Scaring the Suburbs

By James Poniewozik

From TV news producers to politicians to home-security companies, few people have ever gone broke overestimating the fears of extremely unthreatened Americans. And producer Jerry Bruckheimer is not a man who is fond of going broke. He nearly singlehandedly made CBS No. 1 with his CSI franchise and its crime-story satellites. His track record in other genres is spotty--this season, the middling WB buddy-lawyer show Just Legal and NBC's Pentagon snooze E-Ring--but in cop procedurals, he has gone five for five. That tingle in your chest when you see Anthony LaPaglia race to find a missing child on Without a Trace? That's Bruckheimer pushing your buttons.

This season Bruckheimer tries to go six for six, with an almost frighteningly astute twist on his procedural formula. In Close to Home (Tuesdays, 10 p.m. E.T.), Annabeth Chase (Jennifer Finnigan) is a prosecutor and new mom who works on horrible cases in a leafy suburb. She has just returned from maternity leave--we first see her being awakened by her crying baby--but gets little support from her career-focused co-workers. "You have got to stop making decisions with your hormones," her (female) boss warns her. But her mom status is also an asset to her department, giving her moral authority with juries to argue cases involving women and children. It also provides her intuition; when she visits the home of a family where the husband is actually imprisoning his wife and kids, she's the only one of her colleagues to notice a vital clue--that the kids have no toys.

I would like to say we have passed the saturation point on procedurals. But I wouldn't bet my pocket change on it. America is addicted to Amber Alerts and Laci Peterson--type cases, and every cable marathon of lost-child and missing-white-woman coverage is free advertising for Close to Home. This TV season has been notable for ever more gruesome cop shows (Wanted, Killer Instinct) with sensationalistic stories about brutalized women and children. Close to Home, whose early episodes involve a kidnapped young woman and doe-eyed kids on the witness stand, is a softer, more accessible--if emotionally manipulative--version of the same.

The show had a decent premiere, in a tough slot against Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, an urban take on the innocents-in-jeopardy theme. Bruckheimer's suburban counterprogramming is risky but makes sense. It may be unfair to stereotype the burbs as a refuge for people fleeing life, but one reason people move there is security. Close to Home is not ashamed to milk those anxieties, right down to its title: the danger, it says, is not just in the big cities. It's right here, close to your cozy little cul-de-sac and your good public schools. Or as a CBS ad put it: "Sometimes crime comes as close as your neighbor's house." (An early version of the pilot was titled American Crime. Apparently, that was too subtle.)

Close to Home has all the high-quality production hallmarks of the Bruckheimer empire, although it's thankfully less flashy than the CGI-heavy, color-coded CSIs. And Finnigan, who was adorable in NBC's otherwise forgettable sitcom Committed, is the Security Mom of prime-time sleuths, exuding both warmth and steely backbone--a crusader for justice with a fridgeful of breast milk at the office. Chase gets more and faster backstory than most of the CSI copbots, even if it's pretty ham-handed: near the end of the pilot, she strokes her sleeping baby's head and coos, "I'll keep you safe." Parents fear for their kids' security and fear not having the time to raise them properly. Chase represents, and overcomes, both fears. If Hillary Clinton wants to be President, she should TiVo this along with Commander in Chief.

Storywise, Close to Home is unimpressive; the pilot's abusive dad is such a sneering, obvious bad guy that your dog could have put him away for 20 years. And the show suffers from a common failing of crime dramas about lawyers: it needs Chase not just to prosecute crimes--boring!--but also to solve them. I suspect that the show will go into ever less plausible contortions to take her out of the courtroom and into crime scenes. But it may be that viewers will not care. It's a big, spooky country, and Bruckheimer knows far better than I how many people out there are ready to put the kids to bed; flip on the baby monitor, motion-sensitive lights and alarm system; and settle down in front of the widescreen for a nice, safe scare.