Favorite New Fall Show – Boss

This past week, we at CliqueClack asked you to vote for your favorite new fall shows to watch (American Horror Story was the top voter-getter) and for those that you would recommend to others. The winter hiatus is the perfect time to catch up on new shows you didn’t initially watch. Read our previous write-ups for Up All Night, Revenge, American Horror Story, Homeland, New Girl, The Secret Circle and Once Upon a Time, and check out why Meredith picked Boss!

There are two strikes against the ambitious and gripping freshman drama Boss. The first is that it appears on Starz. The second is that it’s seriously grim. Its outlook on politics makes the Occupy Wall Street protesters, by comparison, look like they’re throwing pep rallies to celebrate highly paid investment bankers.

And that’s exactly why I’ve been thoroughly and completely sucked into this Kelsey Grammer vehicle and am always disappointed when an episode ends and I have to wait a week for the next installment.

Sure, there are other standout shows that have premiered this fall, like the intriguingly tense Homeland and the romp of a puzzle that is Once Upon a Time. But neither of them have what draws me to Boss and that is this: The complete disappearance of an actor into his role. Grammer is able to deftly simultaneously make viewers utterly despise his character and, at the same time, pity him. Frasier who?

Grammer’s Tom Kane, longtime Chicago mayor, is a monster.

He’s violent. (He assaulted a city councilor, choked his father-in-law’s home health care aide with whom he’d slept and slapped his wife in the face.)

He’s a bully. (He demeaned one of his most loyal assistants by screaming in her face and telling her she’s an insignificant nobody.)

He’s cruelly manipulative. (He continued a discussion with a city councilor while he walked to his in-office bathroom, relieved himself with the door open and then insisted upon shaking the councilor’s hand after he intentionally did not wash his hands. Kane also made the state treasurer literally get down on his hands and knees in his office, then Kane walked out of the room and shut out the lights.)

He’s ruthless. (He had his only daughter busted, her reputation ruined, in order to take some political heat off of himself. And years ago, when he was an up-and-comer, Kane allowed toxic waste to be dumped in a location that wound up poisoning children.)

At the same time, viewers can look upon Grammer’s Kane with a twisted kind of sympathy, similar to the way that Tony Soprano seemed kind of sympathetic when he was in his therapy sessions with Dr. Melfi.

To complicate things, Kane has a terminal, degenerative disease about which he has only told his daughter, the one he had busted for drugs even though she covertly obtained medicine for him that would help him control the symptoms of his disease. He’s utterly terrified that the disease will turn him into a shell of himself, which his doctor has said that it most definitely will. That fear has been brought into stark relief when Kane has visited his wheelchair-bound father-in-law, a former Chicago mayor, who cannot speak or move with intention and is essentially non-responsive, under 24-hour care. During several scenes throughout the season, I’ve found myself pitying the ogre. (The season finale is this week.)

The supporting cast is outstanding as well, specifically Kathleen Robertson as the tightly-wound Kitty O’Neil who’s starting to question her allegiance to Kane in the wake of the toxic waste scandal, and Jeff Hephner as Illinois State Treasurer Ben Zajac, whom Kane hand-picked to run against the incumbent governor but who later tried to double-cross Kane (and was subsequently blackmailed by Kane). Zajac also happens to be a careless, sloppy and stupid serial philanderer.

Boss delves into the impact of big city political legacies in the person of Meredith Kane (Connie Nielson), Kane’s estranged wife whose father was also a powerful Chicago mayor and who has an agenda of her own that she wants to pursue. The show addresses ruthless political expediency as it was revealed that Meredith Kane was the one who persuaded her husband to cut off contact with their daughter Emma, now a minister, after she’d become addicted to drugs. It also dabbles in political journalism as a newspaper publisher interfered with a dogged investigative journalist’s unflattering series of stories about Mayor Kane.

For a news and political junkie like myself, Boss has everything. It’s like The West Wing, only meaner, more sinister, more profane, violent and set in the gritty underbelly of Chicago politics. And if Grammer doesn’t win an Emmy for best actor in a drama, that’ll be a crime.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Dec 06, 2011 @ 11:00 EST5EDT