‘Anna Pigeon’ Review: USA’s Underwhelming National Park-Set Drama

Allow me, please, a quick first-person digression.

I finished my review of FX’s The Shards last week, but I haven’t stopped thinking about the Ryan Murphy adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel. I’m pretty sure that The Shards is a bad series (or at least not a good series), but it’s a bad series that obviously engaged me on a number of different levels — so it’s succeeding on some terms.

I finished watching Anna Pigeon last night, but I haven’t thought about USA’s adaptation of Nevada Barr’s novels a single time since. I’m certain that Anna Pigeon is a bad series — it’s packed with leaden writing, flimsy plotting and boasts several dismal performances — but it’s primarily a forgettable series that’s designed to be forgettable, and therefore succeeds entirely, I suppose.

If the ethos of USA Network‘s old school Blue Sky brand was disposable escapism — my own argument is that the better Blue Sky shows, including Burn Notice, were richer than that — then Anna Pigeon delivers pretty people blending into photogenic Alberta backdrops, and, as I’ve already said, you will never think about any of the 42-minute installments past the closing credits. I can’t recommend it on any level other than that, but if that’s the level on which you choose to approach Anna Pigeon, it’s an unambitious mission generally accomplished.

“[M]ission…accomplished[!]” — The Hollywood Reporter.

Tracy Spiridakos plays Anna Pigeon, a former Broadway stage manager who chose to became a law enforcement park ranger after her husband was murdered.

If that requires more disbelief than you’re prepared to suspend, then Anna Pigeon is not the show for you — which is okay because if there’s a Golden Age of Park-Ranger-Solving-Crime TV, then we are surely living in it. It’s hard to believe that television existed for decades with park rangers merely struggling to protect picnic baskets from overdressed (or underdressed, I suppose) bears, but between Anna Pigeon, Joe Pickett and Untamed, we’ve discovered how much they’re capable of.

Anyway, no longer satisfied with making sure that the theatrical trains run on time, Anna is a national parks vagabond, going from job to job, never laying down roots.

Her current gig is at Montana’s (Alberta) Glacier National Park, where she’s watching the clock and preparing to move on to the next park, much to the chagrin of her chipper mentee Zoey (Paulina Alexis) and colleagues including Manny (Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz), a military veteran with PTSD and a friendly wife (Melanie Scrofano), and…hmmm…I don’t remember the names or personalities of any of her other colleagues.

The prospect of Anna’s departure also disappoints the hunky bartender (Cooper Levy) she’s sleeping with, whose name she may or may not know. How long has Anna been in Montana (Alberta)? How long has she been sleeping with Jesse? How long has it been since Anna’s husband died? How long did it take her to become qualified as a law enforcement park ranger?

Anna Pigeon is fuzzy on time, characterization, a lot of things. I’ll just keep saying: If you’re the sort of person who tends to dwell on things, either skip this series or perhaps read the books.

Other details that were probably better conveyed on the page have to be supplied in expositional blobs, like when friendly and flirty FBI agent Fredrick Stanton (Ronnie Rowe) tells Anna, “You have a fancy arts degree, parents back east, sister who’s a big New York psychiatrist, and you’re good living in old, moldy ranger houses going from park to park to park?”

Oy.

Then, a fellow ranger turns up dead. Murdered. Suddenly, Anna’s goal of drifting through life without making attachments becomes untenable.

Facing her trauma seems like a good idea to Anna’s aforementioned sister Molly (Tricia Helfer), who exists only via phone from New York City (played by Calgary, I’m guessing, but definitely not New York City) and pops up to offer helpful advice, because she’s a psychiatrist and, as we know, all deeply damaged people should get psychiatric services from family members.

It’s okay, because Molly isn’t a good shrink anyway, offering kernels of wisdom like, “Attractive men are your weakness.” Yup. Anna’s the rare television character who likes to bop sexy people. Uggos need not apply. And Jesse is very attractive, so attractive that when there’s a talent show, his talent is stripping. Is that a spoiler? I’m not sure. I also don’t care.

Having Anna remain in the park seems like a bad idea to Jeremiah Paulson (Kim Coates), a hilarious generic bad guy who, apparently, wants to, like, buy the park or something? He dislikes Anna, because he’s wise enough to know that the only person capable of stopping a scheming Montana billionaire is a former Broadway stage manager with a gun.

Anna is a loner and this causes problems for Zoey and for her boss, whose name I don’t remember but he has a mustache (fine, it’s Ryan Northcott’s Geoff). But mostly it causes problems for series creator Morwyn Brebner, who has to figure out how to build a show around a character who prefers not to interact with other people. She solves the problem in various ways, none good.

The first episode finds Anna just talking to herself, aloud, a lot. She’s just wandering around the park saying what she’s looking at, which actually makes her a dream character in a TV landscape forced to assume that viewers are doing other things and can’t be bothered to pay attention, but makes her a bad character in terms of resembling an ordinary human.

Thankfully, Anna’s tendency to talk out loud — “Beer can?” she says to a beer can in the pilot — becomes less pronounced in subsequent episodes. Unfortunately, Brebner then burdens her with an overwritten internal monologue that would make more sense if Anna’s previous career had been as a Broadway writer. Instead, she just begins and ends every episode with pretentious noodling about grief and nature. Nothing about the character suggests introspection of any type. She is, in fact, explicitly avoiding introspection. So why must we listen to her introspect badly? Dunno.

So Anna sticks around after the murder, but for the next three of six episodes sent to critics, she’s just solving dull and predictable procedural park cases that don’t necessarily relate to the park at all. In one episode, she solves a decades-old series of bank robberies. In another, she encounters a family living in the park without permission. In another, it rains and she gets stranded with a group of tourists, one of whom may be a murderer. I had to check my notes for these plots, because none is notable.

The last two episodes are a two-parter in which somebody pushes Anna into a pit and she has to figure out who, while conquering her past traumas. Those two episodes are absolutely better than what came before, though they build to several thoroughly unsurprising surprises and give no indication that Anna Pigeon is a show prepared for deep mythology.

The biggest impediment to any ongoing story is that, as Big Bads go, Jeremiah Paulson is awful. He’s badly developed, speaks exclusively in toothless villain talk — “You are just a down-on-her-luck, rapidly aging widow and everything you touch turns to shit,” he tells Anna — and, with nothing tangible or interesting to play, Coates is pretty bad, delivering neither complexity nor menace. In fairness, I’m not sure this is a part that, like, Anthony Hopkins could give nuance to.

Few of the other supporting figures are much better. Crystle Lightning is likably chirpy as the ranger office manager or something, but I wouldn’t say she has a character to play. Along the same lines, if you accept that Alexis’ Zoey is Willy Jack from Reservation Dogs all grown up and working as a park ranger, it’s delightful to see her at all; if you don’t have positive associations with her from Reservation Dogs, I’m not sure what you’d make of Zoey.

As for Spiridakos, she’s fine. Going back to Revolution, she’s never been an actress capable of selling clumsy dialogue, but she’s an assertive screen presence and there are a few bursts in which her ability to be cheery and sarcastic at the same time adds welcome levity.

Even when Anna has just tumbled into dark pits — both literal and not — the series directors, starting with Lea Thompson, make sure she looks good, matched only by Levy’s abs and the myriad valleys, burbling rivers and background mountains. If you took away the low-stakes action — there’s one episode in which the actors barely move within the frame at all, as if the series forgot about blocking entirely — and the actors, there’d be enough pretty nature stuff for Anna Pigeon to be soothing background television.

[M]ission…accomplished[!], indeed.