Promo image for the show's launch. Before it was killed by Tricia Helford.
TNT recently announced that it wasn’t renewing “Dark Blue” for a third season. That’s too bad, since the show started off with such promise. Dylan McDermott was due a good series after his long run on “The Practice” and there was enough drama and intrigue about the deep undercover crew in L.A. that it kept me watching.
But then she came along. The she I’m talking about it Tricia Helfer. The Cylon babe from “Battlestar Galactica” whose key asset is keeping her mouth justthis open when staring at you with sultry eyes. It was hard to buy Helfer as a cop, much less a fairly high-ranked FBI agent capable of pulling off elaborate operations. But it was also obvious that she was brought in as a love interest for McDermott’s character, whose private life wasn’t explored too much in the first season (compared to the costars).
That was the mistake. McDermott’s gritty do-it-at-all-costs undercover cop didn’t seem like a good match to the do-it-by-the-book Helfer, and a relationship between the two certainly made her character weaker along with his. And the eventual move into the “will she marry me?” territory was just too much.
While there were other reasons the show started to weaken. Logan Marshall-Green’s Dean Bendis seemed to fall in love with the daughter of a target? Come on… and this is after Season One he got involved with co-worker Jamie Allen (Nicki Aycox). And the dissolution of the only stable-ish relationship on the show (that of Ty Curtis – played by Omari Hardwick) further piled on the personal issues and drama.
In the end it all helped kill the show, but if Carter Shaw (McDermott) didn’t lose his way, it might have kept everyone else in line. As it is, I’m worried that Tricia Helfer will become a show killer if she shows up on another cop show. Stick to sci-fi.
Even with the cancellation, TNT is still a great friend to the cop show, with the vastly superior “Southland” coming back for a second season on the network starting January 4, 2011. The network also airs “The Closer,” “Rizzoli & Isles,” “Memphis Beat” and the crime drama-ish “Leverage.” So I’ll watch on…
