When I first read the description for Homecoming (on Amazon), I wasn’t sold. A drama about a case worker helping veterans readjust to home life. There weren’t a lot of details in what I saw, and I couldn’t see where the show could go…they can beef up the honour, sure, but what kind of drama could they have that people would actually want to watch? Because PTSD flashbacks aren’t exactly “must see” TV week-in and week-out. Maybe it could take a Touched-by-an-Angel, wholesome viewing storyline, but even that would seem false if everybody’s life is suddenly better in 60 minutes. It also didn’t seem gritty enough for Amazon.

Imagine my surprise to watch the first episode and to find out the main star is, wait for it, Julia Roberts. I mean, holy crap on a stick. That is a BIG get for a show. And on that basis alone, I’d be willing to upgrade it from CANCELLATION to RENEWAL. Everybody wants to work with Julia Roberts.

But I watched the premiere / first episode called “Mandatory” and I won’t be watching anymore. I have almost no idea what the show’s about, and while I don’t mind a “slow to build” storyline, this one is almost glacial.

As near as I can figure out, Julia plays an administrator of a mental health facility for returning soldiers. She has been hired as the “point person” to run the facility, but the guy behind her is a used car salesman trying to do business with the Department of Defense. At first, she just seems inept, new to the job, not really sure of herself. She walks the first patient through “intake”, notes that he’s there voluntarily, and that there are really only three mandatory elements to the “process” — he eats his meals there, he attends some workshops, and he has regular check-in sessions with her. It isn’t clear if she has a therapeutic background, but she does seem to legitimately care about trying to help them. Meanwhile, the guy running the business side is basically flying by the seat of his pants to get everything up and running, using a converted office building, etc., and oh, by the way, did he remember to ask her to do background checks on the food services people? The businessman/owner is really anxious about an upcoming presentation to DOD, and that they will “have the data” that she will gather from the soldiers.

The soldiers are in rough shape, very much the PTSD issues you would expect, along with general transition issues. But that isn’t enough to hold attention, as I mentioned, so there’s a time jump…it is four years later, she’s working as a waitress, and an auditor has come to investigate allegations that the program didn’t run smoothly, which makes her VERY nervous and defensive.

Obviously something happened, and with some of the content of one of the sessions with the lead patient, you could see how it could have been something severe. These soldiers are scary dudes with issues and she’s poking around in their heads.

But it’s not enough. I don’t care about Julia (gasp!) or her character, there’s just not enough there to see why I would care. She was a doctor, now she’s a waitress, she was trying to help, now she doesn’t want to…it’s not enough. I didn’t see enough of any of the patients or the businessman or anyone else either.

Maybe there’s a fabulous mystery to unravel, but I’ll never know. I’m out.

ABC has their new show called “The Rookie” and I was prepared to love this show based on the little I knew about it. A 40 year old hero from a bank robbery decides to become a cop and join the LAPD. Hence he is their oldest rookie. It doesn’t scream hit to me, but with Nathan Filion aka Rick Castle playing the lead, I was in like Flynn to give it a shot.

The show unrolls, at first, exactly like I thought it would. There’s an opening “event”, in this case a bank robbery at the bank where the main character, John Nolan, is putting his divorce decree in a safety deposit box. He’s a good guy, and the divorce was amicable — they even stayed together 2 extra years so their son could go off to college first. He’s just a little lost now, wondering who he is and what he wants to do with his life. As he’s exiting the bank, two bank robbers come in and start robbing the place. One assaults the bank manager, John’s friend, and John reacts, drawing the attention of one of the robbers. Just as the robber is about to see the bank manager hit a silent alarm, John distracts him to get his attention back on him, and in the process, gets pistol-whipped. Then John sees cops pull up across the road, and to distract the robber, he draws his attention again. Just as the robber is about to shoot him, the cops save the day. Fast forward nine months and Nolan is joining the LAPD as the oldest rookie.

At this point, the story could go a lot of different ways. First, it could be a comedy of errors and blunders as he stumbles through being a rookie. It could even be an actual comedy. But it’s not, it’s a drama.

Second, it could go with the very traditional “story of the week”, the tried and true formula of Castle, Blue Bloods, pretty much every other procedural out there. But he’s a rookie, not a detective. So, no.

Third, it could focus on him as he learns the job, totally about him being a surprise superstar. Nope, not the way they went.

Fourth, it could focus on him as he struggles to learn the job, a “lesson of the week” type approach. This is kind of the premise, but they threw in two twists I wasn’t expecting.

John isn’t the only rookie — there are three in total, John, Jackson, and Lucy. And they are all assigned training officers. Plus the TOs have a boss who hates John, and that boss has a boss who likes the idea of John’s potential positive press. And so it is a LOT like Rookie Blue from a few years ago. No Missy, but that’s a good thing in my books.

But what I wasn’t expecting was the extra support. That’s John plus seven other key regulars, and while I assume Nathan Filion pulled in some big money, it was the other cast members that I was surprised by in terms of their pedigree.

Okay, I’ll start with Nathan on Team 1. I like him a lot. He was great on Castle, loved the show. However, while I watched Firefly, I’m more enamoured with his short-lived show after Firefly — Drive. So I was going to give this one a good try, even if the pilot was slow. Nope, I liked it, we’re all good. His training officer, Talia Bishop, is played by Afton Williamson, and I have only seen her in guest star roles, none of her larger series roles. She’s good, appropriately tough, and sits well in the role as a strong training officer.

Team 2 is a combination of rookie Lucy Chen, played by Melissa O’Neil who I loved on Dark Matter, and training officer Tim Bradford, played by Eric Winter who is a bit hit and miss for me (okay on Mentalist, meh on Rosewood).

Team 3 is rookie Jackson West, a gung-ho, squared away, energetic rookie played by Titus Makin Jr. (a few guest star roles that I’ve seen, but nothing memorable) and training officer Angela Lopez, played by Alyssa Diaz (some guest star roles that I’ve seen, a bunch of others that I haven’t).

At this point, I was just happy to see Filion supported by O’Neil. Then we meet the boss of the TOs that hates John…Sgt Wade Grey, played by Richard T. Jones. Jones was one of the few highlights on Wisdom of the Crowd, and I liked him all the way back to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles or even farther back to Judging Amy. He makes a great cop, so happy to have him. And since he’s set up as a source of conflict for John, he’ll be around regularly. Watching, waiting to pounce.

But he has a boss too. A Captain Zoe Andersen, played by Mercedes Mason. I’ve seen her around in shows — NCIS: LA, 666 Park Avenue, even Castle. And I always like seeing her. She doesn’t have a big part in the pilot, so hard to tell for the future, but I’ll count her as a plus.

Actually, I’m counting all of them as a plus. I thought it was going to be mostly just Nathan Filion, newbie. But the story was a bit deeper than I expected in the opening, albeit not very strongly written, but it’s got some potential meat lined up for future EPs. I’m in. My original prediction was RENEWAL, and I’m sticking with that prediction. And I’ll be watching.

I got turned around somehow on the show Legacies. Not completely, just a little. I assumed it was more Buffy-ish i.e. lots of mortals trying to figure supernatural stuff out that was happening around them. I didn’t realize it was going to be following a triple threat — part witch, part vampire, part werewolf. Or, as one character calls her, a unicorn.

Here’s the premise. There’s a Hogwart’s-like school, or Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Children-like, if you prefer, where witches, vampires and werewolves learn to control their darker sides so they can blend in with the human population without killing them all. A budding werewolf is welcomed to the school, and when the school tries to mesmer his friend to forget everything, it doesn’t work. And the story begins.

I got turned around somewhere, as I said, as I thought it would be more Buffy-ish, but I also worried it was going to be like The Vampire Diaries (its original source material). I had watched a couple of episodes, but I had trouble dealing with the semi-permanent teen angst in the episodes I saw. So I was surprised to see that it was more immature angst, easily dismissed in the cast. I didn’t hate it to be honest. It’s hard to know which characters are going to be big, but there’s a bit of a hint, and so I’ll focus on them.

Danielle Rose Russell is the triple hybrid lead, Hope, and she’s pretty compelling. I didn’t see her in The Originals but she is both bright and cheery, despite her tortured soul role, and she’s fun to watch. Aria Shahghasemi plays the unmesmered “human”, Landon, and outside of his small part in the TV series Unforgettable, there’s nothing I’ve seen him in. Yet he seems eminently familiar as a young, almost tortured artist who knows too much. Again, compelling to watch, but I’d like to know his story pretty fast, otherwise it will get old. Kaylee Bryant sparkles as daughter #1 of the headmaster, and while I haven’t seen her in anything before, she does a decent job of playing the broken-hearted witch. Daughter #2, played by Jenny Boyd, is a bit all over the map, and it’s hard to tell if she’s intentionally that way or just bad acting. Peyton Smith plays the new werewolf, but it is TOTALLY confusing as he seems totally okay knowing that he’s a werewolf (of only a month?) and that there are witches and vampires too, oh my. They are friends with a vampire kid named M.G., played by Quincy Fouse of Logan-fame. All of them are watchable, but only the lead and Kaylee really shine.

The only really experienced player in the group is the headmaster, played by Matt Davis. He played the same character (Alaric) on The Originals as well as the Vampire Diaries. I don’t remember him that well from the few episodes that I have seen, but at least he’s not into the angst-love-fest. And with so many EPs under his belt, it was obvious he was comfortable with his character.

I originally predicted RENEWAL and I’ll stick with that prediction.