Boss Mayor May Not Be Excellent

Starz looks up to (and envies) its big brothers, Showtime and HBO. Once an excuse to not go to the video store, the co-kings of premium cable are now best known for their original programming, generally considered to be the farms at which the best series on television are grown. Starz started tagged along a few years back with Crash, a serious effort at getting into the original drama game, but things didn't quite work out—so the network became known for boobs-and-blood genre series Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Camelot. But with Boss, which debuted tonight, Starz is all of a sudden more than just a network for fans of Renaissance Faire-inspired softcore porn.

I don't think there's another show currently on the air that relies more heavily on one actor than Boss, which stars Kelsey Grammer as the manipulative mayor of Chicago. Best known as funnyman Frasier Crane, a role he played for 20 years in the comedies Cheers and Frasier, Grammer turns himself inside-out to play the scheming Tom Kane, and he isn't just good, he's f'ing fantastic. If you've ever doubted Grammer's drama skills (or simply forgot that he got his start on the stage), re-watch the scene from tonight's premiere where he "recommended" that councilman Mata do something about his loudmouth contractor. Yikes! He'd make a great nun at a Catholic School.

Grammer's Mayor Kane is a man whose every waking moment is devoted to maintaining his grip on power, either by greasing palms or cutting them off. But in the opening moments of "Listen," he was slapped in the face with the news that he'd been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, a horrible degenerative brain disorder that took my father's life a few years back. Trust me, it's HORRIBLE. Boss is borrowing a bit from Breaking Bad, which saw lead character Walter White being diagnosed with terminal cancer in the series premiere. The difference here is that Kane is already in full-on Heisenberg mode; the question is whether his disease will make him more or less of a menace. So far, it looks as though Kane is treating the diagnosis as just another obstacle in his relentless quest for power, because he was one nasty son of a bitch in "Listen" and doesn't seem to have any intentions of building a nest egg for his family.

Boss is all about the twisted world of politics, and though I hate to do this (and will probably regret it), it features some similarities to HBO's The Wire—a series considered by many to be the greatest thing of all time. Just as The Wire showed that even the smallest pieces of the puzzle have their place in the big picture of law enforcement, crime, and the city, Boss is doing the same with an emphasis on politics. I'm not saying it's as good as The Wire (only time will tell), but the two shows share enough DNA—a dirty look inside one aspect of a city's gears, the slow burn of information and details, no hand holding—that I wouldn't complain if someone put the DVDs on the same shelf.

Deserving as much credit as Grammer for the success of Boss' pilot is producer Gus Van Sant, the acclaimed director of Milk and Good Will Hunting. Van Sant, who directed "Listen," brings his hometown of Portland with him to the series, coloring the show with overcast greys that soak everything in seriousness. He's an incredible director, and each shot was painstakingly calculated for maximum potency. Heck, there was even a sex scene that managed to be artsy and a turn-on. "Listen" was easily one of the best-looking pilots I've seen this year and set the tone for an unapologetically gritty follow-up. Let's hope the rest of the series looks half as good.

As great as it looked and as great as it was acted, "Listen" wasn't an open-and-shut pilot and had no aspirations to be one. The whole plot with Kane's daughter stalking a drug dealer (is she an ex-junkie, or is she just attracted to him?) didn't weave into the main story at all, but until it stays tangential for two or three episodes, I don't think we need to grab the fire extinguishers. The episode offered plenty of intrigue without blowing too much of its wad on major plot points. Tom Kane's troubles are just beginning, and "Listen" did a great job of touching on each one of them. Some might call that boring, I call it deliberate. Boss is clearly training for a marathon, not a sprint.

In an unusual move, Starz renewed Boss for a second season in September, before the series even premiered. Now I'm seeing why. If Boss continues to be as great as its first episode, the show may not just be a critics' hit, it may bring Starz into the elite tier of premium cable networks.

Notes:
– Grammer's performance overshadows the rest of the cast's, but Francis Guinan is excellent as swearing governor Mac Cullen. Every time he unleashes an F-bomb, it's a hoot. Martin Donovan, who plays Kane's senior political adviser, and Connie Nielsen, Kane's wife, are always welcome on my screen. Also, how happy is Jeff Hephner to get kicked off of The Playboy Club to play the role of upstart Illinois State Treasurer Ben?

– Did Kane know someone was taking pictures of him on the roof with the treasurer? Was that Kane's way of saying "f**k you!" to Mac Cullen?

– "When you speak, we listen." Here, have a box with my ears. Dope. Also dope: "reminding" your doctor of the details of the Hippocratic Oath and making sure she's all ears by paralyzing her.