Maybe it’s because I know a few people who have gone to med school, or that I know one in particular who went to med school later in life, but I kind of had a bit of hopefulness in watching the new CBS show, Carol’s Second Act. The short exposition dumped early in the episode is that Carol taught high school science, had some kids, etc., and then her marriage fell apart and she went to med school. Now she’s the oldest intern. Sounds like the show, The Rookie, except instead of cops, it’s medicine, and female instead of male. I would say also it’s supposed to be a comedy instead of a drama, but that’s highly debatable.
The show stars Patricia Heaton, and for many, that’s apparently a bonus. Sure, people liked her long-suffering role on Everybody Loves Raymond, and the audience applauds as soon as she appears in the episode. But it’s a comedy. And I don’t think I even smiled the entire episode. It was more farcical than comedic and her own attempts to be funny? Ridiculous. Even down to the “I’m going to rant and rave and then stop, only to find out you were going to apologize” scene. This passes for comedy?
She’s surrounded by five other doctors, all ridiculous caricatures. The strict, no-nonsense black woman boss. The laid back, pseudo hippie senior attending physician. Three other interns — quiet guy, Latino girl, over-confident white guy. The only good scene in the entire episode was Dr. Carol talking to a patient and giving bad news, drawing upon her life experience to deal with him compassionately and professionally. Sweet. Touching. Redeeming if it wasn’t done by her since her ethics were already intact. Snore.
I’m out, and I’m betting lots of other people will be too. It’s just not funny.
CBS has a new show called Evil and my quick summary of the premise was an investigatory team looking into supernatural occurences and deciding if they are caused by supernatural or psychological forces. A little bit X-Files-ish, a little bit like Proof (2015-16 series about whether there is life after death). Or maybe just The Exorcist by another name. It didn’t sound like a winner to me so I went with cancellation as my prediction.
The first episode was a bit different than I expected. The lighting and camera work was softer than I expected, odder angles, so it gives you a bit of an off-balance look to the scenes, which was interesting. And the mystery unfolds in an interesting way. The main character is a forensic psychologist, Kristen Bouchard, and in the pilot, she’s investigating a defendant accused of killing three families. She interviews him, finds him to be lying, deems him fit for trial, her job is done. Until the defence asks her to confirm that it is psychological, and not potential possession by demons. She has a WTF? moment with him on the stand like he’s an idiot, and then she meets David Acosta, priest in training (why is it always a new priest or a priest in trainng?) who works for the Catholic Church on contract to investigate if something is supernatural or not. She doesn’t believe in the mumbo jumbo he’s peddling, but she does witness the defendant freak out and start speaking Latin to her, so she thinks maybe he’s hallucinating. More investigation is needed.
At this point, the story kind of goes weird for a bit. ** Spoiler alert ** She has a dream where she meets an “otherworld figure” aka George the demon and she has a night terror. He comes back a second night, and then when she’s talking to the defendant later, he asks about George. Something he couldn’t possibly know as she told nobody else. Well, except her therapist. Dun dun dun. At this point, it turns into a routine investigation of a con.
And it is that switch that makes the pilot so confusing. If the show was meant to be X-Files-style, the truth is out there, then the show SHOULD end on a note of a question — are there unanswered questions out there? Does evil exist? Are possessions real? The answer in the pilot is CLEARLY no, it was just a con. And as a result, it’s not clear where the show will go — debunking everything or there are unexplained outcomes. The beauty of the X-Files was that Scully could explain a LOT but not everything Mulder experienced. The truth was out there, they just had to find it. For this show, they said, “Nope, here’s the truth, that’s it, nothing to see beyond this.”
Which is a weird way to sell the show. The believers in the possibility would feel slighted by the conclusion; those who don’t believe merely had their belief confirmed, it’s all a con. But would they watch? Probably not.
The actress playing Bouchard, Katja Herbers, was familiar to me, but I had no idea where I’d seen her. Westworld would not have been my guess. She’s pretty good, but as I mentioned, the camera work leaves you a bit off-balance. She handles strong well, she handles confused and scared well. The only thing that she doesn’t do well is angry…there’s a couple of scenes where she is in battle mode, taking no prisoners, and she comes off spirited more than furious.
The priest-in-training is played by Mike Colter of Luke Cage fame, and he is really good. Compassionate, caring, quiet. Relaxing. Comforting. I was expecting more doubt in his faith, but he has none. Not in a “I’m blind to it” way, a total “all in” way. Not the normal portrayal in the genre. One of his regular phrases is that he doesn’t care that Bouchard doesn’t believe, he wants her skepticism.
And, as he puts it, “Possession looks a lot like insanity and insanity looks a lot like possession” and he needs someone to help him distinguish between the two. I do find it a bit odd though that they’re going to be a team, considering she has four kids to look after and an absent husband. When will she find the time to go galivanting off to other locations to investigate miracles or demons?
A third member of the team is played by Aasif Mandvi, and I liked him back on Blue Bloods (series of guest appearances) and way back on Jericho. He’s good here, and a good plot device character as the equivalent of a “ghostbuster” who finds natural explanations for phenomenon (like a dishwasher making weird sounds that make it sound like a demon whispering to the husband).
But as I said above, it’s a weird first EP and a weird way to sell it to potential viewers. Clear answers are not going to get you renewed. I’m staying with cancellation. I almost liked the leads enough to keep watching.
To understand the TV series Treadstone’s premise, you need to know a bit more about where the Treadstone idea orginated.
Robert Ludlum introduced the world to Jason Bourne through his novels, starting with The Bourne Identity in 1980. Two more sequels followed in 1986 and 1990, and after Ludlum’s death, Eric Lustbader added to the series with another DOZEN stories from 2004 to 2019. The initial book focused on Bourne as an undercover agent trying to capture the terrorist Carlos the Jackal by posing as a rival but fictitious assassin named Cain. Unfortunately, Bourne almost gets killed, develops amnesia, and can’t complete his mission, and while he is recuperating, the host agency running his operation thinks he’s turned traitor. That organization is called Treadstone.
When the new movies came out in 2002 with Jason Bourne played by Matt Damon, they altered the plot to create a series of Treadstone agents who volunteered to become super agents with advanced training, drugs, and psycho treatments aka brainwashing. Bourne still had amnesia in the movie, but it is more about him being an assassin FOR the government for black operations and he had a crisis of conscience just before he got injured. Treadstone still distrusts him, so they send other Treadstone agents against Bourne, and he has to hurt the organization hard to get them to leave him alone. Two more movies followed where first he thinks Treadstone is after him again, and another where a journalist is investigating Treadstone and a new thread called Blackbriar. The constant spectra of “Treadstone living on” vs. “Treadstone being shut down” continues in all the movies.
In 2012, they made a Bourne movie — but without Jason Bourne. The film was called The Bourne Legacy and added a new thread of agents called Operation Outcome that used meds to stimulate cognitive and physical abilities. Bourne exposed Treadstone more widely in movie #3, and the storyline is woven into the background of Legacy…Treadstone is dead, Blackbriar is exposed, and people decide to covertly shut down Outcome too. With extreme prejudice. A fifth movie just called Jason Bourne had Bourne again, but this time helping one of his original handlers who is in trouble as a potential whistleblower. Over the course of the film, Bourne learns more about the origins of the original Treadstone and how it worked.
Which brings us to 2019 and a new show called Treadstone. It’s hard to know the premise exactly, as certain storylines don’t quite match up. Basically, instead of Treadstone being the training of hard-core James Bond-level agents who can kill without hesitation, there is a Russian program called Cicada. These are sleeper agents who have no memory of their original lives or who they are until they are woken up to do a mission. A North Korean general knows that someone has an old Russian nuke aimed at the U.S. and is trying to get the launch codes, so he alerts the CIA to prevent an apocalypse, even while knowing it will likely sign his death warrant.
But here is where it gets weird in a long episode introducing a lot of disparate parts:
An ex-journalist is the one the DPRK general alerts, knowing she’ll be monitored by the CIA, and alerting the CIA that there’s something Treadstone-like called Cicadas who are being woken up, in addition to the problem of the nuke. In addition to the journalist, there’s her new handler, plus two senior officers within the CIA who are involved;
It’s flashback time to 1973, where an American agent somehow infiltrated the Cicada program, and escapes. Two flashbacks show what happened and who one of them is in the present time, but not the American agent;
In the present, a North Korean music teacher is activated or rather woken up as a Cicada agent in order to kill the DPRK general. Except she doesn’t know who she really is, or how she knows how to do stuff, or anything. She was activated blindly and given her assignment…the Cicada program is big on compliance over freedom of thought; and,
A fourth stream of people is an average Joe working on an oil rig and taking special yellow pills that keep on an even keel (aka like the meds from Outcome). Except he gets laid off, doesn’t take his meds, and when a Russian jerk starts a bar fight, the leatherneck breaks into Jason Bourne abilities and kicks the crap out of five guys. A kindly face helps clean him up after the fight, and basically resets him back into being a normal guy again, kind of like a form of Treadstone with Outcome meds and Blackbriar awakenings and compliance.
Now if you don’t know all that context before you get to the TV show, all you’ll see is that there are sleeper agents doing missions on both sides of the old Cold War, and the bad guys are trying to get control of a nuke. Bourne and the rest of the stuff is great if you know it, but they don’t tell you hardly ANY of it. In fact, all they basically say is that they thought they shut down Treadstone previously, and it turned out to be bigger than they originally expected.
So who is relevant in the story? Hard to tell. Jeremy Irvine plays the original American agent, Bentley. He’s okay in the episode, but mostly what he does is fight and escape. Tracy Ifeachor (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow) plays the ex-journalist, and while she seems good, she has very little screentime to get to know her. Her handler is played by Omar Metwally but he has even less screen time. Gabrielle Scharnitzky plays the older version of a Russian agent, while Emilia Schule plays the younger version. The younger version has presence, the older version is boring.
But the show will live or die by the two sleeper agents. For the Communists, it is a woman named SoYun played by Hyo-Joo Han. She actually does alright, and it is fun to see her transform from simple music teacher and mother/wife into Jane Bourne. For the Americans, it is Brian J Smith playing sleeping Doug McKenna. I liked Smith on Stargate Universe, and he is decent here, although a bit inconsistent since he doesn’t know what’s happening to him.
And just to round things out, as we can’t have Treadstone without figures back at Langley, we have Michelle Forbes as the potential good cop (hard to believe she was Ro Laren on ST:TNG all the way back in ’91-94 and I wouldn’t have recognized her if I hadn’t seen her name in the credits) and Michael Gaston (a really great cynical white guy, although I liked him better as a Red John suspect in the Mentalist).
So where does that leave me? Certainly it is not well-paced for plotting and characters. If you didn’t know any background, you’d be thoroughly confused all the way through the episode. I DID know and I was still confused. Yet, I was already “all in” as soon as it was announced. I predicted cancellation as it seemed like it was going to be more about a one-man army, which lots of shows try every year and they all fail. However, with the addition of other competing agents, I’m going to reverse my prediction and say that USA might renew it.
The premise for The Unicorn was listed as recent widower re-enters the dating world. Umm…wait a minute, didn’t I see that last year? It was called Single Parents or something? Okay, let’s go with cancellation.
Except I didn’t realize it was Walton Goggins as the widower. I absolutely loved him as Boyd Crowder on Justified. Sure, he’s been in lots of other shows, but none that I watched regularly. One of the elements in Justified that I loved was his comedic moments — playing straight while the world crashed around him. So I was definitely willing to give him a shot.
Then, in passing, my wife mentioned having watched the premiere even though she watches almost nothing regularly, and not being too impressed with the show. I still went for it, with my expectations low.
But I like him. I like seeing him in the new show, I like him on screen. He’s not completely goofy or over the top. And even his kids mostly work — Ruby Jay as the older sister Grace and Makenzie Moss as the younger sister Natalie.
The episode spends a bit of time getting to the premise of the show which is Wade starting to date again. His wife has been gone a year, he’s working all the time or spending time with the kids, mostly eating frozen meals that people gave them after his wife died. And he’s down to the last frozen meal. His wacky friends help him prepare an online profile as a six foot cuddler who is widowed. So his phone blows up — he’s a unicorn. A single guy, devoted father, no emotional divorce baggage or lots of singlehood issues, looking to date. With a job. Until he realizes that they want to date him because he’s widowed. He feels like he’s using his wife’s death to get new dates, so he goes back to setting his profile to simply single instead of widowed. And his first date goes awkward fast.
Yet here’s the thing. Most scenes in sitcoms would make that awkward scene be incredibly embarrassing. Beyond awkward, almost geeky, painful even to watch. The show didn’t do that. They played it straight, it’s resolved easily enough with some side humour thrown in, and the date is “saved” through honesty and transparency. Leading to a fantastic set of lines where she’s inviting him over for sex, he realizes he’s not ready yet, and she notes that he’s really sweet, etc. Then she tries to rationalize maybe he’s having a mid-life crisis and perhaps he drives a Porsche. Nope, he says, a dirty pickup. For her? “You’re so hot.” Not raucous laughter, sure, but the scene and the joke work.
Him with his family? Awesome. But the friends are a disaster. Couple one is Rob Corddry (white guy trying to be hip) and Michaela Watkins (Casual) as a bit weird neurotic. Couple two is Omar Benson Miller (Walter from CSI: Miami) who is a bit hip and yet lovable and Maya Lynne Robinson is a cliche as a frazzled mother of 4 kids. They’re barely tolerable to watch, and no real humour in any of them, but at least Goggins gets to play it innocently straight with them.
In the end, my wife is right. Not that great and I’ll predict cancellation. Yet I’ll be watching until it is cancelled. Cuz it’s Goggins.
So the basic premise that I had for Sunnyside was a city councilman finds a new calling or something with a group of immigrants applying for citizenship. It didn’t seem like it would have anywhere to really go, so I predicted cancellation. Now that I have watched the opening episode, cancellation was a generous prediction. I’m surprised the makers of the show are not in receivership with the studio asking for their money back.
Kal Penn is the lead as the councilman and I generally love him. And no, not from Harold and Kumar. I liked him on How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, and more importantly, Designated Survivor. So when I saw it was him, I was hopeful. But the character is TERRIBLE. Disgraced councilman who spent 15 years freeloading on the public dime, only to get booted off council following a drunk and disorderly charge and a viral video. But he hasn’t changed. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself and that continues for most of the episode. Right up until the end when he SUDDENLY decides he does care, because his sister told him to? No catalyst, just an epiphany and now he’s a supposed good guy. Meh.
The rest of the cast is completely forgettable, one trick ponies. From the replacement councilwoman who is likely to be a future romantic interest to the Asian stereotypes to the surgeon turned cab driver. Yawn. The ONLY character that is the least bit interesting is Griselda, played by Diana Maria Riva — she has tons of different jobs. In just about every scene, she’s working. It’s cute and it works.
But the show has the biggest problem of all — it ain’t funny. Which would be fine if it wasn’t a supposed sitcom. On that front, it is unforgivable. Cancellation would seem guaranteed.
