I’m watching The Equalizer pilot so you don’t have to
(a liveblarg one-shot. I’ve had some drinks, so buckle up, here we go. spoilers ahoy.)
So, I remember liking the original version of this show as a kid. It was basically, “What if aro/ace James Bond retired, moved to the US, and started taking cases from regular folks on a sliding scale?” The “mysterious, wise-cracking ass-kicker helps out the victim of the week” genre was *very* popular at the time, but this guy was different because he didn’t hit on the people he was helping. Or at least that’s how I remember it.
Queen Latifa is going to play the badass who helps the downtrodden in this remake. In theory, I’m on board with that because I’m a sucker for mystery/action hybrids, especially when the “good guys” are not cops. But this is CBS, and I am not exactly confident in their willingness to handle storylines about the various ways in which the system fails people who aren’t rich/white enough.
First things first: “Aunt Vi” (Lorraine Toussaint) should absolutely be Latifa’s wife, not the generic platonic relative who lives in her unreasonably gigantic, gorgeous house. sigh, CBS gotta CBS? Our hero’s also got a generically sassy-yet-bland teenage daughter and a so-far-offscreen ex-husband (because she’s STRAIGHT. super-duper-hetero. just sayin. in case you were wondering. #cbs) who’s about to get remarried. blah blah.
Latifa just quit her international ass-kicking CIA job because she’s disillusioned (her family thinks she worked for a “charity” that flew her all over the world? uh-huh). Mr. Big from Sex in the City is apparently her ex-CIA friend/handler who still has tons of connections, but she’s not interested in joining Big’s private security firm, even though the money is apparently great, because she cares about people. How does her family think she afforded that house on a non-profit salary? Maybe Aunt Vi is loaded? Or maybe the ex-husband is/was? (#future plot point)
Our case of the day is a girl who works at a diner and gets high-tech framed for a murder in the alley. There’s two NYPD detectives -- one seems sympathetic, his partner less so. Is she in cahooties w/ the bad guys? LETS FIND OUT (edit to follow up: no. in fact, she’s so unimportant that she’s not even in the imdb credits, despite having a speaking role??)
OOH, Latifa (whose name is Robin McSomething) has ex-CIA friends! A petite sniper who runs a bar in midtown while hustling douchey wall street types at darts and a hipster hacker played by Adam Goldberg. I guess we’ll let the “you know the hacker is awesome because he’s got a 10-foot-wide monitor in his basement nerd-lair” thing go?
the whole “she’s gotta balance family bullshit with saving a random innocent person!” concept isn’t exactly new ground, but I am on board with the person doing the brilliant deducing and unrealistic action-hero stuff being a middle-aged black woman who isn’t skinny. I’m inclined to check out next week’s episode.
fyi, there’s a quick but surprisingly pull-no-punches waterboarding scene, and more of a bodycount than I might have expected (but negligible blood).