Patriot did something remarkable that I did not expect when watching the last scene of the last episode. It made me want to keep watching through season two. This is somewhat frustrating to me. I had become at peace with stopping Patriot after one season. It is a perfectly average show, with some rather glaring flaws that were hard for me to ignore. These flaws were too much for me to continue. But that last scene ended on a cliffhanger, and it's a cliffhanger that does intrigue me. Weirdly, I do not expect to like or be satisfied by the conclusion of this cliffhanger, but nonetheless curiosity killed the cat as they say.
Patriot is a show about John Tavner, an absolutely miserable human being and I do not mean miserable in the sense that he is a terrible human being, I mean he is legitimately miserable. He is one of the saddest characters I've ever seen in a television show. He is a spy who has been forced to do terrible, awful things that eat at his soul. I watched the 10 episodes over a period of a couple months, but there may have been one or two times total that this guy was even remotely happy. You can probably sense that I had a problem with this and I kind of do, but not necessarily in concept. He was just so sad sack ALL OF THE TIME.
My solution to this problem would be one of two things. You have to make him charming or clever or good with people. Something. He does not hide his depression. He is not good with people. He's not really even that good at his job since absolutely nothing goes right for him. Characters being excellent at their job is like the easiest way to get the audience on their side (Side note: that's pretty weird right? I mean it's absolutely true, but weird.) . I mean it's certainly implied that he's good at his job. I think we're meant to think it. I just saw no evidence of it throughout the season. He didn't even do fucking paperwork for the job. My second idea is to do flashbacks of him being normal and happy. I need something to compare his miserable self to in order to see how far he's fallen.
I'm going to be unfair here and I'm doing this to illustrate my points. I'm going to compare this show to what I consider the best show on television. The Americans is also about spies who are undercover, pretending to be someone they are not, who are constantly forced to do things they don't want to do, things that cause them to be miserable. Phillip, in particular, is probably as miserable as Tavner is. But he starts the show relatively normal. He's good with his kids, he's good interacting with people, and he's also really fucking good at his job. When he kills people or kidnaps them, the show makes it clear that's he forced into this situation. He wasn't prepared for this to happen and there wasn't anything he could have done (usually).
Tavner, on the other hand, doesn't really seem like he tries... like at all. He has a running tally of problems that accumulate over the course of the season, but he barely tries to address them or fix it. He's just constantly putting it off so that all of them can converge in the penultimate episode. For example, the easiest fucking problem he has, is paperwork. I swear the HR guy asks him to do paperwork so that he can, you know, legally fucking work there for like five episodes. Just do the god damn paperwork John. He keeps getting on the bad side of Leslie (well-played by Kurtwood Smith), but that's because Leslie is the type of character who appreciates hard work. Tavner wants to get on Leslie's good side. I think anyway. He sort of half-heartedly tries at it, but it's clear he couldn't give less of a shit.
This is not a particularly well-plotted show. I honestly don't care about that, for the most part. But things don't really feel natural to how things would go in these situations. It's clear Steven Conrad, the creator, wanted all of John's problems to accumulate at the same time in the final episodes. But it was just an overly absurd amount of coincidences for that to happen. For instance, John murders a guy, so the police are on his tail. That's a natural conclusion. I can accept that. The paperwork is just contrived though. That could be solved in a hour. Why did he not do it for so long?! Because that was just another problem he needed to have.
One of the best parts of the season though is something that snuck up on me and when I noticed it, I felt dumb for not noticing it sooner. Tavner's dad, as played by Terry O'Quinn, is a very good character. He's very manipulative. He's kind of painted as the villain. I appreciate that. He's not a mustache twirling villain either. Just a guy who's willing to let his son deteriorate his soul, because he's willing to do literally anything for his country. He's that type of guy. He'll justify any decision if he thinks it's good for his country. He's one of those stubborn guys who probably will never be convinced he did anything wrong. When I realized this, it painted John in a whole new light. He was manipulated into this life. I still wish he showed anything other than outright depression for more than two seconds, but it shaped his character more than anything else for me.
The actors in general are all pretty good. I don't really fault Michael Dorman for his character because I'm fairly certain that's how he's intended. Michael Chernus provides some much needed levity to this program. Kathleen Munroe is... fine I guess. She is given literally nothing to do so I have no way to know if she's a good actress or not. She gets like five minutes of screen time per episode and in that time, pines for his husband and doesn't really do anything else.
Patriot is listed as a comedy drama and I think that sums up a large part of my issues with this show. It's not a hilarious show. It has a dark humor to it, which produced few laugh out loud moments. But the comedy to a certain extent undercuts the drama of the situation. It may not for everyone, but it did for me. I never really felt tension when watching the show. It's a spy show. I feel like I should feel nervous about what might happen, but I didn't. I'm not saying the show should lose the comedy, but it's toeing a very difficult line, one I don't think it quite achieves.
(Sorry James. I didn't mean for this review to sound as harsh as it came out, but when the words start flowing, I can't stop myself)
Grade - C+
