Crossword Puzzles: Not Just for Old Ladies

Will Travers begins his day as usual, heading to work as an analyst at a national think tank. He cracks codes, sees connections where others don’t and digs through a mess of information in order to unravel conspiracies around the world. But today, he stumbles randomly upon a connection that sets events into motion that even he won’t be able to comprehend.

A message is set within various crossword puzzles across a number of newspapers. Will’s mentor doesn’t seem to think much is going on with his discovery, and so it might have ended there. But with the death of a colleague, Will can’t ignore that something bigger may be at play. Perhaps something that so big it involves a clandestine influence, controlling even our own government.

Rubicon is a show far different than most any series that has been aired to date, with an audience to be found in a specific and clever niche. It is a rare breed of television, not often witnessed since the days of Hitchcock. It’s The X-Files without the sci-fi or supernatural. It’s All the President’s Men minus the journalism. It is conspiracy presented on a stage that feels very real and genuine. To borrow from the series’ own catchphrase, “not every conspiracy is a theory.”

James Badge Dale plays Will Travers. Coming off of the recent HBO miniseries The Pacific as Leckie, one of the series’ more enjoyable characters, Dale enters his role in Rubicon well. With a bit of a scarred past, Travers is a man deeply engulfed in his work. Highly intelligent, it is not difficult to see why he is so good at his job analyzing current events.

AMC aired Rubicon‘s pilot in June after the season three finale of Breaking Bad. In addition to that, they have been pushing an online preview as well. A similar marketing effort was made with Fox’s Glee last year—a move that proved to create a sensational buzz for months leading up to its series first season. However, Rubicon may not garner the mass appeal that a show steeped in pop culture such as Glee has.

AMC is certainly pushing forward with its own brand of programming that strays from the typical television format. With an arsenal of cinematic shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad and now Rubicon, it is almost as if the network is more apt to compete against pay channel powerhouses such as HBO or Showtime instead of the mere cable channels included with basic programming packages.

Rubicon is clever and intelligent. At times one forgets they are watching an episode instead of a feature film. It will certainly pique your curiosity and have you dying to know what lies around the next corner, what it all means, and who is behind it all.