Chase TV Series

At least U.S. Marshal Annie Frost is consistent in employing her absurd crime-fighting techniques. In the series pilot, she shared her philosophy that “music is the quickest way into a person’s soul.” The second episode of Chase finds her kicking back with some Tejano, while chewing bubble gum, and doing a little light reading about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo — all to get into the mind of a killer. This week’s bad guy is called — repeatedly, with a straight face — “El Lobo,” or just plain “Lobo” to the crack team of marshals who continue to make their headquarters in Fair Park’s Hall of State (even though they’re supposed to be working in Houston). For a couple other Dallas locations making appearances this week, and more lessons from the Frost school of criminal justice, take the jump.

In the pilot episode of Chase, tracking fugitive criminals is discovered to be as simple as playing a game of Clue. A host of grand suppositions, massive generalizations, and absurdist statements lead U.S. Marshal Annie Frost and her team to capture the series’ first Big Bad. When we’re introduced to Annie, she’s chasing a fugitive through the Fort Worth Stockyards. She gets her man, but not before he taunts her: “Didn’t your mother teach you girls shouldn’t play with boys?” After she throws him to the ground with an acrobatic move involving her belt, she responds “My mother died when I was 8, so no.” Later we learn that she doesn’t know whether her own father is alive. (I predict we’ll meet him in season 2, probably in a sweeps month.) The show is setting up the lead character’s mysterious, troubled past. After all, she’s a woman obsessed with nailing bad guys — she’s got to have some dark secret to explain why she’d go into this field of work, right?

The first episode of Lone Star, one of two locally made shows premiering on prime-time television tonight, sets up an intriguing premise about a con man who's wormed his way into a big-time family oil business while balancing two lives, and women, in two different cities. One of those places is Midland. The other is Houston. Both are played on TV by Dallas. Or, to be more precise, the Dallas area. I realize that we'll soon become accustomed to seeing a host of familiar sights appear on the small screen regularly, what with the new series (in addition to Lone Star at 8 pm on Fox, Chase starts at 9 pm on NBC tonight, and The Good Guys returns Friday) on the air. But we're not yet jaded by the novelty, are we?