‘American Hostage’ Puts Jon Hamm’s Fred Heckman in an Impossible Position — Can He Still Be a Journalist?

Fred Heckman’s job has always been to report the news. In American Hostage, he ends up becoming part of it. Within the first two episodes of the show, CBS offers him a job, his wife understands how much the offer tempts him, his church ties come into play, and a gun appears, and Jon Hamm plays Heckman as a man who cannot sit still.

The series opens in Indianapolis on February 8, 1977, with Heckman working at WIBC, a respected news station, while also dealing with a career crossroads. CBS has made an offer, and his wife Barbara (Mireille Enos) is right: “It’s a big stage, and I know you want that.”

Tony’s Plan

Tony Kiritsis (Giovanni Ribisi) meets with Dick Hall (Kristoffer Polaha), a mortgage executive, before he can settle on a move. Tony pins the ruin of his plans on the Hall family, who kept him from developing 17 acres of land into a shopping destination with a steakhouse. With the land facing foreclosure, Tony fabricates a broken arm, draws Dick aside, and pulls out a sawed-off shotgun, wiring it to Dick’s neck with a dead man’s line around the trigger. If Tony is shot or loses control, Dick dies.

Instead of simply keeping the hostages, Tony does something that stands apart from what a usual hostage taker would do — he calls the police himself.

As the police close in around Meridian Mortgage, Fred and the WIBC team start reporting the story. Reporter Ben Hairston (William Jackson Harper) delves into Tony’s background, while Fred dispatches other members of the team to hunt down any information on the man holding Dick hostage. Fred also has a personal stake in this: he worships at the same church as Dick.

Then Tony asks for Fred by name.

Why Tony Chose Fred

Giovanni Ribisi explained to TV Insider why Tony trusted Fred so completely. “I think Tony had an agenda. I think he wanted to rattle the cage and do something that was somewhat radical so that he could get the attention, and someone like Fred Heckman would give him a conduit to be able to tell his story.”

Ribisi took things further. “Now, in the research that they did, Tony was a big fan of Fred Heckman, his radio show, and everything that he stood for, which was a contrast to today’s media, where it’s thumbing through TikTok or Instagram and seeing things that would almost be violent or pornographic or whatever that is. I think Fred Heckman represented an ideal, and I think that spoke to Tony.”

Fred was a pillar of the community, and a great many people listened to him. That fact weighed on a man who was alone with a gun and a dead man’s line on a hostage’s neck.

What Tony Wants

Tony is adamant about having a live, uncensored interview with Fred, where he can lay out his case against his father M.L. Hall, his brothers, and Dick. He believes they are “cheats and liars” who have spent years scheming to take his property. Tony wants Indianapolis to hear his side of the story because he feels he isn’t simply a lunatic. If Fred doesn’t given that chance, and he says Dick is a dead man if they don’t listen.

Jerry Morris (Job Cobden), the station chief, now faces a decision that goes well beyond ordinary news operations. Broadcasting Tony live on the air risks serious financial damage. Tony’s words could draw FCC fines, sponsors could leave, and Ben brings up a terrible possibility: what happens if Tony kills Dick on the air?

The Apartment

Tony isn’t staying put. He marches Dick out of Meridian Mortgage at gunpoint, past police and news crews, before taking him to his booby-trapped apartment. When a pastor offers to take Dick’s place, Tony refuses. When Tony slips on the ice, one wrong move from a police officer nearly brings the entire situation to a bloody end.

Fred ends up right in the middle of the story, rather than simply reporting it, once Tony and Dick return to Tony’s apartment, and Fred makes his choice. WIBC puts Tony live and uncensored on the air. It’s place.

Shawn Ryan’s Take

Coshowrunner, writer, and exec producer Shawn Ryan explained what Fred saw in the calls from Tony. “Fred was really lionized in Indianapolis. He was the most trusted voice in news, and I think he was a great reporter. And when Tony first called, I think he realized there is a story here, and that he has something to tell that’s going to be important.”

The next marker in the material, “I think Fred sensed from the beginning that there was something extraordinarily newsworthy and something that the public, not out of prurient interest, but of real value that could be had from this conversation.”, is a passage from the text that the speaker, Ryan, proceeds to quote.

What The Show Sets Up

By the time of Episode 2, Tony uses that platform to set out his argument against the Halls. He describes the family as a “three-headed monster” whose real estate, mortgage and construction businesses allowed them to profit from people like him, and he claims they planned from the beginning to take his property.

Across its eight episodes, the series investigates what that means. Fred, from the beginning, realizes the story extends beyond a hostage situation. He understands it points to something else entirely.

Here is how the story unfolds across the first two episodes:

The show’s setup puts Fred in an impossible position. Tony is a hostage-taker who picks a radio journalist because the man stands for clean, honest news unlike today’s rubbish. And the journalist still puts him on air anyway.

It is a story where a person is held as a hostage, but the person holding them is the tale itself. The show has built a situation where the writer becomes the story, and the story becomes the writer.

Fred Heckman is caught in multiple kinds of entrapment, held between a man wielding a weapon and a public demanding the truth, regardless of the consequences.

The strain runs through the first two episodes, and Fred is aware the story involves far more than a hostage situation.

Source material: “‘American Hostage’ Puts Jon Hamm’s Fred Heckman in an Impossible Position — Can He Still Be a Journalist?,” TV Insider.

American Hostage · CBS · dramas · Jon Hamm · TV Review