- Title: The Company You Keep – Pilot
- IMDb: link
On the night each of their previous relationships have gone down in flames, con man and criminal Charlie Nicoletti (Milo Ventimiglia) and CIA Agent Emma Hill (Catherine Haena Kim) meet in a hotel bar and spend the next 36 hours together. The “Pilot” episode captures their meeting, and the couple other run-ins between the pair, but is primarily focused on their separate lives with Charlie’s criminal family (Sarah Wayne Callies, Polly Draper, and William Fichtner) getting the bulk of the screentime. For Emma we get the standard “too smart to be listened to” set-up for her character that, like Charlie, sees things others miss.
There’s solid chemistry between Charlie and Emma, although the set-up and staging of the show consists mainly of keeping them apart (once through some lame romcom actions by Charlie). I will be curious to see how much we see of them together on-screen moving forward or if future episodes continue this same pattern. The other important character in our opening episode is Daphne Finch (Felisha Terrell) who Charlie’s family steals from in the opening segment (before getting betrayed by his girlfriend) and who Emma loses through the incompetence of the other federal agents later in the episode. She wants Charlie to pay what is owed and Emma wants to catch her which, along with not revealing too much about their real lives to each other, will be the challenge for the couple moving forward.
