Category Archives: Television

Series premiere: Debris

The PolyBlog
April 7 2021

The new show Debris debuted recently, with a strong alien/X-Files vibe to it. In a nutshell, the premise is that scientists spotted a damaged alien ship drifting through the solar system, surrounded by debris. Some of that debris has fallen to Earth, and almost all of it has strange energy readings with unpredictable impacts on the local population. For example, the first use you see of it is someone picking up a piece that lets them pass through solid matter, falling 14 floors to her death THROUGH the hotel building she’s in. Cool, huh? The two main characters are investigating the phenomenon, a joint task force of the US and the UK. He’s CIA, she’s MI6, and they’re not the only ones looking for these fragments.

So, is it X-Files 2021?

It’s hard to say based on a single EP if that will be the continued vibe, but the short answer is no. It is clear from the get-go that there are aliens and this is alien tech. There’s no “mystery” of the truth being out there. The debris is definitively alien.

However, there is a bit of an X-Files “what is this about” vibe. He’s more the Scully-type, traditional hunter, having formerly been in Afghanistan and not wanting to go to the private sector on returning home. For the debris, he wants to keep it out of enemy hands. She is the Mulder-type who believes in the power of all things, and that if they find the technology, they can improve the lives of all humanity.

The “he” in question is Bryan Beneventi, played by Jonathan Tucker. He is the co-anchor for the show, and that’s a problem. I liked him in Westworld, Justified, numerous guest shows, and all the way back to The Black Donnellys. And in almost every single show I’ve seen him in, he’s a snivelling weasel, pretty much. Spineless. Often with some drug stuff going on maybe. Untrustworthy to the core. THIS is the guy you want saving the planet? Oh, he’s got faults all over the place, but he isn’t a guy I root for, pretty much ever. If he was in a mobster show, he’s the one double-crossing the big guy or going rogue to prove himself, screwing either bit up, and getting whacked asking why everything always goes wrong for him. I like him in those other roles, but I had a lot of trouble seeing him in this one.

The “she” in question is Finola Jones, played by Riann Steele. I’ve seen her in a few things over the years, nothing that stands out as riveting. She’s decent in the premiere, but nothing particularly compelling. There’s some back history with her father having seen the debris field, he was an astrophysicist who apparently died. Spoiler alert — he’s apparently not dead.

For other supporting characters, there’s Bryan’s boss played by Norbert Leo Butz who isn’t sharing everything with Bryan. He’s been in a few things here and there over the years, nothing that stands out to me. Finola’s boss is played by Anjali Jay, but you don’t get a really good scene with her (she’s on the phone to Finola), so it was hard to place her. Thanks to IMDb, I now know I’ve seen her before on Continuum (she was good) and Supergirl (meh). Nothing compelling, and impossible to know if she’ll have much of a role in the show.

Good news though, we have a bad guy. I thought it was some sort of typo, I confess, as the actor’s name is Scroobius Pip. He’s apparently a quite well-known hip hop artist in the UK, but I have never heard of him. It explains his name, I guess, with the background. Anyway, he’s been in a few shows, nothing I have seen though, and in EP1, he has about 10 lines. His role is a bit intriguing as you find out he’s actually SAS and hunting the debris too, plus he has some sort of transporter tech they’re using (from the debris fragments). It has some bugs though, so kind of a last resort tech.

The premiere’s goal though is to grab you. To pull you into the mystery. And to be honest, it doesn’t. It’s interesting, sure. The case of the week is (spoiler alert, again!) a kid that has come back from the dead and a bunch of people are seemingly dying and floating across the ground in the same direction to the same spot. They’re not actually dead though. So the mystery is how is the kid alive, what’s the connection between the victims, how do they solve it. Well, considering the opening scene that raised the stakes took about 10 minutes (complete with Michael Eklund as a black market dealer of debris relics, and I was initially excited cuz I loved him as Bobo on Wynonna Earp, right up until he bites the dust at minute 9), they solve the rest in the remaining 32 minutes or so. Bippity boppity boo, all is right with the case, problem solved. Really? That would be like the Lost characters finding a resort to stay at on the Island rather than facing the Others.

So where does that leave me?

Basically nowhere. The writing wasn’t compelling, nor was the acting. The mystery of the week ended way too easily. And the larger mystery? There just wasn’t enough time spent on the fact that it was ALIENS for crying out loud. We have people DEFYING GRAVITY (no reference intended to the show) and people aren’t losing their sh**? Really? Okay, well if you’re not excited and getting worked up, why would I? I’m going with cancellation (which is also TV Grim Reaper’s prediction) and I won’t be watching.

Series premiere: Law & Order: Organized Crime

The PolyBlog
April 7 2021

“In the nation’s largest city, the vicious and violent members of the underworld are hunted by the detectives of the Organized Crime Control Bureau. These are their stories…”.

And so we embark on a new Dick Wolf drama, Law & Order: Organized Crime with Detective Stabler back in NYC working on a task force. Olivia Benson is around for continuity references and a tie-in to L&O:SVU fans, but she doesn’t have much of a role, just as a friend.

I watched EP1, and I was thinking about watching all of the series as it grows from day 1. I really liked the original L&O, plus Criminal Intent. I’m “so so” on SVU because there is just too much depiction of violence against the special victims, even with the so-called “justice” banner to drive the show. It’s hard to call it “dark” as the show mostly isn’t, but I feel almost like I need a shower after watching some EPs. Now that I’ve watched L&O:OC, I’m on the fence.

Let’s start with the premise

Stabler left SVU, went off to Rome with his wife and kids, they’ve been there 12y, they’re back in NYC for something, and someone car bombs his wife. Stabler is convinced it was mis-directed collateral damage for something he was working on, and he wants to stay in NYC and chase the killers. I watched the opening, and I was so confused. I thought the wife was dead years ago, and now he has a lead, or something. Nope, they’re burying her during the episode. But somehow he just snaps his fingers with his bosses and he’s working in NYC again? Huh? Not to mention there is NO consideration of the trauma of the kids losing their Mom and now suddenly moving back to NYC and losing their own social network too. Whatever.

At first, with the organized crime bent, I was thinking there might be a bit of a Wise Guy bent to it with someone going undercover, but nope, he’s just running around flailing, generally doing whatever he wants with little to no oversight. He has a couple of bosses, but he generally ignores them, and who knows why they keep him around.

The supporting cast on the police side are not big players in Ep1, so hard to say what role they’ll have going forward. There’s a nice line about them “staffing up” a new task force, and there’s a pitch by Stabler for a really good hacker that ten minutes before he didn’t even know who she really was but when he meets with her it’s like their bosom buddies, lifetime pals or something. Weird vibes.

Elliot Stabler is played by Christopher Meloni and he’s solid as Stabler after playing him for so long. The problem? He’s big on anger, not so big on the emotional range. Not a big draw for me.

What might be different

There is one element that makes me wonder if it is different for this show is that it seems unlikely they will simply do case-of-the-week busts, not for organized crime. Usually, OCB-type stories are a bit larger, it takes more to bring down the big guy. Enter Chazz Palminteri as Manfred Sinatra, the recently-paroled aged mobster. Palminteri has played a lot of Italian gangsters, and he’s always great — The Godfather of Harlem, even all the way back to Wise Guy. Spoiler alert though — he’s not the big bad guy.

The actual bad guy is played by smiling, smirking Dylan McDermott and I don’t know if he’s had some bad plastic surgery but he looks TERRIBLE in the show. Like there’s “something wrong with his face” terrible. I don’t know if it is just aging actor stuff, extra weight, but he’s a long way from The Practice. And I can’t take him seriously. He has a few lines where he basically wants to appear angry or sinister, almost menacing, and he comes across as whiny. And HE’S a bad guy? Yawn.

But as I said, it MIGHT be different from other L&O shows if they have longer story arcs.

Thoughts on the show

People who liked Stabler/Meloni are going to show up looking for “ripped from the headlines” L&O-lite. This is NOT going to be your standard “cops for part 1, lawyers for part 2” structure, and I don’t know if it will work for most watchers. It didn’t work for me. If this was back in the L&O heyday, I’d not bet against Wolf’s franchise; in 2021? I’m going for cancellation after 1 season.

Series premiere: The United States of Al

The PolyBlog
April 7 2021

One of Chuck Lorre’s newest sitcoms, the United States of Al, picked up some pre-launch buzz but not good buzz. Lots of people looked at the 30s trailer and immediately jumped on it saying it was going to be tone-deaf, mocking Muslims, etc. Oddly enough, the goal of the producers was to have a Muslim protagonist that wasn’t a punchline.

Personally, I try not to prejudge a show from that perspective. What I ask myself is simply, “Is there much humour going to be found in said situational comedy that doesn’t make me cringe? Will the actors make me tune in? Will the writers make me laugh?”.

I watched EP1, and the short answer is no to all three questions.

I’m tough on comedies

I confess, I am really tough on comedies. There are a ton of sitcoms out there and I can’t watch them. Fat jokes, ethnic jokes, tease the different person, etc. all make me cringe. Or a premise that is simply miscommunication / misunderstanding combined with immaturity of the main star, often a man, to reinforce the idea that “men are from mars”-level stupid. Yawn.

Very, very few comedies make it through my gauntlet of fall or spring premieres. I watched Big Bang Theory because I’m nerdy and enjoyed the show enough to keep watching up until they added the girlfriends and then I started to love it. Currently, I’m regularly watching the animated show, The Great North, the show with Walter Goggins called The Unicorn, and the kidney donation show B Positive. I can’t imagine B Positive will get renewed, but TV Grim Reaper is predicting it will be, along with The Unicorn, while the Great North has already been renewed.

But I digress. Let’s get back to ripping The United States of Al, EP1. The show basically divides into five scenes:

  1. Waiting for Al to arrive at the airport, where you learn that the main character is a Marine who has been trying to get his Afghani interpreter over to the US for three years (although there’s a timeline problem as he says he’s been trying for 3y, but he’s only been back 6m?);
  2. Driving back from the airport, where there’s a series of one-liners to show the camaraderie between the two men;
  3. A scene at home over dinner, where they talk about the fact that the Marine is going through a divorce;
  4. A scene afterwards in the garage, where the two men get to talk about adjusting to life outside of Afghanistan for both of them; and,
  5. A scene where Al invites the soon-to-be ex-wife over for some mediation with the Marine.

It’s slightly more than those five scenes, but not much. So here’s the thing…if you read those five scenes, there really isn’t much comic gold to be mined there. Waiting for Al, you see a guy and a girl trading lines, but it isn’t really clear who they are. You assume they are boyfriend/girlfriend, but they are brother and sister. It’s mildly amusing. The drive from the airport is more or less just an extended airport scene, with the sister in the backseat with NOTHING to do, while the two men reacquaint themselves. There’s a repeated series of lines throughout the show about the US bombing Afghanistan, hahaha, isn’t that funny? Well, no, it’s not. It’s just stupid, nor would the Afghani interpreter likely be the one making those jokes. But whatever.

The scene around the dinner table is mostly leading up to the revelation regarding the divorce, and how upset the Marine is about it. All leading to Al intervening the next morning to try to mediate between the divorcing couple. Oh, and before we get there, let’s talk about the fact that the sister was planning a wedding to a guy in the same unit who was killed, and now she goes out partying a lot, and the Marine is struggling to fit back into his old life. Wow, just screams laugh track, doesn’t it?

Can the actors or dialogue save it?

You may have noticed that I keep calling the main guy, The Marine. Why? Because his name is irrelevant. He acts like a petulant child for most of the episode, not the amazing smart compassionate guy who got the interpreter out of Afghanistan somehow. His name is Riley, sure, and he’s played by Parker Young but basically he’s a cardboard character. I saw Young before in Arrow and A Million Little Things, but he has very little presence and can’t seem to fit into his role, although perhaps that’s what he’s going for (as he TELLS us, he doesn’t know what he is back in the normal world). Considering he’s carrying 50% of the show, that’s a big risk.

The other half is Al, played by Adhir Kalyan, and he’s decent. Is he an “authentic” Afghani? No clue. He’s cast generically, and written generically, so it might be fairer to ask if he’s “authentic regular-guy” Muslim. Equally, no clue. What I do know? He drops some of his best lines woodenly. A bit of sarcasm throw-away lines rather than “mic drop” quality. I liked Kalyan back on Second Chance, but I don’t know if I like him enough for him to anchor half a show. Nor am I buying him as the “fixer” of everything. He doesn’t have enough gravitas to start a cult following of Riley’s friends and family.

Supporting characters are limited to three for the episode…Riley has a sister, played by Elizabeth Alderfer, and there is some hinting from Riley that she’s got some complicated mental stuff going on that won’t get fixed in a single 22m episode. That doesn’t mean there is any substance “there”. I’ve seen Alderfer in a few cameos but none of her big stuff and in EP1, she looks like “generic sitcom girl” who could have been a single episode character for all she contributed.

Dean Norris plays their father, Art, and much of his role is to run the house, he cooks meals, he keeps the family together, etc. Oh, and to keep saying how much he likes Al who does nothing but kiss his butt all episode. Yet here’s the thing that I find a bit hard to wrap my head around. I have seen Norris as guest-star-of-the-week on numerous shows going back almost 30 years. And every time, he’s okay but a bit of a caricature. Limited characters is probably closer to the description. And as soon as I saw him, I was like “Meh”. Not because I don’t like him, I do, but because everything I have seen him in, he’s had limited range.

We also get to meet the separated wife, Vanessa, played by Kelli Goss. I haven’t seen her in much, but honestly, my reaction is pretty much in her name “Kelli with an i”. There was no on-screen presence. She too could have been “sitcom girl of the EP” and disappear.

Apparently, we will get to meet the daughter Hazel in future EPs, but none of the acting here said, “Watch me!”.

And, as noted by the heading, when I turn myself to the writing, there are some wry comments throughout the show, but almost no real jokes. They may have come from the Big Bang Theory, but the writers should have been cancelled when TBBT ended. To be blunt, many of the lines could be delivered by anyone.

Where do I think the show will go?

Oh, look, let’s have an ethnic minority you don’t normally see and show how they make everyone’s life better. That must be show-worthy, right? In my opinion, no. There’s no meat on the bones. And as such, I’m going to predict cancellation. But I do so knowing that TV Grim Reaper predicts renewal based on the current ratings and knowing that it is a Chuck Lorre show, and EVERYONE loves Chuck. I’m still going with cancellation though.

Series premiere: Coyote

The PolyBlog
April 2 2021

I imagine most people watching Michael Chiklis on TV think of his show, The Shield. For me, it is a bit softer with The Commish or The Fantastic Four. Maybe a bit of Gotham. I like him, but I prefer the lovable side, not the hard cynical side. Usually.

Here he plays a newly-retired border patrol guy who is asked by his old partner’s wife to go down to Mexico, look at a cabin he was building, and finish it up to sell it off so that the bank doesn’t foreclose on their house. It’s a crapfest of a situation, but he wants to help. He feels obligated to help. Most of his life has been spent seeing everything as black or white, or perhaps brown or white, illegal or legal. Now he’s in Mexico seeing the locals, meeting a few, getting involved in their lives, and he’s not so sure the lines are so straight.

I know very little about the long-term direction of the show. With a title like Coyote, maybe he’s going to turn into a smuggler trying to help those in rough spots get away from the bad guys. In EP1, he’s doing exactly that, even though he tries really hard at first to stay out of it.

I’m not going to rate the rest of the cast, as it’s impossible to tell from the opener who will be sticking around. Chicklis is excellent, of course, and the initial scenes are compelling. Enough for me to stick around. I know it gets darker, there are cartels involved, but for now, I’m happy just to see Chicklis. I’ll predict renewal based on him alone.

Series premiere: Firefly Lane

The PolyBlog
February 17 2021

I didn’t know much about Firefly Lane until I saw that it had premiered. When I looked it up, and saw that it was a buddy premise, I thought, “Sure, why not give it a try?”. And with two women instead of two men, I really wanted to like it.

Katherine Heigl plays the co-lead, Tully, and for a lot of people that would be a giant plus. They loved her in Grey’s Anatomy or State of Affairs. Me? I remember her from Under Siege 2 and I thought she was decent enough there, but well, she was in the background. I didn’t watch GA and I gave SoA only one episode before bailing. I find almost all of her characters come across as almost superficial, particularly when she’s trying to be deep for a moment. I don’t “get” her, and I don’t want to I suppose.

Sarah Chalke is the other co-lead, Kate, and I didn’t watch her in Cougar Town with Courtney Cox or on Scrubs. I do remember her as Stella from How I Met Your Mother and vaguely as Becky from Roseanne. And she’s decent enough, just the character is rather bland. Yet I don’t mean just in comparison to Tully, I mean bland all the way around.

But you know the real problem? I kept seeing the two of them with all the flashbacks, and I thought, “Who cares what happened?” Because “modern day” Kate and Tully are a mess. There’s no giant success for the two of them to want me to know the origin story for them. I saw them meet, I’m pretty much done. I don’t care what happened in between and I don’t care what happens in present-day. Not to mention that relatively speaking, they seem like the same characters then and now. They started as wild child and home-body, so not much of a growth arc to present-day.

Kate’s daughter seems interesting, albeit a cliché teenager. But I don’t care enough about her to watch either.

I also can’t help feeling that someone watched Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in Grace and Frankie and said, “Give me that. But make them 40 instead of over-60.”

It’s Netflix, so the business model is different than normal. I’d normally say “cancellation” without reservation but it is getting buzz. Lots of women are interested to watch in the same demographic. And maybe the other 9 EPs are worth the buzz. But I’m going to pass. And I still think it should be cancelled.