Raines
NBC
Rating: 3.7 

At first glance, you want to slap the cuffs on NBC’s new crime drama Raines and book its creators for excessive recycling. It’s impossible to watch the commercials, or five minutes of the show itself, without your knee beginning to twitch, impatient to kick Raines to the curb. On the surface, it’s a shameless mix of two of the more popular formulas in heavy rotation: The “I see dead people” mystery (Medium, Ghost Whisperer) and the “Difficult-to-Get-Along-With, Idiosyncratic Leading Man” drama (Monk, House, Shark, etc).

But that knee-jerk summation captures only the form of the show, not its substance. Because Raines uses those elements to create something, if not entirely new, then at least intriguing enough to more than make up for the nagging sense of déjà vu.   It’s a classic character-driven police drama — one whose central character has more in common with eccentric detectives like Columbo than with, say, Gregory House — and one with a psychological twist: The dead people that L.A. homicide detective Michael Raines sees are figments of his own imagination, manifestations of his need to develop a sense of the deceased in order to get a handle on the crime (”Know the victim, find the killer” is his mantra). And as he learns more about his victims, their appearance, manner, even language change to fit what he knows.

The appearance of these ghostlike visitations isn’t Raines’ choice: They’re projections of his subconscious, nagging reminders that every case was also once a human being. Raines also sees his former partner (Malik Yoba), who died in a shootout during a case the pair was working on; but unlike the other phantoms of Raines’ imagination, he doesn’t fade away at the end of each episode. His presence serves a different, hitherto unfathomed purpose, presumably to help Raines deal with the aftermath of the shooting — which also happens to be the function of an attractive shrink played by Madeleine Stowe.

Based on its first two episodes, Raines shows real promise. Its mix of sturdy murder-mystery sleuthing and engaging psychological drama is a delicate balancing act, and that it works at all is a testament to the talent of Jeff Goldblum, who dials down the quizzical quirkiness he brought to roles in The Big Chill, Independence Day and Jurassic Park. Goldblum nails the part, bringing home Raines’ fear that he’s cracking up through subtle use of the actor’s trademark stuttering dialogue, wry delivery and muted self-effacement. He also makes it easy to believe in Raines’ fluid genius for his line of work, selling us on the crucial notion that the character’s deductive brilliance, erratic behavior and vivid imagination are all facets of a shattered whole, a gifted professional just beginning to crawl from the wreckage of a devastating tragedy. It’s a nuanced performance, and should Raines survive its midseason-replacement origins and get picked up as a permanent series, one that should remind audiences of a talent we’ve come dangerously close to dismissively pigeonholing into his own little box. 

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Television Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.