At the start of the premiere of The Code, the opening explanation is that there are Marine lawyers who enforce the US Military Code of Justice i.e., the Code, and that these lawyers are full Marines, and can be deployed as prosecutors or defense counsel or into combat. It all sounds very serious, very “new”. Except it’s not.

Ever since A Few Good Men showed us Tom Cruise as a lawyer representing PFC Downey and Lance Corporal Dawson in their trial of the murder of Private First Class William Santiago, everyone knows there are lawyers in the military. Good ones who demand the truth at whatever cost to themselves or their careers. So much so that following the movie, actual enlistment numbers jumped in the US Military. The year was 1992.

Three years later, J.A.G. premiered. It starred David James Elliott as Lieutenant Commander Harmon Rabb, ex-Navy pilot grounded due to night blindness, turned lawyer. His partner in crime and occasional adversary (the lawyers take turns both defending and prosecuting, depending on the case) was Catherine Bell as Sarah Mackenzie, lawyer and one squared-away Marine. Rabb and Mackenzie will put in appearance on NCIS in the not-too-distant future, so we’ll see them again, some 14 years after they went off the air.

The Code? It’s the same ground. Lawyers, or Judge Advocates as they are called in the military, are searching for the truth. The pilot episode even contains the exact same moment as A Few Good Men. Going after someone big, a more senior officer who has crossed the line, someone who is responsible in the command structure for the criminal behaviour of those below them who committed the actual act. The big moment is that all seems lost, it’s do or die time for the lawyer, commit to the attack knowing there is no net beneath them, and that they NEED the person to confess because they have no evidence in front of them. They need Colonel Jessop to admit he ordered the Code Red in A Few Good Men — they need Tom Cruise to get him to admit it. And the scene shows him on the precipice of deciding whether or not to go full hog on him with no evidence and get him to admit it, but in doing so, totally risking his career. You see Tom Cruise pause at the defense table, pour himself a glass of water while his hands shake, and decide to go for it.

In this pilot, you see the lawyer do the same thing. He’s got the guy on the stand, he’s cross-examining, he knows what happened, but he doesn’t have the video evidence yet. He’s waiting on an email to get it. But he proceeds anyway. To save the day. And then, the moment of truth. The video arrives. Game over.

The lead character is Captain John Abraham, played by Luke Mitchell. He’s practically a poster child for a marine lawyer, having been a Marine himself who got shot and can’t do infantry anymore (sound like a Navy pilot who couldn’t fly planes anymore?). I have almost always loved every role Mitchell has inhabited. Roman on Blindspot, Lincoln on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., John on the Tomorrow People. He almost makes me willing to watch Home and Away, just for his involvement. Almost. My only concern is that he has this “tragic” feeling to him, that he’s damaged somehow, and it isn’t clear if that will fit well with the “recovered Marine who has found his new home” vibe that he’s selling in the pilot episode or enough to be the main lead. He’s always been a bit of an ensemble player.

Ato Essandoh plays his immediate supervisor, Major Trey Ferry, and I was having a lot of trouble placing him while I watched. His roles have been so different, I’m not surprised. He played Sherlock’s sponsor Alfredo on Sherlock; Vernon in Altered Carbon; and Reverend Potter on Blue Bloods. Three roles I’ve seen him in during the last three years, and I didn’t figure him out at all. Moving on though, he’s pretty good here. He doesn’t have a lot to do, coming off more as a buddy of Abraham than his boss, but maybe there will be some conflict there in the future.

Abe’s opposing counsel in the first episode, and potentially a love interest for the show, is Captain Maya Dobbins, played by Anna Wood. She does a decent job, albeit a bit formal with a hint that she wasn’t always so in the past. They have a history but it isn’t revealed in the pilot what it is. Trailers show a more relaxed version in the future, which would be welcome. She makes a good foil for Abraham, not sure a good romantic foil though.

For the smaller parts, they have Raffi Barsoumian as a warrant officer who works with the lawyers who is really good at his job of arranging logistics or finding things. Almost like Tiner on JAG? Stop that, I know. Anyway, small role in the pilot, but okay. And then there’s Dana Delany as the head of the unit, Colonel Turnbull. She only has a scene or two, but of course she nails both of them. Odd to see her in such a small role though. Or to realize she’s 63 years old now. Wowzers, she looks awesome. Or as she says in the episode, she cleans up well. I haven’t seen her since Body of Proof (I only watched the pilot, didn’t really like the show much), and also hard to believe it is 30 years since China Beach. However, I have to say, she will always seem like FBI profiler/special agent Jordan Shaw from a measly two episodes on Castle. If there was ever a character on Castle that deserved her own spin-off, it was her. Sigh.

So the show rips off A Few Good Men. And J.A.G. And a few other shows. But not in a bad way. Maybe they meant it as an homage? Okay, so no, it’s a ripoff, but it’s a good ripoff at least.

When I saw the initial description for the show last fall, it seemed like JAG + CSI, and I went with RENEWAL as my prediction. I’m a little less confident in that prediction now that I’ve seen the premiere, but heck, why not…I’ll stick with that prediction.

Over the last couple of years, I seem to be tripping over Romanoff stories left and right, often mysteries with claims that one Romanoff escaped the murders, and building off the years of stories and fairytales that the Romanoff lineage in Russia endures. Very few of them have been any good, to tell the truth. So when I saw there was a new Amazon original series, I thought, “Meh”. Predicting cancellation on any of the streaming shows is a crapshoot of course, too hard to know if the series has any promising metrics at all or what will strike the fancy of the streaming service to renew. They generally don’t follow any predictable pattern of typical shows since there are no advertising revenues to measure success.

What I didn’t realize is that the series is actually an anthology of 8 stories about people who believe themselves to be the direct descendants of the Romanoff lineage.

The first episode, The Violet Hour, tells the complicated story of a lonely old woman who has an beautiful apartment in Paris worth a large fortune in and of itself. Her immediate family is all gone, and all she has left is a nephew. She is in failing health and needs a caregiver around in case her BP spikes, and the woman sews dissent with every word. She’s a battleaxe basically, taking out any petty grievance she can on those around her, and driving conflict just to get a rise out of people. The nephew wants the apartment, as does his cunning wife/girlfriend, and the woman is tired of waiting for the old bat to die. The aunt has a fainting spell, and is aggrieved nobody rushes to her side, even going so far as to fire the caregiver. When the agency sends a Muslim girl, named Hajar, the aunt goes batshit crazy trying every racist thing she can think of to push the girl away. But Hajar endures. And the woman occasionally respects her. She even dresses her in a beautiful old gown one day and takes a shine to her.

*Spoiler alert* Eventually Hajar hooks up with the nephew, despite a huge age difference, they disappear from each other’s life, and that seems to be it. Until Hajar comes back around, pregnant. Which pushes the wife/girlfriend out of the picture and makes the aunt really happy.

And I didn’t care about ANY of them. Hajar was potentially interesting, the nephew was boring, and the aunt + wife were just negative caricatures. I thought there was potentially some great material hidden with the aunt, and one or two scenes when she was talking about the past just shone. If only the 90 minutes could have stayed right there.

Maybe some of the others will be amazing. But for me, I won’t know. I’m going to go with my original predication — CANCELLATION.

Back at the start of the TV season in the fall, I read the description for The Neighborhood, and thought, “Friendly mid-westerner moves to an LA neighborhood? Meh.” I expected cancellation. I bookmarked an online version of the premiere on one of the Canadian networks, and then kind of forgot about it. It didn’t hold a lot of interest for me.

What I missed in the original description was that it is about a white mid-westerner moving to an almost exclusively black suburb. All small houses, but a decent neighborhood. And as the first episode unfolds, you realize it is a bit of a different take on race relations to see a white man being not exactly welcomed by his black neighbors, or at least by one in particular. It actually has something to say, despite being a comedy, and it doesn’t do it clumsily in the first episode.

The three white midwesterners are Dave (Max Greenfield from Veronica Mars and New Girl), his wife Gemma (Beth Behrs from 2 Broke Girls) and their son Grover. The four black neighbors are Calvin (Cedric the Entertainer, who used to be really annoying but is okay here), wife Tina (Tichina Arnold), and sons Malcolm (Sheaun McKinney who is fantastic) and Marty (Marcel Spears, who cracks wise a bit too much for my taste).

The first episode shows promise as Dave arrives with his family in tow, and meets Calvin. While Gemma and Tina hit it off, and Malcolm and Marty seem to like them well enough, Calvin likes to expound on the fact that there are two types of racists — those who hate black people and those who love black people, over-compensating. It doesn’t take much to see that Calvin thinks Dave is the latter type, and despite Dave trying his hardest to be the super nice new neighbor, Calvin is less than pleased to have a white family living next door.

But let’s back up a second…it IS a comedy after all, not race relations 101. And some parts of it are quite amusing. I chuckled out loud a couple of times even. But not enough to hold my attention for episode 2. I just don’t care enough. Truth be told, I think there are three main relationships for the show — Gemma and Tina, which will be fine, a few bumps now and again, more just getting used to each other, yet not that compelling; Dave and Malcolm, that seem to have some actual chemistry and are worth watching; and finally Dave and Calvin, and I really don’t give a rat’s ass about Calvin. I see from the episode descriptions that somewhere around episode 4, Dave has had enough of Calvin’s rejection, but  honestly? I had enough about 2 minutes in. There’s just not enough humour in it.

But I have no idea how to predict the show’s future. I guess I didn’t see enough to convince it is renewable, but I have to say, it had more depth than I was expecting, and if they could concentrate on Dave and Malcolm, there just might be some gold there. Too bad Calvin would be the main counterpart to Dave. STILL PREDICT CANCELLATION.