What’s Worth Watching: Battle Creek: Dog Days in Michigan

Battle Creek, “Heirlooms” (Sunday, March 22, 10/9c, CBS)

“You think your dog is better than our dog?” Like the proverbial dog with a bone, Battle Creek‘s cynical Detective Russ Agnew (Dean Winters) just can’t drop his defensive edge when it comes to handsome FBI interloper Milt Chamberlain (Josh Duhamel) in this clever twist on a buddy cop drama. It’s one thing for Milt to upstage the locals with his dazzling federally funded crime-solving gizmos, but when he brings in the K9 “Agent Frazier” to assist in tracking down a dog’s snout-print left at the crime scene of a waitress’s murder, Russ has had enough. It’s game on between Agent Frazier and Russ’s homegrown pooch, Cookie, to get to the source of their latest mystery.

Russ is just as dogged when it comes to trying to figure out just why golden-boy Milt was reassigned to little old Battle Creek (“It’s like a step down from Boise”). And because this week’s case is mostly routine, the fun in executive producer David Shore’s script comes from watching Russ play on Milt’s sense of decency and fairness, opening up about his own past—though can he be trusted to tell the truth?—in hopes that Milt will finally spill. Will either, though, be able to sniff out a liar?