Carter premiered last summer/fall, and I just got around to trying an episode. The premise is a typical trite TV Land premise, i.e., a person who is not a cop acting like a detective and bringing an unique perspective to the world of police work with some success. Lots of shows have done it over the years, with some coming from the world of cozy writing (Murder She Wrote), medical examiners (from Quincy to Crossing Jordan, there are dozens of examples), lawyers (hundreds, starting with Perry Mason), and more recently Castle. Few had the success of those shows I just listed, but Castle was one of the more recent ones — a best-selling novelist, always looking for the real story, initially shadowing the lead detective to do research but not-so-secretly lusting after the detective and more importantly, actually enjoying the work.

So when the premise came across the list of premieres of an actor playing a TV detective solving cases in real life, I thought, “Wait? Didn’t I just see this?”. Nope, that was The Grinder, with Rob Lowe. He played a TV lawyer now handling legal cases in real life. Sure, totally different. My bad.

Anyway, I expected it to be Hollywood Glitz style, high-budget, maybe some action scenes. I was NOT expecting it to be shot and generally set in North Bay, Canada with a much smaller budget.

Jerry O’Connell plays Harley Carter, formerly boy detective, now TV star detective. He’s likeable in a goof-ball sort of way, and oddly enough for my litany of shows above, I actually used to like him on Crossing Jordan. Except part of that liking him is because he wasn’t the lead. In small doses, I don’t mind him. Not sure if I can take him for a whole series.

In the show, Harley goes back to his hometown and gets his old high-school band of friends back together, namely a old potential ex of sorts (he’s not sure if he slept with her one night when he was drunk, she says no, she was just kidding him) and a buddy. The ex/not-ex is now a police detective (of course she is), her name is Sam Shaw (seriously), and is played by Sydney Poitier. I recognized her in the show, but had no clue from where…I would have never come up with Veronica Mars (even though I just binged it last year), or Joan of Arcadia (a million years ago), or Knight Rider (although, once I saw that in her bio, I was like “oh, yeah, now I remember”). She’s okay in the show, looks a bit younger rather than more mature than him though for the episode.

The buddy, Dave, is played by Kristian Bruun, and the whole time I’m watching, I’m thinking that I know this guy from something else, just can’t place it. He’s awesome though. Just can’t place it. Head slap. I see a photo of him without the beard, and I’m like “Donnie from Orphan Black!”. Of course. He always played Donnie as a bit of an uptight goofball doofus, here he’s actually relatively confident and more of a laid-back blue collar dude. I’m not surprised I didn’t immediately recognize him, just surprised I didn’t eventually come up with it. Sigh.

So the three amigos are going to investigate crime while Harley is on hiatus from his TV gig. And just for fun, Harley’s mother went missing years earlier and is presumed dead. But Harley has never forgotten her nor stopped believing she’s out there somewhere, probably. At least it seems like it at the end of the episode — a small hint there’s more than just the case of the week.

When I saw the original premise, my reaction was “Actor plays TV detective, actor becomes detective –> Cancellation”, and after seeing the pilot, I would have stayed with that prediction. Which is easy to claim as the show is long past cancellation. It went ten episodes, August 2018 to October 2018 and that seems to be all she wrote.

And while I’m not surprised, I am a bit disappointed. I have no illusions it’s high quality TV, but I would have tuned in for more shows and I’m going to burn through all ten episodes even though I know it isn’t going to do much with the bigger mystery (I cheated to see if anyone plays his mother in the show, and they don’t). It’s lighter fare, but better than some of the darker fare out there that still gets renewed.

When Abby’s premiered at the end of March, I had been tracking it on my prediction list since back in September. The only thing I really knew about it was that it was about a woman operating an informal / unlicensed bar in her backyard. I saw a few quips here and there online about it being a DIY version of Cheers, and I thought I could at least give it a chance. Then I read a review of it by a writer who used to work on Cheers, which is perhaps not the most unbiased of view but also one of the most informed, and after seeing the first episode, I have to generally agree with him. It’s neither welcoming nor funny. I have to admit though that my bar for sitcoms is pretty high; there are very few that I can tolerate.

The owner of the bar, Abby, is played by Natalie Morales who has been on a series of shows that I never watched. Even her guest spots aren’t generally shows I’ve seen. However, here’s the weird part…she was on almost a full season of White Collar, a show that I quite enjoyed. I didn’t remember her character. I went back and found a photo from her 2009/10 season, and I *still* don’t remember her. And while I wouldn’t have put the two together and thought they were the same woman, I obviously didn’t feel she had any presence before. She looks a bit like Nancy McKeon from her Facts of Life days, the blue-collar girl connecting with the locals. And they have her as a two-tour Marine, running a tight unit for the bar — there are rules, and a vetting process to even become a regular to sit at the bar instead of at benches or patio chairs. And honestly? I don’t care one whit about her character. Nada. Zip. Zilch. There was NOTHING there.

In the pilot, we meet her new landlord, Bill (played by Nelson Franklin), who has inherited the property and is surprised to find out there’s a bar in the backyard. Most of the conflict in the first episode is him asking for Abby to make some changes and Abby resisting his common sense suggestions. Franklin seems familiar, but the only show I could find in his bio that I ever watched is going WAY back to Dollhouse (also 2009) but he was only in two episodes so maybe not. Strange though that he seems familiar from two episodes and Morales not at all from a whole season? Anyway, he’s got a few good lines with a bit of a self-aware comic foil angle for the stupidity of some of the characters.

In the pilot, there are four other main characters introduced…Beth (played by Jessica Chaffin), a mom with two psycho kids, who doesn’t want to go home and look after them but she can see their window from the bar; James (played by Leonard Ouzts) as the resident bouncer who hates conflict and is also fat, so he must be funny (oddly enough, his stand-up comedy skills do show as his delivery is perfect); Rosie (played by Kimia Behpoornia) as the waitress / extra bartender / busgirl, who alternates in the opener between insightful and stupid; and Fred (played by Neil Flynn) who has known Abby since she was a girl and has a soft spot for her, almost like friendly uncle. Flynn is actually pretty solid for most of the episode.

So where does that leave me? Liking the landlord and one of the regulars, and not caring at all about Abby or three other regulars. But it’s the first episode, hard for them all to be lovable out of the box, right?

Except I didn’t laugh once. The WHOLE episode was boring and dull. There are two small scenes that had potential…one actually partly works where Fred has a trivia challenge of something Beth says, and when he loses his challenge, they go to the “punishment” cooler and he has to drink a lime-flavoured non-alcoholic beer. The second is Bill about to “document” things and taking notes on his phone, not realizing that Abby has a rule against cellphones in the bar, and she kicks it out of his hand into the next yard like Charlie Brown and Lucy, except she connects. But Bill looks at her like she’s an idiot, and for the joke to work, she has to commit to it. Live with it. Act like it’s normal. Instead, she shrugs sheepishly, apologizes, and then goes to get the phone back. Even the initial premise of him bending low so she could kick it didn’t even make sense.

And so I would stick with my original prediction — CANCELLATION. The show’s premise (a backyard bar) might lead everyone to know your name, but it had none of the original charm of Cheers.

When I first read the description for Homecoming (on Amazon), I wasn’t sold. A drama about a case worker helping veterans readjust to home life. There weren’t a lot of details in what I saw, and I couldn’t see where the show could go…they can beef up the honour, sure, but what kind of drama could they have that people would actually want to watch? Because PTSD flashbacks aren’t exactly “must see” TV week-in and week-out. Maybe it could take a Touched-by-an-Angel, wholesome viewing storyline, but even that would seem false if everybody’s life is suddenly better in 60 minutes. It also didn’t seem gritty enough for Amazon.

Imagine my surprise to watch the first episode and to find out the main star is, wait for it, Julia Roberts. I mean, holy crap on a stick. That is a BIG get for a show. And on that basis alone, I’d be willing to upgrade it from CANCELLATION to RENEWAL. Everybody wants to work with Julia Roberts.

But I watched the premiere / first episode called “Mandatory” and I won’t be watching anymore. I have almost no idea what the show’s about, and while I don’t mind a “slow to build” storyline, this one is almost glacial.

As near as I can figure out, Julia plays an administrator of a mental health facility for returning soldiers. She has been hired as the “point person” to run the facility, but the guy behind her is a used car salesman trying to do business with the Department of Defense. At first, she just seems inept, new to the job, not really sure of herself. She walks the first patient through “intake”, notes that he’s there voluntarily, and that there are really only three mandatory elements to the “process” — he eats his meals there, he attends some workshops, and he has regular check-in sessions with her. It isn’t clear if she has a therapeutic background, but she does seem to legitimately care about trying to help them. Meanwhile, the guy running the business side is basically flying by the seat of his pants to get everything up and running, using a converted office building, etc., and oh, by the way, did he remember to ask her to do background checks on the food services people? The businessman/owner is really anxious about an upcoming presentation to DOD, and that they will “have the data” that she will gather from the soldiers.

The soldiers are in rough shape, very much the PTSD issues you would expect, along with general transition issues. But that isn’t enough to hold attention, as I mentioned, so there’s a time jump…it is four years later, she’s working as a waitress, and an auditor has come to investigate allegations that the program didn’t run smoothly, which makes her VERY nervous and defensive.

Obviously something happened, and with some of the content of one of the sessions with the lead patient, you could see how it could have been something severe. These soldiers are scary dudes with issues and she’s poking around in their heads.

But it’s not enough. I don’t care about Julia (gasp!) or her character, there’s just not enough there to see why I would care. She was a doctor, now she’s a waitress, she was trying to help, now she doesn’t want to…it’s not enough. I didn’t see enough of any of the patients or the businessman or anyone else either.

Maybe there’s a fabulous mystery to unravel, but I’ll never know. I’m out.