5 Reasons to Freak Out Over NBC's Crisis!

NBC’s Crisis is one of the hot new shows to hit mid-season. The thriller stars two longtime lesbian faves, Gillian Anderson and Rachael Taylor. If you haven’t been watching since the March 16 debut, it’s definitely not too late to catch up. (You can see the first two episodes at NBC.com or Hulu.)

The premise is tense tense tense: Students from the prestigious Ballad High School, where the children of Washington, D.C.’s elite go, awash as they are in privilege, get ambushed during a school trip. Their school bus–which happens to also have the President’s son, the Pakistani ambassador’s son and the daughter of one of the top (female) CEOs in the world on board–is re-routed. Mayhem ensues from there and the Secret Service has a national crisis on their hands.
If you like your action mixed with emotion and intrigue, this is the show for you. Sundays on NBC.

5. It’s the Capitol, Stupid.
Ah, Washington. The locus of American politics and intrigue. Crisis takes us inside the halls of power–and the black ops of it–in similar ways to Scandal, Homeland and The Blacklist. This is serious stuff, a President’s son being held for...what, exactly? When the President says he will have to let his son die, do we believe him, or is some other, darker conspiracy in play? And what can former cop and rookie Secret Service Agent Marcus Finley (Lance Gross), having his "worst first day ever" do about it?

4. Pretty Little Liars.
The CW and ABC Family are full of pretty little liars and other ne’er do well teens who many adults re-live their teen years through vicariously. If only we’d gone to McKinley High (Glee), Mystic Falls High (The Vampire Diaries) or Rosewood High (Pretty Little Liars).... One of the subplots of Crisis involves all those teens held hostage. Who loves whom and why. And can we see Amber hold BethAnn’s hand again?
 

3. Conspiracy Theories
What exactly made Francis Gibson (Dermot Mulroney), an ex-CIA analyst, go off the rails and become a terrorist? We only have the tiniest glimpse in the pilot episode that he was expected to fall on his sword, but for who and what? In his elaborate plan to win back his daughter BethAnn’s (Stevie Lynn Jones) love, is he also trying to prove he can best the system he worked in for years?  

2. Lean In
After a TV hiatus post her iconic, Emmy-winning role as The X-Files’ Agent Scully, Gillian Anderson has been popping up all over the small screen lately, most recently in a recurring role in NBC’s homoerotic chiller, Hannibal, as Hannibal’s shrink, Bedelia Du Maurier. But now she’s a star again, as Meg Fitch, CEO of an international IT company (think a gorgeous female Bill Gates), a woman with money, power and a plethora of secrets. Anderson has never been better and she’s playing Fitch just as she did Scully–with guts to spare.   

1. We Love a Woman in Uniform
Aussie actress Rachael Taylor plays Secret Service agent Susie Dunn on whom much of the action pivots. Dunn has some secrets–her older sister is Meg Fitch, from whom she’s been estranged for years. But her niece, Fitch’s daughter Amber (Halston Sage), is actually...her daughter who she gave up as a teenage unwed mom for Fitch to raise. We’ve hearted Taylor since forever. We loved her as Callie’s ob-gyn Dr. Lucy Fields on Grey’s Anatomy, we watched Charlie’s Angels to see her and we couldn’t get enough of her (or Vanessa Williams) on 666 Park Avenue. As Susie Dunn she’s got game and then some. And she totally rocks that uniform.  
　
Victoria A. Brownworth is an award-winning journalist, editor and writer. She has won the NLGJA and the Society of Professional Journalists awards, the Lambda Literary Award and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a regular contributor to The Advocate and SheWired, a blogger for Huffington Post and a contributing editor for Curve magazine, Curve digital and Lambda Literary Review. She is the author and editor of nearly 30 books including Coming Out of Cancer: Writings from the Lesbian Cancer Epidemic and Restricted Access: Lesbians on Disability. Her collection, From Where We Sit: Black Writers Write Black Youth won the 2012 Moonbeam Award for Cultural/Historical Fiction. Her Y/A novel, Cutting will be published in fall 2014. @VABVOX