Review: 'Snoops'

Glenn Hall (Gina Gershon) doesn't have time to let a little thing like the Constitution get in her way as she runs her private investigation firm. Whether it's wire taps, high-tech surveillance, or simple intimidation to get the answers she needs, she uses any means necessary. It's all fair game, and all just part of a day's work on ABC's new drama "Snoops."

Of course the new hire, Dana Plant (Paula Marshall), comes from a police detective background, so she finds herself butting heads with Glenn over any number of procedural differences. (You know, stuff like Miranda rights.) But as Glenn is quick to point out to Dana, detective Dorothy isn't in police department Kansas anymore - she's crossed to the dark side now. Also on Glenn's team are Manny Lott (Danny Nucci) and Roberta Young (Paula Jai Parker). He's the agency's technocratic whiz kid, she's a bombshell with a certain gift for cracking insurance cases. Both have a little trouble at first warming up to their new co-worker, but as the premiere's plot unfolds, they're forced to set their differences aside and be the team that Glenn pays them to be in order to get the job done.

"Sexy sleuths" is a genre that's been missing from the airwaves for awhile, but we can thank "Ally McBeal" and "The Practice" creator David E. Kelley, curiously enough, for bringing it back to us. Originally conceived as a man-woman combination, Glenn and Dana took on a whole new dimension with the interest of feature film actress Gershon in the veteran PI role. Kelley quickly reworked the pilot, excising the sexual tension between the two leads (although given Gershon's performance in the lesbian caper flick Bound, this step probably wasn't necessary) and replacing it with a certain catty female wariness of one another. The result is a bit muddled, a tepid thriller laden with Kelley's unmistakable quirks which don't quite suit producer-director Allan Arkush's glitzy Miami Vice visuals. Kelley's script seems hastily done; intricate plot machinations are ordinarily his specialty, but in the higher-stakes, faster-paced world outside the courtroom, he seems less surefooted. Glenn and Dana are in the midst of a murder investigation, but the whole thing goes pretty much by the numbers. There's no last-minute twist, no Kelley-esque reveal which makes the whole story pop.

Overall the actors are up to the task of their slim roles, but even within the span of the premiere episode, the good girl/bad girl rapport between Dana and Glenn becomes tiresome. Marshall, so winning in last year's clever Cupid, seems out of her element playing a hardened plainclothes detective. Her natural inclination is to show us the woman behind the badge, but that person doesn't jive with the dialogue the jaded cop is required to spit out. And Gershon is appropriately sleazy as Glenn, but ultimately behaves like characters on TV shows do - the script says she has all the answers, so we never really fear that she might get in over her head because she doesn't act that way. Jai Parker as Roberta is just one-note surly (though we never get a clue why), leaving only Nucci to breeze in like a breath of fresh air. Manny delights in the day-to-day machinations of his job, be it breaking into people's houses, spying on them from not-so-discreet distances, or simply shooting them with his tranquilizer gun.

By the time the team has cracked the case by episode's end, there's such an anti-climactic feeling of "so what?" that we're left scratching our heads and wondering, is that really it? None of the characters seem to be affected by anything they see, hear, or do during the episode (including the perpetrators), and there's none of the thought-provoking Kelley hallmarks which make his other dramas so distinctive - ruminations on human nature, love, interpersonal discord. But how could they be? They're all exceedingly content - Glenn's laissez-faire attitude seems to have rubbed off, but gotten distilled as it went. In that sense, the show is perfectly set in shallow Southern California - everyone's just too blasé to give a damn.

Believe me, I know how they feel.