Minor spoilers follow (But do you really care?)
What the F is happening!
That seems like a line that would fit in snugly in a Quantico script, to describe a character’s incredulity at discovering something very obvious, for example, or to exclaim when yet another bomb goes off in the middle of New York. Clearly, Quantico writers aren’t happy with one major terror attack to keep viewers engaged. “Why have one blast, when you can have two?” seems to be the mantra to keep a flagging narrative from going entirely limp.
If you’ve read any of my Quantico reviews so far, you’ll know that the show has been pretty dreary ever since it premiered, in spite of a promising plot line and a decent protagonist in Priyanka Chopra.
Chopra’s presence, however, magnifies the incompetence of the remaining cast members, most of who look like they’re still in acting school (and faring badly), rather than the FBI training academy (where, too, they seem to suck). In fact, eachQuantico character does things so silly (and has a past so murky), you wonder how any of them made it to the FBI. Their secrets fuel the show’s whodunit format, yes, but it also makes America’s primary investigative agency look silly and unbelievably mismanaged.
Then there is the bipolar narrative, struggling to be a gritty thriller and fun campus drama at the same time, the two elements hardly ever tying in neatly. The past-present narrative style is difficult to maintain over entire seasons – as How To Get Away With Murder has shown us in the past – and Quantico writers can never do justice to more than one timeline per episode. When the drama gets pulsating in the present, unwanted scenes from the characters’ past pop up, and just when you get hooked to a storyline unfolding at the Academy (told through flashbacks), you are rudely pulled away to the aftermath of the Grand Central explosion (in the present).
The show took a mid-season break (American shows, just like the audience, get to go on Christmas breaks), and the last episode ended with what should have ideally been a wicked twist.
But every plot twist on Quantico seems like a discarded idea from an Abbas Mustan film – forced into the story for mere shock value, without it ever really helping the story move forward. Also, there’s only that much interest a show about characters constantly switching loyalties can maintain after the initial surprise element wears out.
At the season’s mid-point mark, Chopra’s character Alex Parrish is still a suspected terrorist, and has managed to win the confidence of her ex-batchmates and superiors, who’re helping her sort her mess out.
In one of the daftest moments you’ll have seen on television in 2015, Parrish pleads guilty for the terror attacks in order to throw those trying to frame her off-track (Mission accomplished, basically).
Quantico might return as a better show early next year (with that cast, there’s little hope), but I doubt I’ll be watching it anymore.
(Aniruddha Guha is a film & TV critic. Follow him on Twitter: @AniGuha)
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