‘The Recruit’ (Season 1) Review: An Underwhelming Spy Thriller
Fresh out of the success of Netflix’s four subsequent teen rom-com movies, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Noah Centineo returns to star in a tv series for the streaming giant, and this time it is a spy thriller. The Recruit follows a newbie lawyer who works in the agency. He tries to figure out the ethics, and strategies of the mission and stay alive at the same time. Centineo has the charm to make this role work but as the story progresses, the plot becomes increasingly exhausting to catch up with the running gags. The Recruit begins as a fun, spy thriller that follows Centineo’s character on one mishap after another, but it is clear that the show needs more drama and a cohesive narrative structure to make it engaging.
The Recruit begins with Owen Hendricks (Centineo) on a snowy field mission, which suddenly goes wrong. It cuts to his early days in the agency as CIA’s General Counsel division before going abroad to complete missions. Owen lacks training in the field and asks his coworkers, Agent Violet (Aarti Mann) and Agent Lester (Colton Dunn) for help but they are determined to see him fail. He’s also eager to impress his boss, Walter Nyland (Vondie Curtis-Hall). Owen is given the task of reading through piles of unread mail to check if there are any dangerous threats that could harm the agency. When he finds a letter written by a Russian woman in an American prison threatening to leak intel that could potentially damage the reputation of the agency, Owen is asked to report it to Nyland. To his surprise, he gets thrown into the field without any help from his coworkers. Everywhere he turns, there are hostile people trying to hurt or kill him. The only person who is willing to help him is the prisoner, Max Meladze (Laura Haddock), who sees him as an asset and she blackmails him to release her from prison. Despite his lack of CIA lingo and training, Owen is smart enough to catch on to her threats, and an alliance is formed between them.
For an eight-hour-long series full of satire, dry humour, and failed mission after another, The Recruit is pretty forgettable. None of the characters is interesting enough and the twists lack any narrative impact. When the first episode begins with Owen on the snowy field, the audience is left to wonder, who is this person? Everything between the first to the last episode, everything feels like a filler. The threats, which at the beginning felt dangerous and were used as an attempt to escalate the situation, slowly get less threatening as the story progresses forward. Owen continues to make bad choices and expects the people around him to get him out of it but the only person who is willing to help him is Max.
As a character, Owen isn’t nearly as intriguing enough, and this goes for the rest of the characters. He’s like a fish out of water — completely new to all of the codes, lingo, procedures, acronyms and rules of the agency. His clumsiness and lack of training are meant to be funny — a running gag that just never seems to end. Owen constantly repeats the line, “I’m not a spy. I’m a lawyer” every chance he gets. It becomes exhausting to watch Owen work through mission after mission, failing to complete any of it. This is the entirety of his arc. As a viewer, how much longer is this continuous failure meant to last? Does the character start to learn the ways of the agency through his missions? What is really at stake for Owen and the agency? These are the kinds of questions that linger through someone’s mind while watching Owen prance around from one country to another. How many more is the audience going to watch this noob get attacked, chased, and almost get killed in this eight-hour-long lacklustre spy thriller?
This reckless behaviour continues throughout the series. Even though he’s a smart negotiator, he’s really bad at his job. The only reason he survives the dangerous missions is because of Max’s guidance, otherwise, he wouldn’t make it out alive. This trope of allowing characters, such as Owen to continuously make mistakes and bend the rules to get things done is an attempt to make the character funny and it is seriously overdone to the point of exhaustion. Owen is not the kind of central character that has an arc that leaps forward. The purpose of a character's journey is to watch them make mistakes and learn and grow from them. But Owen never seems to follow through, and the only reason he even stays alive after jet-setting the entire globe is because of Max and the other women around him.
Regardless, The Recruit shows how mentally and physically challenging a job at the agency can be for characters like Owen. The audience is able to understand the agency protocols in real time. It’s a fast-paced show with action, drama, and some comedy bits that just don’t hit the mark. The project is just another filler on Netflix that should’ve stayed in the archives instead of subjecting the audience to a messy narrative and unlikeable characters, even though the season ends with a worthy cliffhanger. The show began with a lot of potential but there wasn’t a lot that this spy thriller could offer to audiences.
The Recruit is currently streaming on Netflix.
