I don’t what to say about the show as I’m not entirely sure what it is all about. Oh, sure, I know the basics. EPIX created a 1980-based show, with a group of mainly-white college grads ready to take on the world, figuring out their lives post-high school, post-college. They seem way more like high-schoolers than college grads, but whatever. Officially, it is a “dramedy” and if you watched the first EP, you would see it basically means a drama at sitcom length. No laughs, lots of young adult angst. Fabricated drama, not real drama. Their entire drama seems to be related to “now what?”. Yawn.
No, seriously, I was waiting for a car accident. A pregnancy. An overdose. Someone with AIDS symptoms, some THING to care about other than “will they or won’t they”, which was answered in the first 30s.
Maybe drama kicks up when the Bridge and Tunnel set hits Manhattan from Long Island, but why would I care? Perhaps the acting?
Let’s start with the actresses. Caitlin Stasey is the lead, a wannabe fashion designer, and she seems familiar, but I haven’t seen her in any of the credits listed in IMDB. Which means I’m thinking of an older doppelganger, and while I can’t place the original, neither are a bonus. She comes off as a 12yo pretending to be 30, so she has to be brash and smoke aggressively. It looks ridiculous, but at age 52, I’m not the demo they’re going for either. Although I’m not sure WHO they are going for — the young millennials won’t be able to relate either. Seeing her with a big cordless phone in the backyard with an antenna was painful.
Her posse is made up of Gigi Zumbado (nothing remarkable in her credits or her performance) and Izabella Farrell (basic credits). Gigi is basically a parrot for Caitlin, maybe it will end up as some sort of romance thing, while Izabella is the no-nonsense “thinker” who will tell them what to do, despite feeling inferior as she couldn’t handle college.
For the boys, we have Sam Vartholomeos as the lead, Jan Luis Castellanos as his athletic friend, and Brian Muller as the analytical guy who talks too much. Sam was on Star Trek Discovery, and I don’t even remember him. Here? Even less memorable. No drive, no ambition, misses his GF, but his father tells him to keep his eye on the prize and not get distracted, but who knows what the prize is as he was talking mostly about hitchhiking around the country. WTF? Jan Luis has a few more noteworthy credits but still nothing big either. Don’t know him, don’t care. Same deal for Brian. Nothing in the past, nothing in the show.
Oh look, creator Edward Burns plays Dad. How exciting! Snore.
I want 27m of my life back. I have no idea why anyone is funding this other than it was Ed Burns, I guess. EPIX is outside of the normal funding bubble, but I’ll still predict cancellation.
I like to give all new shows a shot, and if you tell me there is a remake of the Equalizer show from back in ’85, I’m going to watch it. If you tell me it’s Denzel as the Equalizer, I’m a bit skeptical. Not because he’s black, that part doesn’t matter, but because he comes off too soft-spoken in just about every role I’ve ever seen him in. I need to feel a sense of caged menace, someone who can unleash a can of whoop-ass. Now Matt Damon doesn’t have it, but did an awesome job as Jason Bourne, creating a whole new genre of secret agent movie options in the process. It’s a good predecessor for shows like Hanna, where you see a young girl, seemingly incapable of such violence, exploding with force and technique. And yet, I watched the two Equalizer movies and I yawned. I felt like Denzel was a terrible choice. Too much Crimson Tide, not enough Training Day or the Book of Eli. Don’t get me wrong, I watched the second movie even after I didn’t like the first one. It’s still a great character, helping the little guy or gal.
Then I saw the big announcement that The (new) Equalizer would be on after the Super Bowl. And I thought, “Oh right, I remember hearing it was coming back as a show. Who’s the star?”. Queen Latifah. WTF? This is the EQUALIZER, not LIVING SINGLE WITH GUNS! But you know, I like to enter open-minded. Sweet innocent Ali from God Friended Me is the new Batwoman, and she’s doing a great job. Nothing about her previous “soft” role suggested to me that she could do action sequences, and I’m still enjoying it, so maybe QL going from comedy/sitcom to action will be fine, right?
And in every scene EXCEPT the action scenes, she’s great. She has fantastic presence, a nice sense of warmth, the mom-bordering-on-grandma vibe reminiscent of the grandfatherly vibe of Edward Woodward in the original series. Truth be told, his action sequences weren’t anything amazing either.
But this is the Equalizer. And what I need to see is that this amazing CIA operative is so much better than everyone else. I don’t need to be told it, I need to see it. Yet in the one big action sequence, she’s slow as molasses. They use quick cuts to speed up the action, but it seems like she’s moving in slow motion. The ads for the show made this big deal out of her riding a motorcycle, and it seemed very action-packed. Nope, she rode up. She got off slowly. She walked over to a van, she walked back to the bike, got on with someone, spun the wheels and drove off. No sense of urgency, no smash and grab. Nothing anywhere in any of the scenes suggests quick, decisive, violence, the stock in trade of the ex-operative who is the best of the best.
In lieu of high-octane, or anything resembling the origins of Death Wish, Sudden Impact, Dirty Harry, Jason Bourne, it was a PG episode looking like a Stephen J Cannell production of the 1980s with nobody getting more than a bloody nose except for the first victim.
However, she has some good characters around her with decent acting. Adam Goldberg plays a computer hacker she helped in a past life, and I could NOT place him at all. Not as Simon Hayes from God Friended Me, not as Private Mellish from Saving Private Ryan. But he’s great. His wife, a sharpshooter, is played by Liza Lapira and I had the same brain freeze on her…I would not have figured out it was Ivy from Dollhouse, or Michelle Lee from NCIS, or even Yuki from Dexter. She’s decent, not much to do.
Most of the rest is window dressing. She has a daughter, who’s okay, and her mother is played by…wait for it…Lorraine Toussaint with about 3 lines in the whole episode. I’m assuming that changes later, but whatever. There’s a victim of the week and a bad guy of the week, they do alright.
But the “presence” is a police detective played by Tory Kittles. He has been in lots of stuff over the years, none of which I’ve seen, but he has a nice, quiet presence. It will be interesting to see what they do with him.
More unusual is her former training officer at the CIA, now in the private sector, played by Mr. Big himself, Chris Noth. I loved him for most of the Law and Order original run and here he’s playing a relatively nice guy, who’s seen some stuff, might be a bit ethically challenged here and there, but generally a good guy. And will provide backup to McCall when needed. I like him, good addition.
But will anyone watch?
QL is a good actress, and if she was about 15y younger or more athletic, I’d say sign me and a bunch of other people up to see a black woman kick ass and take names. But this is not a superhero show, and she has no amazing skills to show off. It’s watchable, but I’m not sure anyone will show up. It simply wasn’t exciting enough.
Yet I still love the premise. I always do. Give me a lone crusader helping people, maybe a throw-back to old style Westerns where the gun-fighter rides into town, cleans up a mess, and rides on. So I’m probably going to watch, at least for a few more episodes at least. Hopefully the action will pick up. If they had a bit more budget, it would be great to see her take on a young partner who needs some seasoning. And if things get too big for her? Maybe she can hire the A-Team to back her up.
Okay, so I’m a little behind the times for the premiere of Alex Rider. Amazon Prime dumped the first 8 episodes on their site back in November, and to be honest, I wasn’t rushing to see it. First, I keep thinking it is by James Patterson (Alex Cross) and I’m not a big fan. Second, when I do realize it’s actually Anthony Horowitz, I’m still not “sold”. I liked The Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder, but more as something to read when I don’t have anything else pressing. I haven’t read any of the YA Rider series, so all I knew was it was kind of like “James Bond, Teenage Version”.
I had even thought it was likely to be somewhere between The Kingsman, Agent Cody Banks, and Spy Kids. Not even close, and that’s a good thing. Maybe even a great thing.
Expectations reset
I decided to try it out, even with low expectations mainly because it has a series of books, there’s some mystery to them, and my 11yo son is always open to new series. I gave it a go. As I said, I wasn’t expecting what I got.
Instead of light fluff, I feel like it is a younger version of either Jack Ryan or Condor, and way less violent than Hanna. The main character, Alex Rider of course, is living with his uncle after both his parents were killed when he was young (they don’t dwell on the details much), and he thinks his uncle works at a boring job in a bank. Nope, he’s a spook, working for an ultrasecret British Ops group. He goes out one night looking into a connection between a couple of supposedly accidental deaths, and he gets killed. Alex doesn’t accept the answer he’s given — traffic accident — so he manages to track the car and find out that there’s a giant cover-up operation at the scene.
He tracks one of the men back to the HQ, and all is revealed. But there’s a reason for the reveal — his uncle found a link to a private school in France where troubled kids go off to be rehabilitated, but only specific types of kids. Scions of captains of industry. HQ wants to look at the school but can’t get in; Alex Rider however could impersonate a son of a wealthy family and see what he can find out. Everything goes sideways starting with the first day at the school, and increasingly so over time, with Alex forced to improvise along with a few of his bunkmates. If that sounds like Scooby Doo, or something child-like, it isn’t. It’s definitely got serious adult vibes going on. Nothing sexual, some swearing, just “heavy” content. So, no, my son wouldn’t enjoy it.
But I was hooked. I binged the whole 8 episodes in one night rather than sleeping!
The acting
Otta Farrant plays Alex Rider, and while most of it is well-done subdued or extreme agitation, there are some “lighter” moments that seem like the wrong tone until the final scenes of the season. The rest of the time it just seems like “ill-at-ease attempting to be light and carefree” (perhaps intentional to seem like a younger teenager). I’ve seen him in nothing else, but I like him here.
His handlers include Stephen Dillane as the head of the HQ operation, Alan Blunt, awesome job as a nice British gentleman who has no qualms about forcing Alex to do what he needs done. Alex’s actual “handler” is Mrs. Jones, played by Vicky McClure as a quietly angry agent who thinks Blunt’s call is reckless and immoral. She is best known recently for the British series, Line of Duty, and I’m almost willing to give it a try just to see her in another role.
The big bad guy is played by Thomas Levin, who has a lot of acting roles in foreign productions, but he is borderline perfect here. Quiet. Ruthless. Conveys menace without trying to do so. He’s great. Haluk Bilginer and Ana Ularu, a few others, round out the “baddies” but they’re nothing spectacular.
He has other people around him, but none are that significant to the story (they reveal info several times, not knowing to keep it a secret)…a housekeeper named Jack (I don’t understand her official role, maybe part-time guardian or nanny), and she is the “adult” that’s left when his uncle is killed and the closest thing he has to family and a best friend, Tom. Yawn. The characters are mildly important as Fifth Business, but the actors are not. Anyone could have played them and you wouldn’t have noticed a difference.
I have one exception, Marli Siu, playing one of the other kids at the school. She has some intensity, which seems a bit like an one-trick pony until about Ep 6-8. There’s a bit more depth there, and I was wishing we had seen it earlier.
Conclusion
Normally, when I do a premiere review, I estimate whether it will get renewed or not. There’s not much “question” here, it’s an Amazon Prime show and they’re committed to it. But regardless, I’d be betting on renewal. As I said, I had low expectations, and just like Condor, Jack Ryan, and Hanna, I binged the whole season pretty quick. Heck, I even liked an “in-joke” at the end where one of the characters was wearing a shirt that said “the book was better”.
So I’m catching up on premieres from this weird COVID TV season that has no start or end, but I actually had heard of the show B Positive before I watched it. The premise is basically that a guy has renal failure, has no close family or friends, and needs a kidney donor. He is at a wedding to an old friend, when he runs into a girl he knew in high school. She’s wasted, finds out he needs a kidney, and volunteers to put her organ in a guy for a change, and they can be kidney buddies for life.
Doesn’t that premise just SCREAM amazing comedy?
No? Well neither does the show.
So let’s talk about the two stars
The main character, Drew, is played by Thomas Middleditch. If you recognize him, it’s probably from Silicon Valley, but most people are likely to just think he is generic thin, bearded geek from Central Casting. You find out he’s divorced with a 12yo kid, supposedly he’s a therapist, and he is about as clueless as anyone can be, so not sure what kind of therapist he is. Anyway, he cracks one-liners every two minutes, and if you felt you were watching maybe Howard from Big Bang Theory, you wouldn’t necessarily be too far off in Ep1.
The donor buddy, Gina, is played by Annaleigh Ashford (Masters of Sex), and she’s basically a train wreck. Lives in a basement pad, drives a bus for a retirement home to take patients to appointments, drinks anything, screws anything, does any drug available. She’s a space cadet generally, and when Drew realizes that she’s serious about the offer, he goes to take her up on it only to find out she doesn’t really remember offering. But hey, why not? Of course, she has to be off drugs, meds, and eat healthy for 3m, what could go wrong with that option? She is really good at playing the brainless bimbo, and she’s helping Drew because he’s the one guy she didn’t hook up with in high school. She isn’t smart enough to use the word redemption, but she likes the idea of helping.
So what’s the rest of the plot?
Well, it’s kind of hard to tell. Presumably we’ll meet his patients, and she has a lot of options with her bus pals. Maybe there’s a love interest eventually, if the show lasted that long. Or maybe they become roommates to help her eat healthy.
His ex-wife is played by Sara Rue, who I liked in The Rookie and Less Than Perfect, although I confess I liked her better as a love interest for Leonard on Big Bang Theory. She basically dumped Drew for being unengaged in their marriage, and has some biting lines to go with it, but hey, they have a daughter, so they have to make it work. And yet, nothing in the first episode about him considering asking her or the daughter for help. Doesn’t even tell them it’s happening. Okay, umm, that’s going to be hilarious I’m sure. The daughter is played by Izzy G and has no role in Ep1 other than occupy space. He obviously cares about her, but is completely disconnected. Oooh, more sources of amusement, right? Did I mention this is supposedly a comedy?
I am almost happy to say that the patients on the bus include Linda Lavin (Alice, Flo) and Bernie Kopell (Get Smart, Bewitched, Love Boat) but they were good for a line and gone.
The bottom line
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t laugh either. But I have NO idea where the plot is going to go. It’s 3m to kidney donation and then what? There’s nothing to hang your hat on pass that point. Unless they’re living together or they work together, or they hook up. The kidney thing ain’t going to hold the show together. Plus he’s still in love with his ex-wife.
So my prediction is cancellation. Yet TV Grim Reaper is predicting renewal. Maybe it’s the COVID bounce, I don’t know, but I didn’t see much there to hold it together. Maybe people are desperate for something that isn’t binge-watching Netflix. But I won’t be watching. I’m out.
Back in the exciting times of the original show, “Walker: Texas Ranger”, you could tune in and see Chuck Norris as Cordell Walker, Texas Ranger, living the legend of Texas rangers everywhere. The story goes that a town asked for help from the Rangers for some upheaval in their town, and when the train arrived, there was only one Ranger. One riot, one Ranger. And each week, whatever happened and despite whatever help he had throughout the episode, Cordell usually ended up in a fight with multiple bad guys and used his martial arts to defeat, arrest, and book ’em. Occasionally, he lost his hat in the attack, but would always retrieve it. Lots of fight scenes, sometimes with shots of people flying here, there and everywhere either being thrown or diving great distances to tackle someone.
Plus, there was always the case of the week. Usually it took the form of someone seemingly innocent being either forced to be shady or just being shady, they’d get found out mostly by the smell test from Walker’s nose, and within 44 minutes, it was over. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Meet a new Walker
While the original Walker had everything together, the new Walker’s life is a complete mess. In addition to having a dead wife, he’s also been MIA in his kid’s life for the last year. Now he’s back, but his two kids struggled without him, and he really doesn’t know how to be a father. Which isn’t a surprise, he didn’t know how to be a father before he left either. He was terrified of being alone with his family even, a backstory that made no sense with the wife he was with, but hey, whatever. She gets dead, he hides in undercover work, now the show starts.
While he is still supposed to be some cop superstar, you wouldn’t know it from the episode. The cop work is almost non-existent in Ep1, perhaps because they spend so much time introducing everyone around town including multiple family members, coworkers, some kid who was apparently undercover or knew something or whatever. It wasn’t even clear, but it was the big breakthrough in the 2 minute long case of the week.
I get that it is Ep 1, and there’s a lot to “introduce”. But you kind of need a cop show to include some actual casework. Meh.
Walker himself is played by Jared Petecki of Supernatural fame, and lots of people will line up to watch just cuz it’s him. Me? I’ve only made it through S1 of Supernatural and I don’t find him much of an actor. Strong and silent doesn’t go very far if you don’t have presence, and I didn’t see much in any of the scenes in Ep 1. What I kept thinking for most of the episode was how great it would be if it was Timothy Olyphant, if it was the U.S. Marshals, and if I had more episodes of Justified to watch. Olyphant was just as screwed up, but at least he had presence. Meh.
The supporting cast
Somebody is going to trim some budget really soon. The cast is HUGE.
Walker, sure. Obvious.
He has a partner? Check. Lindsey Morgan from The 100, looking WAY too small and too earnest to be a Texas Ranger badass. A Mexican American woman Ranger, sorry. And HE’s the one having problems at work. Uh huh.
He has a boss? Check. Coby Bell, formerly of The Gifted, and I didn’t mind him in it. His character bounced around a lot with the writer’s lack of direction, but he was fine then, and he seems comfortable here.
Let’s expand to his family. Father, mother, brother, son, daughter. I probably missed someone in there. And in Ep 1 alone, the writers made sure to give him a scene with ALL of them one on one. Why? I have no idea. But do we really need to meet all FIVE family members? Mitch Pileggi plays the dad, and I like him in just about anything, even if the character sucks. I liked him in X-Files obviously, but also Day Break (1 season), an episode of Cold Case, Stargate: Atlantis, an episode of Castle, and even Blue Bloods. Maybe Supergirl blew chunks, but hey, I like the guy in almost everything. So am I happy to see him here? Nope, he has nothing to do.
Molly Hagan plays the mom, and I confess, I love her. I do. I have ever since she was the voice of compassion on Herman’s Head way back in ’91. Over the years, I have liked her when she popped up on Star Trek shows, Early Edition, JAG, Monk, NCIS, Eli Stone, Cold Case, and Castle. I always do this mental dance, “What’s her name, and where did I see her last” before remembering Herman’s Head. So, sure, I’m glad she’s here, just like Mitch, but as far as I can tell, her role is to shout at the family or have deep meaningful discussions while she rewires a lamp or something. Yawn. Don’t get me wrong, I’m willing to watch her rewire a lamp any day and twice on Sunday. But it isn’t exactly great television.
Moving on, we come to the angry daughter. Violet Brinson plays Stella, but why they gave her a name, I don’t know, she could literally just be angry daughter for the whole episode. Her brother, Arlo, is played by Kale Culley and either of one may be master thespians, but we’ll never know based on the 45 seconds of screen time they have to be “angry daughter” and “anxious to please son”. And neither have anything to do with the cases. Why do I care?
Last but not least is the loving brother. The one who stepped in as substitute Dad while Walker was off undercover. He wants Walker to focus on being a dad and forget everything else. Why? Because he obviously had something to do with the wife’s death a year before, or at least knew something, and hasn’t said. It’s like he walked straight out of central casting as the brother who will turn out to have been between a rock and a hard place and knew whatever got the wife killed, but is REALLY sorry about it all. He’s played by Keegan Allen, and I hope he has something else for his character to do other than be a future “fifth business” reveal. His job, dun dun dun, is as an ADA, so we should theoretically be seeing a lot of him.
And I’m not done. Wait, there’s more. If you act now, we’ll throw in MORE supporting cast members who have nothing to do with Ep 1! We have the partner’s boyfriend (just to make it clear there’s no romance going on with his partner, that would be crazy, right?). Jeff Pierre is the actor and remember that name as you are going to see it in the credits. Maybe not on screen for longer than 30s, but you’ll see it. And there’s some chick at a bar that he knows played by Odette Annable, his dead wife (played by his real-world wife Genevieve Padalecki), and his daughter’s friend (Gabriela Flores). But wait, there’s more. I’m sure we’ll get to meet the kid who was afraid at a pottery store, the daughter’s teachers, maybe her dentist, who will no doubt turn out to be an old lover of Walker’s who’s in a bit of trouble that erupts just as his daughter is in for a cleaning. Holy crap, there are PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. Oh, wait, no they have farm animals, there should be room for a hot female vet to stare lovingly at the father while the kids get jealous.
And nobody in any of the cast is really DOING anything for the entire episode.
Okay. Calm myself. It’s not like the original Walker was some master class in acting. They showed up, caught the bad guys, kicked some butt, spouted a few words like “drugs are bad” and cashed their cheques. I’m confident this group can do it too. Just as long as the writers remember that it’s a cop show at some point.
But that last part is the weak link. The show’s creator, Anna Fricke, notched her belt with shows like Everwood, Men in Trees, Being Human. I would love to be confident that the show will find its footing in action, not relationship angst. I just don’t see it being her go-to scene. Now, if she wants to write about him moving to Alaska to find himself after his wife dies, taking his two kids to live with him in a small town, I might be able to follow that one.
What the heck. It’s a coin toss for me for renewal. The brand is solid, and if they can do case-of-the-week FAST, the brand for Walker + the love for Patecki should be renewal gold. If they turn it into Everwood, Texas Style, me thinks no one will find it. Because the people showing up for Patecki and Walker are not looking for Everwood. I’ll go with Renewal, reluctantly. And I’ll watch for another episode or two to see if it goes ANYWHERE.
