Take Two is an ABC Police Procedural that launched on June 21, 2018 for 13 episodes.
Samantha Swift (Rachel Bilson) spent eight years starring on the hit cop TV show "Hot Justice." But the same week her show was canceled, her actor boyfriend dumped her on the red carpet after she discovered he was cheating on her. This sent Samantha on a wild binge of drinking and partying and ruined her career.
Fresh out of rehab, Samantha decides to research a comeback role of a private eye. Her agent hooks her up with Eddie Valetik (Eddie Cibrian), who's not happy. Samantha accidentally helps Eddie solve a case and the resulting publicity convinces him to hire her on as his partner where her acting skills and "experience" playing a cop (along with her celebrity connections) helps them out.
ABC announced in November 2018 that the show was cancelled.
Tropes
- Actor Allusion: Patching Eddie up, Sam remarks "I'm not a doctor but I played one on TV".
- Attending Your Own Funeral: Samantha does this with a client who faked his death. They're both in disguise, and the "dearly departed" is a tad upset to see that folks who supposedly hated him are attending and a guy hitting on his "widow."
- Bad "Bad Acting": Done a few times by Samantha who can be good in some roles on a case but go over the top on others.
- Bad Job, Worse Uniform: Samantha finds her job prospects are limited thanks to her past and is horrified at a certain offer. When her agent says it's not like porn, she snaps "porn would be a step up!". At the episode's end, we see the job: A TV ad with Samantha dressed in a ridiculous giant pizza costume. Naturally, Eddie loves it.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Sam soon reveals she's a genius at this, able to slip into a part and trick someone into opening doors for her or giving up info by acting like a person of authority.
- Body Double: When her old actress friend is killed, Samantha is thrown to see what looks like the woman entering a bank the day after her death. She then remembers how Ava had some lookalikes including how she once spent five minutes talking to one before realizing it wasn't really her.
- Book Ends: The first episode has Sam visiting Eddie, when he opens the door to her shirtless while post-coital Christine is getting dressed in the background. In the season finale, Eddie opens the door shirtless to Christine while Sam is getting dressed in the background.
- Break the Haughty: Happens before the show with Sam admitting she let a lot of her fame go to her head and the humiliation of being publicly dumped and turning into a tabloid joke has changed her attitude.
- Death Faked for You: Samantha suggests this for a client hunted by a killer. Eddie points out how idiotic it is and involves getting numerous doctors to agree. His own police contact notes how it's nuts but also admits it's so offbeat that it just might work.
- Decontamination Chamber: At the end of "About Last Night", Sam and Eddie think they've been exposed to nerve gas and hurry to the shower and begin to scrub themselves clean... Only for the amused FBI agent to interrupt it and tell them the nerve gas wasn't real.
- Engineered Public Confession:
- A good tactic by the duo such as tricking a guy into talking to his would-be victim which is streamed live to the LAPD.
- Subverted when Samantha and Eddie talk to a guy on how he tried to kill someone to cover his involvement in a big drug-smuggling ring. He suspects them of being wired and plays dumb...unaware the two were distracting them while a friend broke into the guy's office and stole his laptop with all the evidence.
- Friends with Benefits: Eddie and his LAPD contact, Christine Rollins, have an on-off fling going on.
- Gone Horribly Right: A man gets a terminal cancer diagnosis and wishes to spare his family seeing him slowly die. He thus arranges for a hitman to go after him so his family can get the insurance. At which point, he learns he was misdiagnosed and tries to end the contract.
- Home Porn Movie: When Sam's ex-boyfriend comes to seek helping finding his stolen laptop, Sam first turns him down. She changes her tune when he reveals the computer happens to have an intimate video of the two together that he said he'd deleted. Thus, Sam is racing to get the computer back before someone posts the video online.
- The Intern: Monica is Sam's unpaid assistant who joins the firm as she finds it a great subject for a project as she studies for her psychology degree.
- Locked in a Room: Has happened twice to the main leads in the first five episodes.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
- Happens a few times. For example, trying to get back a stolen laptop exposes connections to a massive drug smuggling ring.
- Eddie's first scene has him meeting a client whose car was stolen. Eddie reveals he's not only found it but figured out the guy arranged for it to be stolen himself to cover up how it was used in the hit and run of a teenager.
- Modesty Bedsheet:
- In "About Last Night", when Eddie and Sam wake up naked in bed. When she leaves the bed to search for their clothes she takes the sheet with her as cover, leaving Eddie to resort to using a pillow to cover himself.
- Also used in the finale when Sam and Eddie sleep together.
- Mr. Fanservice: Eddie spends several scenes shirtless.
- Noodle Incident: Sam will have a lot of offhand mentions of wild antics she's done from partying to meeting various celebrities.
- Non-Nude Bathing: Sam and Eddie only strip down to their underwear for their decontamination shower. The scene is still played for Fanservice since Sam has a Lingerie Scene white Eddie has a Shirtless Scene.
- Once per Episode: Almost every episode involves Sam dressing up in some costume. Like on Burn Notice, except played for comedy.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Eddie and Sam are kidnapped by bad guys who want to know why they're asking about Trevor. It takes some back and forth about "papers" and "purebreed" for it to come out that while they were looking for a dog, the crime boss assumed they were looking for someone called Trevor.
- Recruiting the Criminal: Eddie and Sam know a woman is a cat burglar who stole a painting for a corrupt businessman. Eddie decides to go ahead and hire her to steal it back from the guy.
- Running Gag: Besides the This Is Reality segment below, Samantha will have a tendency to go into a strong and warm speech of encouragement. After which Eddie (or someone else) will dryly note she's just quoting a scene from her show.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: "Stillwater" has a wild one. Eddie and Sam are investigating people vanishing in the title town, supposedly taken by aliens. A woman who comes back is suddenly able to walk after a couple of years in a wheelchair. It turns out all the people taken had done work for a local winemaker, unaware he was using contaminated materials that made them sick. Realizing if they figured it out, he'd be facing a monster lawsuit, the man used reports of old UFO sightings to his advantage. He used his tech to fake the abductions and have them treated by a doctor for their "cures." As the sheriff says after he's arrested, the man figured spending a million dollars on a massive alien hoax was better than paying out hundreds of millions in settlements.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: A key reason Eddie takes Sam's help is that her fame opens up doors to the rich and famous that would be closed to him.
- Sam also has contacts like a former NSA agent who can track a phone signal on the sly.
- Sam gets a corrupt company owner to give info by threatening to tell her very large social media following how terrible the company is and hurt its business.
- Shout-Out:
- A bounty hunter compares the Eddie/Sam partnership to Remington Steele.
- When Eddie and Sam are called into an alleged alien abduction, the local sheriff calls them "Mulder and Scully".
- Skewed Priorities: Sam is investigating the death of Ava, her former co-star on a TV show Sam worked on when she was a kid. During an interrogation, Sam learns that a producer was talking about reviving the show. Instead of seeing it a major clue, Sam is more upset she wasn't asked about joining.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: How the Sam/Eddie partnership works at first as Eddie thought Sam just a bimbo and she found him a jerk. It seemed to end as the movie she was trying out for was canceled but he hired her on for the publicity.
- The second episode justifies the teaming a bit more. At a court hearing, Sam is accused of breaking rehab by being photographed leaving a bar. Eddie speaks up to explain she was helping him on a case and he can vouch she didn't touch a drop. The judge thus declares Eddie will be Sam's appointed guardian, thus explaining him keeping a closer eye on her.
- Themed Aliases: On one occasion Eddie and Sam pretend to be health and safety inspectors called David Addison and Maddie Hayes, giving a Shout-Out to an earlier detective-rom-com show with a low-rent private eye teamed up with a broke female former celebrity.
- This Is Reality:
- A Running Gag of the show is Samantha bringing up stuff she did on her TV show and Eddie snapping that doesn't work in real life.
- Watching a video, Samantha says they need to "enhance the resolution." Eddie dryly points out how "it's scientifically impossible" to do that.
- Samantha suggests Eddie triangulate a phone signal to find its source. Eddie snorts even a real cop would have problems with that without a warrant which "takes a lot longer than a commercial break" to get.
- Subverted when they're held at gunpoint and Sam disarms the guy with the same "kick a gun" move she used on her show. Even she can't believe it works and Eddie admits he figured she'd miss and he'd just use the distraction to attack the guy.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: "About Last Night" begins with Sam and Eddie waking up in bed together, naked and no memory of the night before. It turns out they were drugged as part of a frame-up job, in order to lure out another bad guy. Except the people who drugged our heroes say they didn't put Sam and Eddie in bed together.
- Will They or Won't They?:
- Eddie and Sam. It's even lampshaded by Eddie's on/off LAPD lover who notes how close he's feeling about her. Becomes a Relationship Upgrade in the season finale
- Also, Berto and Monica.
