‘Allegiance’
Grade: B
Replacing “Parenthood” in NBC’s Thursday primetime lineup is the mysterious “Allegiance,” and it has some serious potential.
Telling the story of a family of secret Russian spies, the “Allegiance” pilot changed the way I think about espionage programs.
Time and time again, TV programs and film have represented secret Russian spies as characters out to get Americans — consider the Cold War period.
“Allegiance” is different because it brings the protagonists and antagonists under one roof and in one family.
It’s not an “us versus them” or a scenario of the “haves and the have-nots.” It’s a complicated identification process.
This is not FX’s show “The Americans,” although it could be said the basis of the Russian spy plot of “Allegiance” does seem heavily influenced by “The Americans.”
Here’s the scenario: Katya and Mark O’Connor, played by Hope Davis and Scott Cohen, are ex-SVR spies.
Katya, a Russian native, fell in love with Mark, an American, and in the style of “Romeo and Juliet,” these star-crossed lovers found a way to be together.
The SVR is the Russian equivalent to the CIA. They relinquished their duties six years prior to the series start in order to live a normal, legal American life.
Their son, Alex O’Connor, played by Gavin Stenhouse, is a new CIA recruit and unaware of his parents’ affiliations with the SVR.
And if you didn’t already see this coming, Alex’s first task is to handle an SVR agent’s wish to defect to the United States.
There is an index of SVR agents, past and present, hidden somewhere in the country.
Just as I was about to write off the show in its entirety, we learn that Katya and Mark have been told by an old friend they must convert Alex into a spy or their hidden SVR identities will be given up.
So begins a game of cat and mouse between parents and son.
Though the premise of this show might at first glance induce eye rolls, it has the potential to be different.
Writers and directors can only go so far in a pilot episode and keep it coherent, and, let’s face it, “Allegiance” can have some pretty intricate, intense plot lines if the show’s creators take it in the right direction.
A show goes one step further when the viewer doesn’t know whether to hate or pity the enemy, and “Allegiance” doesn’t quite give us a clear view as to who the real enemy may be.
“Allegiance” seems to be trying to rid itself of the stale Russian-spies-versus-American-spies plot line and increase its variation.
There is no evidence of a brutal Cold War complete-nuclear-annihilation plot, but rather a revamping of old rivalries in a new century.
