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Josh Duhamel

'Battle Creek' cops mix like oil and water

Bill Keveney
USA TODAY
Dean Winters, left, and Josh Duhamel patrol "Battle Creek."

LOS ANGELES – As Battle Creek, Mich., police puzzle over the smoking, charred shell of a Mercedes-Benz, their impeccably attired FBI liaison, Special Agent Milt Chamberlain (Josh Duhamel), approaches, looking like he just walked out of a GQ shoot.

He politely asks one detective if he can speak privately to Battle Creek police alpha-male Russ Agnew (Dean Winters), and the rough-hewn Agnew pushes back at his more polished counterpart: "He might not mind, but I mind."

This is not the beginning of a beautiful friendship, nor even the middle: The scene being filmed is from the 13th and final first-season episode of CBS' offbeat cop drama, Battle Creek, premiering Sunday (10 p.m. ET/PT).

"The two cops aren't buddies," Winters (Oz, Rescue Me) says during a break, standing under pine trees in a Los Angeles park doing stand-in work for the small Michigan city. "They respect each other, but there's no love lost here."

Milt and Russ are good cops but philosophical opposites, thrown together when the resource-rich FBI agent is assigned to work with the budget-strapped police department in a town that's emblematic of Rust Belt America. The equipment gap suggests Die Hard's "John McClane having to co-exist with James Bond," says Edward Foreman (My Name Is Earl), who plays Battle Creek Det. Aaron Funkhauser.

Russ and Milt, in their separate ways, also represent the show's idea of Battle Creek, with native son Russ representing the city's pride and resilience and Milt's optimism reflecting a positive outlook despite setbacks, says executive producer David Shore (House).

Russ has a more skeptical take on criminals and catching them, bending rules when necessary, while Milt is upbeat, taking a by-the-book approach that works for him. His contrasting nature rankles Russ, who can't quite match Milt's immaculate style. Winters likens his intense character to "a pot of boiling water. And there's something about Milt that just makes his pot boil over."

Milt threatens Russ' top-dog status among his colleagues, including Funkhauser, Det. Fontanelle White (Kal Penn), office manager Holly Dale (Aubrey Dollar) and their boss, Commander Guziewicz (Janet McTeer).

Shore, who built the first season from a pilot script written years ago by Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan, says he was drawn to "the Milt and Russ characters, exploring a different view on life and an approach to people, especially in a criminal setting. On House, I was exploring cynicism, and on this show, I feel in some ways I'm exploring optimism, without it being sappy."

If Milt and Russ make for uneasy investigative partners, Creek's serious, CBS-style crimes and off-kilter, cable-like comedy of manners are working comfortably together, says Duhamel (Las Vegas). The second episode, Syruptitious, deals with a maple-sugar cartel and another episode, Cereal Killer, is a nod to Battle Creek's breakfast heritage.

"That's what makes this show different. It does have procedural elements and deals with drugs, murder and prostitution, and yet it's also very funny," he says, seeing the mismatched investigators as more "spy vs. spy" than buddy tandem.

"It takes what people expect from a typical procedural and flips it on its head," says Duhamel. "It's somewhere between Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Criminal Minds or CSI."

The characters, however, are more complicated than they appear on the surface, as Milt's FBI career trajectory, which included Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, suggests a darker past.

"He tells some pretty heinous lies (to his colleagues) just to keep them off his trail, stuff that CBS wasn't very fond of at first but we talked them into it," says Duhamel, who visited the real Battle Creek. Russ "believes that if you do the right things, you can right the wrongs of the past. But your past always comes back."

The two characters may fit together more than they realize, Shore says. "Inside each of them is the other one on a certain level and I think they help each other bring that out and they need that other."

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