TVSquad

When I sat in on the NBC conference call for the show Heist, I was probably the only person on that call who hadn't seen it. In fact, I had absolutely no idea what the show was about... besides some sort of heist, of course.

But as reporters from around the entertainment journalism landscape politely asked stars Dougray Scott and Steve Harris their questions, I started to figure out exactly what this show was going to be like. There was going to be a team of expert thieves, each with a specialty; they were going to plan a big heist that's funded by smaller heists; there was going to be a cat-and-mouse game with the cops with some romantic entanglements; finally, there was going to be goofy lines and lots of people not taking themselves too seriously.

How'd I get this off of one conference call? Two words: Oceans Eleven.

Oh, no. As soon as those words came out during the call, I knew this was going to be a problem. Not that I didn't like Clooney, Pitt and company, but I just didn't want to see this on TV for a dozen or so episodes. I just thought the formula wouldn't work over the long term of a series. And the first fifteen minutes or so of Heist wasn't convincing me otherwise.

Mickey O'Neil and James Johnson (Scott and Harris, respectively) are veteran robbers who scheme and plan their heists out to the hilt, making sure, for instance, they trip the alarm three times on a targeted jewlery store so the cops stop responding. Then they hit the store with brute force, blithely discussing Mother Theresa's wavering belief in God as they break in and rob the safe. So, yes, I get it, these two have intellectual lives beyond grand larceny; this is just a job to them. Yawn.

Then they gather the team to set up the big score: a hottie, a dipshit, and an old guy. The old guy (surprisingly named Pops) seems to be good at stealing cars, but we don't quite know what the other two specialize in just yet. But Mickey tells them of the biggie... rob the three biggest jewlery stores on Rodeo Drive during Oscar week. The expected take? Half a billion. Lots of quips, lots of sassiness. Double Yawn.

Then you've got the cops: Detective Amy Sykes, who's in charge of Robbery and Homicide in her precinct, who's smart, determined, and a little bit troubled (she shoplifts razors in a supermarket as Mickey scopes her out). She's surrounded by a fat bumbling racist cop and his black, much more dedicated partner. Triple Yawn With a Neck Droop.

But y'know what? The show started to suck me in a little as the heisters tried to get a little cash by glomming onto the crude robbery scheme hatched by some "foreign" (read: Arab) terrorists: send a pizza guy in with a bomb strapped to him and if the cops come, blow the sucker up. Remember, not only are the heisters doing smaller capers to fund the biggie, but O'Neil and Johnson are also trying to scout "the enemy," too. And Amy's smart... perhaps too smart, even for the audience. Note this IM exchange with my boss Keith, who watched a preview of the show a few days ago:

Keith: OK, how did they know the cars would be held back by the woman cop? Did they just hope she'd figure out what was going on and call for the cars to all stop, so they'd lost the tail? That bugged me a lot.
Me: That could have been a nice coincidence.
Keith: They lost the helicopter easily. But how'd they know the cars would be gone?
Me: Maybe they reasoned that there was a reason why the cab left when the cops came.
Keith: Well I had a thought... The plan all along was to learn about the woman cop. To figure out that she'd be the one assigned to burglary and then to learn how she'd think. That first burglary was to do that.
Me: Maybe.
Keith: Since they didn't get anything out of it at all. Just that totem, which he left on her bedside table.
Me: I would guess that's why they did it.
Keith: That's the only explanation that worked for me.
Me: The cat and mouse game...

So the writers might be a little smart for their own good in setting this scenario up, which will play out over the course of this season. We'll see. I'll give it another episode and see if I want to continue. I hope Dougray's accent gets better by then, because his Scottish burr is seeping through in his speech, which has been Americanized for some reason. Also, there are some side plots, like a betrayal suffered by Mickey, which need to be explored. But, they just need to ease off the quippiness a little bit. It's just not necessary.