TV's New Low-Tech Feds

The latest fictional federal agency to make its way to the small screen is the American Policy Institute, an intelligence analysis outfit featured in the new AMC series, Rubicon. In addition to having a name that makes it sound more like a think tank than an actual government organization, API is unlike contemporary agencies in another way, too.

It has to do with the fact that the series is an homage of sorts to 70s spy movies, with a dense and slow-moving plot involving some mysterious shadowy conspiracy. The show reinforces that throwback outlook by taking a distinctly Orszagian view of federal technology. The API employees featured in the show, who are portrayed as brainiac whiz kids, almost never touch computers, instead sorting through the stacks of paper files that constitute the day's "intake." The central character, Will Travers, who becomes head of one of the agency's teams under unusual circumstances, doesn't appear even to have a computer in his office. When he finally touches one in a common area of the agency five episodes into the series, it has an almost laughable DOS-era boot-up screen featuring scrolling green type.

Is that funny because it's true? Or just an inside joke about hidebound, backward-looking government?