McCormack mixes comedy, drama in misguided 'In Plain Sight'

"In Plain Sight" wants to be one of those glib, airy, summer police shows like its fellow USA series "Monk," "Psych" and, most of all, "Burn Notice," but at the same time it wants to compete with edgier, feminist cop dramas like TNT's "Saving Grace" and "The Closer."

Unfortunately, it can't have it both ways. It's too wide a gap to straddle. And this week's episode, running at 9 p.m. Sunday on USA, finds it collapsing as it loses all touch with reality.

A cop show doesn't have to be real. In fact, USA has found success by stretching reality to the comic breaking point where what breaks down most is audience resistance. Yet when "Sight" mixes near-death melodrama with cheap comic relief this weekend, what cracks isn't the case; it's the show's credibility.

Mary McCormack stars as Mary Shannon, an iconoclastic U.S. marshal who routinely violates protocol while working with the Witness Protection Program in Albuquerque, N.M. She also has every male within spitting distance - her partner, her commanding officer, the local detective and her own muy caliente Hispanic studmuffin - half in love with her. It's a nice role for McCormack and fully deserved after she served on the fringes of "The West Wing" and played Howard Stern's better half (who could be worse, or even half as bad?) in his feature-film biopic, "Private Parts."

If she doesn't quite manage either the dramatic intensity of Holly Hunter in "Grace" or the blithe humor of Kyra Sedgwick in "The Closer," it's not entirely her fault. She can toss off caustic lines, such as referring to her job as "the care and feeding of career criminals," in a manner that's both cynical and comical.

Yet the comedy supplied by Lesley Ann Warren as her ditsy mother and Nichole Hiltz as her dysfunctional sister doesn't provide relief so much as it undercuts the drama, never more than in Sunday's episode, "Trojan Horst."

Mary and her partner, Frederick Weller's Marshall (yes, there's both a Mary named Mary and a marshal named Marshall in this series), are placed in charge of a nebbish convict played by Dave Foley, the "Kids in the Hall" comedian who went on to "NewsRadio." As Horst, he's been the agent-bagman for a hit woman named Lola by arranging her schedule of jobs and picking up the money for services rendered. So of course he's a prime witness in the case against her, making him a marked man.

Yet, Mary and Marshall are inexplicably sloppy in moving him around the desert, to the point where Horst moans, "Don't anybody worry about me, the guy you're supposed to be protecting." Not only do they get caught in an ambush, but Marshall needs to remind Mary that, with their SUV breaking down and all contact with the outside world mysteriously cut off (how convenient), they're prone to another attack. (In the immortal words of Hannah Montana: "Ya think?") And Marshall has already been shot in the chest in the first barrage.

This leads to a near confession of love. "I feel like I'm the keeper of this exotic animal," he says of being her partner.

"I'm sorry," she replies. "That's your job."

All right, that's fine and tender as far as it goes. Yet at the same time the show keeps cutting back to Mary's mother, Jinx, and sister, Brandy, as they try to pawn what turns out to be costume jewelry. Such swift shifts in tone require a fine sense of control on the part of creator David Maples and his writing staff; sorry, but they just don't have what it takes.

Even worse, after calmly standing in front of a window when they're pinned down in a remote cabin, Mary simply slips out to plan their escape, pulls it off and gets the bad guys, just in time for the show to end with her family showing up at the hospital to provide emotional support. It's about as believable as a classic episode of "The Rookies," and not half as funny for trying so hard from time to time to be humorous.

There's a lot to like on "In Plain Sight," not the least of which is Paul Ben-Victor, salvaged from "The Wire" on HBO to play the boss who indiscreetly carries a torch for Mary. Yet the series has to make up its mind what it is: a frothy summer escape in the USA tradition, or a more serious feminist drama along the lines of TNT's more challenging summer fare. For now it just seems to be staggering blindly between those two alternatives.