Watching “Backstrom” is like eating leftover popcorn: it is digestible but highly unrewarding. With the scathing critic reviews and my own disappointment, I feel confident in saying that, much like the stale popcorn, “Backstrom” will be thrown out after its first season and the television realm will be better off for it.
Let me preface the rest of this review by saying that I’m not going to waste any time entertaining mercy towards “Backstrom.” I do understand that many new series initially have a rough start; a show’s evolution from pilot to something more substantial and lasting is often difficult.
However, in this case, the show’s bumpy beginning is synonymous with the quality of the show itself. With that out of the way, let us take a look at some of the most unsavory elements of the show.
Rainn Wilson plays the title character Everett Backstrom, a Portland detective and an unpleasant character to say the least. Backstrom is an unreserved misanthrope. He is racist, misogynistic, a drunk, an unhealthy eater with a fondness for stogies and is — conveniently enough — good at solving cases.
It is his means of deduction and off-book, even downright illegal methods of obtaining information that make him a tolerable and necessary asset to his department. However, to the viewer, Backstrom’s insights into the case at hand are often unnecessary simply because each whodunit is so formulaic and predictable that further explanation is rarely needed.
Another downfall of the show is that, despite each episode’s laughable premise, “Backstrom,” which is marketed as a police-procedural comedy, is anything but funny. Occasionally the writing does succeed at wit, but most of the character dialogue, especially detective Backstrom’s, is as lewd and abrasive as the scrawling on a bathroom stall wall.
It is for these reasons that I feel pity for lead Rainn Wilson. I know him to be capable of dynamic character range and of making even his most unusual characters likable. However, I’m sure it is difficult to shape a diamond when all you are given is a pair of dull scissors. Perhaps if the show played off of its extremes instead of taking itself so seriously, the many faults would actually have worked in its favor.
Instead, what we have is a show that doesn’t know whether it should play the role of dark comedy or police drama. Combine this identity crisis with a protagonist who is incredibly loathing of himself and others, and we are left with little more than an exercise in trying to identify the series’ redeemable and likable aspects. The biggest mystery that “Backstrom” has yet to solve is to answer how the show was green- lit in the first place.
