Why ‘Bull’ needs a Moriarty (and why Cote de Pablo should be cast)

Through the majority of “Bull” season 1, it’s been established that Dr. Jason Bull is absolutely brilliant at what he does. He’s incredibly smart, very shrewd, and somehow this is a man who has yet to lose a case in the live-action portion of the show that we’ve seen so far on CBS.

Now that we’ve said that, we have to pose an interesting question: Are we in need of a bigger threat? You can easily see where we are going just in looking at the title for this article. There are some easy comparisons to be made between Bull and Sherlock Holmes — both operating independently in many ways of their profession, both rarely ever lose cases that they set out to complete, and they are experts at reasoning. The main difference is that with Bull, his reasoning is more tied to reading other people than it is a read of evidence and of deducing the path of a crime.

What “Bull” lacks for now is his own Moriarty, a character who is a terrifying threat, is an equally smart adversary, and is capable of defeating him in a way that almost no one else can.

There are several different ways to introduce such a character. Maybe this is a prosecutor who Bull squared off against in the past, or maybe it’s a new consultant who works on reading the jury and trial science much in the way that he does. They can have a past that is linked in the way that maybe they went to school together, or they can have a past that stems from time spent in various courtrooms. Given that we are so early into the series, it’s easy to justify why we haven’t heard of such a character — there’s been no reason to bring them up.

Now, let’s get to the Cote de Pablo side of things. Back when the show was casting Bull’s ex-wife, we know that there were many people hoping for it to be Michael Weatherly’s former “NCIS” co-star. Upon reflection, we’re glad it was Yara Martinez instead. She was great in the role, and we think that for any actor, the idea is that you want to try to do something a little bit different than anything that you did before. Playing another love-interest type character would be fun, but mixing things up is all the more exciting.

Therefore, to us there is something tremendously exciting to see Cote play a part of a notorious adversary of Bull’s, his Moriarty or Lex Luthor, if you will. Have her turn up in a couple of episodes at the end of the season, and have her be the one who potentially defeats Bull and makes him question everything. We know that she has her own things going on, but part of the fun about this sort of role is that you could find other ways in the future to bring her back. It would be a really fun way to circumvent “NCIS” to put these two actors in opposition to each other, and for Cote as an actress, what would be more fun than being perceived as a villain? This particular role would be exciting given that as a person working with the prosecution, she’d probably interpret what she is doing as right and 100% just.

Like this idea? Loathe it? Either way, we want to hear from you below! Meanwhile, head over here to read more about the next new episode of “Bull” coming up. (Photo: CBS.)