TNT’s “The Company” finally got interesting and spiritually provocative in its last show, after three weeks of hype and (in my opinion) underperformance.
Really interesting. Really provocative.
The three-week CIA show had a great cast, including Chris O’Donnell (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Batman and Robin”), Alfred Molina (“Spider-Man” and the upcoming “Ten Commandments”), and Michael Keaton (“Live From Baghdad,” “Batman,”), under the eye of Ridley Scott (“Black Hawk Down,” “The Gladiator”) and Tony Scott (“Spy Game,” “Crimson Tide,” “Top Gun.”).
The plot focused on two CIA guys recruited from Yale who (along with their various supervisors and recruited “assets”) influenced everything from KGB infiltration to the failed Hungarian uprising and the disastrous Bay of Pigs, eventually including Vietnam, the stock market’s 500-point drop, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yeltsin’s rise, and various other world events.
At the crux of the final episode, though, was the determined quest of an aging management apparatus to indict one of the friends (“Leo”) and the loyal commitment of his college friend (“Jack.”) The conundrum is classic and powerful.

Either:
1. Leo is the KGB’s “Sasha,” deceiving even his closest friends; his tormenter and interrogator is a patriotic genius; his friend Jack is a blind fool for believing in him; and the CIA’s research and profiling methods are victorious
or…
2. Leo is a victim, being framed by the KGB’s sophisticated triangulated counter-intelligence and disinformation campaign; Jack is a disloyal betrayer; and the interrogation leader is an archaic and irrelevant dinosaur who’s allowing the KGB agenda to infiltrate the company.
One of the most spiritually penetrating events that can happen to any of us is the occasion when we have to choose who to trust. Usually, that also requires a choice of which information we will trust, as that shapes our conclusions about people.
The same is also true in the ultimate spiritual journey: our decision about who we trust as The Source of spiritual truth and our authority for moral choices in life.
“The Company” illustrated the high stakes of such a choice, and got to it with enough of the show left to show the consequences of everyone’s respective choices as the ultimate information comes out. I won’t give it away, because it’ll be worth it for you to watch the encores.
But a few moments to reflect on the absolute, high-stakes, dramatic gamble that it is to place our trust in any nation, any person or any deity is what moved “The Company” from decent drama to spiritual relevance.