Skip to main content
Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
More On:
Dylan McDermott
-
Where Was ‘Anyone But You’ Filmed? Discover the Australian Filming Locations for Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney’s Rom-Com
-
Drew Barrymore Sobs Over Surprise Reunion With ‘Bad Girls’ Co-Star Dermot Mulroney On ‘The Drew Barrymore Show’: “You Were So Good To Me”
-
Tom Hollander Admits He’s Often Mistaken For Tom Holland: “I’m Introduced To Somebody’s Very, Very Excited, Then Confused, Then Disappointed Children”
-
Dylan McDermott and Dermot Mulroney Can’t Get Their Own Names Right on the SAG-AFTRA Picket Line
Like we said when FBI: Most Wanted debuted four years ago, it’s pretty much the Platonic ideal of a CBS procedural. It’s mostly about the case of the week, with a lot of chases and shooting, with an occasional dip into the lives of the law enforcement officers solving the cases. The only difference between now and the first season is that Dylan McDermott’s Remy Scott is leading the team (replacing Julian McMahon in 2022), and McDermott’s presence on a show always makes it more interesting. Entering Season 5, we see McDermott’s character, Remy Scott, in a contemplative mood.
FBI: MOST WANTED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A woman is drinking a beer at a bar while looking at her phone, and a man playing pool tells his friend that he’s going to buy her a drink.
The Gist: The woman rejects the slimy guy’s advances, then runs outside to meet someone when she gets a text. She gives the guy an envelope and he gives her a sack full of money. But the slimy guy runs out after the woman, interrupts the transaction, pulls out a knife, and gets two shots to his chest for his trouble.
In the meantime, Remy Scott (Dylan McDermott), Supervisory Special Agent of the FBI Fugitive Task Force, is in a therapy session. He tells the therapist, Dr. Fairweather (Samantha Smith), that he’s been trying to stay in touch with his nephew Corey (J.D. Martin), but after the documentary about Corey’s father’s innocence came out, the nephew Remy never knew he had has been ghosting him.
He gets the call about the shooting because the woman, who has gone missing, works for NASA. He goes to the team’s base location just in time to see Special Agent Nina Chase (Shantel VanSanten) arrive on her first day on the team. She’s a familiar face who has worked with the team before, but she has cut her family leave short for the opportunity to join the Fugitive Task Force.
As the team — Scott, Chase, Ray Cannon (Edwin Hodge), Sheryll Barnes (Roxy Sternberg) and Hana Gibson (Keisha Castle-Hughes) — investigate, it becomes clear that the guy who was shot was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the woman was involved in a lot more than just a robbery gone bad. In fact, their investigation leads the team to an anti-government insurrectionist named Noah Capole (Michael Laurence), who has put together an elaborate plan to disrupt satellites under federal control.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? FBI: Most Wanted is a spinoff of Dick Wolf’s FBI. There is also a third show in the franchise, FBI: International. CBS airs all three on Tuesday nights.
Our Take: Here’s why we love Dylan McDermott on any show he is on: he loves chewing scenery, spewing manly lines in his low, growling voice. Sure, he can be subtle when he needs to be. But it seems like he’s in his element when he gets to bark his lines out like he’s a dog when the UPS guy shows up. He’s great as Remy because he can have those subtle moments, like when he confronts Corey at the end of the episode and tells his dismissive nephew that he’s not going anywhere, but he can spend most of each episode grunting lines like, “This guy’s dead meat.”
The addition of VanSanten as Nina, who was a recurring character on the FBI mothership, gives Remy someone to bounce off of. She challenges him right away on the circumstances over which her predecessor, Kristin Gaines (Alexa Davalos), left the team. But Nina is also there to be one of the more daring members of the team, as we saw when she got behind the wheel to chase a van after a shooting happened. It’s a good addition and helps shake the formula up.
Speaking of that formula: When did the show get away from chasing after people on the Most Wanted list? Do they just get cases because they’re a mobile unit and can deploy quickly? The circumstances under which they got this case were a stretch to say the least, and the entire case was a convoluted mess that seemed designed to generate a high body count and little else. At this point, that may just be what FBI: Most Wanted is about, and that’s probably just fine for the people who watch the show every week.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Remy tentatively hugs Corey then leaves his apartment.
Sleeper Star: Like we explained above, VanSaten is a good addition to the cast as Nina. Shows like this need new blood every so often, and given that Nina is a familiar face to FBI fans, her entry into Most Wanted should be seamless.
Most Pilot-y Line: “This guy’s dead meat” is as lunkheaded as this show gets. But, boy, does McDermott deliver that line with gusto.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re not huge fans of the cases on FBI: Most Wanted, but we’ll watch Dylan McDermott do his Dylan McDermott thing in pretty much any setting.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
