Re-investigating The Unusuals – We celebrate Boorland Day

by Brittany Frederick

As 'The Unusuals' rolls on, Jeremy Renner proves you don't need an action scene to be a badass and continuity still counts for something.

It’s time to get back on the beat with the detectives of The Unusuals. This week, it’s “Boorland Day,” and Walsh (Jeremy Renner) does a damn good job of summing up the entire series when he tells Shraeger (Amber Tamblyn) in the opening minutes, “Nothing is what you think it is.” Including the part where your partner shoves you aside while you’re chasing down bank robbery suspects.

We’re introduced to the Boorlands, the oldest crime family in New York, who decide to start a new crime spree and keep our favorite detectives busy, including the bank heist, a pawn shop theft, and one not-too-bright family member who tries to hold up a restaurant with a samurai sword. “They’re petty thieves and thugs,” Sergeant Brown (Terry Kinney) tells his team, “they can’t agree on anything.” And so we get a lot of the episode’s humor from this oddball clan, whether it’s from the one guy with a Napoleon complex or the one who unfortunately has a questionable name. It’s funny, and it’s funny without being crude or profane or mean-spirited, too.

I also love that Walsh is a badass in this episode without doing any of the things other TV cops often do to establish themselves as cool customers, and the resolution that we’d see on any other show ends up being the option that doesn’t solve anything. Sometimes, I feel like this show laughs in the face of cop-show cliches, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But there’s some serious stuff going on here as well. Frank Lutz (Ryan O’Nan), the unscrupulous associate from Cole’s (Josh Close) past, makes his first appearance in this episode. He’ll continue to be a plague through most of the series. We also meet Casey’s trust fund manager and boyfriend Davis, and learn that Walsh and Beaumont (Monique Gabriela Curnen) are a couple. This second episode sets up a lot of characters and plotlines that are part of the fabric of the first (and sadly only) season, as a solid beginning should.

Meanwhile, Shraeger tells Walsh that Sergeant Brown asked her to look into him, and Walsh’s response is to confide in her about how his refusal to throw games during his major league baseball career got his girlfriend killed. It’s the moment where they begin to become partners in more than just the title. What’s great about their partnership is that since our introduction to it was literally its first day, we get to see the full evolution of that bond between them. Amber Tamblyn and Jeremy Renner do a great job making their characters’ dynamic feel natural; already we see how they mesh on some things and don’t in other aspects, but we also get the sense that they’ll make a good team, and they do – one of my favorite TV partnerships ever.

And speaking of what makes cops tick, Walsh makes a very good point to Alvarez (Kai Lennox) in the first act: Eddie’s been with the Second a year and can’t recall Delahoy’s (Adam Goldberg) first name or Banks’ (Harold Perrineau) age. Walsh advises him to come have a beer with his colleagues once in awhile and “stop being a snob.” It drives home a point about real-life cops and one that’s played out so well in The Unusuals: the concept of colleagues functioning as a family. Walsh is pointing out to Alvarez that if he wants to be part of the squad, he needs to be part of the family, and that’s the heart of the series as well: no matter how different these people may be, they treat each other as a family unit, and we in turn are also able to feel like part of that family, because these characters are brought to life so well and written with dignity.

Lastly, I love the fact that the second episode keeps a real-time continuity with the first. Characters discuss the events of the pilot as having happened a week ago, from Delahoy nearly being shot to Walsh pranking Alvarez. Continuity in television shows seems to be an unpredictable if rare beast; many shows are content to only raise plot points when necessary, and overlook them if it doesn’t mesh with what they want to do later. Not this show, which isn’t going to let Delahoy off the hook for his apparent death wish, or let us forget that Casey is on the Second Squad in part to figure out everyone’s secrets. Having set up certain things with the pilot, series creator Noah Hawley lets us know that he is going to pay those aspects off, even if it’s piece by piece.

“Boorland Day” is something of an anti-cop show episode, in that it is so not what one would expect from the genre. In real life, not every cop can be the hero we’re used to seeing on TV. There are cops who have to deal with everything else, and those people’s work and their own stories are just as valid as their more high-profile coworkers. That is another reason why I adore The Unusuals: it might not be about the most complex cases and the characters might not be Steve McGarrett, but this show is still more compelling than many of the others in the genre, past or present.

Missed a case? Check out all the entries in Re-Investigating The Unusuals.