TV Review: BOSS: Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Boss Season 1 Episode 1 Pilot. Gus Van Sant‘s Boss: season 1, episode 1: Pilot started the new Starz TV series off as strongly as AMC’s Breaking Bad. Mayor Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer) is given the most terrible news a smart and accomplished individual can get, and for that matter, anyone could get. What does someone of Mayor Kane’s character do? He goes right back to work as if nothing has happened.

Mayor Kane’s breakdown in the car ride to his speech date is much like Diane Lane‘s on the train in Unfaithful after she has had her first affair and is torn between what she experienced and its repercussions for her marriage. Mayor Kane has worked hard to get where he is and now his primary tool, his mind, will be taken from him. His sees who he is destroyed, he sees his future, his dependence on others (others depend on him. The reversal is not favorable to him), his legacy wiped out. All that he sees people remembering about him is what he will become, not who he was.

Kelsey Grammer’s second best scene in the pilot episode of Boss is when his construction plan goes up in smoke and he lets Alderman Lalo Mata (Ricardo Gutiérrez) know just how he feels about that and his employee going on the news before discussing the situation with anyone. The result of this confrontation, on a golf course, and later at a gala, was completely over the top in my opinion. Why maim a person for life so horribly when other more creative measures could be taken that would heal in time?

Kitty O’Neill (Kathleen Robertson) is the consummate executive assistant that is as intelligent as she is discrete, possessing the ability to rattle off detailed statistics and the low morals to have sex with a married up and comer (Jeff Hephner) in a stairwell (a well shot scene, hot but not gratuitous), all while never faltering in her position’s obligations.

I am looking forward to seeing why Meredith Kane (Connie Nielsen) and Emma Kane (Hannah Ware) are both estranged from Mayor Kane. The bad stories on those two situations will be interesting.

Starz has a good show on its hand with some of the complexity of AMC’s Rubicon, great acting, tasteful sexual situations, and gore: in short, something for everyone. The viewer also gets to see Kelsey Grammer like they have not before: totally aggressive, a political machine that intimates with his power and persuades.