It was another fine showing for Christopher Chance & Co. this week on Human Target, as the writing and plot progression get tighter and smoother, like a rich old woman's neck. The humor/action juxtaposition will probably stay clunky for a while, but I find my complaints about the show are lessening in number, even if I have nothing overwhelmingly positive to say about things. FOX action shows are FOX action shows.
Former gang-boss extraordinaire Whitey Doyle hadn't been heard from publicly for ten years. Assistant District Attorney Allison Russo was asked to a meeting with him, in reference to her investigation into the Westland gang. Her financial past is filled with Doyle's attempts to pad her bank account. Doyle possesses a ledger he's kept over the years of everyone who's ever taken money from him. It's a long list of names. Their meet is disrupted by gunmen, who put a bullet in Doyle's right hand man, Frank Murphy, forcing Allison to drive away, smashing one of the attackers in the process. Who you gonna call? Winston, not Zedmore, though he is the black one. FOX inspires racy words.
Chance quickly gets Allison to identify Doyle as her confidential informant. So the plan is to set up another meeting and draw out the enemy. Chance acts as Doyle's lawyer and openly expresses Doyle's intent to meet again, and then calms everyone with some precedent case facts. In your face, everyone who isn't Christopher Chance! Political higher-up Wes Gibson is in the passenger seat on the trip to the fake meeting. Chance trips Gibson up and pegs him as one of the gunmen. Then there's a gunfight and then a fist fight as a car careens down city streets. Truth be told, it's a very fast, and very intense little sequence, of the teeth-clenching kind. Though don't expect anyone's foot to actually be on the accelerator, or for the steering, done by Allison from the backseat, to actually resemble the close-call swerving we see. But it was well-executed and fun, and Chance kicked some bad-guy ass.
Driving away, Chance finds a receiver linked to a tracking device somewhere on Allison's body. After tossing her cell phone, she shows some skin in the backseat before they realize the tracker is actually inside her body. This is where Guerrero comes in, and he gets a few funny moments before popping out to take care of his end of the script. Knowing that Gibson will frame Allison for all wrongdoings, Chance calls Winston to talk to Al, a buddy in Internal Affairs, to help out. Winston finds out Gibson has got a hand in almost everyone's pocket, and little can be done to take him down. He also finds out about Allison's bank records. Frustrated, Chance calls Allison out on the money, which she denies ever having taken. It turns out Doyle is actually her father, and he was trying to pay for her mother's cancer therapy. The twist came out a tad more kaboom that I just described it.
Chance and Allison ditch the vehicle they were using and take a cab to the hospital where Frank Murphy is being kept, so that he can relay the message to Doyle that in order to save Allison, he needs to send the ledger to her office. Because of the tracker, time is short, and it's not long before gunmen burst into the room, and people die. Allison is blamed for this as well, so they have to keep low cover and sneak into city hall in order to talk to a judge known to be free from Gibson's tentacles. Meanwhile, Guerrero talks to a buddy who inspires him to create another receiver with a larger microwave emission than the tracker in Allison's body, to be used as a decoy. In a dusty storage room at city hall, Gibson and his men walk into a fist fight with Chance. After a nice little tussle, Gibson escapes.
Allison finds her judge, but as it happens the ledger never made it to her office. Doyle brought it straight to the judge himself, and he's the X-Files' Cigarette Smoking Man, jowls and all. All is well. The episode ends on Chance tying up some loose ends. We don't get to see what he does to Gibson, but it probably isn't pretty. I tried not to pay attention to the corny dialogue between Winston and Allison right before this.
The story was more mainstream action drama, but the amped-up attitude helped raise it above standard fare. It's still not better than pretty good so far, but like I said, it's getting better, and I can't fault a show for that. It's better than the unscripted bullshit that plays around it, though I'd love to see Christopher Chance fail to protect an auditorium full of American Idol folks.
