Lifetime’s ‘Against the Wall’ isn’t too promising

The jubilant musical celebration of counterculture from the 1960s featuring Treat Williams in one of the only roles I’ve ever enjoyed him in (no, I never saw “Everwood – I’m sure he was wonderful) would have been way more entertaining than, say, the premiere of “Against the Wall,” where he played the dour cop father of Abby Kowalski.

Oh, I’m sure under normal circumstances his character is charming. He’s married to a caterer and his three sons are, like him, also cops in Chicago.

But in Sunday’s premiere of Lifetime’s new family drama, he learned his only daughter, Abby, also a cop, had made detective ... and she’d joined Internal Affairs.

Insert ominous chord.

This was the entire episode. Although she’d had the assignment for a week, Abby – played by Rachael Carpani – could not bring herself to tell her father, or anyone in her family.

Two of her brothers find out by chance when they run into her at the station, and one of them referred to her newly assigned partner, Lina Flores, played by Marisa Ramirez (”Roswell,” “Miracles” and “Mental”) as “that (expletive) from Internal Affairs.”

And Abby said she didn’t know if Lina was an expletive – she’d only just met her – but that she was indeed in Internal Affairs and was in fact her new partner.

Her brothers immediately call their other brother, Richie, and he and his partner, John Brody, meet Abby for lunch. All of them want to know if she’s told dad, yet, about this incredible scandal.

The other scandal is right under Richie’s nose. Richie doesn’t know John is seeing Abby. Well, they’re not together. Abby calls John whenever she needs ... companionship. She’ll call, say “I need to see you,” and the camera cuts to the two of them in his bed. Afterward she leaves.

John asks Richie, in passing, if Abby is seeing anyone, and he says, “I’ll kill you.” He says John isn’t Abby’s type, and then admits he doesn’t know what her type is.

But this secret relationship is part of why Abby isn’t seeing anyone socially. She tries to have a nice date with someone but it falls apart for reasons best known by the writers.

Oh, and in the meantime she’s got a new job as a detective in Internal Affairs! And she’s got a case – some aging married cop involved in a bar brawl defending his mistress.

Abby conducts an “interview” – one that certainly master interrogator Brenda Leigh Johnson of “The Closer” wouldn’t waste the word on – and she and Lina sail out and interview the mistress, his fellow cops, finally getting around to his abusive wife.

Plot twist

In all of this, I do not know what they learned that was of much value. I’d rather watch Mary McDonnell in “The Closer.” Yes, she’s in Internal Affairs there and has an anta-gonistic relationship with the rank-and-file cops there, too, but in her show they respect her because she is a consummate professional.

Abby is ... not. She seems to have had no training in conducting interviews, taking notes or documentation, she doesn’t suggest the guy might want his union rep present, and really, her attitude is strange for a person who grew up in a houseful of cops. See, I don’t imagine she’s the first cop Internal Affairs has hired from the force, so she’s probably at least a little sympathetic to what they’re all going through.

Instead, everyone’s reacting to her like she’s grown a second head. Her dad screams at her: “Internal Affairs?! Cops have a code! We look out for our own!” As if most of three decades marinating in Kowalski wouldn’t give her at least that level of insight.

The final scene set the stage they’d been building to all episode long: Abby is called out to investigate a case and surprise! It’s her brother, Richie. Whatever shall she do?

Not much, in that I’m pretty sure no police department in the country would risk the civil suit guaranteed by a sister investigating her brother in an officer-involved shooting. They just need to make those Sunday dinners that much more awkward.

It’s maybe a good Lifetime drama, but I don’t think it’s a good cop drama. And I don’t think it’s an especially good show. It’s pretty disorganized, the dialogue is basically junior high, and people’s reactions to each other are just painful.

And when pretty much the whole pilot episode is driven by “I’ve got a secret – it’s my JOB,” it’s not an especially promising start.

New episodes of “Against the Wall” premiere Sundays at 10/9c on Lifetime.