Hacker Sitcom Breaking In Taps Espionage-Lite Trend
In Breaking In, Odette Annable, right, leads Contra Security colleagues on a mission.
Images courtesy CBS
The hackers in new comedy Breaking In look as though they spend more time at the gym than they do hunched over a computer. Hollywood-handsome, these sitcom tech wizards may not walk the awkward nerd walk, but they do get to work in an office anchored by Captain Kirk’s Star Trek chair.
Debuting Wednesday, Breaking In centers on geeky high-tech consultants hired by clients to detect breaches in their security systems. In an era rife with institutional larceny, leaky intelligence and high-level buffoonery, it’s one of several TV shows that are in no mood to present espionage in an entirely serious light.
NBC’s Chuck, for example, casts an everyday schlub as a key player in intelligence operations. CBS’ new dramedy Chaos, titled in homage to Maxwell Smart’s nemeses at KAOS, offers up operatives practiced in the craft of cynical asides. FX Network’s animated Archer showcases doofus spies, while USA Network’s Burn Notice equips its former CIA agents with expertise in pyrotechnics, surveillance and wisecracks.
They all operate in the somber shadow of 24’s relentless antiterrorist Jack Bauer, the grim character whose exploits defined for nearly a decade the deadly earnest anxieties faced by Americans in the early post-9/11 years. But the strain of eternal vigilance took its toll by the time Fox’s action series ended its run last May. Now espionage programs lean on goofy, Get Smart-style attitude more than earnest patriotism.
It’s no wonder that prime time wants to look at the lighter side of spycraft: The real thing is too damn depressing. Last year, AMC’s Rubicon offered a deeply researched portrait of analysts at a secret think tank trying to decipher the daily deluge of “chatter” and satellite surveillance in order to pre-empt terrorist acts. Before the show got cancelled after a single season, the characters succumbed to alcoholic relapses, medication, suicide and vacant-eyed despair.
For audiences mired in a scam-fueled economy manipulated by con artists operating at the highest corporate levels — see Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job — a little levity goes a long way. Hence, the popularity of revenge fantasy Leverage: The TNT series keeps it light for each week’s mission conducted by witty rogues who turn the tables on big-money fraudsters.
In the case of Breaking In, the skullduggery is contracted out to the very private Contra Security, run by the mysterious Oz (played by Christian Slater). Oz recruits 27-year-old perpetual college student Cameron (Bret Harrison), who hacked his way into an extra-large dorm room by registering as twins. Blackmailed into working for Contra, Cameron rips off a car dealer as his first assignment.
Breaking In downplays the heists and skips over the “how’d they do that?” trickery. Instead, most of the show’s intermittently funny shtick draws on Cameron’s wobbly rapport with sexy safecracker Melanie, portrayed by Odette Annable (The Unborn) and sci-fi/fantasy freak Cash (Alphonso McAuley), a Dragon-Con devotee who believes his friends are “speaking Hobbit.”
Breaking In shares its Comic-Con worldview, and its three-dudes-and-a-babe casting template, with The Big Bang Theory. But the CBS geek-com starring Emmy-nominated Jim Parsons presents a more convincing group portrait of brainy misfits, as does BBC America’s The IT Crowd.
“Breaking In is actually a mouthpiece for my geeky agenda,” the show’s co-creator Adam F. Goldberg (one of the writers of Fanboys) said in a statement. “Stuff my wife won’t let me talk about outside the house: Star Wars, Goonies, Tron, Lord of the Rings.”
Still, geek cred is beside the point for Breaking In and its frothy ilk. Cybercrime is no laughing matter — just ask the nearly 2 million people who this week learned their private records were compromised by hackers who hit Epsilon Data Management. Rather than stinging viewers with grim, headline-sourced procedurals, the espionage lite genre suits these data-addled times with its laugh-to-keep-from-crying sensibility.
Breaking In debuts Wednesday at 9:30 p.m./8:30 p.m. Central on Fox.