Tag Archives: fall

Series premiere: The Orville

The PolyBlog
September 30 2017

While the big news for the purists amongst Star Trek fans was the release of the new series, Star Trek: Discovery, the news for the rest of the ST universe was the release of The Orville. Seth McFarlane is a huge ST fan, and the show rips off just about 90% of its approach from the Old Series, the movies, The Next Generation and Voyager.

Originally billed as a spoof, most of the reviews that I saw of the show were noting that it was way less of a spoof than Galaxy Quest had been. GQ had people acting crazy, but it was because it was so far out of their normal wheelhouse i.e. science fiction brought to life for actors who had been on the show. For the Orville, you’re a lot closer to Space Balls than to Galaxy Quest, without the outrageous side. It is more like a like sitcom set in the ST universe.

But the weird part is the show actually still works as a sci-fi show. The series premiere focuses on a remote science post with a new discovery, alien invaders, and a new ship sent to investigate with a new captain at the helm.

Seth McFarlane of course plays the Captain, Ed Mercer, of the U.S.S. Orville. Success with The Family Guy and American Dad could have easily made this a natural fit as an animated series but apparently, he just wanted his own ship. The first officer character is a woman (a la the original Star Trek pilot), and his ex-wife, played by Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights, Agents of SHIELD). By the end of the episode, they’re working well together, and if that dynamic holds, could be fun to watch. If not, it’ll be like watching your parents fight.

The secondary characters — Penny Johnson Jerald as the medical officer, Scott Grimes as the helmsman, Peter Macon as a science officer, Halston Sage as security officer, and J. Lee as the navigator — are all more or less third or fourth-level characters. I’m sure they’ll grow in importance, but mostly they are just comic relief. And not very good comic relief. Across the board, and particularly the first two, I have pretty much never liked them in anything they’ve been in.

It’ll be interesting to see if they keep it going as Star Trek-lite or up the spoof factor.

Series premiere: The Brave

The PolyBlog
September 29 2017

The new series The Brave premiered this past week, and when I read the premise ahead of time, I gave it little chance. It was basically suggesting the show would be kind of Seal Team Six redux, i.e. elite undercover military heroes. It wasn’t entirely clear if it was supposed to be ripped from the headlines type premises, or straight up action, so I wanted to check out the pilot to see how it ran.

Surprisingly, it is kind of like Law & Order took on military ops. There is even an explanation like the SVU intro…there’s text that basically says there are two groups defending the U.S. — analysts and special ops. The only thing missing was the “These are their stories” wording plus a Kachung sound.

For the analysts, we’re talking major baggage storylines. The head of the unit, the Deputy Director of the CIA is just back to work after losing her soldier son ten days before in combat. Yawn. Anne Heche is the woman in charge, and she has almost no emotion through the entire episode. She smiles near the end, briefly. I like Anne in certain shows, not sure for this one. Feels too much like they said, “Okay we have a blonde in Homeland, a blonde in Ma’am Secretary, a blonde in that other analyst show, get me another blonde for this show”. Her team is mainly made up in episode one of an ex-field agent Hannah (Sofia Pernas from Jane the Virgin and Young and the Restless) and Noah (Tate Ellington who was so good in Quantico). Or I think she’s supported by them — while the rest of the actors are listed as being in the first six episodes, they’re only listed on IMDB as being tasked for the pilot. Ellington was the only one of three I had hope for in the future.

For the action team, there is team lead Dalton (Mike Vogel from Pan Am and Under the Dome), Preacher (Demetrius Grosse from Justified and Westworld), ninja Jaz (Natacha Karam), McGuire (Noah Mills), and Amir (Hadi Tabbal). None of the five members are particularly standout characters in the first episode, although Dalton comes the closest to being interesting. Except they are all perfect. No issues. No challenges to their plans. Everything runs perfectly. Yawn.

And overall that was the problem for the episode. I just didn’t care because there was no real “risk”. For a three-act model, you kind of need some tension somewhere and I never felt any. The damsel in distress of the week was okay, but every time she went to talk, they made her shut up. Kind of hard to bond with her.

I predicted that NBC wouldn’t extend or renew it, and I see nothing in the premiere to change that prediction.

Series premiere: Me, Myself and I

The PolyBlog
September 29 2017

So the quick premise is that the main character, inventor Alex Riley, has had a bunch of significant moments in his life, and three in particular — once as a kid moving from Chicago to L.A. when his mom got remarried, once as an adult catching his wife having an affair, and once as an older man having a heart attack. In the opening episode of the series, you get to see each of the three events unfold, with some basic links between them.

For those who saw This Is Us last year, this is a similar take, except it is focused on one man. As a kid, he’s played by relative newcomer Jack Dylan Grazer and there is a very strong The Wonder Years feel to it. The kid is good, the dad is fine, Mom and the new brother are difficult to watch. And that’s going to be a problem for the series — seeing this age have the same gravitas as later-in-life segments.

The middle age version is played by Bobby Moynihan, and most people would recognize him from Saturday Night Live. I’m not an SNL watcher, maybe some highlights now and again, but oddly enough his voice sounded familiar. Cruising through his bio, I see he was the voice of Chet for Monsters University, and I think that’s why he seemed familiar to me. An odd link, I must say. And to be frank, he’s not bad here, he’s just not particularly great in Ep 1.

The old version is played by John Larroquette, and while I would love to love him, as much as I used to on say Night Court, this character seems bland to me. Perhaps in part because he has nothing much to do in the episode, he’s at loose ends. At least for the other two, you know how it turns out in part at least by seeing where the older versions are at in their life. But the oldest version of Alex is just drifting.

Which is a pretty good summary of the show too. Drifting. I’m not hopeful CBS will keep it past its initial commitment.

Season premiere: DC Legends of Tomorrow – 2016/17

The PolyBlog
October 15 2016

I knew of Batman (for Gotham), Superman (for Smallville), Green Arrow (for Arrow) and the Flash (for, well, The Flash). But I am not a huge comics fan for either DC or Marvel so lots of the recent spates of shows go beyond my knowledge. DC Legends of Tomorrow is in that category, never having heard of them as a group. But I love time travel shows and was enjoying some of the characters before they went wandering through time, so it was a no-brainer for me to start watching. I confess though that the ensemble approach leaves me a bit spread out in my support for the show, and it hovers on the “watch this week” vs. “catch it on binge later” toss-up line.

When the season ended last year, the producers didn’t know yet the fate of the show. It ended up moving to the CW, but they didn’t know that at the time so the final episode ended with a cliff-hanger…the ship is headed for the sun, likely to be destroyed, etc.

Episode 1 of Season 2? Picks up as if that episode never happened. Reminds me of the end of JAG Season 1 where Season 2 started off as if that episode never happened. Took them another 20 eps to figure out how to write it into the show. Instead, DCLoT starts with the ship trapped on the bottom of the ocean, and a professor coming to see Oliver Queen as Mayor and Green Arrow to help save the ship (the professor is an amateur time detective). They go to the ship, find one crew member, hear the story of how the team chased time gremlins for six months after the death of the time masters, and then ran up against Damian Dark, the reverse flash, and Nazis, only to have the ship hit with an atomic bomb. The team got scattered throughout time to save them (totally ridiculous explanation, with Palmer hanging out with Jurassic dinosaurs) and Sara trying to get vengeance for Laurel.

The episode was okay, but *spoiler alert* it ends with the Captain presumably lost, and the team set to go forward without him but with the new professor as the historical expert. As much as I am unsold on the ensemble, it only works for me if it stays stable. Predictable. Knowable. I have the same problem with Arrow this season — they’ve recruited a new team. Most of whom are likely to be fine, but really, I don’t care about their issues and their eventually-to-be-revealed backstory. I at least like the new Professor, just hope it doesn’t kill the show’s momentum as they devolve into a constant state of bickering about what to do next since nobody will be in charge.

Okay episode, not great.

Season premiere: Supergirl – 2016/17

The PolyBlog
October 12 2016

When Supergirl debuted last year, I wasn’t sure it was fully going to work. The “aw, shucks” innocence of Kara was hard to take without more backstory, but it was precisely that missing backstory that probably made it work. There are few “other” Supergirls to contend with…Laura Vandervoort played her on Smallville, and was decent but only amassed about a season’s worth of episodes overall, and often as a secondary character. And of course Helen Slater in the Supergirl movie. Let’s forget about her though. Which is easy to do. So, when Melissa Benoist started as SG last year, she had almost a clean slate.

But the first episode of Season 2? Her cousin stops by. Yep, Superman. Clark Kent. The Man of Steel. The big ICON that everyone knows. And honestly, I wasn’t that excited by it. Sure, the Flash stopped by last season, but that was Grant Gustin, who is already playing The Flash. This one is an entirely new Superman. A HUGE ROLE. For anyone.

I love Smallville, mostly as it focuses so much on the origin — how he learns to become Superman as opposed to “hey, look, I’m Superman today”. And Tom Welling was perfect in that role — not sure how I would like him in the suit, but as young Clark Kent, he was awesome. Other TV options include Dean Cain, George Reeves. In the movies, you have Henry Cavill, Brandon Routh, Christopher Reeve, or Bud Collyer. Sure, lots of others too, but those are the main ones. For me, Christopher Reeve was one of the few who got both Clark and Kal-El “right”. It’s really hard to not make Clark look “like” Superman, but not “like Superman”.

So who is the new Superman? Tyler Hoechlin. Wait, who? Sure, he might have been big on 7th Heaven or Teen Wolf, but I didn’t watch either. For me, he is brand new. And you know what?

I loved him. He is good as Superman…looks pretty young, almost a bit “youthful”. But he is GREAT as Clark Kent. Not bumbling, some steel in his role as reporter, confident, settled. The contrast with Kara was of course deliberate, but I was totally sold on him being Superman. Not like the others, all his own rendition. But believable. Totally in line with the way they have Kara written, with a bit more edge.

Overall, great episode. I’m not sure I want the entire series to be “Flying Cousins”, but for an occasional visit, it’s nice.