3 out of 5

Created by: Michael Seitzman

It’s “the information superhighway” or “the grid,” or several other variations on a theme to avoid saying that special forces everything-specialist Gabriel Vaughn – played by Josh Holloway with the same swagger and stern looks but more fighting proficiency than his ‘Lost’ Sawyer persona – that Vaughn essentially has the internet in his head, ’cause saying it like that sounds sort of dumb and exposes ‘Intelligence’ as the low-rent sci-fi it mostly is.  That is – science fiction premises as written by people who buy the new Mac product and read Wired and know what Ruby is but will move on to the next trend when being tech-savvy is no longer cool.  Vaughn has a genetic mutation that allows him to be the guinea pig for “Project Clockwork,” which gives him a microchip-in-brain that, as long as there’s network access, gives him the ability to flip through the online world’s wealth of information, as well as “cyber render”, a technique by which Gabe can step (in his head) into three dimensional recreations of scenes as pieced together by whatever data he’s collating.

Now I’m ragging on this – and it does deserve to be ragged on, because most TV cliches are committed on the show – but after some bumpy intro episodes where they get some cluttered plotlines out of the way, ‘Intelligence’ settles into an enjoyable badguy-of-the-week format, with a fun supporting cast and Marg Helgenberger giving a believably stern performance as the head of US Cyber Command, outshining Lili Taylor’s future police chief in ‘Almost Human’, which started around the same time.  (Though that show, overall, was superior to ‘Intelligence’, the parallels are apparent.)

‘Intelligence’ can’t ever quite make proper use of its technology (having Gabriel “see” information while people are looking it up on a computer never quite impresses) and the show sputters when trying to delve deeper into Gabriel’s psyche – pretty much stalling on the human/machine question forever – and when trying to kindle romance between two generic special ops agents (Holloway and his here’s-an-excuse-for-another-character Riley, played by Meghan Orly, assigned to ‘protect’ Vaughn)… but this is balanced by the semi-legit tech-talk from entertaining father/son scientist duo the Cassidys, a short-list of popular Wired-culture plot themes, and a nifty visual interface for Gabriel.  And admittedly, Gabe’s ability to dial into security plans and whatnot excises a lot of potential extra dialogue, allowing most eps to move along at a brisk pace.

The season did end on the same cluttered notes as its opening, generally the fate of a show with an uncertain future trying to leave things as resolved as possible, but it doesn’t detract from the overall experience (…since it never really exceeds average).  While perhaps not quite ‘intelligent’ itself, ‘Intelligence’ is generally aware of its limitations and plays its all-are-welcome sci-fi card with enough charm to keep it a pretty level, carefree view.