CBS has a new drama called Guilty Party, and it wasn’t in my upfront predictions as I thought I would skip it. The premise is that a disgraced journalist is trying to rebuild her life and gets invited to a women’s prison to meet with a woman who claims to be wrongfully convicted for murdering her husband.
When I heard of it, I was like, “Meh”. I mistakenly thought it was a true crime show, not drama, and I checked out early. Instead, no, it is indeed a fictional drama along with a whole bunch of other dramas in the last few years where you have a season-long mystery. Most of them hold little attraction for me. But then I saw it was Kate Beckinsale, and I started to rethink it.
She was awesome in Underworld generally, and I liked her in Serendipity. I almost skipped The Widow, and only hung on because she was in it. But she had some gravitas as the widow wondering what happened to her husband who supposedly died in a plane crash, until she seems him on TV in the background of a current news report. The show was okay, she was great.
Sooooo, she’s in this one, and I wanted to give it a try to see how it runs. Big mistake.
She is playing a pseudo-space cadet. She won an award, she was all good, but she’s disgraced for making up stuff in her article, and almost all of her acting around it comes across like a child. There’s nothing THERE for gravitas, the only thing that held my attention in The Widow. She’s married to an okay guy but there’s little chemistry; she interacts with writing people in ridiculously destructive ways; you’re supposed to feel something for her as she’s trying to get her life back on track, but well, the inmate is right. The “opportunity” she sees isn’t about her, it’s about the woman in prison. Except, well, that actress is new, a fresh face, sure, but ZERO presence.
The various friends and family are unrelatable, not sure why I would care about any of them. In fact, in the entire story, about the only person I even remotely cared about was the guy who got killed. Until I found out he was also a gun runner and an abuser of women.
I don’t know what the story arc will look like, but nothing seemed compelling. I’ll predict cancellation, and I definitely won’t be watching.
Ah, NBC. I know you really, really, really would have liked to have Lost on your network, but it was ABC that had it. So you created a new one, with a relatively similar tone…people are together, catastrophe happens, they wake up in a new land after passing through a very white light, and have to learn to survive with sharing food, building shelter, finding water, fighting off large ravenous polar bears, err, I mean wolves. Heck, the show even drops a ref to being in an episode of Lost. When the show was listed, I wrote the following:
La Brea on NBC premieres next week, and I would love to make fun of it. I mean, after all, there’s a lot of material to work with…a tar pit that collapses into a sink hole in LA? That transports people into another dimension? Really? I have to say cancellation on that basis alone. It isn’t LOST, and it ain’t even Manifest. But here’s the thing. The main star is Natalie Zea. OMG. I loved her on Justified, she is just knock down gorgeous to watch doing anything. On Unicorn, he was getting a girlfriend, and I thought, “meh”, until I saw it was her. Then I was like, “Yes! She has presence!”. The fact that I loved her all the way back to Dirty Sexy Money is not relevant to the conversation, is it? Okay, maybe it is, but I’m also excited to see Eoin Macken who I used to really enjoy on Merlin (oddly, I just binged it again recently). I expect cancellation, but I’ll be watching anyway.
Sooo, the tar pits part is relatively irrelevant. I’ve seen EP1, and I didn’t even recognize Eoin Macken as Natalie Zea’s estranged husband. Let’s recap the premise a bit now that I have more details.
Mom, newly-one-legged daughter, and brother are driving in LA when the world’s largest sinkhole opens in front of them, next to the La Brea tar pits, and sucks Mom and Bro into the giant hole. Sis manages to escape. But the hole is huge, like several city blocks by several city blocks big. Whole buildings collapse. The government shows up, says there’s nobody to rescue, they fell too far, the hole is too big, and well, too bad buttercup, that’s all there is. Except they then talk to each other about how they’re lying to everyone. Dun dun dun.
Mom and Bro wake up in a new land, lots of grass and trees, and after travelling a fair distance to get to a smoke column, they find each other and a bunch of other people. Now, let’s ignore the fact that the hole would have taken thousands of people and about 50 make it to this encampment. I mean, we have to ignore it, as there’s no explanation of where everyone else is or the fact that millions of tons of debris and concrete fell into this hole, and what’s around are some cars, a few trucks, a couple of signs, etc. Virtually no rubble. Huh?
Meanwhile, back in normalcy, the ex-husband is trying to get a job as a pilot, back in the air force. Except that he’s meeting with a senior air force person to get them to pull strings to get him back in after a plane crash led to him seeing things. Despite the fact that recruitment would be regular through recruiting offices or his post-military liaison, not cold-calling an air force bigwig like he’s applying for a private-sector job. Oh, and btw, the images he’s been seeing? They’re of the same place his wife and son are now trapped.
I wanted to give this show a fair shake, and all I kept seeing were scenes that looked like rip-offs from Lost. Oh, look, one of the guys taking charge is a surgeon. Really? REALLY??? At least they didn’t call him Jack.
Oh look, someone is injured and they have to find bandages, and meds, and medical supplies in general, oh my! They pool food, some people pull a Sawyer and try to hoard. And I swear to god, they find HEROIN in one of the cars. Good news if you’re an addict like Charlie. Oh, wait, that was Lost, right.
But there’s at least no one who seems to have been miraculously healed by the transfer and has the ability to lead others. Although that shrink was suicidal and now seems to be finding himself. Never mind. Let’s just call him Locke.
Now, I have to give a giant SPOILER ALERT. Normally, in a show like this, they throw the premise at you, like Lost did, but don’t really explain anything. The mystery pulls you back, trying to figure out where they are, what’s happening, what’s really going on.
Except this show tells you in EP1 that somehow they have gone back in time. Birds that are extinct came out of the hole; a boulder that the husband and wife had visited in present time is back in the past in his vision, along with her wedding ring lost in the past but able to found relatively unmarked lying near the boulder to prove they are somehow stuck in the past; and, oh yeah, Mom recognizes the Hollywood Hills without the Hollywood sign, and realizes she’s still in LA. So everyone knows what’s going on, including the viewer. And if you were still confused, a live sabre-tooth tiger attacks.
Well, at least they weren’t dinosaurs.
But the show is terrible. It is one ripoff after another, and as much as I would like to follow it, they even seem to have ripped off Star Trek. There is a light that they passed through, and I swear it looks exactly like the Nexus from the movies. Really? REALLY?
Sigh.
I can’t even watch it. Even with Natalie Zea in it. Hopefully, they’ll cancel early so she’s free for another show in the next pilot season. Maybe another romantic comedy or she can read the phone book for all I care.
I made a small typo in my predictions for this show, as I thought it was called “The” Foundation, but it is simply “Foundation”. For my prediction, here is what I said:
The Foundation starts on Apple TV+, a sci-fi series ruled by a clone not happy about a mathematician predicting darker times ahead. I am in like Flynn, and if it was on regular TV, I’d say cancellation; on Apple, I’m predicting renewal to Season 2.
Now that I’ve seen the first episode, I’d be tempted to predict possible renewal anyway. It’s hard to say. The show IS pretty hard-core sci-fi, and likely too dense for most casual viewers.
Here’s the skinny…a young woman has won a galactic math competition set up by a professor. She is from a conservative planet that shuns science and math, yet she has embraced it. She travels across the galaxy to the main planet to meet the professor and to take up a job with him, but upon her arrival, he tells her that she will be arrested the next day as one of his followers. The contest was really bait to find someone who could understand his mathematics well enough to verify that his predictive analytics are correct: the current civilization will fall within five centuries and may be followed by 300 centuries of dark conflict. He has a plan to limit the duration of the darkness — libraries to help people rebuild — but the current ruling dynasty is not happy to hear that his predictions have them dying off. The professor’s simple prediction comes true, they ARE arrested, and the trial basically accuses them of treason.
The professor, Hari Seldon, is played by Jared Harris, and I almost didn’t recognize him. Normally, he plays a bit of an oddball, emphasizing some issues with his eye alignment to make him seem a bit deranged and always a bit sketchy. Here, he’s very formal, sincere, respected, and speaks slowly and persuasively. In short, he is awesome. But he almost always is. Hodge from Mortal Instruments, Jones from Fringe, or Moriarty from Game of Shadows, he always delights.
Relative newcomer Lou Llobell plays the girl who won the competition, Gaal Dornick. She is generally solid, although in EP1, there are a few places where she seems a bit inconsistent i.e., either too light or too serious, although it could be the intent of the script for the scenes. Just seemed off a bit, pulling me out of the story.
There are a host of other characters…three leaders (clones), various people who represent the government (including Alexander Siddig aka Dr. Bashir as the government’s advocate), religious groups, and other supporters. It’s not clear yet who will make it through the series, and the direction of the series itself is unclear. The story has two time periods (present and 35y later), and both seem potentially compelling, although once you know it’s been 35y, I’m not sure the urgency of the interim period is as exciting.
Overall, it was a great Episode, really well done for production values, seemed more like a mini-movie than an episode. As I said in my prediction, I’m in like Flynn. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
I felt like I was going to hate this show. Or more like I wanted to hate the show. When I did my prediction, I said this:
The Big Leap on CBS is a show about making a dance reality show where they select contestants to star in Swan Lake. I know, I wasn’t looking for a fictional reality show either. But it’s basically Glee, or maybe Fame, for adults. I am curious enough to see an episode or two, mostly because I like the woman playing the main character (a large black woman who thinks she’s too big to be the star), but it also has some others like Piper Perabo who I like. I am not a giant fan of Scott Foley, and as they up the angst factor, everything I hate about reality shows is likely to turn me off. Teri Polo plays a housewife who drinks too much and has no support from her family for her interest in being part of the show, and well, that’s the cringe factor for me. So yes to Ep 1, but I’m predicting no renewal if only as there is no place for it to go without dumping all the characters you love and recasting next year. I know, I know, it doesn’t stop reality shows from thriving. But I’m still saying 1 season and done.
Then I watched EP1, and a lot of the “cringe” factor went away. As predicted, the lead woman, Simone Recasner, had really good presence. Yes, she can dance, but more importantly, she has some range for acting too. Sweet.
Scott Foley is playing almost a caricature of a producer who will feel bad, but not too bad, at exploiting everyone because they need to in order to make the show work. Some good lines and not too cheesy except when he’s supposed to be.
Piper Perabo has one big dance scene with another character, and not over the top. Sweet.
Did I mention it all comes across as sweet? Because the drunk wife wasn’t a cringe factor, it was almost funny seeing her go to the Genius Bar to have them restore her husband’s laptop so she could see what porn sites he’s visiting. There’s mild cringe in it all, but mostly she’s feeling uplifted with the new area of her life.
There’s some other stuff going on that is relatively stupid for a premise. One of the characters is a dancing meter maid/traffic cop? Another is a porn star / stripper. Another is a friend of the main star, was her boyfriend in high school, and she apparently needs him to have the confidence to go and do the audition. Which then leads to him making it to the next round, but other than having good moves, having no real purpose in the story.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The show is generally crap. There’s almost no redeeming value anywhere in it, and I can’t even guarantee it will make it to the end of the season, let alone season 2. But I am going to watch anyway.
NBC has been hyping the heck out of their new show…it’s new! it’s different! it’s a rip-off of the movie Sliding Doors! Oh, wait, they didn’t say that last part.
When I read the description and saw the ads, I wrote this in my prediction:
Ordinary Joe on NBC has a This Is Us feel to it, crossed with the movie Sliding Doors. The basic premise is a guy named Joe who has to make a choice the night of his graduation as to what he’s going to do next and he has three choices in front of him…ask out a pretty girl he just met, go with his best gal pal to the beach as she has something important to tell him, or go for dinner with his parents and family. The story then branches and shows what would happen if he picks each of the three choices, with some of the characters and events crossing back and forth between the storylines. The story lives and dies by the main character, played by James Wolk, and he has an awesome presence. I’ll give it a go and I predict renewal.
Now that I’ve seen the pilot, I’m going to change both of those predictions. First of all, I have to say it is very different from what I was expecting in the storytelling. Whereas Sliding Doors was more nuanced and soft about the choices, in Ordinary Joe, you actually see the big “moment” AND it clearly shows you in the show “these are my choices” in case you were too stupid to get it. Sure, the narration has more of a strong A Million Little Things feel to it than This Is Us, but the biggest element that was different for me was that I thought the story would start right after that big moment.
Just to be clear, he has the three choices I mentioned above. But then, the story jumps forward ten years and shows his current life, depending on which of those three choices he made. Most of the same characters show up in all three storylines — the new girl, the best gal pal, the best friend, and his extended family.
I don’t want to spoil things, but in one of the storylines he’s single, in the second he is married and stressed trying to have kids, and in the third, he’s married with kids but his marriage is imploding. One storyline has him working as a cop, another as a rock star, and finally one as a nurse. The hook for EP1 is it is his 10-year reunion from graduation and he’s unsure about his life at the moment.
I was surprised that they jumped forward 10 years instead of showing his changes as he went, but the bigger surprise for me was the editing. After a really ham-fisted approach to his choices — they literally show all three in side-by-side screens — the editing for the rest of the episode is likely award-winning. If anyone is looking for next year’s editing Emmy, I’d sign this show up.
Instead of pausing as you go from story to story, all three are intermeshed softly, and it is amazing editing, but also likely too confusing for most viewers. I like confusing, I like stories like this that are almost time-travel parallels, and I couldn’t follow all of it. The producers and directors did a great job of helping viewers follow the storyline by making him look like a cute boy scout in one (the cop), the scruffy heart throb in another (the rock star), and the nerd in the third (nurse).
And I confess, I love the main star, James Wolk. He’s had some success in previous shows, including Mad Men, but it wasn’t something that ever interested me so I don’t think I’ve really seen him in anything before. He is awesome in all three versions, and each one has a slightly different tone to it. He’s not Tatiana Maslany or anything, but he has definite presence.
The “new girl” choice is played by Natalie Martinez, and I confess that for most of EP1, you don’t really get much of a feeling for her in each of the three timelines. She has more presence in one than the other two, but it is the editing with her scenes that are the most confusing to me in places. Her role is not as varied in two of the timelines, and it is hard to follow in a couple of places when the jump shows her in relatively similar roles. I saw her for one EP in the Island, but didn’t stick around, and I don’t know her from her other roles.
Elizabeth Lail plays the gal pal from college, and she is a decent bright spot. I liked her in You, but I don’t really remember her from a season of Once Upon A Time or her one EP arc on The Blacklist. Still, she’s pretty solid here, and each role is quite different — one quite strong and controlled, one more desperate, etc.
With two of the main leads as solid, why am I not sticking around? Because the jump cuts and premise to the show isn’t holding me. I thought I would see him become this 10y-later version. Without it, I feel like, “Hey, what’s happened?”. I also think with the editing, the show is NOT going to make it to renewal. Maybe if it does, I’ll pick it up for binging sometime.