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Doozie’s Doghouse
DreamWorks’ ‘Doozie’s Doghouse’ serves as a sister series to ‘Gabby’s Dollhouse,’ offering an imaginative, fun and kid-friendly Netflix show.
When FBI agent Jack Strickland lectures would-be agents during his Principles of Crime class, he breaks down a major burglary like this: “A high-asset robbery is 12 months in planning, 12 hours in execution. A bank robber who’s not caught in 12 days is not caught at all.”
That is the premise behind Apple TV’s crime thriller 12 12 12. It chronicles those 12 months, 12 hours and 12 days, jumping between timelines at will and whim. And it puts Strickland and Paul Galvin—a robber that Strickland desperately wants to catch—on the clock.
Honestly, Paul would rather not be a robber at all. His last gig—a lucrative job in Newark, New Jersey—should’ve set him up to live comfortably for the rest of his life. But the burglary came with some bloody collateral damage, and that’s not Paul’s scene. He wanted settle into a safe, quiet existence as a family man. He hoped to marry his girlfriend, Severine, who was carrying his child.
But another branch of the family had other ideas.
Bobby, Paul’s no-account brother, was a big reason the Newark job went sideways. Now, he’s the reason Paul needs to get back into thieving. Bobby spent his cut from the Newark job. Then stole Paul’s cut. Then got mixed up with some even more dangerous folks who’d love to break into a Swiss bank and steal about $1 billion from the Russian mafia. And if Paul and Bobby don’t help? Well, their new employers will just kill them and everyone they know and love. How’s that for an incentive?
Fast-forward a solid 12 months, and hey, look at that! FBI Agent Jack Strickland is in Switzerland himself. He has some familiarity with the Galvins’ work in Newark: His partner on the force was killed in the course of its investigation, and Jack blames himself for her death.
Is the fact that Jack is now stationed in this relative European backwater punishment or penance? Maybe a little of both. But there’s another reason, too: Jack has a source inside Paul’s inner circle. Jack knows that Paul is planning something big. Really big. And if Jack can catch Paul and his cronies this time ‘round … well, maybe his old partner can truly rest in peace.
And maybe Jack can rest a little easier, too.
Thanks to its running clock and time-centric gimmick, 12 12 12 can feel a little like Fox’s still-beloved crime thriller 24, though the gimmick is totally flipped on its head.
In 24, Jack Bauer had a literal day to solve the latest world-ending crisis, with each episode counting down Jack’s margin in real time. It felt grounded—e ven if Mr. Bauer could drive across Los Angeles in 10 minutes or so.
In contrast, 12 12 12 picks the viewer out of would-be standard timeline and flings you into the past or the future, into a nice, sunny day in May or the day after Christmas. You might be with Paul as he plots how to break into a super-secure bank vault. Or you could be hanging out with Jack as he stares through a gaping hole in that vault.
Yeah, spoiler alert: The bank gets robbed. But how and why and how many things go wrong are still unanswered, and Apple TV’s counting on those little mysteries—as well as whether Jack Strickland catches his quarry—to bring viewers back.
But other elements may spoil this show as well.
As you might expect, 12 12 12 is rated TV-MA, with problems as numerous as the Swiss Francs the Galvins steal. The dialogue is peppered with the strongest sort of profanity, with nearly 50 f-words in the opening episode alone. Sexual content can be surprisingly strong, as well, including nudity and near nudity.
And even though Paul really, really doesn’t want anyone to get hurt, violence and death seem to follow him and his crew. People are threatened, attacked and sometimes killed. And there’s at least one instance where someone takes their own life.
To be sure, 12 12 12 has its merits. It stars top-shelf actors Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie as Paul and Jack, respectively, and the storyline is taut and compelling. But the show’s content issues present a viable concern. And many viewers, like Paul, might wish they were never dragged into the whole mess in the first place.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
The first scene in the series takes place on Christmas Eve, and Paul Galvin’s 12-hour plan is just about to get underway. He meets brother Bobby at a local church service, and soon a contortionist is snaking his way out of a sizable safe-deposit slot.
In the 12-month, pre-robbery timeline, we see Paul happily talking and canoodling with Severine. When he learns that she’s pregnant, Paul trots down to a nearby grocery store to buy a massive engagement ring—where he’s promptly kidnapped by thugs associated with his brother. In the post-robbery, 12-day timeline, Jack Strickland moans about Swiss coffee and tries to suss out more information on an impending robbery masterminded by his mortal enemies, the Galvins. He doesn’t know where they’ll strike, but he has been told when: New Year’s Day. In other words, Jack thinks he has a week to prepare.
The contortionist in Paul’s plan emerges from the slot totally naked. We see him from the side and the rear, and we may get a glimpse of his privates a time or two if someone’s particularly handy with a pause button. (He eventually slips on a hooded, head-to-toe plastic garment that had been hidden in another safe deposit box.) About a year earlier, Paul and Severine have sex: We see Severine’s breasts and most of their respective bodies, though their genitals are always covered. We hear a crude reference to masturbation.
When Paul learns that Severine is pregnant, he goes to talk to her father about marrying her. The father, Serge, quotes Karl Marx, saying that marriage is “the purest form of exploitation.” But while Serge is a great fan of Marx, he disagrees with him here.
A man is apparently killed in a robbery, and his mangled body is found by authorities. A van smashes into a jewelry store: Paul throws himself over the store’s clerk to protect him. Paul is then dragged away at gunpoint. A car chase leads to a crash. Bobby flashes a gun in a church. We hear about casualties in the Newark job. Paul and Bobby get into a fight. Paul’s new employers threaten both him and Severine. A man is poisoned; he projectile vomits over some security screens before he’s rendered unconscious. (The poison was administered to knock the guy out, not kill him.)
A ring is stolen. The location of ill-gotten gains is discussed. Paul jokes that Severine’s preborn baby should be fine, as Severine’s smoking habit is “down to five cigarettes a day.”
Paul and Bobby reminisce about their petty-thief father and the time he took Paul to rob a house during midnight Mass. “A house full of museum-quality antiques and Dad lifts the Betamax,” Paul says with a rueful smile. We hear other references to that evening, and to Mass, later.
Someone leaves a Quran on the sidewalk—apparently as a diversion. Bobby asks Paul how he can know certain things: “What is it, the Holy Bible?” he says. “Are you the Oracle of Delphi? Nostradamus?” Someone serves a Christmas meal for a guard working late and says, “God bless the Christ child.” The Galvins are well aware of Jack Strickland, and they call him the Holy Ghost.
Jack demeans his Swiss coworkers by calling them “Swiss cheese” and “fondue.” (They don’t seem to like him much, either.) A Swiss officer asks whether Jack was stationed in Switzerland due to his race: “American police are killing Black people all over the place, yet you are a policeman who is Black,” she says, continuing her purposely combative inquiries. Jack notes that she’s being racist, quipping that he’s more used to “the old American racism.”
We hear 45 f-words and about seven s-words. Also overheard are “a–,” “b–tard,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is misused three times, twice with the word “d–n.”
In the show’s 12-month timeline, Paul and his new employer begin strategizing for how to steal more than 800 million Swiss franc notes. In the 12-hour robbery timeline, Paul’s crew discovers a curious safeguard that they must somehow navigate without blowing up the vault. And in the 12-day, post-robbery timeline, Jack begins his pursuit of the criminals—even capturing one after a frantic foot chase.
Jack confronts the burglar, who notes that his fellows call Jack the “Holy Ghost.” Jack admits that he gravitated to the job because he was doing unapologetically good work (unlike the rest of his family, all lawyers). “I have something that they never will have,” he says. “That’s respect. An aura. A f—ing halo. And Galvin stole that from me!”
As the conversation goes on, the burglar suggests that Paul Galvin is the one who “still believes in something.”
“So do I,” Jack says. “I believe in revenge. That’s something.”
“Until you have it. And then it’s nothing at all,” the man replies.
A man jumps out of a window several stories up, intending to kill himself. We see his bloodied, battered body as he expires. We hear that Serge, Severine’s father, has cancer. (We see him cough a bit of blood into a handkerchief.) One man chases another through some city streets. We hear that if the vault security measure is set off, it’ll likely collapse the roof—killing the contortionist still trapped in the vault. Someone suggests throwing an injured man into a fire.
The burglars and their ruthless benefactors hope to rob a Russian crime lord, and they are working with the crime lord’s financial advisor to do so. When Paul asks the man why his help is worth 10% of the total take, the man notes that “the previous advisor and his entire family simply disappeared. So that’s my level of risk … I have a family, too.”
People drink whiskey. We hear about 20 f-words, four s-words and a couple of other profanities (“a–,” “g-dd–n” and “b–ch”). Jesus’ name is abused three times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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