“All these people I help…I help so many people…people come to me for help…”

     So, Benjamin Bratt helps a LOT of people in The Cleaner.  How he helps them, I’m not sure.  Why he helps them, I know that - he helps them for profit.  Bratt plays a former drug addict who is now clean, and has made some kind of one-way pact with God to help out other addicts.  And so he has built himself a team, himself and three other nondescript people, who go around “saving” people from the dangers of evil drugs.  Every episode involves this team taking on a case, where the family or friends of the addict pay them an assload of money to save their friend, or their kid.  And sure, this team does a little bit of pro-bono work.  But a pretty big deal is made about how much money they make “saving” these people.

     Throughout the episodes, there are some stylistic touches that just don’t work.  Bratt “talks” to God, although he makes a big deal out of not being religious.  Which is fine, except his one-way conversations with God are not the kind any human being would have, but rather they are narrations, designed to move the plot forward.  It’s through his talks with God that we learn that while he was separated from his wife, he had sex with the hot chick who is part of his team.  If he’s really talking to God, no matter what his belief of who or what that God is, wouldn’t he assume that God already knows he slept with the hot chick?  Well, at least we learn this without taking up too much screen time.

     The other standard artistic quirk is a series of split-screen shots.  People talk on the telephone with each other, and we see them in split screen.  That makes sense, although it happens so often that it’s irritating.  But when two people are in the same room talking to each other and they are in split-screen, it’s irritating immediately.  The other split-screen convention is the one where while two people discuss someone’s drug use, we see that person using drugs on the other portion of the screen.  Which gives the whole show the feel of a really bad after-school special.  That girl is smoking crack.  And her parents are talking about her smoking crack!

     And that is the biggest failing (of many failings) in The Cleaner.  This is a TV series that thinks it’s far grittier, tougher and better than it really is.  The main characters are former drug abusers who have turned their lives around, but they’re still badass people who can run with the drug crowd without being detected, and they say things that are almost controversial, and they do things that are almost over-the-edge, and they deal with people who are doing things that are almost R-rated.  However, this is a series that is constantly aware that it does not have an R rating.  And never, not once, does it have the balls to really take an episode to it’s logical, depraved and drug-addled conclusion.

     So what we get is a series of episodes which play, every single one of them, like really really silly and bad after-school specials.  There are a series of kids who steal from their parents, alienate their friends and shout angrily about their crack habits.  “I hate you!  You’re the worst parents ever!  I can’t stop!”  This might be partially because the show attracts some incredibly poor actors as guest stars.  And that’s part of the problem.  But the real problem is that the writers have come from the world of the after-school special, and I can only assume none of them have ever had real problems with drugs themselves.  They think that every kid who smokes pot is on a slippery slope to crack abuse and theft and burglary and prison.

     The second-biggest problem with the show is that I have no idea what it’s actually about.  In every episode, some person is on the dangerous path to destruction through drug abuse.  And the “team” gets called in, paid a lot of money, and are tasked with stopping the destructive cycle, getting the kid off drugs, and doing it in the most badass way possible.  While not crossing over into R-rated territory.  But just about every episode involves the team trying to track down and find the kid.  In the druggie underworld.  So they rough up dealers, they go undercover, they bust up drug rings, and they drag the kid out kicking and screaming.  And the episode ends.

     So how, exactly, has this kid been helped?  At the end of most episodes, we see the kid in some rehab centre.  But that’s it.  So the “team” tracks them down, attacks them, and drags them off to rehab?  So really, all this team does is interventions (extreme interventions, of course) when the family or the friends are too sissy to do it themselves?  That appears to be the sole function of the team.  And there isn’t a lot of drama in the search for a kid (or, in some rare cases, an adult) when you have no idea how they might be “helped” once they are found.

     And that brings us to the third-biggest problem with The Cleaner.  The actors and the characters.  They come straight out of some focus group.  The hot chick who likes fast cars and can seduce people when necessary.  The grungy dirty kid who might, at any time, backslide into his own addiction.  The big fat do-gooder black guy who philosophizes constantly.  And the tough-guy leader who has made a pact with God.  Each of the characters is so cliched that they are not at all compelling.  They are boring.  But the episodes are, for the most part, about them and not the drug abusers themselves.  The hot chick still wants to sleep with the leader!  The fat guy wants a bigger role on the team!  The sketchy kid might be back on drugs!  Oh, and there’s this kid we have to find.

     Then there is Bratt’s family.  His kids are constantly bringing up his past drug use, his trips to jail, and the rocky relationship he has had with his wife.  This is so we know where he has come from, but it doesn’t matter.  Because he looks at them intently, says “I know.  I’m sorry.”  And that’s it!  There appears to be no lingering animosity, no real conflict there, although the show tries to make us believe there is.  There is even a subplot where Bratt’s wife takes up a new job as a real estate agent.  Why?  Who knows.  I guess this show needs a lot of filler, because otherwise we would have to see this team actually helping people.  And no one knows how they would actually go about doing that.

     There is not a lot to recommend the show.  In fact, almost nothing.  Benjamin Bratt is decent as the star, but he has almost nothing to do.  He has a boring family, a boring team, and a job that is not only ill-defined but may well be exploitative and dangerous and immoral.  The writers have clearly bought in to the slippery-slope, gateway drug propaganda we see in those painful after-school special type ads, and that has infused this series with an after-school special sensibility that makes me uncomfortable.  It thinks it’s dirty and grungy and gritty, but it’s not.  It’s cheesy and silly and totally unnecessary.  Skip this show.

     Oh, right.  Season One of The Cleaner comes out on DVD June 9th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 6:25 am and is filed under 2008, Benjamin Bratt, Drama, Garbage, TV series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.