woman (Leslie Hope) tends to her garden. She doesn't notice anything unusual about the new mailman (John Ventimiglia) until he shoots her neighbor dead. She races into her house to make a desperate call for help, but can't escape him.
John Burrows (Tim Guinee) is the primary detective on the case. He quickly discovers that the missing woman isn't whom she claimed to be. Odd facts begin to pop up and Burrows begins to put two and two together. As he digs deeper, he learns that the case has been turned over to Level 9, a top-secret government agency that uses advanced state-of-the-art technology to fight cyber-crime. Instantly, Burrows is pulled in, and he's introduced to Level 9 team leader Annie Price (Hodge).
Price tells him that someone hacked into the U.S. Marshal's computer program that oversees the witness protection program. That person now has the identities and locations of over 3,000 people, and the information is up for sale on the Internet. Six people have already been killed, while the missing woman, Grace Bishop, may still be alive.
The Level 9 team soon discovers that the person who took Grace is also involved with Price's archnemesis CrayZhorse. He is a master hacker who has dedicated himself to creating anarchy by leading others in a group called "The Great Uprising." CrayZhorse seems to have orchestrated both the murders and Grace's kidnapping. Price has gone up against him before and lost. But this time Price can't afford to lose, because Level 9 is the country's last and only line of defense against those who would seek to do the unthinkable.
Plot holes, but plenty of potential
Level 9 has the potential to be an exciting and scary look at what state-of-the-art technology and talented cops and criminals just might be able to do. That belief is based more on the premise than the actual pilot, which focuses on the wrong characters, has plot holes and is a poor introduction to the show.
The initial episode spends very little time introducing the Level 9 team.
Characters like Price, who do have a bit more screen time, are hard-edged and don't give us any reason to come back. The most appealing characters are Burrows and Grace, but they are not regular cast members. A new character, Jack Wiley (Max Martini) will be introduced in the second episode. However, there's no way to know what his character will bring to the series.
Beyond the problems with character, Level 9 has deeper troubles.
The story is a confusing hodgepodge that doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be. The really cool stuff, like how the team identifies the assassin after he drives by a surveillance camera, is only slightly touched upon. Instead, the boring good-guy-chases-bad-guy action drivel takes front stage. Bits and pieces of information about CrayZhorse are peppered through the script, but not to any great effect.
Many of the problems likely come because Guinee was originally meant to be the star of Level 9. A casting change brought in Martini as the new star of the show, but the producers decided to keep the original pilot and just make slight adjustments. This has created a lopsided and confusing pilot episode.
