Meet Mike Warren. Review: Graceland Series Premiere - "Pilot"

Season 1, Episode 1

Air Date: Thursday, June 6, 2013, 10/9c on USA

Rating: ★★★★★

“Your lies are your life.” – Paul Briggs

Surfs up

FBI agent Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit), fresh out of the academy having graduated at the top of his class, is destined for Washington, DC until a series of events suddenly sends him to California. There, Mike lives at a beach house that has been nicknamed “Graceland,” where he must quickly learn how to be an undercover agent if he wants to fit in with the other inhabitants of the house.

Graceland, having been seized during an FBI raid, got its name from its previous owner, a drug lord who happened to be a huge Elvis fan. Now the house is inhabited by a group of young, sexy agents from the FBI, DEA and US Customs. Graceland is more than a home, though. It’s a sanctuary from the lies these men and women live outside the house as undercover agents. The interesting thing about Graceland is it’s based on a real beach house in Manhattan Beach, California where several agents from various law enforcement bureaus actually lived. The Elvis part is made up, though.

Mike learning his cover background

I enjoyed the pilot but what really surprised me is how funny it is. There is a scene on an airplane that cracked me up when Mike is busted telling his first undercover lie to another passenger. While Mike and FBI agent Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata) have been the main focus in all the commercials—presumably for their sex appeal—FBI agent Joe Tuturro (Manny Montana) provides much of the humor, albeit subtle, and almost effortlessly steals many of the scenes he is in.

Graceland marks the second USA Network series from creator Jeff Eastin who also created my favorite show, White Collar. The interesting thing is Graceland was written three years before White Collar’s season premiere. This might explain the dejá vu feeling White Collar fans will have during a pivotal scene where Mike goes undercover as a hitman and has to break into a house and kill its resident. My guess is that this scenario was always in the Graceland script but when the series seemed to be going nowhere, Eastin liked the bit so much he decided to use it in White Collar, which was on its way to becoming a huge hit for the network.

With the fantastic acting, great dialogue, and terrific camaraderie among the characters, Graceland is definitely worth checking out. The true test for Graceland will be giving each character its own identity. With so many people living in the house, each with a separate undercover persona they must portrary outside the house, the potential for the players to get lost in the mix is a concern. While this is only the pilot, the characters of the two female leads, FBI agent Catherine DeMarco (Vanessa Ferlito) and DEA agent Lauren Kincaid (Scottie Thompson), seem thin and can easily be described as merely “sexy eyes” and “angry eyes.” I am not sure yet what they bring to the show other than their feminine appeal and applying makeup to Mike so he matches the look of the man he is going under cover as. I don’t expect this feeling to last long, though, given Eastin’s track record for creating strong female characters. It isn’t just the female characters, though, as US Customs agent Dale Jakes (Brandon Jay McLaren) seems to show up only when people are touching his stuff.

My biggest complaint is the twist at the end. It seems so cliché that as I watched it unfold, I found myself hoping Graceland wouldn’t go there. But it did. It seems too easy to have Mike’s reason for being there another lie in a house full of lies. I expressed this while having a discussion with Terry Goldman, the Director of Social Media for USA network, who assured me, “The twist will pay off in the end in spades.”

Your lies are your life

While both of Eastin’s shows revolve around FBI agents, these are two very different worlds. Graceland is a very dark and gritty show where bullets kill, people are tortured, and heroin is in full display. It’s obvious these agents’ lives are at risk each and every day. In interviews, Eastin has described Graceland as more real while White Collar has more of a heightened reality. Sadly, as the huge White Collar fan I am, that also means Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) and Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) will not make any surprise appearances at the beach house for a cross-over episode.

The big question is whether Graceland will fall under the weight of the marketing campaign that has flooded our TVs with commercials for what feels like years. While most networks hype a show for approximately six weeks before its premiere, Graceland has been plugged since last September. The marketing was then followed by a two-week run of the pilot episode in late April on various cable channels’ On Demand feature.

It seems to me USA is taking a risk with Graceland since the network is known more for its quirky characters rather than the raw grittiness that is portrayed in this series. The show feels more like something you would find on a network like FX. Apparently, this is a risk USA is willing to take. Will Graceland live up to the marking hype that it has created? Only time will tell.

For more information on Graceland, visit the official website.

Follow Graceland on Twitter.

Follow the stars of Graceland on Twitter: @DanielGRACELAND, @MannyMontana, @SwanSerinda, and @brandojay.

LIKE Graceland on Facebook.

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Greg Staffa

I provide testosterone to the site. You won’t be reading about how nice a actress looks in a dress or how much of a hunk Matt Bomer is in my reviews. I describe colors using words like brown, not taupe. My twitter name is @staffaroadtrip because I love road trips and have done two different 48-state road trips since 2008. My favorite show is White Collar.