I went into this one expecting something serious... You know... Spies... Secret... missions... Government conspiracies.... People whispering in dark rooms...
Somebody saying, “We have a situation.”
Then Tom Ellis shows up and starts breaking rules and that's basically the show...
CIA follows Colin Glass, a CIA case officer who seems to have a very flexible relationship with the rules, and Bill Goodman, an FBI agent who is pretty much the complete opposite...
Bill is the guy who wants to follow procedure while Colin is the guy who looks at procedure and says.. “Yeah... we're not doing that today.”
Naturally, these two are forced to work together and honestly, that's the best part of the series...
The Colin and Bill partnership works because they are so different.... Colin is experienced, confident and unpredictable while Bill is intelligent, careful and much more disciplined...
You already know they're going to annoy each other and they do... A LOT... but slowly, you start seeing why they actually make a good team.... Colin can take risks that Bill wouldn't normally take, Bill can stop Colin from completely losing his mind... It's basically one guy saying, “Trust me.” and the other saying, “I absolutely do not trust you." But somehow... They still get the job done...
The first season throws everything at them... Stolen weapons, Terror plot, Smuggling, Kidnappings, Murder investigations, Foreign intelligence, A crashed satellite carrying nuclear material and eventually, a mole inside their own operation... So there's always something happening..
The official episode lineup shows just how much ground the season covers, from the opening stolen-weapon case through deep-cover operations, terror plots and the eventual hunt for a mole and that's something I appreciated...
The show doesn't spend ten episodes investigating one crime... Most episodes give you a new problem while slowly building the larger story underneath... That makes it very easy to watch... You can sit down and say “Let me watch one episode.”
Then suddenly you've watched four...
Tom Ellis was probably the biggest surprise for me... I've seen him in other roles, but Colin Glass gives him the opportunity to be more of a traditional action/spy character.. He's charming, confident and he clearly enjoys being the smartest person in the room but underneath all that, there's also a darker side to Colin...
You get the feeling that this man has been doing this job for too long.... He knows how the game works and would do whatever it takes to finish the mission...
Nick Gehlfuss is also good as Bill..
Bill is easier to relate to because he's basically the normal person surrounded by CIA madness...
He's professional, intelligent and doesn't always agree with Colin's methods and I liked watching him slowly adapt.... At first, he's basically thinking... “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”.. By the middle of the season, he's basically like.. “Okay, fine. Let's do this.”
Nikki Reynard and Gina Gosian also add more to the team, especially from the station side of things but I have to be honest... CIA is not exactly revolutionary..
If you've watched a lot of FBI, NCIS, Chicago P.D., or other network crime dramas, you're going to recognise the formula...The team saves the day, Then we move on to the next case....It works.... But it's familiar.... VERY familiar..
Another thing I liked is the fact that the CIA and FBI aren't portrayed as exactly the same...
Sometimes Colin wants to operate in the shadows while Bill wants everything done properly and sometimes Bill's approach is exactly what saves them...
The action is decent too..
There are shootouts, undercover operations, car chases and plenty of dangerous situations...
The show also knows when to slow down and let the characters breathe and I think that's important because without those moments, Colin and Bill would just be two guys running from one explosion to another...
Overall, I enjoyed CIA...
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Rating: 83/100
