‘Quantico’ Review: Sexy FBI Rookies and Terrorism
Quantico is a twisty new adventure drama about new FBI agent Alexandra “Alex” Parrish, played by Priyanka Chopra. The premiere on ABC Sunday night begins with Alex waking up in the rubble of an exploded Grand Central Station in Manhattan — a terrorist’s bomb has destroyed it. The show then flashes back to her first days of FBI training in Quantico, Virginia.
Quantico has a lot of media buzz for its star (she’s a former Miss World and a big Bollywood star in her native India) and for the show’s revved-up pace. Created by Joshua Safran, the pilot looks as though Safran had a lot of notes from ABC executives to make this show as much like a Shonda Rhimes hour as possible.
Related: Should You Watch ‘Quantico’ Now, Later, or Never?
Thus, like Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder, Quantico is front-loaded with a lot of disparate, attractive young people running around eyeing each other hungrily, on the make and hiding secrets, all of this set to cranked-up-volume songs that sound like variations on Maroon 5 tunes. The agents are super-smart, and super-horny. The show’s token pretty blonde (UnReal’s Shelby Wyatt) ogles a ripped guy in a bath towel and moans, “I hate that I can’t stop looking”; the show’s token gay guy (The Mindy Project’s Simon Asher) leers in response, “I don’t.”
Watch the first 8 minutes of the Quantico series premiere right here:
The flashbacks that dominate the pilot introduce us to the stars — the guy in the bath towel, for example, is played by Believe’s Jake McLaughlin, whose Ryan had sex with Alex within minutes of meeting her on their way to Quantico. This is a show in which the characters’ libidos are as important as their investigative skills.
Quantico is slick enough, and well-enough cast, to probably keep a good-sized audience watching, although its success probably depends on whether its new-show lead-in, the soap opera Blood & Oil, and time-period competition like Showtime’s The Affair, help or hinder. By the end of Quantico’s first hour, your expectations of what kind of hero Alex is going to be have been completely flip-flopped at least twice. Again, like a Shonda Rhimes show, there’s a secret only the main character knows the answer to, and we in the audience are supposed to be so instantly invested in discovering that answer, we’ll tune in every week.
Quantico premieres Sunday, Sept. 27 at 10 p.m. on ABC.
