Entertainment
8 Years Later, Prime Video’s Spy Series Is the Best Kind of Cult Show No One Talks About
There’s more content than ever about espionage and covert intelligence, but most shows based on these subjects tend to characterize spycraft as an exciting, action-packed profession. Even if these shows do not universally endorse or sympathize with the characters that they portray, they do offer a depiction of their work that boasts the epic scope and scale of what is inherently compelling. Patriot is a downbeat, darkly funny, and frequently avant-garde spy series that is a bit too disturbing to be a comedy, too strange to be a straightforward drama, and too experimental to be lumped in with other streaming genre shows. There aren’t any broad characteristics that can be used to describe Patriot because of how original it was, and the series deserves more recognition for being one of the early indicators of how inventive streaming shows could be.
Patriot was created by Steven Conrad, the talented showrunner who would go on to make the Emmy-nominated limited series DTF St. Louis and write several hit comedy films. The show tells the story of John Tavner (Michael Dorman), an unusual intelligence agent who performs covert tasks for the Director of Intelligence, who happens to be his father Tom (Terry O’Quinn). Despite John’s desire to be a folk singer and troubled marriage to his wife Alice (Kathleen Munroe), he is assigned to go undercover as “John Lakeman” and gains a job at a Milwaukee industrial company run by the recovering alcoholic Leslie Claret (Kurtwood Smith). Patriot finds a roundabout way to explore the demanding task of assuming different identities while remaining confident in one’s personal ethics. Even though it is John who is professionally lying to make his living, all the characters in Patriot are being dishonest with themselves in one way or another.
‘Patriot’ Puts a Fascinating Spin on the Spy Drama
Patriot is an apt commentary on modern American life because the series explores the mundanity of workplace culture, which is ironically not that different between undercover spy work and blue-collar industrial labor. All the infrastructure in Patriot is built on the maintenance of established values that no one has ever questioned, which makes all the more trouble for John when he starts asking questions. John strays from his father’s teaching and often has to be reined in by his brother, Edward (Michael Chernus), a congressman from Texas. At the same time, his unusual attitude makes him stick out like a sore thumb at McMillan, the processing plant, especially when compared to the more dedicated “company men.” The irony is that John’s inability to fit in causes a shift in his relationship with both of his mentors; Tom begins to talk to him less personally as if he were only an employee, and Leslie begins to take him under his wing, treating him like a son.
Patriot cleverly riffs on the archetypes of spy fiction because its narrative mirrors similar storylines involving nuclear anxiety in other movies and shows, only to go in a completely different direction by focusing on small and seemingly insignificant tasks. The series is also keen to note the type of consequences of John’s work that wouldn’t always be brought up in a spy story, specifically within his relationship with the rival job-seeker Stephen Tchoo (Marcus Toji). In the first episode, John is forced to injure Stephen to ensure that he can get the job at McMillan and serve as an undercover agent. Instead of casting Stephen aside altogether, Patriot shows his continued experiences after dealing with severe brain damage, making him a living reminder of the atrocities that John has committed in the name of a mission that he does not fully comprehend.
‘Patriot’ Has Excellent Characters and Performances
While Conrad’s other work has involved getting great performances out of actors who were cast against type, Patriot boasts a true standout in Dorman, who gives a melancholy, charming, and impressively removed performance as a self-destructive anti-hero. So much is learned about John’s past over the course of the series that the family dynamics begin to feel real; the relationship between John and Edward becomes quite impactful towards the end of Season 2, once Chernus is given much more to do. There’s also an interesting depiction of marriage that shows the costs that Alice faces as she tries to collect any knowledge she can about her husband, whose frequent absences for long-term assignments put a strain upon their relationship.
Although it has a satisfying conclusion that wraps up John’s journey and could have easily been extended into later seasons, Patriot was cancelled prematurely after the end of Season 2. This might be because it aired at a time in which streaming television was more of a novelty, and the notion of an auteur-driven show with stark stylistic tendencies didn’t fit within the reputation that Prime Video has as a brand. Prime Video has now developed a corporate identity as a streamer that produces a high volume of action, military, and espionage shows that embody all the clichés that Patriot subverts and satirizes. There’s nothing about Patriot that feels cynical or predictable, and eight years later, it’s still a breath of fresh air that more people should know about.
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