For the uninitiated 

Lincoln Rhyme is NYC’s Sherlock Holmes, and he’s on the hunt for the only serial killer to give him a real challenge – the Bone Collector, more from Summer 2018 Reading Recommendations 

Now that you’re all caught up 

I can still recall learning from Jeffery Deaver himself at a Meet-the-Writer event here in Denver that NBC had purchased rights to the book of the same title and were working on a series.  I was initially excited at the prospect of the show.  I enjoyed the movie with its A-list cast, but the show did not live up to what I had hoped for. Between a cast whose chemistry came across as slightly better than mediocre, the changes made to more central characters’ families and backgrounds, the way the main antagonist is portrayed, the origin of Rhyme’s condition as a c4 quadriplegic, the desperate attempt to keep the audience braced for a second season, all coupled with an unfortunate lack of celebrating science earns the show a non-plussed score. Let’s start by exploring that lack of scientific enthusiasm in the show. 

Most of the science of the show itself rests on computer-generated eye-candy (CGI), which was done  well to be fair to the show.  However, they never get into the nitty-gritty forensic work. One of my chief qualms about the show is that lack of attention to the grit of forensic science.  In every Rhyme novel Deaver pays spectacular attention to some of the more crucial devices you’d find in an advanced forensic expert’s lab. One of the more common tools being a gas chromatograph coupled with a mass spectrometer.  Both devices can work separately, but yield some fascinating results when put together in terms of figuring out the constituent parts of the myriad of mysterious substances forensic techs find at crime scenes. There was one scene in the show where Amelia gets trapped in a utility closet, a strangely stocked utility containing a bomb set to take out any intruders.  Rhyme has to walk her through how to put the chemistry (aluminum and rust) together for creating a super-thermite device to escape the detonation, but knowing the science in that solution was correct made me beam. 

Speaking of chemistry, let’s agree that if the cast doesn’t have a good onscreen chemistry it won’t matter how good or bad the writing is the show just won’t work.  I can only imagine that’s what must’ve happened here.  Replacing Denzel who played the titular character in the move is Russell Hornsby (Fences, After The Sunset). Then there’s his protégé/sidekick-to-be, Amelia Sachs, who was played by Angelina in the movie while played by Arielle Kebbel (John Tucker Must Die, The Uninvited) in the show.  One of the show’s few saving graces, and a small one at that, was that they kept her name as Sachs instead of changing to Donaghy like they did in the movie.  Rhyme’s former partner prior to having to retire from active duty is Detective Michael (Lon in the book, Paulie in the movie) Sellito played by the uber-versatile Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos, Lucifer).  What I learned watching that role was no matter how good the actor in the role is if the writing is lacking there’s rarely anything that the actor can do without risk being let go from the show.  Replacing Lincoln’s aide Thom Reston from the book is Claire played by Roslyn Ruff (Salt, The Help); I find it interesting that in both on-screen interpretations Rhyme’s aide changes from a white man to a black woman – Queen Latifah (Taxi, Bringing Down the House) had the honor in the movie. Finally, what was quite possibly the most fascinating change-up as characters go was the way Rhyme’s senior forensic technician, Mel Cooper in the books, is broken up into two characters in the show: a techie, Felix, played by Tate Ellington (Remember Me, The Endless) with considerable engineering prowess; and Kate, played by Brooke Lyons (The Affair, 2 Broke Girls), is more the actual forensic technician. She’s the one who’s hunched over the microscope or running the cool devices discussed earlier. I don’t know whether it’s the writing or the actors, but the chemistry feels forced and the dialogue somewhere between awkward and unnatural. This brings us to my next point about the differences from the three versions of The Bone Collector, which would be the characters’ backgrounds. 

Another redeeming point of the series was Rhyme’s aide having issues of her own (agoraphobia) that she efforts to treat through the job, but while I find the change in the aide a cool idea I was more bemused with the changes made to Rhyme’s romantic itinerary and personal investments; in the books he was previously married, but he let his commitment to his job get in the way and the two never talk.  In the show he remains in close contact with her, but because they had a child together despite never getting married.  Personally, I’m all for the not getting married part, but that’s another story.  He’s also a father in the show and I couldn’t help but get the sense that the whole giving Rhyme offspring was done purely for sake of providing the writer’s additional leverage opportunities against Rhyme without attacking him directly. 

More hang-ups beyond the changes made to Rhyme were those made to Amelia’s background and family.  In the books her father was a beat cop who passed away some time beforehand and instilled in Amelia her love for muscle cars and munitions; while she consistently carries a standard-issue Glock 9mm for work Amelia’s always driving around in some kind of sweet muscle car, and, in some manner, battling either the arthritis her father gave her or subconsciously punishing herself for some reason by means of digging at her own finger cuticles or “worrying” a wound in her scalp in a similar fashion.  However, none of that comes through in the show.  Instead, mom and dad both killed in a diner and she gets stuck bring up her kid-sister by herself because the thug who killed her parents ran out of rounds just as he figured on having to kill Amelia.  To me, that all wreaked of shabby writing. 

That brings us to the bad guy himself played by Brian O’Byrne (Million Dollar Baby, The International).  Throughout the show he is portrayed as the biggest passive-aggressive cry-baby ever.  Again, I can’t easily tell whether it’s a case of poor acting or shabby writing and directing.  His relationship to Rhyme is also starkly different in the book, he’s Rhyme’s heart specialist whereas in the show he was one of Rhyme’s former classmates in a forensics class they took togethr.  Unfortunately, I found this bad guy something worse than predictable, in a word: lame. I mentioned earlier how one of the potential few plusses to the show was the way they ended the season to make room for another season, but this ending made very little sense over-all.  In the season’s final showdown Rhyme has his opponent Peter Taylor poisoned and thus believed dead… that is until Rhyme receives a pretty weird phone call in the last couple minutes suggesting Peter Taylor wasn’t the actual Bone Collector.  Huh?!? 

In conclusion this was one of those shows I had naturally high hopes for up front; however, being that I am no stranger to weathering a tough first season I look forward to what suspenseful twists await in the second season – hopefully even one or a couple episodes written by the original author himself. Now that’d be worth watching even as a stand-alone episode!  Unfortunately, this first season didn’t give me that “wow, I didn’t see that coming” sensation in an intellectually honest way.