Kat with a K

Rubicon 1.2: "The First Day of School"

I think I forgot to mention this last time, but is anyone else completely distracted by how much Will (James Badge Dale) looks like Matthew Morrison of Glee? No? Just me? Anyway, more substantive thoughts after the jump . . .

I'm finding this show difficult to write about because I'm actually pretty fascinated by it, except that nothing happens. Or things happen, but it's completely unclear which if any of them are important. There are a lot of long looks and awkward movements and cryptic statements. Hyacinths! Graham Greene! Ferries! Vanderbilt! Nigeria! Any of those words could be important. Or not. Who knows?

But, okay, let's try to sort through some of the more tangible elements that may or may not be important. But wait, first, I had sympathy for the security guard making the girl take off her sunglasses, because all the characters on this show look alike. It took me this entire episode to get a handle on Maggie and Tanya and which is which, and I still have no idea who's who among the older guys. Thank goodness Will, Miles, and Grant all look different, or I'd be completely sunk.

So. It's Will's first day as boss! Replacing his father-in-law! Shockingly, there's tension. His team seems to be composed of Miles, Tanya, and Grant. (Is Maggie on another team? Or is she an admin or something? I couldn't figure this out, but I think it's the latter.) Miles and Tanya seem generally decent, but Grant is either an awful person or really has something against Will. And Tanya. I guess we'll find out. Maybe. Miles is obsessed with Nigeria, and Maggie is informing on the group, possibly as a way of keeping her kid safe. Or something. Oh, and there's also tension with Will's higher-ups, and he's late for his first team leader meeting. Last episode, someone made a big deal about him never being late for anything since his wife and child died on September 11, so is it supposed to be Extremely Significant that he was late for this meeting? Or did they just forget about the never late thing?

Will's bosses want him working on this thing about a guy named Yuri, who has ties with ex-KGB people, as though the fact that his name is Yuri hadn't told us that already. He was photographed with a German guy named Beck. There are bank accounts involved. And money. And Hezbollah and missiles, maybe. I don't know. I also don't know if the Yuri thing is actually important or if it was just designed to distract Will from the Great Crossword Mystery. Or maybe it's some kind of test of him as a boss. Or something else entirely.

Speaking of the Great Crossword Mystery, Will has not been distracted from it. He has a guy who he calls Hal (but whose name is actually Mason, I think) working on it, and apparently NotHal could get fired for doing this for him because it's unauthorized, and it's all very cloak-and-dagger for some unexplained reason. NotHal finds a similar Crossword Thing in 1983, and David's friend Ed tells Will that he and David did it and it was supposed to be a "go" code. So presumably this new one is the same thing. NotHal decides it was a trigger for revenge killings of Hezbollah people. Wait, does that mean Yuri was actually involved? Hm.

Ed also tells Will that the code Will found in David's typewriter is an old-school book code, and that made me happy, because I've actually heard of that! Both people have a book and use the code to specify a page/line/word/letter, and the letters together spell out the message. Will realizes quickly that the book in question is probably the one David gave him right before he died (and speaking of which, what ever happened to the motorcycle and the "drive away" message?). The message ends up being "They hide in plain sight." Uh, thanks, David. That was enlightening.

People are following Will throughout the episode, which he sometimes seems to know and sometimes doesn't. And someone bumps into him and then he almost gets hit by a taxi, which might or might not have been an accident. But he seems fairly unconcerned. At the end, one of the people watching him is all "Why are we watching this guy?" so maybe they too are amazed by how little happens on this show.

Elsewhere, Miranda Richardson is back! Yay! At the reading of her husband's will, she discovers that he changed his will a week before he died to leave her one of his companies, and she is suspicious. And then she discovers that he also left her a townhouse she didn't know he had, so she's REALLY suspicious. She thinks he was cheating, and is looking all over for clues, and finds a four-leaf clover, which leads back that secret society, of course. Oh, and the "fourth branch of government" idea, which apparently Will and NotHal forgot about in the whole "The crossword is a go code!" thing. Hmmm.

Oh, random thought: Maggie's daughter's name seems to be Sophia, which means wisdom. That could be meaningful! Who knows?

This show is still deadly boring and completely riveting at the same time. Somehow. It's a marvel.