If you are a fan of How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal, you will be right at home with the new series Quantico, which premiered as one of the stronger pilots of the fall season for ABC.

Quantico is fronted by Bollywood superstar and former Miss World, Priyanka Chopra. Playing with the same flash-forward narrative style seen on How to Get Away with Murder, the highly respected Gossip Girl and Smash creator, Joshua Safran allows the story to skillfully unfold before the audience, frame by frame.

We are introduced to Alex Parrish (Piyanka), who has been knocked out by the impact of a lethal terrorist attack at Grand Central station. She is quickly taken in by the FBI, and is told to reflect on the months spent in training to narrow down who could possibly be behind the attack. Little does she know the tables will soon turn and those she thought she could trust are now the same people who could possibly be to blame for her predicament.

In the pilot, we meet a handful of FBI recruits on their first day of training. We see them as they meet each other and catch glimpses of who they are entering the program and the lives they led prior to entering the FBI academy.

In an interesting tactic to provide the audience with the appropriate amount of exposition, the new recruits’ first assignment is to find out each other’s secrets and expose them in a polygraph test. Tensions are high as each participant struggles with their dark past and the anxiety of being exposed.

The pilot instantly has you on the edge of your seat. The icing on the well-written story’s cake, is the strong cast hired to tell it. Alex’s love interest, Ryan (Jake McLaughlin), is scruffy, squinty and appropriately hunky.

UnREAL’s Johanna Braddy plays a fellow newbie who is a little boy-crazy and a little gun-crazy. Josh Hopkins from Cougartown plays the grumpy instructor who teaches everyone the basics of conducting a proper interrogation. Brian J. Smith plays Eric, the Mormon with a secret, Graham Rogers plays Caleb, the handsome golden boy, and Yasmine Al Masr is Nimah, the new Muslim trainee.

These are just a few of the many characters you can expect from the new series. Each character has been well developed and their backstories make them intriguing. Everyone is not who they seem, which is apparent from episode one.

From the pilot alone it seems that Safran has multiple storyline options to take the show’s focus. Will the show focus on the FBI training, the terrorism investigation, the blend of present and past we see in the pilot, or all three?

Even more, as Safran enters the genre of mystery and crime which is currently ruled by television sensation, Shonda Rhimes, will his show be able to compete with the likes of her works? Will the promise of Quantico be enough to keep the show afloat? We sure hope so.

Janay Boone – Managing Editor