Review: ‘Quantico’ Flips Between Jousting F.B.I. Recruits and a Terrorist Attack

Successful producers shape the TV business through the shows that they make. Monumental producers shape the TV business even through the shows that they don’t.

Shonda Rhimes, for instance, reached a milestone last season when she began producing a full three hours of ABC’s Thursday night lineup. But arguably her greater influence is proved by “Quantico,” a seemingly Rhimesian terrorism drama that Ms. Rhimes did not make.

You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. “Quantico” has many of the trademarks that have made the emotional thrills of “Scandal” et al. the institutional voice of ABC drama. The roller-coaster plot reversals and the reveals laboratory-engineered to melt Twitter. The multicultural, multiamorous group of competitive young workaholics alternately getting in one another’s faces and pants. The closing sequence set to a heartfelt recent pop song — here, “First” by Cold War Kids. (“Quantico” was created by Joshua Safran; one of his fellow executive producers, Mark Gordon, is also one of the many executive producers of Ms. Rhimes’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” so there is some connection.)

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And very much like “How to Get Away With Murder” (Ms. Rhimes is the executive producer and Peter Nowalk the creator), the first episode of “Quantico” flashes forward to a horrific crime that the series promises to solve, then doubles back to tell an origin story.

We first meet Alex (Priyanka Chopra) regaining consciousness in a heap of rubble that used to be Grand Central Terminal. Nine months earlier, she’s arriving for a 20-week training course at the titular F.B.I. Academy in Virginia just after having a front-seat quickie en route with Ryan (Jake McLaughlin), a stubbly stranger who, of course, turns out to be a fellow F.B.I. candidate. Somewhere between the rubble and the stubble, the appeal of “Quantico” is meant to lie.

The pilot is nothing novel, but it is an efficient character- and exposition-establishment machine, each of whose parts has double functions. (The academy’s claustrophobic dormitory setup, for instance, both fosters tension and provides plenty of chances for characters to stumble upon one another in their underwear.) Again, as in “Murder,” the aspirants are greeted/terrified by a no-nonsense mentor, Miranda (Aunjanue Ellis), who immediately gives them a test: Find out a dark secret about a fellow recruit within 24 hours or get the boot.

The assignment introduces conflict and a theme — everyone has something to hide. The Southern belle, Shelby (Johanna Braddy), is tougher than she appears; the idealistic Mormon, Eric (Brian J. Smith), more compromised; the devout Muslim, Nimah (Yasmine Al Massri), more complex; the gay recruit, Simon (Tate Ellington), more conservative.

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But these character-building tidbits may also be clues. Flash forward, and the Grand Central bombing is believed to be the work of a mole in Alex’s academy class. She’s both investigating the attack and a suspect in it, dogged by Liam O’Connor (Josh Hopkins), an academy instructor looking to redeem himself with the bureau after his own past failings.

The strongest human asset in “Quantico” is Ms. Chopra, a Bollywood superstar and former Miss World who is immediately charismatic and commanding amid the otherwise generic ensemble. If there’s a problem with her casting, it’s that she may come across as too seasoned and assured to be persuasive as a shaky, neophyte recruit.

Or is that exactly what they want you to think? If there’s one thing you can assume about the characters on “Quantico,” it’s that there’s more to them than you assume. Like not only “Scandal” but “Homeland” and many other heightened serials today, “Quantico” is hooked on twists. The last half of the pilot includes a revelation about one recruit that raises the plot’s outrageousness to threat-level “Empire.”

The narrative gymnastics make the first half-hour of “Quantico” pass quickly and entertainingly. Too much of this, though, keeps you from investing much in the characters. Why bother if they might become different people after the next commercial break?

But this is an example of how adept “Quantico” is at absorbing TV’s most popular thriller tropes. There’s also the gambit of establishing a character’s brilliance through Sherlock-like observations (as when Alex finds the holes in Ryan’s faked personal history by glancing at his hands and shoes), the conspiracies within conspiracies and the ubiquitous device of linking a character’s professional talents to personal damage. (That Alex is motivated to join the bureau by an Olivia Pope-like history of family heartbreak is no spoiler at all.)

If great TV takes many hands to make, competently O.K. TV like “Quantico” takes even more — it doesn’t do much to hide its borrowings. It does at least repackage them divertingly, but it lacks the idiosyncrasy that grounds a show like “Scandal” through its wildest flights. What remains to be seen is if “Quantico” is no more than what it appears to be, or if there’s a distinctive terror story underneath, like a mole with an exceptionally pretty disguise.