Ironside - Series Premiere - Recap: Hell On Wheels

Credit: NBC

The show is a remake of a 37-year-old NBC series starring Raymond Burr, and the premise remains largely unchanged: Robert Ironside (Blair Underwood) is a detective confined to a wheelchair after suffering a gunshot wound to the spine two years earlier while chasing a perp. The episode opens with Ironside threatening a suspect with a knife to ascertain information on a missing girl named Denise Matthews, and though he's portrayed as a bit of a loose-cannon/renegade cop, Ironside is also depicted, in the grand tradition of loose-cannon/renegade cops, as a guy who gets results, dammit. And so it is here, as Ironside's methods lead to the safe recovery of the girl. However, the case ahead proves a bit more challenging.

The investigation revolves around the presumed suicide of a young stock broker, a death that is very likely a homicide, and even more likely tied to an investment scandal orchestrated by crooked businessman Bill Broughton (Brian d'Arcy James). It's all very by-the-numbers, but it allows Ironside to display his various strengths as a detective, the most useful of which is his ability to keep a fairly level head in the face of increasingly stressful situations, in addition to his ability to lull suspects into a false sense of security due to his disability. Both of these traits tell us plenty about Ironside and how the shooting that put him in the wheelchair has changed him. It's an encouraging "show, don't tell" approach that offsets much of the scenery-chewing rage that characterizes Underwood's performance in the early part of the pilot. Yet even the aggressive nature of Underwood's characterization isn't necessarily a bad thing. Ironside is a man with a chip on his shoulder, and he frequently goes out of his way not to address his bitterness, for fear that he might succumb to it if he took a long enough look in the mirror.

Credit: NBC

Honestly, it's the performances that keep this thing together, for the most part. Brent Sexton is terrific as Gary Stanton, Ironside's former partner. Gary still hasn't gotten over the incident two years ago that resulted in his best friend ending up in a wheelchair, and though Sexton doesn't get as much screentime as one might expect for a character so crucial to Ironside's origin, the actor does a great job making an indelible impression without crossing over into caricature. There's genuine guilt at the center of Sexton's performance, as Gary refuses to forgive himself for his failure to protect Ironside, even after Ironside himself gives him an angry motivational speech, pleading with his friend not to "let one bullet take out both of us." However, when Gary refuses to let it go, Ironside dispenses with the softer approach and delivers a speech that basically amounts to "Stop crying about it, you're being pathetic."

Credit: NBC

Underwood has a difficult job, taking a character for whom we should instinctually feel sympathy, and forcing us to feel conflicted about the nature of his morality. Yes, he's a good cop, and he might even be a good man underneath it all, but he's such an abrasive character that there ends up being a certain ambivalence in how viewers might feel about him. And that's one of the richest aspects of this pilot, the complicated nature of its lead. Ironside might try to pretend he's over what happened to him, but as evidenced in the episode's best scene -- with Ironside exercising while in his wheelchair, in between flashbacks of the night of the shooting -- we can see how deeply his disability affects him at a psychological level. When Underwood lets out an anguished roar after going to town on the speed bags in the gym, it feels cathartic in a way that a simple breakdown with Sexton wouldn't have.

Ultimately, Ironside brings Broughton to justice after talking the victim's loved one out of hurting him in a tense, climactic standoff, but these moments are all ancillary to the character developments at the end. Ironside visits Gary at a support meeting where he delivers a speech about his continuing struggle to overcome his guilt, after which he returns home to reconnect with his girlfriend, showing an inherently softer side to the abrasive detective. For a procedural to focus this much on the characters and still succeed is a good sign, although the rest of the case is fairly generic: Spencer Grammer plays Ironside's current partner Holly, while Kenneth Choi is his overly skeptical boss, Captain Ed Rollins. The cast also features Neal Bledsoe and Pablo Schreider in relatively thankless roles that largely blend into the background, although that's more a byproduct of this being the pilot. There simply isn't enough time to service every character.

Credit: NBC

That said, there is a bit of intrigue in the approach to making Ironside not simply an action hero in a wheelchair, but a detective who must now rely on his intellect to level the playing field against suspects of increasing volatility. In many ways, it could be interpreted that Ironside is overcompensating by trying way too hard to play the badass renegade to offset the appearance of his physical limitations. Whereas before he could just strong-arm his way through an investigation, he must now adopt a subtler approach, and that conflict, in which Ironside struggles with the effect his limitations could have on his police work, is worth exploring. And while it's just a theory at this point, I feel there's real potential in the possibility that Capt. Rollins, despite his disapproving attitude, might be implicitly enabling Ironside's loose-cannon police work, as none of it would really be possible if Rollins didn't sanction it. In essence, he's giving Ironside just enough rope to hang himself, whether he's even aware he's doing it or not. That could be an interesting direction for this series to take, one that pair well with the contrast between Ironside's physical limitations and the image he wishes to project. This character dichotomy would, in effect, set Ironside apart from procedurals of a similar vein.

However, as it stands now, Ironside is a perfectly acceptable entry into the genre, even if ultimately inessential.