(S01E04) - Lives are more important than livelihood.

A major political leader's daughter has been kidnapped by militant insurgents and only one government insider can save her. Throw in a pair of electric nipple clamps hooked up to a car battery and a ticking clock, and it sounds like you've got an episode of 24.

This, however, was last night's Kings. Episode four takes a seemingly innocent decision to give Port of Prosperity to rival Gath and almost turns the whole affair into the white hot embers of a growing civil war within Shiloh.

King Silas' decision to give Gath the Port of Prosperity returns to bite him in the ass when its residents don't like their leader's use of eminent domain. So Silas puts our hero David Shepherd back in the spotlight to quell the growing insurgency and test his loyalty.

(S01E02) - "You're just one boy. What good can you do here against all that?"

Kings is a show about a lot of things: love, money, greed, power, guys in suits that cost more than one year of college tuition. Mostly it's about action and consequences. So if the show's premiere episode was about war as a consequence, then naturally the next episode should be about its root cause: politics.

We finally get a taste of the aristocracy from the inside in the second episode. All the scheming and conniving that makes the greatest primetime soap operas and dramas like The Shield and The West Wing so great to watch. The fun comes from figuring how people like Vic Mackey and President Bartlet are going to get themselves out one bear trap without chewing their own foot off and choking on the marrow.

In Kings' case, however, the plot seems to have found its way out of one bear trap and inadvertently stepped right into another.

(S01E01) - "We give up what we want when we want power."

The two-part premiere of NBC's new political morality drama Kings kicks off in ways you would expect.

It's not just a political soap opera. It's a war epic. It's a family drama. It's a historical fantasy, even though such a thing sounds completely improbable. At times, it's even a comedy. All of these genres get their chance to shine in the show's first episode, "Goliath," and not all of them work, but they make for an interesting mix of television conventions.