I never saw the movie Limitless, but I thought the premise sounded interesting — a special drug that gives you access to more parts of your brain, making you extremely efficient and smart as a whip. The holy grail of pharmaceutical companies everywhere, and one of the hoped-for byproducts of work on Alzheimer’s treatments. So when they announced a TV version, I thought, “Why not?”

The premise is a young Brian Finch, drifting along as a wannabe music star when his old buddy hooks him up with a designer drug called NZT-48, the wonder drug to give his brain a “jumpstart”. It works awesome for him, so much so that he figures out what his father has for a disease. But his father needs a liver transplant, the drug wears off, and Brian needs another fix to keep his brain churning at light speed. Except his old buddy is dead, he’s the prime suspect for a while, and the FBI is on his trail.

Fast forward to some interactions with an attractive FBI agent (Dexter’s sister, remember her?), and she’s willing to play along for a bit to see if he can find the real killer. Which he does, along with someone important finding him and offering him a cure for NZT’s debilitating side effects. Cue the credits, along with an offer of a liver for Dad in exchange for, dun dun dun, Finch becoming an FBI consultant.

It wasn’t an awesome episode but some of the effects were cool, and if it treads along the same path as Forever, Elementary, Lie to Me, then I’m okay with that. Hard to say if the show has legs, but I’ll watch for awhile at least.