Category Archives: Television

Series premiere: Nancy Drew

The PolyBlog
October 16 2019

Sigh. I love mystery stories, and series in particular. So when I saw that a new version of Nancy Drew was coming, I thought, “Cool beans.” I’d give it a go. I totally missed that it was on the CW, which would have given me a clue as to the type of show it would be. It is definitely not your parents’ Nancy Drew. This is more ND, by way of Stranger Things or The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Yep, there’s a supernatural element.

Here’s the skinny. Nancy Drew is in Horseshoe Bay, Maine, and has grown up solving mysteries. But she’s 18, time for college, right? Nope, Mom died of cancer, and it kind of put her college on hold for a year. So she’s waitressing and using boy toy Ned “Nick” Nickerson for sex. Her and her dad are estranged, she’s just marking time until she can go off to college, and she has given up her detective days.

Well, until the pilot, when a local rich boy comes into the diner after hours for a quick meeting while his wife waits outside, only for her to wind up dead. The Sheriff thinks Nancy and her friends are involved, although really he’s just busting their chops because ND has been a pain in his side for awhile. Nancy plans to stay out of the case, but well, she dabbles. Until it turns out her BF might have a motive. Now she’s all in on whodunnit, drawing up lists, predicting motives and means. The Game is Afoot. And just for fun, a dead girl haunts her with clues.

Nancy Drew is played by relative newbie Kennedy McMann and she does an okay job through the episode. She’s a little uneven in the role, but that should adjust over time (bopping from Veronica Mars one minute to space cadet the next, and don’t get me started on the relationship angst). Not that entertaining for that part, but whatever.

Her boyfriend / boytoy Nick is played by Tunji Kasim and he is even more inconsistent. Angry one second, hurt another, loving a third. Whatever. The rest of the “friends” group isn’t much better…Leah Lewis as Georgia (I have only seen her in an episode of The Gifted), Maddison Jaizani as Bess (also from Into the Badlands), Alvina August (Sabrina!) as Detective Hart, Scott Wolf as Nancy’s dad (terrible chemistry with the daughter), and Adam Beach as the police chief (wtf?). Pamela Sue Martin apparently showed up in the episode as Harriet, and I have NO idea who that was in the Ep. She’s a throw-back for nostalgia as she used to play Nancy Drew in earlier shows (70s).

So, I was expecting a procedural “mystery of the week”, kind of like Veronica Mars or a younger version of Murder, She Wrote. Instead, it is much more Sabrina than that. Which isn’t bad, I guess, just not really Nancy Drew to me. Almost like X-Files in some ways although she’s not really interested in the ghost stuff, just what the clues can tell her.

I predicted renewal, and I’ll stick with that. I may even watch the rest of the episodes to see if it turns out to be who I think it is (Detective Hart, the one protecting Nancy). Motive? I have no idea. Maybe the woman lied in a case and Hart put the wrong person in jail. That’s what I’m going with for now.

Series premiere: Emergence

The PolyBlog
October 8 2019

Ever since Lost went big, various networks try to come up with the “viral” show that will hold viewers. Alcatraz. Time travellers. Time loops. Plane disappearances and reappearances. So not surprisingly, the networks are trying again this year. I already wrote about one (Series premiere – The I-Land) and why I passed. Emergence had a slightly different take on it, which was a plane crash of some sort with only one survivor. A girl. With supposed amnesia and not a scratch on her.

But that wouldn’t be enough for the weird. Just before the plane crash, all the electronics in the nearby town went haywire. After the crash, some supposed NTSB people showed up and tried to take the girl, before the real NTSB people showed up. Meanwhile, the local police chief is protecting the girl. Dun dun dun. There’s other stuff happening, people trying to kidnap the girl, etc., and a reporter guy running around. Plus the girl seems to have some weird abilities — communicating with the TV, freaking out and causing stuff to move (telekinesis), and stopping a moving vehicle dead. Plus she never gets hurt. Cool beans. At the end of the episode, she goes into the bathroom and CUTS HER NECK to remove some sort of tracking tube or interface module that was glowing, without screaming or crying. DUN DUN DUN. Oh, and btw, she also can look at the police chief’s father and see that he has cancer that isn’t being cured.

Allison Tolman plays the police chief, Joanne Evans. She’s separated from her husband, and living with her daughter and dad. For her acting, I have to divide it in three segments. When she’s investigating, she’s a bit meek, but fine to watch. When she’s interacting with family and others, she’s quiet and speaks way too slowly. It’s like watching paint dry. And then when she’s with the girl, she seems like Ellen Degeneres voicing Dory. If I close my eyes, I hear Ellen. It’s very relaxing, and it works. But she does it like FOUR times in the episode. I get it, you can bond with the kid. Please stop. I’ve seen her in nothing else, but some parts here are hard to take.

Alexa Swinton plays the young girl, nicknamed Piper since they don’t know her real name. Swinton is fine, but she really doesn’t have much to do except look scared for most of the episode, with no emotional range except for one freak-out scene. Definitely need more scenes between her and the chief’s daughter. Haven’t seen her in anything before, she’s okay here.

Other actors and characters include:

  • Ashley Aufderheide as the chief’s daughter, okay;
  • Robert Bailey, Jr, as a young police officer, also okay;
  • Zabryna Guevera as a doctor, although I liked her better on New Amsterdam and Gotham; and,
  • Donald Faison as the ex-husband, who has a lot of series experience, none of which I saw, also okay.

Clancy Brown plays the Dad, and I liked him a lot in Sleepy Hollow as Sheriff Corbin. He’s always solid, even way back to Highlander as Kurgan, although he’s a bit of a caricature as a General on The Flash. Nice to see him here, although not sure about the role of the character.

The other main character is the supposed reporter, Benny, played by Owain Yeoman. I loved him on The Mentalist, and love him using his natural accent here. He doesn’t have a huge part yet, but I’m hoping that grows. I’m curious if he is supposed to develop a love interest with the Chief, but I hope not, she had no chemistry with him at all.

So where does that leave us? A couple of solid veterans to support the relatively newbie cast, two leads with limited emotive range, and a decent plot. Except I don’t see where it can go after Season 1. My original prediction was cancellation, and I’m going to stick with that. But I like it enough to watch for the plot.

Series premiere: Batwoman

The PolyBlog
October 7 2019

The DC Universe on TV burst out with Arrow, added Flash, added DC Legends of Tomorrow, added Supergirl, added Black Lightning, and this season has gone full series for Batwoman. And, while Arrow is ending, a “birds of prey” by another name is set to spin off too. Since I like superhero shows and the tropes they follow, I tend to watch all of them. I’m not a equal fan of all of them, but I enjoy them. Arrow used to be dark, and I liked the difference. Flash is white innocence, as is Supergirl, while DC Legends is quirky and irreverent. I like Black Lightning probably least of all, as it seems more campy as they figure out their powers — less super hero than people with fun tech or mutants with glitz. Anyway. I love the Bat, so I was definitely going to be all in for Batwoman. Heck, I even watched Gotham and have burned through Season 1 of Pennyworth.

Yet, I’m not steeped in Batman lore. I have no idea all the different versions, nor the various links with Robin incarnations, and no idea why “Batman has left Gotham” three years ago as the story opens. But Kate Kane is his cousin (cute, huh? kind of like Kara and Clark) and while she didn’t know that Bruce was Batman, she loved him and hated Batman after Batman failed to save her and her family after a bus crash from the Joker (he thought he had saved them until the car materials gave way and the car fell).

Anyway, Kate is a badass who has been training to be a super private soldier in her father’s company, training all over the world kind of like the Dark Knight backstory (in the Christian Bale version of the Bat). She returns to Gotham, discovers Bruce’s lair, puts on the suit to protect the city and her family. A lot happens in the first episode, and overall it’s great.

Ruby Rose plays Kane, and other than other EPs of the DC shows, the only thing I had seen her in was Dark Matter where she played a kickass android. She was awesome in that EP, but it is her presence that defines her performance. She owns almost every scenes she’s in. I confess I was less impressed in a scene where she’s strung up and talking to Alice, the villain, and she didn’t look awesome in the first view of her in the suit when she’s not fighting. It seems awkward to me.

The villain, Alice, is played by Rachel Skarsten and I am a little embarrassed when it comes to her. Every time I see her, I can’t place her. AT ALL. Which makes no sense. I really only had a reason to pay attention when she played Tamsin on Lost Girl. She was fantastic, loved her and loved her various episodes. I went back and binged Birds of Prey at one point, and didn’t recognize her. Sure she was ten years younger, but still. She was also in The Listener, didn’t recognize her. Republic of Doyle, nope, no clue. Wynonna Earp, no clue. And here as Alice? Nope, couldn’t place her. Sigh. I generally love her, and while I even like her fight scenes, the fight scene here with Batwoman wasn’t that great. And it was no surprise ** spoiler alert ** to find out that she was Kane’s supposedly dead sister, as soon as they said they never found her body. They held that detail back or it would have been WAY too obvious upfront. Meh.

There are a bunch of other roles buried in there:

  • Camrus Johnson as Luke Fox, aka Alfred to her Batwoman;
  • Elizabeth Anweis as a flaky step mom;
  • Nicole Kang as a weird, completely inconsistent step-sister — one minute flighty, one minute suburban underground clinic doctor; and,
  • Meagan Tandy as a previous GF of Kane’s.

None of them are really worth writing about, but they were all fine. The only real other role in the pilot is that of Kane’s father, played by Dougray Scott. I don’t recognize him, although there’s a cute in-joke in the opener that his character is showing Zorro in the park, and Scott played in the Zorro TV series back in the day. Most of the episode, he seemed like a low-rent Russell Crowe wannabe, but he’s okay. Nothing great. If he turns out to be an evil Doc Ock-like turncoat, that will work probably just as well.

Will I watch? Yes. That was a given. Was it great? For the genre, sure. Will I predict renewal? Of course, it’s the CW and all the DC shows get renewed.

Series premiere: Stumptown

The PolyBlog
September 29 2019

I love private investigator stories, pretty much in any form. Give me a PI, lawyer, military investigator, mentalist, profiler, detective, mystery writer, psychic, whatever you want, if they’re investigating crime, I’m willing to give it a go. So ABC has a new PI show called Stumptown, takes place in Portland, and focuses on an ex military intelligence type who might be able to help people who don’t want to go to the police. It’s well-trod ground, all the way from the Busted Flush to the A-Team. If you have a problem. If nobody else can help. And if you can find her, maybe you can hire…Cobie Smulders?

Yeah, that was my reaction too. I liked Smulders on How I Met Your Mother. And I mostly hate her whenever she’s in the Marvel universe. Nor did I consider it a positive when she showed up on Andromeda. So…PI show on the one hand, Smulders on the other. Sigh. Let’s give it a go. Maybe I’ll be surprised.

And I was. She didn’t suck. Hardly high praise, but she was watchable. She plays it relatively straight, no fake comedic bits, albeit a bit cynically wry at times. Sure, she’s got PTSD of some sort, and her ability to fake that or pull off a sex scene isn’t great. But the PI side? Decent enough to watch.

But every PI needs a cop foil, and hers are two-fold — first up is Michael Ealy as the good cop and love interest / sex partner. I enjoyed him in Almost Human, skipped Common Law, and liked him in Flashforward. Here he is good, although his character is a bit uneven for Ep1. His boss, Camryn Manheim, basically scowls at people the whole time, which she has done lots of times before. Way back at the start of The Practice, she was decent, but I lost interest in the series and she was part of the reason. Not a plus for me, but she has a limited role here and it’s fine.

The rest of the cast is okay. Her friend Grey seems too good to be true — best friend? Something more? Curious if they’ll later reveal he’s either gay or has had a crush on her for years. Played by Jake Johnson, a little too earnest at times. Her brother Ansel is played by Cole Sibus, and is a maturing influence on Smulders character as she has to take care of him (unexplained condition, likely Down Syndrome or equivalent, and I like that they don’t explain it). And some people from the local reserve, Tantoo Cardinal (as the casino owner) and Gregory Zaragoza (as her right hand). Cardinal is decent, although mostly she just has to seem old and wise, with a bit of disdain for others.

Overall, I liked the show. Because of Smulders, I originally predicted cancellation. Unfortunately for me, I’ll be watching anyway but I think cancellation was the right call. I just don’t see enough meat in the show to get to renewal.

Series premiere: First Wives Club

The PolyBlog
September 29 2019

The original First Wives Club back in ’96 had a strong revenge motive as its plot. Three divorced women reunite, have each others back, and decide to get back at the husbands who dumped them for younger models. The TV series has some of that same premise in the pilot, with three friends getting together when one has a very public meltdown against her husband and the video goes viral.

Ryan Michelle Bathe plays Friend #1, Ari, who in the pilot is married to an up and coming Senatorial candidate. She has left her law practice to run his campaign, and is doing her best to make it happen, an equal partner to his movement forward, despite being totally bored with him. She’s decent, but hard to get a handle on who she is or what she wants as a character.

Michelle Buteau plays Friend #2, Bree, who is separated from her husband Gary after finding out that he cheated on her. Gary is still chasing after her, wanting to get back together, go to therapy, etc. but she’s having none of it. In the opener, she matches a Sex in the City-like plot and gets a new man to rock her world for a night. Bree is okay, but not a lot going on with her in the episode — she’s struggling to balance her family life as a single mom but it seems more plot device than realistic.

Jill Scott plays Friend #3, Hazel, who is married to a record producer husband Derek. Derek and Hazel are tussling because Hazel is working on a comeback album, and she gets her release date bumped for a young artist that Derek is trying to sleep with too. Hazel and Ari work out a bit of revenge, and the Ep ends with it escalating badly against Hazel. War has begun.

As an aside, of the males running around the show, the only one with any presence is Malik Yoba as husband #3, Derek. I loved him on Defying Gravity and he was good on Designated Survivor, and I even liked him way back on Alphas.

So, at the end of Ep 1, you have Ari supposedly solidly but unhappily married, Bree separated and moving on, and Hazel feuding with her husband. It didn’t exactly ring “organized revenge” to me, and I have no idea where this could go after Season 1. I didn’t get a good feel for any of them and while I’m not the intended demographic, I’m going to keep with my original cancellation prediction. I know, it’s on BET+, and they’ll likely renew everything this year, but hey, for now, I’m saying cancellation.