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2 April 28 - May 4, 2019 El Dorado News-Times cover story
Navigating a thorny issue
CBS’s ‘The Red Line’ confronts institutional racism in America
By Kenneth Andeel
TV Media
It may be the king of procedural law enforcement dramas, but CBS is breaking the mold and trying some- thing new. “The Red Line” premieres Sunday, April 28, and the network knows this drama is something special. It’s being billed as an “event series,” and it has been scheduled
in a unique format intended to offer audiences a propulsive viewing ex- perience with a swift resolution. The drama focuses on the lives of three starkly dissimilar Chicago families as they deal with the consequences of an appalling, life-changing tragedy. It’s a bold, timely and potentially controversial show that wrestles with hot-button subjects such as institu- tional racism, police profiling and gun violence in American culture.
The cast of “The Red Line” is led by Noah Wyle, who returns to another fictionalized version of Chicago 10 years after his beloved “ER” charac- ter Dr. John Carter last saved lives at the fictional Chicago County General Hospital. Wyle plays Daniel Calder,
a Chicago teacher whose husband, Harrison, a black doctor, is shot
to death by a white police officer responding to a call. While out on a late-night errand, Harrison witnesses a convenience store robbery, and after the perpetrator departs, Har- rison approaches the injured store clerk to render assistance. The police arrive moments later, and one of
the responding officers, Paul Evans (played by Noel Fisher of Showtime’s “Shameless”), confuses Harrison for the suspect and opens fire without warning, killing him.
This act is the central tragedy around which the story of “The Red Line” revolves, and the series investi- gates the consequences of the killing not just for Daniel but for his adopted daughter, Jira (newcomer Aliyah Royale); for officer Evans and his ex-cop brother, Jim (Michael Patrick Thornton, “Private Practice”); and for Jira’s birth mother, Tia (Emayatzy Corinealdi, “Middle of Nowhere,” 2012), who is running for Chicago’s city council as a reform candidate.
The dual meaning of “The Red Line’s” title offers some insight into its scope and thematic goals. Super- ficially, a red line is often a meta-
Michael Patrick Thornton as seen in “The Red Line”
phorical reference to an imaginary boundary not meant to be crossed, or a delimiter between what is and isn’t acceptable. The title also holds a sub- tler reference to Chicago’s Red Line, the busiest rapid transit line in the Chicago Transit Authority’s L system. One of only five American rapid tran- sit systems that run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the 23-mile-long Red Line is a major artery in the Chicago metropolitan area and connects huge (and hugely diverse) areas of the city. Between those two references lies a tidy encapsulation of “The Red Line” as a show: a forbidden line is crossed, a violation occurs, and that event ends up connecting three families from very different socioeconomic, racial and cultural backgrounds who share the same urban living space.
“The Red Line’s” creative team in- cludes executive producer Ava DuVer- nay (“Selma,” 2014), who has never shied away from confronting the is- sue of racism in America, and her new series fearlessly pursues that sensi-
tive topic. The epidemic of shootings of unarmed black men by white people, frequently involving police of- ficers, has been a headline-grabbing issue in recent years. Throughout the last decade, multiple high-profile cases have caught the attention of the media and the public.
In 2012, Florida teen Trayvon Mar- tin was shot to death by a paranoid white man who suspected him of criminal intent. In 2014, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, another black teenager, was fatally shot by a police officer who was pursuing him in response to a report of shoplifted cigars. In that same year, New Yorker Eric Garner died after an alterca-
tion with NYPD police officers who restrained him using a chokehold (an incident that was recorded on video by bystanders). In 2015, Walter Scott was shot to death in North Charles- ton, South Carolina, from behind as he fled from an arresting officer (yet another incident that was caught on camera).
This spate of killings, along with numerous others, awakened a social movement calling attention to racial profiling and the cavalier use of dan- gerous or lethal force against black Americans. “The Red Line” is a timely, “ripped from the headlines” response to those incidents and others. The cast and creators of the show have made sure to mention that their proj- ect isn’t merely a callous attempt to grab ratings by probing a raw wound in the American psyche, but is instead a message of hope and healing. “The
Red Line” demonstrates that it’s possible to emerge from catastrophe stronger than before, and that renew- al and reconciliation is only possible through coming together with others.
Audiences will ultimately judge whether “The Red Line” succeeds in its mission. The series begins its run with back-to-back new episodes Sun- day, April 28, on CBS. The remaining episodes will air on consecutive Sun- day nights, again in the two-episode, two-hour format, until the full eight- episode series concludes.