All in all, I was disappointed by Sleeper Cell. I was hoping that it would live up to the standards of HBO’s original series, like The Sopranos, Deadwood, and my particular favorite, The Wire. But IMHO, it missed the mark by a wide margin.
One of the great things about The Wire is its realism: the good guys and the bad guys both have a few sharp, dedicated people on their side, as well as a larger number of clock watchers, losers, and idiots. The competent ones try to push the others in the right direction, but as often as not, stupidity, politics, and bad luck keeps them from succeeding. I don’t know about your life, but this is how the real world seems to work most of the time. There was a little of that in * Sleeper Cell*, but not enough.
The show had some good points, chief of which was that it portrayed Islam in a nuanced and realistic way. Darwyn and others were shown as serious, devout, and sympathetic Muslims who are good Americans but have to put up with bad Muslims and people who believe that all Muslims are terrorists.
But the show’s biggest problem, IMHO, was that the producers were trying to make Darwyn too likeable. In doing so, they had him do LOTS of things that no real undercover agent would ever do. Like the following:
[ul][li]Have a girl friend. Especially one who happens to be a friend of one of your fellow terrorists. Rule Number One for UCs has to be: No picking up babes just as you start a new operation (unless she’s a target). It’s just idiotic. It was so stupid that I predicted earlier in this thread that she must be a UC herself. That would have been an interesting twist, especially if it wasn’t clear which side she was working. Sadly, Sleeper Cell wasn’t that subtle. Gayle served merely as an ordinary romantic foil to show Darwyn’s warm and fuzzy side, and to implausibly be put in danger (with her kid) at the big climax. (BTW, good call in post # 18, AuntiePam!)[/li][li]Constantly question and challenge the boss bad guy. Terrorist organizations aren’t democracies. In the first few episodes, when Darwyn should have been following orders without question to establish his credibility, he was constantly asking Farik what he was doing, suggesting other plans, and generally being a pain in the neck. Dumb.[/li][li]Constantly do good-guy things that could blow your cover or jeopardize the mission. Saving the child prostitutes; trying to get the Gitmo guy out, etc.[/li][li] At the very end, when he and Christian are about play their parts in the Big Bang, he could have just taken his gun, and as Christian walked off, shot him in the back. But nooooo! He tries to arrest him, engages in a fist fight that he easily could have lost, and ultimately kills him with that neck twist move. (Can you really kill someone that way? I have my doubts.) He’s just as dead at the end, but he tried not to kill him. Yeah, right! [/ul]And there were lots more examples. [/li]
The point is that an undercover agent has to be just like all the other bad guys. Outwardly he’s not going to seem like a warm-hearted, sensitve guy, he’s going to behave like a terrorist. But the producers apparently were afraid that if they portrayed him that way, we wouldn’t care about him. Or we wouldn’t be sure that he really was a good guy unless he tried to right every wrong he saw along the way. It struck me as unrealistic.
Okay, IANAUFA (undercover FBI agent), but in addition to all the spy movies we’ve all seen, I have done a fair bit of reading about how spies and other undercover operatives actually work in real life. And Sleeper Cell was just full of incredibly bad tradecraft on both sides.
[ul][li] As I mentioned previously, the cell frequently met and discussed their plans in public places. Why would they take that risk?[/li][li] Darwyn’s control used a 24-hour porn shop as a meeting place. Isn’t that a strange place for a supposedly devout Musilm to be seen? [/li][li] In the final episode, the bad guys following the tanker truck just pull into the motel behind him. Okay, they may not be worried about him noticing that two vehicles were following him (although they should have been), but then the big black FBI van pulls up just outside the fence to keep an eye on them. D’oh![/ul]And there were lots more examples. [/li]
Another thing: the FBI was unfailingly, amazingly competent.
[ul][li]They set up a big road block, complete with Hazmat gear and SWAT teams, to stop the tanker truck, then instantly pull it completely out of sight when they conveniently find out on two minutes’ notice that the truck’s wired. [/li][li]They get Farik’s satphone, take it to their magical electronics van, and within seconds have found the coordinates for the other cells, zipped them off to NSA so the (unprepared) teams in DC and NY can intercept those cells with no casualties whatsoever. [/ul]And there were lots more examples. [/li]
The whole series would have gained a lot in my eyes if they hadn’t arranged such a completely unlikely, totally casualty-free ending. More implausibility: at the very end, outside a huge stadium that 50,000 people were leaving, Darwyn just happens to find poor little Marcus, and carries him about twenty feet straight to Gayle, who hadn’t found him in half an hour of frantic searching. How sweet.
In short, Sleeper Cell was just an ordinary action film/cop show in miniseries form, with almost none of the subtlety or realism that has made HBO’s series so great. Too bad; it had some potential. I was hoping for more.
(Sorry to go on so long.)
