HUMAN TARGET 1.3 – "Embassy Row"

WRITERS: Matthew Federman & Stephen Scaia
DIRECTOR: Steve Boyum
GUEST CAST: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Alex Fernandez, Tyler McClendon, Claire Smithies, Aleks Paunovic & Sean Maher

[SPOILERS] Three episodes in and Human Target's mostly delivering what you demand of an action-adventure series about a freelance security expert putting himself in the line of fire to protect clients. It's fun, it's fast, the stories are easy to grasp (yet feel more robust than anything on, say, Chuck), and the casting has been excellent so far. It's still not digging its hooks into me, but that's mainly down to the decision to drip-feed information about its regulars over time, so Chance (Mark Valley) is still something of a macho cipher...

In "Embassy Row", a "spyhunter" friend of Chance's called Danny (Tyler McClendon) is killed by an enemy Russian agent after a foot chase at night, but not before he calls his reporter brother Aaron (Sean Maher) and passes on vital information relating to a case he's been working. Aaron was unaware his brother was a secret government agent, and soon finds his own life in danger from Danny's foreign enemies.

Fortunately, Chance has been made aware of Danny's demise and agrees to help Aaron avenge his sibling's murder by assuming Danny's cover at a black-tie event being held at the Russian Embassy. He's even helped gain access by calling in a favour from the Secretary of Defence, no less, and once inside Chance intends to find and eliminate Danny's target and thwart Russian plans to sell a dangerous device during a secret, Bluetooth-enabled auction. Matters are complicated by the fact both Aaron and Chance have contracted a deadly airborne poison left at Danny's apartment, and Chance finds himself having to work alongside beautiful FBI Agent Emma Barnes (Emmanuelle Vaugier) who's undercover at the Embassy as a guest of Danny's.

Again, it's hard to fault Human Target in terms of telling a rollicking story in an mostly exciting way -- with fun stunts, good fights, and a smattering of ways to make Chance's mission anything but easy. Winston (Chi McBride) and Guerrero (Jackie Earle Haley) were again left to do the donkey work to aide Chance's mission, but it never feels like a wasted effort when the story switches over to them to give us ab break from the A-story.

Partnering Chance with feisty Barnes also proved to be a masterstroke; the pair made for an engaging duo with a prickly attitude towards each other, and both actors gave credible performances in the action stakes. The fact the episode ended with Barnes tracing Chance's identity[*] from a fingerprint he (intentionally) left on a handcuff, suggests that Barnes will be around for a little while longer. And that's a good sign, because I think Human Target needs more threads to stitch individual episodes together right now, not to mention a strong female involved in some way. Emmanuelle Vaugier has the smouldering good looks, but she also had good chemistry with Valley and looked competent handling the fight sequences.

Overall, "Embassy Row" was another very solid episode that took some espionage clichés (a function at a foreign Embassy, involving a sexy agent in a red dress, and a fight choreographed liked a Tango) and still managed to make it work. Sometimes clichés are fun and comforting, basically, but it helped that Human Target had some more original tricks up its sleeve (from the twist of the slow-acting poison, to an exciting motorcycle chase to American soil near the end.)

I think it's self-evident that Human Target has a strong foundation to build a show on already. I just hope it starts to explore the characters soon, before we start to grow a little tired of its simple formula. I love action and spycraft as much as the next guy, but I don't yet care about Chance or feel much trepidation when he's on a dangerous mission. If anything, the fraught relationship and banter between Winston and Guerrero is eclipsing any dynamic that's involved Chance, and that doesn't really need to be the case. Valley's not quite the hunky plank of wood his character's in danger of becoming.

26 JANUARY 2010: FOX, 9/8c

[*] Or, to be more precise, Chance's dizzying array of aliases she'll have to labouriously trace, at any rate. Let's hope she does it alphabetically, eh?