Rubicon was a conspiracy drama on AMC starring James Badge Dale and Miranda Richardson. James Badge Dale is Will Travers, a twitchy, bushy-haired intelligence analyst at a private think tank called the American Policy Institute (API) who finds himself in the middle of the conspiracy. Miranda Richardson co-stars as Katherine Rhumor, a recent widow whose late-husband's (one of the Powerful White Men) sudden suicide draws her into the mystery as well.
While the overall arc focuses on the conspiracy, individual episodes focus on day to day intelligence work of Will Travers' team and the strain it puts on them. His team, Grant, Miles, and Tanya, work to predict and prevent terrorist attacks in the US and elsewhere. The shows draws heavily on the audience of the AMC show that comes on after it.
The show was canceled after one season that aired in 2010.
This show provides examples of:
- Age-Gap Romance: Kale turns out to have a boyfriend who's at least twenty years his junior.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Nearly everyone. David was obsessed with superstitions and numerology; Miles is a Conspiracy Theorist with few social skills; Tanya is The Alcoholic; even Will is kind of strange and is only normal in comparison to everyone else.
- Cliffhanger: The series ends on one due to its cancellation. Will has compiled a report based on the evidence he's gained on the conspiracy. It's left unclear if he'll go public with it however, as the conspirator he speaks with claims people won't believe it.
- The Conspiracy: It turns out that a secret group of arms manufacturers have been manipulating intelligence API analyzes, profiting from catastrophic world events which kill thousands of people, including fellow US citizens. They use crossword puzzles which have been placed in international newspapers as codes to signal secret operations.
- Oh, Crap!: Everyone's faces when they see the news report about the oil tanker explosion in the penultimate episode of season one.
- Public Secret Message: A secret society publishes messages encrypted in crossword puzzles in newspapers.
- Red Herring: Yeah, you thought the big disaster would happen in St. Louis and/or on Katherine's anniversary, too. Pretty sneaky, sis.
- Right Behind Me: Played hilariously in 1.10 with Miles sitting on the table and sarcastically suggesting that Kateb is in fact Santa Claus...not realizing that Spangler has entered behind him.
- Sexy Secretary:
- Maggie, Will's secretary who is also spying on him for Kale.
- James Wheeler, former friend of David Hadas, is paying his secretary extra for sex at 3p.m. every day.
- Shout-Out: There's an framed Invisibles cover in Miles' office and Julia (an API Urdu translator) has a Triforce tattoo.
- Straight Gay: Kale turns out to have a boyfriend, Walter, who he lives with. Walter is the first person he shows emotion and affection toward, though it's mild. It's also implied that Bloom was once involved with him. They're all very average, completely lacking stereotypical traits of gay men.
