“Flat Line” – aired on April 29, 2018
Written by: Tanya Barfield
Directed by: Laura Belsey
Grade: 2,5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Before I delve into “Flat Line,” I need to get something off my chest. I have previously expressed some concern in my episode 4 review on the dangers of Instinct turning a “Cumming/Reinhart show” and relegating Novakovic/Needham to a secondary role, or even to a sidekick to the male detective. Having said that, I also did not neglect to praise, in that same review, the showrunners for not having fallen into that trap yet.
Well, I feel a bit differently now.
First, the promo for this episode basically announced throughout the week that Reinhart is the leading uno of the duo. It largely promoted Reinhart’s high-IQ, which is fine, and then, connected the show’s title with Reinhart, which is not so fine: “To solve murders, they’ll need to trust his instincts.” It may have as well added on a line such as “and we are along for the ride along with Detective Needham to admire Dr. Reinhart and drool over his one-man show.”
Second, there is the intro monologue that begins every episode since “Pilot,” the one that points to Reinhart’s superior importance to what we are about to watch over that of Needham. It lasts thirty seconds during twenty-six of which Reinhart describes how versatile and accomplished he is, adding that his best-seller is so “successful, a serial killer used it as clues for his murders.” But no worries, because that is “when the NYPD reached out” to Reinhart and he lets you know with a firm tone that he caught the killer.
The intro ends with a four-second-long, token mention of Needham: “So now I’m working with this woman, Detective Lizzie Needham of the homicide division, catching killers.” That’s it! Four seconds for the female co-lead in the intro monologue after the male co-lead talks for 26 seconds about him. Even Needham’s sentence-question that ends the intro is about Reinhart: “Don’t they call you Professor Psychopath?”
Look, I get it, Dr. Reinhart is a genius and Cumming delights all of us with his representation as the witty professor-writer-ex-CIA-operative Dylan. I am even fine with the portrayal of Dylan being the brain of the team. That should not, however, translate into having yet another male co-lead dominate every problem-solving and clue-finding sequences while the female co-lead, supposedly a skilled detective herself, watches him wondrously and has numerous “a-ha” reactions. It’s a tiresome trope that has been utilized by a plethora of past TV procedurals that have male and female co-leads.
Unfortunately, this issue does not end with the promo and intro this week. The episode itself also echoes a “Cumming-Reinhart show.” Dylan asks the pertinent questions, obtains the crucial info, works his contact for paramount information, advances the investigation, feeds the exact words to say to Lizzie through an ear piece in a key scene, and even gets to dress up as a hospital employee.
In contrast, Lizzie briefly hangs out with Pete the stalker (Jay Klaitz) and gets a ham-fisted B storyline involving a weasel named Jeff. Heck, Dylan steals the show even when Lizzie attempts to be relevant, trying to calm the perpetrator down in the climax of the hour. He takes over the “calm-the-perpetrator” speech from Lizzie and succeeds where she did not a few seconds earlier. In short, Dylan gets it done, Lizzie doesn’t, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Leaving my renting and raving aside on the unequal relevancies of male and female co-leads, “Flat Line” comes across an uneven, nondescript hour of Instinct, with a fitting title. There is indeed a lot that flatlines in this episode and the few bright spots that provide temporary glimmers of hope fizzle out in a narrative filled with ham-fisted contrivances.
For example, the episode’s beginning shows promise. It avoids the usual discovery of a body followed by crime-scene dialogues. We join Dylan and Lizzie already in pursuit of a suspect named Theo. They catch up with him at an investments firm. Dylan distracts him with his comfort talk, enough for the woman he is holding to shake free. He gets injured and hospitalized in the process. When our protagonists want to question Theo, he panics and dies somewhat inexplicably after the nurse injects him with “two milligrams of lorazepam” to calm him down. Dylan is visibly shaken by the events which hints at a personal connection to the scene. In the meantime, we meet Nurse Albany – played wonderfully by Dena Tyler – who is curt with Dylan and Lizzie, and rough on the edge with patients. An encouraging start indeed.
Except that by the end of the episode, the only pay-off we get from that start is some character development for Dylan – he has painful memories of his mother being treated in a hospital. Nurse Albany’s storyline loses credibility as she is transformed in the blink of an eye somewhere in the middle of the episode from a jerk to a compassionate, fight-for-the-cause hero. Tyler does her best with the script she is given, but even with a talented actress like her, the unrealistic change the character goes through within a matter of minutes defies logic. Nurse Albany’s purpose mainly turns out to be a vehicle for Dylan’s character development – he remembers the nurse of his mother. Both Albany and Dr. James Walters (Brian Hutchison) become irrelevant less than half an hour into the episode.
As for crime solving, the writers apparently needed Dylan to save the day one more time with his comfort talk in a dangerous moment, just to initiate the episode’s actual murder mystery. Would the minutes wasted on this pointless scene not have been put to better use if they served to expand the investigation? It sure needed them.
So, instead, we get a rushed, compromised investigation narrative. When Lizzie and Dylan talk to the hospital administrator, we get a conveniently disturbing intrusion by a Dr. Walters who drops hints of “irregularities,” much to the dismay of the administrator, and names a nurse who is under review. Lo and behold, it’s Nurse Albany. It’s all done so artificially, just so that our two heroes can pick up on the obvious cues and pace through the mystery labyrinth with ease.
Later, when they arrive at the hospital to talk to the nurse – and I do mean, right as they arrive – they catch a glimpse of Nurse Albany being given a note by Dr. Walters. They follow her naturally, only to find the two of them engaged in coitus in a room. I cringed, not at the laughable, fully-clothed-missionary coitus on a desk in the back room of a hospital, but at how fruitless the whole sequence was. It appeared as nothing more than an effort to insert a corny je-ne-sais-quoi moment in the scene and to make the story zoom from point to A to B as fast as possible.
Even Julian’s role suffers through the rushed sequences. Dylan wants him to dig some hard-to-get information as usual and it takes Julian less than forty-five seconds to go into the computer and spit out a name, while warning Dylan that he is “going to need some time.” The name is Rebecca Dunmar (Tracee Chimo) and yes, she will turn out to be, well, the “angel of death.” Chimo puts forth her best effort to make her character appear conflicted despite the hasty narrative.
Drowning in the artificial plot advancement is another shining performance by Naveen Andrews when Julian infiltrates the hospital with Dylan. The two even get to dress up as hospital employees. It’s a fun scene, the best of the episode, and the Cumming-Andrews duo milk it for all its worth.
What is Lizzie up to during all this? She gets the privilege of being the star of the B story line – Yay! It involves a scam artist named Jeff (David A. Gregory) who poses as a personal trainer and tricks Lizzie into injuring him while making it appear as a benign exercising accident. Later, he sues her and that causes, thankfully, Andy to enter this aimless B story as Lizzie’s legal helper and render it half-way bearable. She also gets a visit Pete the stalker from “Heartless” who makes an encore appearance for comic relief. He requests Lizzie to write a letter of recommendation for him. It is outrageously dumb, yet Novakovic and Klaitz somehow make it work, in a hilarious way. It is also refreshing to see a nod to continuity in a procedural drama.
In other news, Lizzie casually accuses all businessmen of being potential murderers. Dylan literally scoffs at her observation and if I didn’t know any better, I would have trouble discerning if it is Dylan the character doing that or Cumming the actor reacting to the superficiality of the writing.
The emotionally charged scenes come in the form of Dylan’s conversations with another couple victimized by the hospital administration – the wife had a left-brain stroke – and of Dylan’s revelation to Lizzie about his mother spending time in a cancer ward when he was in sixth grade. It is a heart-breaking memory and Dylan’s sharing of it with Lizzie reminds us once again that the synergy between Cumming and Novakovic is still the best asset of this show.
After having its best outing with last week’s “Heartless,” Instinct dipped into mediocrity with “Flat Line.” I don’t know what the future holds for the series – it’s apparently on the bubble as I write this review – but this may be a good time to air some more episodes written by the showrunner Michael Rauch who has inked the most notable ones so far.
Until next episode…