The first half of the traditional TV season is over, and it’s time for the mid-season replacements to debut. Back when the announcements were made, here’s what I said about LA to Vegas:
FOX: L.A. to Vegas – Workplace comedy? Sure. Airlines to Vegas? Umm, no – CANCELLED;
Now that I’ve seen the first episode, I’d like to edit that to say, “Umm, HELL no”. If you took all the funny bits from the episode, condensed it down to 4-5 minutes, it wouldn’t make it as an SNL skit. During their slow years.
They had a cute line or two, sure. The opening premise of the stewardess arriving late to work, getting changed as she ran through the terminal, sprinting to the plane past the various passengers in time to get on board and greet the boarders. Her obviously gay steward coworker asks her to confirm if she got dressed in the terminal again, and cue the punchline, “At least I wore underwear this time”. Ba-dum bah.
The lead character is the stewardess and she goes from “I’m trying to get it together” to “existential crisis” to “total confidence in herself” as she flirts with a passenger at the end. All over the map. Wait, I think I have a line for the writers there…
She works with a pilot who’s a one-trick caricature (pilot, drunk, divorced, pathetic), gay co-steward, and a few regular passengers (a stripper, an econ professor, and a gambler), and NONE of the characters are worth watching. I was expecting to see them outside the plane, doing something in Vegas, but it literally is about the flight there, and the flight back. So far, that’s it. Now, don’t get me wrong, you can have a huge successful show where nobody leaves a bar, or even operating a flight terminal, but they’re on a discount airline with the most spacious seating known to man. Really?
As I’m reviewing this, I’m not even bothering to look up the actors’ names, because I really didn’t care that much. I can’t believe this got green-lighted.
When the new season started and I read the original description, my prediction was:
ABC: Marvel’s Inhumans – ABC really wants to be in the superhero game, and this is what they have to work with, so RENEWED;
That was before I really new what the new premise was for the show. I had no idea what the Inhumans were, I assumed it was X-Men / Gifted / Mutant X, etc. I had no idea the premise was a transgenic compound that gave people powers and they were now living on the moon. On the moon? Seriously?
If I had known that, I likely would have downgraded to cancelled, or at least put in some caveats. Nope, I thought it might get renewed. Ratings so far have TV Grim Reaper predicting cancellation, and I’m not surprised. I actually enjoyed the two part premiere though.
The King of the Inhumans, Black Bolt, never speaks as his power is that his voice sends powerful sound waves forward — it’s how he accidentally killed his parents, not understanding his power. So he speaks only with sign language. The King is played by Anson Mount, and since he has to do all his acting with just a look and a gesture, it’s hard to have much presence. His wife, the Queen i.e. Medusa, is played by Serinda Swan. Since she already played Aphrodite back in the Percy Jackson movie, she has some experience with god-like powers. She’s not bad in the first two parter, has a decent fight scene, but is just a little too earnest looking.
A twist in the show is that it isn’t Inhumans against humans, it is Inhumans against the brother of the king, played by a scheming Iwan Rheon. Rheon is great, but hard to see him as a serious long-term threat. Would be great as a secondary traitor, hard to see him as the man who would be king.
The supporting cast includes Ken Leung (Lost, Person of Interest), Eme Ikwuakor, and Isabelle Cornish. All three are decent, although hard to tell their potential from just two episodes. And if TV Grim Reaper is right, I may never find out. On the other hand, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is still on the air. Maybe there’s hope.
When the new TV season started, I was surprised to see three new shows with what sounded like similar premises — Valor, a failed copter mission in Somalia; Brave, undercover military heroes; and this one, about Seals and weekly missions. That’s not unusual, multiple shows with a similar premise, but the fact that it was all hardcore military seemed unusual, particularly as few shows of this nature ever make it. If there’s too much rah rah rah, people tune out; if it’s all about the family drama, people tune out. The balance is hard to find.
From the original description, my prediction was:
CBS: Seal Team – It was a toss up with S.W.A.T., but I’m not convinced David B is right for the series – CANCELLED;
David Boreanaz is the leader of the SEAL team, and as you can see from my prediction, I wasn’t sold on his casting. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him as Angel. But I hated him in Bones and a few other quick roles. Yet I have to say, he doesn’t completely suck in the pilot. He’s still a bit uneven in places, using some sort of manic look to indicate his inner emotional turmoil, but for the team leader role, he’s not bad. Lots of quick scenes, good action, fits his abilities.
The rest of the team has a bunch of familiar faces, including A.J. Buckley. I watched him through five or six seasons of Justified and never realized he was Adam Ross from CSI: New York. How did I miss that? Some others, all fine, no issues. I really like the casting for the female roles…Michaela McManus (Aquarius, Awake, L&O: SVU) is relegated to playing David’s wife, not sure how big a role that will be for the series, but she’s capable of more. So is Jessica Pare (Jack and Bobby), as a CIA analyst.
Ratings are pretty good now that they’re nine shows in, and TV Grim Reaper is predicting renewal. Might be the first one I get wrong all year, and if so, I’m okay with that. I underestimated the show, and Boreanaz. Not enough for me to keep watching, but I can see where it might have grabbed some eyeballs.
Each new TV season, I often try to watch at least one episode of just about every show that has even a scintilla of interest for me. This was the lowest scintilla of all, mostly just curious how the show would skew young to grab better demographics. The original Dynasty was campy for lots of viewers, yet a small but steady crew grabbed on to it because it was “new and different”. Or more pointedly, it was rich people behaving badly and lots of people loved seeing John Forsythe, Linda Evans and Joan Collins grinding each other up. But 30 years later, we’ve progressed through the Melrose era and the Kardashians, and the world of Beverly Hills Wives. Fictional “bad families” aren’t that scandalous anymore.
From the original description, my prediction was:
CW: Dynasty – while the reboot year is upon us, the CW runs young, and I don’t think they’re ready for Melrose Place without a 90210-like lead up, the various ages of the characters won’t pull them in – CANCELLED;
So I watched an episode, as painful as it was. A few faces leaped out, but it was the overall casting I found interesting, not the individuals. Blake isn’t the geezer anymore, he’s a much younger Blake, marrying a young wife and appointing her COO of his company. Much to the chagrin of the daughter who wanted the job, when she’s not running around trying to look like Taylor Swift. I don’t know that the dad will pull the younger crowd, but he’s watchable for the now-older Melrose crowd, and perhaps the young daughter will hold the young’uns. The son is *gasp* gay, isn’t that exhilirating? Snooze. Oh, and there’s biracial stuff going on, aren’t we all progressive and diverse in our casting?
About all I can say about the one episode is that it didn’t completely suck. Sure, it was bad acting. Yes there was a cat fight. People were wheeling and dealing. And there’s eye candy to watch for both sexes and orientations. Yet while the ratings for the series haven’t been stellar, Netflix is interested, which makes me wonder if it might move over and add some more graphic content. Netflix has a different business model, so maybe it works for them, and it’s enough to get it renewed.
I doubt it would make it on any other network than CW, and definitely not without a Netflix buy-in.
CBS: S.W.A.T. – With H50 and MacGyver not strong enough to continue in my view, I’m going to bet on another throwback continuing with this one, so RENEWED
When the original S.W.A.T. premiered back in 1975, I was seven. I don’t see how that is possible, that I was that young when it debuted and yet still was allowed to watch it, but I had an advantage over other kids — I had a brother who was six years older and often I got to watch a lot of shows simply because he was watching them. And the show was kick ass cool. Hondo as the guy in charge, played by Steve Forrest. Robert Urich was the baby-faced Street, Mark Shera was Luca, Rod Perry was Deacon, and James Coleman was T.J. As sniper, he was frequently the trigger for Hondo to say, “T.J., on the roof!”. It was high-energy, fun and campy, and at the time, new and different. People had heard of SWAT back in the 60s with riots and things, but here they were in urban settings applying their special weapons and military-style tactics against new and more heavily armed bad guys. Two seasons later, it was done.
Samuel L. Jackson tried to reboot it with a movie version, and it was watchable for nostalgia, not much more.
And I thought my prediction was good enough for this new one, sight unseen.
The new series has some twists from the old crew. Hondo is no longer the whitest cop you’ve ever seen, he’s a black Hondo played by Shemar Moore (Criminal Minds, Young and the Restless, Birds of Prey). He’s watchable when he’s playing everything super serious, but since he’s dating his boss, you have to watch some excruciating attempts at interpersonal acting. Deacon is played by Jay Harrington, and I knew he looked familiar, which I attributed to him likely having been guest star of the week on a lot of procedural shows. Nope, he was Steve on Coupling? Really? Never pictured him as comedic, but you almost never see him either, his role is extremely limited. Luca is played by Kenny Johnson, and once I got over reminding myself he wasn’t a young Gary Busey, I started thinking where I’d seen him. I recognized him more from shows I haven’t seen — like The Shield. I knew he was on it, but it wasn’t a show I watched. IMDB filled in the missing trivia — holy crap, he was Dewey on Saving Grace. I loved him then, which is also partly why I like him now. It’s kind of the same character…good cop, not the brightest acting, etc. Good casting. Victor Tan is a new team member, played by David Lim, and other than being Asian, his contribution to the show is extremely limited.
The two additions to the team though that are pretty great are Alex Russell as Street and Lina Esco as Chris, a female member of the team this go-around. Russell has a bunch of roles in shows and movies I’ve never heard of, so mostly a newbie, but he seems a bit like Chris O’Donnell in NCIS: L.A. While he doesn’t do much in the opener, a later episode has him undercover and the Ep was great. Equally, I like just about every scene that Esco is in. She looked familiar, and it took IMDB again to help me realize it was from the TV show Cane back in ’07.
There are a bunch of other support characters, including Hondo’s boss / girlfriend, but they add little to the show other than exposition.
Is the show great? Not really. It’s okay, if you can excuse race riots and other complicated social issues all being wrapped up in 44 minutes by a relatively new team leader. The show debuted really late for premieres, holding off until November, but as far as ratings are going, TV Grim Reaper is predicting renewal.
Why am I watching? I don’t know. It’s not great acting, little action, and not much in the way of special weapons or tactics.
Maybe I’m waiting for the rotation of “let’s have a special episode with THIS character” to make it around to Escu. Or just nostalgia. I didn’t think I’d still be watching after 7 episodes, but I am.
