On the show, Perfect Harmony, one of the characters exclaims holy crap at one point, and that is what I was thinking too, but for different reasons. Okay, quick premise. Music teacher takes over small-town church choir and gets them to pull together. That’s what I knew before the show started, and while I don’t want to discount the Glee factor, it’s a half-hour comedy show. Nope, I went with cancellation as my prediction.

Then I watched the show. The premise is a bit more involved than that, but not much. First, the music teacher lost his wife, he brought her back home to be buried in her small town, and now he’s ready to kill himself rather than go on. However, just as he reaches for a bottle of pills, he hears a REALLY bad choir singing and playing the piano, and he refuses to die with that as his final listening experience. He goes in, tries to tell them what to do, and then passes out. When he awakens, he finds them all hoping he’ll use his music expertise to help.

Second, it turns out that in addition to all of the choir being a bunch of misfits, another choir always wins a local competition every year.  And it just so happens that the pastor of that church refused to let the wife be buried in his cemetery, so the music director decides to stick around and help the choir try and beat the other choir out of spite.

If this was a movie, you’d see it be a struggle for them to all come together and then finally in the end, they would win it all by learning some lesson about love, and friendship, and believing in themselves, or some equivalent ridiculous crap. Probably with some quiet church mouse rising to the occasion and singing her heart out like never before. But this is TV, so more like Glee, or a dozen other shows, it would normally take a whole season of practicing, with some setbacks, etc., until the end, when in the last couple of episodes it would almost come together, maybe some dark betrayals, maybe some tears, and then a final win near the end. This show? They get ready for a show in 20 minutes of air time, including some rehearsals, go on stage, do their thing, and sing a song the music director never ever heard them sing before. He’s totally bewildered.

Bradley Whitford plays the music director. I loved him in West Wing. I liked him in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He blew me away in The Mentalist. Fantastic, creepy. But some of his comedic attempts leave me wanting less. He needs a really good comic partner, and the shows don’t tend to give him one. And he is TERRIBLE here. He’s funnier when he plays it straight, and terrible when he goes for humour.

Anna Camp plays the simple leader of the misfits, and piano player. A single mother, she’s all rainbow and sunshine. And while I haven’t seen her work much on True Blood, she’s okay here. Except when she sings. She’s not BAD, it’s just the whole choir is a totally different group when singing — like they all have two roles, one while talking and one while singing, and they’re not the same characters. And not in the sense of “let it go”. 

Other members of the choir are played by Tymberlee Hill, Will Greenberg (Abby’s), Shanice Williams, Rizwan Manji, Dominic Burgess, Desi Dennis-Dylan, and Geno Segers. They’re all good, but hard to tell if they will hold up over time.

But I’m lost. 21 minutes after the opening, they’ve had their first competition and it’s over, and they’ve invited the music guy to stay. But what’s the premise? Where does it go after the competition?

I have no idea. And I don’t really care either. There were a couple of mildly amusing lines, but that was it.

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.

And it was — it’s already been cancelled.

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.