it’s hard to figure out what to watch. The buddy cop genre is full of choices but none of them are like Instinct. From the characters to the overall story it’s a breath of fresh air. Let’s meet the characters. *Some spoilers below*
Dr. Dylan Reinhart (Alan Cumming)
We first meet him as he is teaching his class about psychopathic behavior in New York. He uses a drama student to prove a point about how people react in ways people don’t expect. That’s when he meets Detective Lizzie and she asks for his help.
He,at first,turns her down because of his married life. He is married to Andy (Daniel Ings) who owns a local bar. He promised Andy he wouldn’t get back into the life he led, which was that of a CIA Field Operative – but he couldn’t help but to be drawn into the case surrounding the novel he wrote and the killer using his playing card theory to leave behind clues to who was next. I’m pretty sure this is going to come back to haunt him. Lies have a way of catching up to people.
This week’s episode guest starred Whoopi Goldberg as his hard hitting editor, Joan Ross. She sets Dylan on his path into the world of undercover work in order to write a better second book.
This is important for network television. There aren’t a lot of main gay characters and even less played by out gay actors themselves. It also means that instead of the “will they, won’t they” conundrum surrounding most male/female teams, this allows both characters to grow outside of each other.
Detective Lizzie Needham played by Bojana Nokavich
Lizzie lost her partner and fiancé, Charlie, a year before the show began. He was killed in the line of duty and now she has to put her dear dog, Gary, down. A pup that her and Charlie rescued together. She is seen as cold-hearted and hard to work with and she refuses to partner with anyone. She approaches Dylan about the murders because she read his book and recognized game the killer was playing.
She tells Dylan she hasn’t trusted anyone since Charlie died, but would like it if he was to help out, showing she was putting trust in him.
I feel Lizzie, unlike most female partners, will have the chance to explore her own world outside of Dylan because there won’t be a love connection. I can’t wait to see where they take her throughout this season.
The story
A killer is murdering people and leaving behind playing cards. Lizzie and Dylan track him down using Dylan’s knowledge of killers and the fact the killer is using a tactic straight out of Dylan’s book. The culprit we find out was trying to get justice for people let go through loop holes found by the judge on all the cases.
Like most procedurals and buddy cop shows this looks like the weekly murder case story. They wrapped up this weeks cleanly at the end.
I feel that because the characters aren’t going to be romantically involved the show has a chance to take us down a lot of different personal roads for each.
I am also interested to see if they decide to throw in a overall threat over the entire season or if they will continue down the weekly murder case road.
Instinct airs Sunday nights at 8/9c on CBS
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