The Unusuals Pilot Review

Take one part MASH, add one part Hill Street Blues, shake them together and you get the Unusuals, ABC's new cop show. The show features a strong and diverse cast of characters dealing with a mixture of typical and zany crimes.
Our window into New York's 2nd precinct is Detective Casey Shraeger (Amber Tamblyn) who is moved from working vice to homicide and spends most of the episode getting irritating calls from her well to do mother. Her new partner is Det. Jason Walsh (Jeremy Renner) whose previous partner, Kowalski, was just murdered. The two first meet at Walsh's other job, a tiny diner that he owns and sleeps at.
While trying to solve the murder, we meet the rest of the cast. There is Det. Eric Delahoy (Adam Goldberg) who has a brain tumor that has lead him to now take dangerous risks while on the job. His partner is Det. Leo Banks (Harold Perrineau) who feels he is cursed to die at the age of 42 just like his father, uncles, and grandfather. He has just turned 42 a month before and now lives with extreme caution, wearing a bulletproof vest everywhere he goes.
Delahoy and Banks have a case of their own, catching a cat killer. Once they catch the likely suspect, their use of a "lie detector" which is really just a photo copy machine that is duplicating his hand print with the word "truth" or "lie" written on it is hilarious. Their next attempt to break the suspect is putting him in a car filled with cats, after covering him with seasoning.
The other cops we are introduced to are Det. Eddie Alvarez (Kai Lennow) who speaks of himself in the third person at all times and is a media slut, wanting the lead on the biggest cases for the most prestige. He instantly claims lead on Kowalski's murder. Walsh and Shraeger are of course doing all the real work for the case, and eventually lead Eddie Alvarez on a wild goose chase to track down a CI while they follow the real trail.
We also have Det. Allison Beaumont (Monique Gabriela Curnen) who gets all the witty lines with the hot dog suit man you have seen in the commercials. Also there's Det. Henry Cole (Joshua Close) who is highly religious, he is trying to repent for his acts of "teenagery". And finally there is Sergeant Harvey Brown (Terry Kinney) head of the precinct that wants to clean up the 2nd by bringing in an unbribable cop in Shraeger (her family is apparently beyond rich and she ditched Harvard to join the police academy).
Walsh and Shraeger continue to develop a bond while getting closer to finding out the truth about Kowalski's murder. Kowalski was screwing around on his wife, yet he was also a big brother to kids who needed it, treating them great and helping them get on with their lives. To top it all off, there are the many files he had on the rest of the cops of the 2nd which is thankfully not answered and should be a plot point for the rest of the season. The other Kowalski related plot line that will defiantly continue is that the boy they end up going after and shooting (after he point blank shoots Delahoy with a shot gun, not even scratching him) was not Kowalski's murderer. After everyone leaves the room, it is the religious Cole who plats the badge of gun of Kowalski at the scene and "discovers it" when Walsh returns. It is good that there will be a season arc with both the real murderer as well as Shraeger discovering everyone's secrets which will give deeper mysteries for audiences of Lost to watch the Unusuals.
Overall the Unusuals was involving and many times laugh out loud funny. To break up major scene shifts was a voice over APD that reminds me of the old MASH loud speaker. It ranged from "Be on the look out for a man in a hot dog costume, last seen running west on Houston Street," to my personal favorite, "Be on the look out for ninjas, or ninja like people." I hope those continue and mix between being plot related and randomly off the wall as well.
The Unusuals mixes drama and comedy very well as well as easily show off a large cast without bogging things down. Every character has a personality that makes them unique and although the pilot did occasionally seem over the top, I think that was more due to it being a pilot and trying to show the most it could in a single hour to get picked up. I'm sure it will get the mixture even better. It seems like a great follow up for Lost, something a bit lighter while continuing a mystery element. Hopefully the Unusuals will stay around longer the it's predecessor, Life on Mars