ABC: The Mayor – rapper pulls prank to get noticed, gets elected…normally I would say cancel, but also in-house for ABC with other producers they’re already in bed with, so likely RENEWED;
Then I watched the pilot. It is a completely confused mess. I love the general premise — someone who doesn’t know anything about governing suddenly gets a chance to govern. It can work as a premise, just like it did back in ’93 when it was a movie starring Kevin Kline as Dave, a presidential impersonator who ends up being president for awhile.
But for the premise to work, there’s something you need that’s solid from the start…the main character has to be someone who wants to help people, someone who wants to do something different. In this incarnation, Courtney Rose only runs for mayor to get his name out in the public to promote his rap career. And when he wins, he just wants to dump it and run. So his mama gives him a 2 minute speech and he’s all on-board. WTF?
The character is all over the map. One part rapper, one part Axel Foley, one part community agitator, one part worthless con artist using the election for publicity. The interactions with his mom are cute, but not enough to save the show, and they are too like mother-son bonding on speed. Every cliché in the book comes out of their mouths, and they think it’s some way of showing profound change. Yet I have no idea what the show is supposed to be — comedy-drama or farce?
His two side-kick buddies are disposable, and the one “solid character”, Valentina, is appropriately intense with a touch of light, which makes sense since she is portrayed by Lea Michele. But then in the final scene of the pilot, it’s like she’s a bubblehead.
A totally confused mess from start to finish. Not surprisingly, the ratings have suffered and it’s all but cancelled at this point. Looks like I’m going to miss my prediction on this one.
CW: Valor – I would like to leave this one on the list as making it, and if it wasn’t the CW, I’d put it ahead of Black Lightning, with a serialized story about a failed copter mission in Somalia and flashbacks, could be great – CANCELLED;
The basis for the show is a helicopter mission to Somalia to deliver some soldiers to bring back a Somalia warlord as a prisoner. Except as they get back on board the copter, the locals show up, open fire, damage the helicopter and they have to ditch. The show then jumps forward a month to them back in the U.S., the two pilots made it, their gunner didn’t … he is MIA with the other soldiers who ditched before the crash. Pretty soon you find out that the two pilots lied in their after-action reports, and they’re hiding something. By the end of the episode you find out that after the crash, they got to shore with their prisoner who was not a warlord but an American soldier. There’s something else going on, the remaining soldier / CIA spook wants to kill him plus one of the pilots, but the female pilot shoots him first. He died, the prisoner got away, and the pilots were rescued after being in the hills for a week. Then they lied about everything afterwards to cover up the murder of the spook. But if secrets stay buried, there’s no show, so the gunner turns out to be alive and a POW, with his captors wanting to trade him for ISIS captives. No deal will happen, so the only way to get him back is a rescue mission.
I have three problems with the show, and I won’t be watching past this pilot. Don’t get me wrong, the plot is vaguely interesting albeit obvious — it was clear it was an American prisoner before it was revealed, there was some sexual tension between the pilots before it was revealed, and there was a crutch leaning on painkillers that was obvious before it was revealed.
However, that just makes it formulaic, not terminal. For me, the first problem is the sexual tension between the pilots. It is abundantly clear why the “stud” lead is attracted to her, he’ll sleep with anything. But there’s virtually nothing to explain why she would remotely consider him. Plus she has a boyfriend, and of course they have to have a fight in the Ep to give her “permission” to maybe do something with this other guy, even if she doesn’t. But it isn’t the sex that’s the problem — it’s the fact that these two leads lied to cover up the death, they’re potentially cheating on their partners, they’re violating tons of orders, and they’re not that heroic. I didn’t particularly care about either of them, and while it focuses on her, dragging her down also drags down the show. While they mouth the words, I see neither integrity nor honour to care what happens to either one of them. This isn’t Top Gun in copters, there’s no JAG or NCIS duty going on here.
Second, and maybe related to the first, the entire mission is going to be about either overtly black and white simplistic solutions or morally ambiguous choices. Neither of which are going to be particularly interesting because the simplistic ones are boring and the characters they have so far can’t navigate the grey zones since they seem to have almost no moral compass or code to guide them. While they want to rescue their friend, it seems almost as much about saving their own reputations and careers.
Third, the show is a bit of a one-trick pony. Unlike Quantico that did the flashback training to inform their actions going forward, this is telling the story in two different timelines, and really more like telling two stories. When those timelines catch up to each other, what then? Will they do the same thing next year for a potential renewal? Or just turn it into Top Gun with copters. The challenge too is they made the copter part BORING. WTF? How do you take the most exciting part and make it boring? I’ve seen more exciting flying twenty years ago with early Apache shows. Heck, even AirWolf and Blue Thunder made some of it look cool. Here? Not so much.
For the acting, there are only really two of any note, i.e. the two leads. Christina Ochoa plays Madani, the female pilot, and she’s not bad. I hope she gets something else next year, cuz I’m pretty sure this one will be gone. Matt Barr plays the male pilot, Gallo, and the whole time I was watching him, I was scratching my head where I had seen him before. I was sure he wasn’t the lead, but more a secondary character. Couldn’t place him at all, and I was starting to think maybe just a single episode of some series. And while he might have twigged my mind from shows like Castle, it was on Sleepy Hollow playing Hawley, the general black market anything for a buck dealer who ended up hooking up with the sister. I liked him then, and I really like him here. Just don’t like his character much.
Too bad the show didn’t live up to the hype, but I think this one will get cancelled.
Well. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this show. From the description, my prediction was:
ABC: Kevin (Probably) Saves the World (formerly The Gospel of Kevin) – It has a Touched By An Angel feel, and there’s a demographic out there that might like it, but not enough to save it, and not at 10:00 at night – CANCELLED;
And that is probably still my prediction. I fully expected though that I would watch it, hate it, like Jason Ritter as the star, and move on.
So I watched it, wanted to fast forward a LOT, and liked Jason Ritter most of the episode. Except I’m not quite ready to move on. Because I’ve seen this show before.
It was called Joan of Arcadia and Amber Tamblyn starred, ran for two seasons back in 2003-2005. Cute, eminently watchable. A little like Oh God, without the actual God in this version.
So the basic premise is that Kevin tried to kill himself, didn’t take, came home to stay for a few days with his twin sister and his niece about 18 months after her husband died. They’re not that close but he has nowhere else to go. Then, the night he arrives, 36 meteors hit the earth all in the same day. He touches one, gets chosen to be one of the 36 Righteous that brings hope to the planet. And he also gets a guardian angel, err, warrior of God, who will guide and train him.
Most of the episode is about him stumbling around, trying to avoid his destiny, and generally mucking up the relationships with his sister, niece and an old love interest. In the end, he makes some progress, it’s all good. Despite the fact that he’s the only one who can see his trainer warrior, so he looks like a kook talking to himself.
Jason’s great, and always watchable. JoAnna Garcia Swisher plays the twin sister, although you could be forgiven if at first you think she looks like Amy Adams. Pretty good, but a bit one-dimensional so far. Relative newcomer Chloe East plays the daughter, and she’s quite good. And Kimberly Hebert Gregory plays the trainer, Yvette, but she is all over the map with her character.
I’ll likely give it a try for a few more episodes, although I don’t expect it to make it to season 2.
Ghosted is a pseudo comedy from Fox that is basically Men in Black, without the straight man. My prediction, sight unseen, was:
FOX: Ghosted – Men in Black, weekly? With extra comedy? Yeah, that’s going to need a lot of work to keep it fresh – CANCELLED;
The basic premise is that there is an organization called The Bureau Underground who does the X-files / MIB thing. One of their agents has gone missing, and his last transmission was to find two guys — one is an disgraced astrophysicist working in a bookstore and the other is a disgraced LAPD missing persons detective working as a mall cop. TBU needs them to help locate the missing agent, and in return, they’ll try and help them get their jobs back. Deal.
Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation) plays the nerdy believer; Craig Robinson (The Office) plays the cop. Who doesn’t want to be partners or involved initially. They are okay together, not too over the top, and their partnership isn’t completely unbelievable. Way more understated then K though.
Ally Walker (Profiler) is familiar to me, but more for Taxi Brooklyn oddly enough. I like her, but have no idea what she’s going for in this portrayal — serious, comic, surprised, skeptical, vacuous? Adeel Akhtar looks to be comic relief in the office (ooh, forensics are weird and funny) and Amber Stevens West will be their weapons designer.
The pilot is full-on MIB, with aliens with no heads, space ships, and multiverses in the first episode. Nerds should love it but not sure it was funny enough for mainstream audiences. I liked it, didn’t love it, but it was cute. I’ll try a few more episodes but I think it will either need to up the humour or find ways to stay fresh.
When I was looking at the upcoming TV series, my prediction for The Gifted was:
FOX: The Gifted – Fox wants to expand into the superhero world too, after their relative success with Gotham, RENEWED;
For me, it was practically a given that if it was XMen, it would make it to Season 2. What I missed in the short announcements was that it is set in the XMen universe, the government doesn’t like XMen, and two parents discover their children have powers so they go on the run to hide. It isn’t XMen, it is the Xmen-ish underground.
Or, for those keeping score at home, The Tomorrow People with different characters and actors. You know, the show that lasted a single season.
In this incarnation, two teens exhibit mutant abilities when they try to protect themselves during a bullying incident at school. Percy Hynes White plays Andy, with the ability to move heavy objects — like buildings, atoms, etc. — and shake them. Or fling people. It’s not a very well developed ability yet, more generic. His sister apparently has had abilities for three years and hidden them. Natalie Alyn Lind plays the sister, and I didn’t recognize her from her turn as Silver on Gotham. Much softer look to her character here, and it works. Somebody has looked at the Heroes original, and made her look a lot like Hayden Panettierre (Save the Cheerleader, Save the World, remember?). They’re okay, not awesome.
The interesting part is their parents. Amy Acker (Person of Interest, Angel, Dollhouse) is always fun to watch, and she does okay here as the Mom, but dramatic emotion is not her forté, she’s much better with wry humour and light sarcasm. Stephen Moyer (True Blood) plays the dad, who is actually a prosecutor of mutants in his day job, until he finds out he has two kids who are mutants. I loved his initial scene with a guidance counsellor, very aggressive, very glaring, but the rest of the Ep, he was blah.
For the Tomorrow People, err, the mutant underground, we have Emma Dumont (Aquarius), who for a moment looked like Rachel Nichols (Continuum) to me and I was all excited. She has presence, but not a lot of airtime in the episode. Jeff Daniel Phillips, Hayley Lovitt, Jermaine Rivers rounds out some of the other cast.
Is it great? Not really. And if they were trying to be different from a show that got cancelled, they probably shouldn’t use almost the identical set for the underground headquarters. I’m not even sure it isn’t the EXACT set.
I’ll stick by my original prediction, as I think Fox really wants into the superhero world. And I liked the Tomorrow People, even if the ratings didn’t, so I’ll be watching. At least for this season, which is now a toss-up in my view.
