Showtime's Sleeper Cell is an interesting, well-done 10-hour miniseries about a Muslim terrorist cell operating in Los Angeles. The season finale aired last Sunday, and was a somewhat disappointing end to a usually well-written, tautly acted television show. The main plot follows an undercover FBI agent who is a green-eyed, African American Muslim played by the very handsome Michael Ealy. All of the members of the sleeper cell are improbably attractive: the beefy, blond, blue-eyed, all-American Tommy (Blake Shields), the sexy, shaved head, Gallic Christian (Alex Nesic), the shy, geeky, good-looking Ilija (Henri Lubatti) and the sinister, darkly handsome Faris (Oded Fehr). It's not clear exactly what the intentions of the creators of the series were when they cast such a pulchritudinous group of men to portray people who are systematically, purposefully planning to kill as many Americans as possible. Is it because they don't think the writing is compelling enough that they have to entice viewers with beautiful evil also? I may be too harsh, I actually like the show and think that the producers are doing a good job to show the minutiae and logistics of how a terrorist sleeper cell would actually operate in the United States. That being said, this is a television dramatic series after all, so verisimilitude is not the primary objective. And I don't think that it should be.
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