Okay, I’ll accept that someone somewhere thinks Lena Dunham is a god. So I can see if she turns something in, a network might want to make a series with her. Jennifer Garner is popular, has a bit of a Disney comedy vibe going; David Tennant is awesome; Juliette Lewis can be amazing. Throwing them together is star-studded gold, right?
Holy crap, this shows blow chunks on the only level it has which is annoying. When I read the premise, i.e. mid-life crisis, high-strung wife, camping trip with cast, I immediately thought, “Umm, how about about cancelled?”. Now that I’ve watched the premiere, and knowing it is on HBO, cancelled isn’t really a “thing” in their parlance (the whole series premieres at once in this case), but omg it’s bad.
Garner and Tennant play a married couple, and Garner is some sort of uber uptight alpha-organizer who has organized a trip for four couples to a camping ground in the middle of nowhere where the campground sets up the tents for them, provides an open-air cooking centre with water, etc., to facilitate meals, and gives them a wide-open setup.
I could see the premise playing out if the four couples like each other, but Garner gets along with basically none of them, and it’s impossible to see why any of them would show up. One of them is a good friend of Tennant’s, so at least that is something, but the other two are just plain odd to show up. Maybe there’s some hidden plot, but honestly, it makes no sense. They know what she’s like, and she’s both bitchy and anal.
If the couples were somehow likable, or at least some semblance of wanting to see each other, you might get it, but it’s just plain bizarre. And while there are lots of shows out there with hard-to-believe premises, this one is hard to overcome for a very simple reason — I can’t figure out why they came because I can’t figure out any reason to watch any of them. I didn’t smile once the whole episode, all I wanted to do was stop it and move on.
Maybe someone likes this crap, but it is the worst show I’ve seen in years.
I would have thought somewhere in the DC Universe there was a super hero janitor that didn’t yet have a series, and I confess that not being well-versed in the origin source material, I thought Titans was going to be about X-Men-like mutants. I was definitely NOT expecting Dick Grayson, aka Robin, as the main guy.
The first episode is a bit hard to follow, as there are several storylines happening simultaneously and at the beginning, they don’t look like they’re very well connected. First up, we meet Detective Grayson working as a cop in Detroit, having transferred in from Gotham. He is tracking a thug who got away with hurting his young daughter, and Grayson wants some vigilante justice. He shows up, kicks some butt with serious bloodshed (definitely NOT the normal beat them up and arrest everyone motif of most super hero shows) and maiming, and then basically kicks the crap out of the guy and beats him severely long after he is down. He is DEFINITELY closer to Nightwing in this incarnation than the old lovable Robin. Brenton Thwaites plays Grayson, and while I have not seen him in anything previously, he’s pretty dang good. Kind of like a darker version of Grant Gustin’s Flash. Does a great job of seeming young but old too soon.
Next up is Rachel Roth aka some sort of demon-within-a-girl who is having trouble coming to grips with whatever is happening to her, and the only solace she can find, is that she keeps seeing Dick Grayson in a nightmare, the night his parents died. But she finds her way to Detroit after her mother is killed and meets Grayson, which she feels cannot be a coincidence. She asks for his help but he’s reluctant to get too involved. Teagan Croft plays Rachel, and she’s good despite her limited experience.
And finally there is a third storyline around a woman who wakes up in a car wreck in Europe, only to be hunted by mobsters who killed the driver of the car she was in. She has lost her memory and is a bit surprised to learn she has superpowers. She is super strong and a skilled fighter, and when she goes up against someone trying to shoot her, she turns into a Firestorm-like human torch and incinerates them with a giant wall of flames. Interestingly, she torches them, but leaves a file sitting on the deck untouched (umm, sure). Anyway, she finds out that before losing her memory she was apparently looking for Rachel. The amnesiac is played by Anna Diop, and I have no more understanding of her character or role than she does.
The amnesiac torch is looking for Rachel, Rachel is looking for Grayson after someone kills her fake-woman-who-claimed-to-be-her-mother, and Grayson is looking for a new life away from Batman. Oh, and just for fun, the episode ends with a boy who turns into a tiger and robs stores at night to get new video games. Umm, okay. Wait, what is this show about?
I confess, I really have no idea. But it is WAY darker and more bloody than I was expecting. I also really love the fact that Robin is a full-fledged Robin, not an origin story. He has cool toys, nice car, fully formed fighting style, and kicks some serious butt in the episode. One of the downsides of going in blind is that I didn’t know much about the show or even the main character, not having seen ANY of the trailers or even the description apparently as it wasn’t even on my initial review or prediction list. I would have said RENEWAL and I’ll stick with that now. And it’s dark enough to hold my interest, so I’ll be one of the ones watching.
I really wanted to hate the CW’s new show, “All-American”. First of all, it’s on the CW, which isn’t all bad of course, but it’s a show about teens, so you know they’re going to jack the teen drama/angst. Second, I’ve seen the show, haven’t I? It’s about high school football and it was called Friday Night Lights. I’m sure it already ran its run.
But I watched the first episode and it’s not bad. Loosely based on a true story of a kid from a rough neighbourhood getting recruited to play football for a high school in Beverly Hills. Sure, recruiting high school athletes is against the rules, but well, there are always ways around rules, right?
The first episode has all the expected clichés. Rough neighbourhood for his home life, complete with gang shootings. The star isn’t interested in leaving to play football in another high school because he’s living with his family, etc. But he gets in one little fight and his mother gets scared, and sends him to live with his uncle and auntie in Bel Air. Oh, wait, different show.
And when he gets to the new school, you can expect he’ll have trouble fitting in. Except he doesn’t. Everyone’s super nice at the start, all the hottest and most popular kids befriend him, WTF? Then a couple of the jocks get jealous of his confident ways and want him gone, there’s a mini-crisis, and he has to decide — does he want a better life or not? Cuz “THIS IS YOUR TICKET OUT!” (surprisingly not shouted in actual dialogue but equally thick and heavy as presented).
I know, it sounds horrible.
And yet.
Spencer is the main character, and is played by Daniel Ezra. He’s decent, has an intensity about him, and while I haven’t seen him in anything before, he has a good guy vibe to him. His mother, Grace, is played by Karimah Westbrook, and I’ve never seen her work before either. Her role isn’t huge, but she has a decent set of scenes with Spencer, and they mostly work. Not too emotional, not underplayed, just normal stuff. There’s a small plot problem from early scenes to the ending scene, but that’s not a big issue with her acting, just the plot. Jalyn Hall plays his little brother, and while he’s decent, he is WAY too serious in most of the scenes. I don’t know how old the character is supposed to be, but he comes off more like a streetwise 80-year-old. Spencer’s home world is fleshed out by his home girl, Bre-Z who is actively encouraging Spencer to take his shot. Never wavering, full support. Hard to get a handle on her character though.
The Beverly Hills world is a different story. Like with Friday Night Lights, the coach is all important, and he’s played by Taye Diggs. I watched the WHOLE EPISODE and never realized it was Diggs. He seems way smaller than I remember him, almost thin and petite in some of the scenes. Not like an ex-NFL player. I think I first saw him on Ally McBeal back in the day. Then next on West Wing with a small role as a Secret Service agent. I vaguely remember him making a small splash on Will and Grace, but don’t think I was watching it at the time. And then he was hosting Day Break, the TV series framed like Groundhog Day where each day he woke up to relive the day he was framed for the murder of a State Attorney. I loved the premise, and the show died. I saw that he was on Private Practice but had no interest in the show, and seeing him with his shirt off wasn’t a draw for me. 🙂 I was delighted to see him when he popped up on Rosewood a couple of years ago, but had trouble placing him. Now, here he is again, and I had no idea it was him. And a small kicker — I didn’t like him that much. I found him all over the place for the character, shifting from warm and wise to fast-talking and smooth to pretending to be harsh as coach. He isn’t horrible, but he’s not good either.
The family around him is almost bizarre. Michael Evans Behling is the QB, Jordan, and also the coach’s son. His acting is a bit wooden, but it’s more the writing of his character, hard to get a handle on him — good guy, bad guy, anyone’s guess. His wife, Laura, is played by Monet Mazur, and while I didn’t love her as Castle’s wife Gina a few years ago, she does alright here. Except she’s a hotshot attorney, perhaps a do-gooder, perhaps nice, perhaps a bimbo trophy wife, not entirely clear. Samantha Logan plays sister Olivia who actually has some presence and depth, and potentially is a love interest for Spencer (who, ** spoiler alert **, may or may not be her half-brother).
Yet Olivia is completely eclipsed by Greta Onieogou as popular rich girl Leila. Maybe nice, maybe scheming bitch, hard to say. She does set him up for a nasty trick, but claims afterwards she had no idea. I liked her back when she was on Heroes Reborn (as Aly) but her role then pales in comparison to her star-studded display here. She steals every scene she’s in, and it is easy to see why Spencer would notice her and not pay much attention to Olivia. Cody Christian plays jealous rival Asher, but if the first episode is anything to go on, he’s written as a complete lightweight. Rounding out the school crowd is Jordan Belfi as the principal. He has a pretty limited role in the first episode, more administrator angst to gently say “win or else” to the coach and “oh no, what have you done”, which is about the same role he played on Castle and The Mentalist.
And yet.
It works okay. Not “And the Emmy goes to…” quality but it doesn’t suck, like I expected it to do. I didn’t even mind the teen drama in the background. And the surprise is that I’m willing to try another episode. I might not stick around, but I’ll give it a go. And I’ll even upgrade it’s potential for the year from CANCELLED to RENEWED. It’s a bit of a flyer, more of a bubble show I would think, but willing to give it a shot.
One of the challenges with reviewing a reboot is remembering that what you actually remember about the previous version is the characters that the actors and actresses created over time, the final product so to speak. If I look back at Season 1, for example, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the characters seem almost like caricatures in comparison with who the actors “became” as they learned to embody and develop the role. Similarly for shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer…season 1 is nowhere near as polished as the more mature versions of the characters a few seasons later.
So watching the pilot for the reboot of Charmed, I should try to compare it to Season 1 of the original Charmed, not the fully developed characters of the later seasons, right?
Well, in short, I can’t. There are three things that stand out for me in the episode as different from the original Charmed.
First and foremost, the sisters seem WAY younger than the originals. When Charmed appeared in 1998, Shannon Doherty had already done 111 episodes of Beverly Hills 90210, and at the age of 27, she was a seasoned TV veteran. Holly Marie Combs was only 25, but had 88 episodes of Picket Fences under her belt. Alyssa Milano was in the middle at age 26, with 40 episodes of Melrose Place and 196 episodes of Who’s The Boss.
For the new show, Melonie Diaz looks like she’s 12 even though she’s actually 34, yet she has only a handful of TV shows for multiple episode arcs plus guest-of-the-week gigs. Madeleine Mantock is 28, and has been on a few shows for full seasons. I liked her on The Tomorrow People and Into the Badlands, although I find it interesting that she seems older than Diaz in the episode. Sarah Jeffery is the relative baby of the group at age 22, but she has a couple of shows that have gone for a season or two. Overall then, on the age front, the new Charmed ones are actually spread out more, but they look way younger in the roles, and have far less experience of creating roles over multiple seasons. I actually felt like I was watching the high-school version, rather than a freshman university level trio.
Second, they have upped the ante on spookiness. There are several scenes where people popped out or birds erupt from doorways, and it was enough to make me jump more than once. I don’t remember a tense/fright factor in the old show, but it was also often a bit too light-in-tone, almost a PG version of hunting demons.
Third, maybe it’s the change from old series premise (grandmother dies) to new series premise (mother dies), or the fact that the third sister shows up and while a complete surprise to the other two, one of them is like “Cool”. No angst about “mom never told us”, no “WTF?” moments over time. Sure, one is suspicious of the person claiming to be a third sister, but there is NO recrimination against mom by the other two, and only a mild complaint by the sister who was abandoned.
Or maybe the issue is that I just didn’t buy the whole “oh, look, I have witch powers” being such a quick change for the three of them. By the end of the episode, I feel like it was just “Okay, we’re superheroes now, all good.” Even the final battle is WAY too easy. And don’t get me started on the previous battle that we DON’T EVEN GET TO SEE (?) that happens off-screen.
Bottom line…I wanted to like the show, as I liked the old one, and I hoped it would be good enough to keep watching. Sight unseen, I did however predicted it would be CANCELLED, and after watching the first episode, now I’m sure of it. I just don’t see any of the three of them being strong enough to anchor the show.
Sundance Now has an Aussie show about a female detective trying to solve a string of murders that includes the death of her trainee. The first episode deals with a new case involving the killer — yes, they know who he is, just can’t catch him — and her investigating the incident. She is brash, she is prickly, she is overbearing. While you frequently see the same character in its male form (the brilliant asshole detective), the brilliant bitchy detective isn’t any more fun to watch.
In the opener, she is on mandatory anger management training (big cliché #1) and everyone blames her for the death of her trainee partners six months before (cliché #2). She has a new partner and she treats him like crap, the same way she treated the previous trainee and through flashbacks, you see that she did have a bit of a soft spot for him even if she refused to let up on him. The only real lead they have on the guy and where he might be is his sister who claims she hasn’t seen him, doesn’t know where he is, etc. Cliché #3. The plotting is atrociously obvious.
And yet, there is something else in the episode that might be worth watching. Not the relationship between her and her ex-husband or his new girlfriend. Not the anger management stuff or her relationship with her new trainee. Not even the killer who has almost no mystique or sense of mystery/awe about him to make him seem menacing or worth investigating. He basically seems like a low level street thug, nothing more.
But the robbery that takes place is with an immigrant on a work visa…for some reason, the killer doesn’t kill the guy, he lets him live. And there is a whole sub-story about the store, the racist owners paying the immigrants as little as possible, the relationship between the clerk and his immigrant visa girlfriend and the three friends they live with to save rent money. In most shows, the victim would have some minor screentime, and almost always with the detectives asking them questions — in this show, you see the two lovers going on a date, interviewing for jobs, hanging out discussing the future, trying to tell their parents about their lover by Skype, etc. Whole sub-storylines, none of which would seem at first glace to have ANYTHING to do with catching the guy who has killed multiple times.
And yet I don’t care. I didn’t like anyone in the entire episode, nor do I care what happens to them. Sight unseen, I originally predicted RENEWAL. Instead, I’m changing that prediction to CANCELLATION, although with it being an import, the same renewal forces may not apply.
