Wahlberg's 'Boston' Still Finest; 'Marshal Law: Texas:' Not Arresting

Famous marshals in television history:

Marshal Matt Dillon, who transcended two generations as Wild West hero for 20 seasons of Gunsmoke;

E.G. Marshall, star of the ‘60s legal drama The Defenders;

Marshall Thompson, who took over the Marshall mantle in the mid-60s as valiant veterinarian Dr. Marsh Tracy in the family-friendly African adventure series Daktari; 

And Marshall McLuhan, the communications visionary who called out this crazy, outrageous medium more than 60 years ago for exactly what it has become.

All of these forerunners, sadly, are considerably more interesting than Marshal Law: Texas, the new Lone Star fugitive roundup series premiering at 10 p.m. EST Tuesday (Nov. 26, 2013) on TNT as a companion piece to Boston’s Finest, which returns for its second season preceding it at 9 p.m.

TNT is fashioning itself as something of a law-and-order reality TV hotbed these days with the recent successes of its Boston’s Finest and Cold Justice. But don’t get too cocky, you “We Know Drama” boasters: more does not automatically mean better.

Here we have a real-life Battle of the Network Stars: Marshal Law: Texas springs forth from the production company of megaproducer Jerry Bruckheimer, while entertainment multi-talent Donnie Wahlberg helms Boston’s Finest. You wouldn’t expect a New Kid on the Block to get the better of a Titan of Television, but you have every reason to expect more from the man who gave us all three CSIs, The Amazing Race and Without a Trace. That last title kind of sums up the presence of Bruckheimer magic in this series. It’s like he threw it together during a bathroom break. 

Marshal Law: Texas is set in Houston (we know this because of the same long, establishing aerial shots that begin every segment), focusing on the brave men and women of the Southern District of Texas, U.S. Marshals Service Gulf Coast Violent Offenders and Fugitive Task Force (whew!), an amalgamation of federal, city and county cops devoted to pulling the baddest of baddies out of their hiding places and into small cells.

The task force pursues several felons simultaneously, so the pace of the hour varies and it isn't exactly what you'd call boring. Yet the process seems exactly the same each time: A dozen or more officers hop into a fleet of SUVs like the Cavalry on wheels, race to a confirmed location, surround it, bust into it and drag out one guy. A dangerous, savage, sociopathic guy, perhaps, but still just one guy. Bullies. Watching this all-against-one scene repeated over and over, you almost start to feel sorry for the criminals.

That might also be because, through the descriptions of the lawbreakers and their crimes, you actually know more about them than you do about the good guys. We may learn more about the individual task force members in episodes to come, but Drama 101suggests you have to develop the characters in order to have empathy with them, and there is none of that in the debut.

In fact, the marshals are so anonymous that you may make the same foolish error I committed. The first time an identifying slate appeared onscreen, reading "DUSM PINON," I thought, "Dusm; what an odd first name." Then I realized they were letters standing for "Deputy U.S. Marshal."

The premiere doesn't generate real action until the last 10 minutes or so, when hunt for a murder suspect with diabetes prompts the task force to totally destroy a house (certainly not the suspect's) before reaching its inevitable conclusion. A warning here: it doesn't end well. 

Wahlberg's on home turf celebrating 'Boston's Finest.' (TNT/John Nowak)

Connecting with characters is no problem with Boston's Finest, and not only because the series already has been around for a season. Wahlberg and his peeps did an outstanding job of introducing us to the Boston Police officers being profiled from the show's very first hour, taking us into their homes and showing us their personal relationships, so our bond of interest and caring deepened. Maybe it's because this is a hometown labor of love for Wahlberg. As one cop says in the opening scroll, "Boston takes care of Boston." 

The second-season return is predictably poignant, centering around the city's giant Fourth of July celebration and the palpable tension throughout Boston in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing just three months before. (The bombing itself is recounted in quick flashback news reports.) Members of the Gang Unit and Fugitive Unit, usually plainclothed, are donning uniforms to bolster police presence during the holiday.

Patrol Officer Jennifer Penton, whom we grew to love and admire in Season One, is now riding alone, her longtime partner Pat Rogers having been reassigned. She talks about the heightened awareness she now must acknowledge as a female officer on her own, and when she and Rogers meet up during a street investigation, it's clear how much they miss each other's company. That's a pure interpersonal moment you'll find nowhere in Marshal Law: Texas.

We even feel a twinge of concern when Penton is sent to check out a large, suspicious black bag left on a neighborhood street, which turns out to be a false alarm. That's the big difference here: Boston's Finest takes routine police work and makes it seem interesting, while Marshal Law: Texas takes slam-bang fugitive takedowns and makes them seem mundane. Where's Tommy Lee Jones when you need him?

Betcha Bruckheimer could get him.

Marshal Law: Texas: 5 clicks (on a scale of 10); Boston's Finest: 8.

Wahlberg's 'Boston's Finest' for TNT is, Well, Finest

Donnie Wahlberg, star of the hit scripted police series Blue Bloods, was on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart the other night explaining how his years of experience playing cops and robbers gave him unique insight to be executive producer of TNT's new reality police series, Boston's Finest, premiering at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, February 27.

"I've played probably 800 cops in my acting career," he told a transfixed Stewart. "I've had like 801 jobs, and 800 of them were cops."

Yeah, right. And just because Anne Hathaway can look sickly and hit a high note, she should win an Oscar for Les Miserables. (Oh, wait. That did happen.) What's more, Wahlberg maintained, his respect for the men and women who serve and protect the hometown he loves so much defined exactly the type of show he needed to make.

"We can't do it on one of these rowdy networks with billy clubs smashing over people's heads," he said. "It's Boston. I have to represent my city the right way."

Oh, how I wanted to dislike this series so wicked hard. One, it's yet another reality series, and someday soon we will be force-fed one too many of them and all our brains will implode. Between those Dish commercials for "The Hopper," the foulmouthed wacky impressions by SVP & Russillo on ESPN and every other cop movie made these days, Boston and its accent have become the chic media premise of the moment. And, quite honestly, it'd be a nice change to see Wahlberg fail at something: he's had the right stuff seemingly ever since he emerged from puberty, attaining extraordinary success at almost everything except finding a really good tailor.

Wanted to. Couldn't. Boston's Finest is what reality TV was supposed to be all along. Insightful. Absorbing. Quietly fascinating. Even a little educational, without smashing us over the head with a billy club. From the network that gives us the best scripted police saga on television, Southland, this is what we should have every reason to expect: Reality done the TNT way. Cops with a Harvard education.

The Wicked Finest. Photo courtesy: TNT

The show is beautifully shot and paced, almost cinematic in its feel, a succession of Beantown glamour shots. And the measured, mellow narration occasionally sounds like the public reading of a new novel. "These cops think the darkest corners of their city are worth saving, and that they were the ones born to do it." Isn't that melodic?

However, as Wahlberg and his fellow producers were getting the mayor, police commissioner and chief of police to sign off on the concept, he told Stewart, "they all said the same thing: It's up to the officers. If they don't feel safe with you in the car, you're getting out of the car, you take your camera and you go home."

Obviously, it was safety first. I looked hard for any sign of uneasiness, insincerity or acting on the part of the officers. Nada. To their credit, these cops accepted the cameras without playing to them. And, in a distinctive difference from most police-focused reality shows, Boston's Finest will, in time, touch upon every segment of the Boston Police Department – street patrol officers, the detective squad, special task forces, the SWAT team, the Fugitive Unit and the city's highly decorated, danger-filled Gang Unit. Layered alongside that, the show impresses in the way it integrates the personal storylines of its principal players with their main focus of snatching bad guys off the street.

For example, in the opening episode I think you will very quickly grow to like Jennifer Penton. A small, compact steel coil of a woman, Penton served her country in Afghanistan before joining the force and now patrols the Hyde Park district with her partner and "best friend," Pat Rogers. They're close enough to correct each other's English on camera without triggering dirty looks.

"This is probably one of the badder areas we're going into," Rogers announces.

"Worst," counters Penton. "I don't think 'badder' is a word."

"What if I say, 'I'm the baddest?'"

"You can be the baddest," says Penton. "But not badder."

By the time the hour is over you will meet her mother, her nephew and her twin sister Melissa, whose lousy life decisions and descent into drug abuse have left her unrecognizable as Penton's sibling. Melissa's existence drives her passion to take drugs off the streets and eventually get into the narcotics unit.

You also see Penton sweating hard in the boxing ring, training to overcome any assumptions criminals – or peers – may make based on her gender and stature. "I'm 5-foot-3, a hundred-and-something pounds," she explains. "With that comes a fear that I'm going to be faced with a 6-foot-2, 250-pound muscular guy who doesn't want to go to jail that day. I have to stay on top of my game. It could save my life. It could save my partner's life."

By the second episode, she's inviting Rogers to her apartment for an after-shift dinner. Ooh, is something more than a patrol partnership developing here? Well, that's why it's a series, silly. Tune in next week.

You'll become acquainted with the Gang Unit, spending a rare night off to meet at a member's house for dinner and care for their combined passel of kids so their wives and girlfriends can enjoy a "Ladies' Night Out." And the wily, devoted Fugitive Unit officer Greg Dankers, husband to a fellow Boston cop and father to twin 4-year-old boys, who sets a trap to catch a violent drug dealer nicknamed (I love this), "DropRock." You'll meet a dozen more before the season's said and done.

Every episode shrewdly ends with a surge of action, a little adrenalin rush to make you consider coming back again for more satisfying visual chowdah. The show's theme song, performed by the Irish punk-rock band Dropkick Murphys, ends with the line, "the roof is on fire and it's ready to blow." That may be an apt description of Boston's Finest as well. It's wicked good.

On a scale of 1-10 remotes, I give Boston's Finest an 8.