premiere – Page 34 – The PolyBlog

Season premiere: Supergirl – 2016/17

October 12 2016

When Supergirl debuted last year, I wasn’t sure it was fully going to work. The “aw, shucks” innocence of Kara was hard to take without more backstory, but it was precisely that missing backstory that probably made it work. There are few “other” Supergirls to contend with…Laura Vandervoort played her on Smallville, and was decent but only amassed about a season’s worth of episodes overall, and often as a secondary character. And of course Helen Slater in the Supergirl movie. Let’s forget about her though. Which is easy to do. So, when Melissa Benoist started as SG last year, she had almost a clean slate.

But the first episode of Season 2? Her cousin stops by. Yep, Superman. Clark Kent. The Man of Steel. The big ICON that everyone knows. And honestly, I wasn’t that excited by it. Sure, the Flash stopped by last season, but that was Grant Gustin, who is already playing The Flash. This one is an entirely new Superman. A HUGE ROLE. For anyone.

I love Smallville, mostly as it focuses so much on the origin — how he learns to become Superman as opposed to “hey, look, I’m Superman today”. And Tom Welling was perfect in that role — not sure how I would like him in the suit, but as young Clark Kent, he was awesome. Other TV options include Dean Cain, George Reeves. In the movies, you have Henry Cavill, Brandon Routh, Christopher Reeve, or Bud Collyer. Sure, lots of others too, but those are the main ones. For me, Christopher Reeve was one of the few who got both Clark and Kal-El “right”. It’s really hard to not make Clark look “like” Superman, but not “like Superman”.

So who is the new Superman? Tyler Hoechlin. Wait, who? Sure, he might have been big on 7th Heaven or Teen Wolf, but I didn’t watch either. For me, he is brand new. And you know what?

I loved him. He is good as Superman…looks pretty young, almost a bit “youthful”. But he is GREAT as Clark Kent. Not bumbling, some steel in his role as reporter, confident, settled. The contrast with Kara was of course deliberate, but I was totally sold on him being Superman. Not like the others, all his own rendition. But believable. Totally in line with the way they have Kara written, with a bit more edge.

Overall, great episode. I’m not sure I want the entire series to be “Flying Cousins”, but for an occasional visit, it’s nice.

Series premiere: Conviction – 2016/17

October 9 2016

Back in the day, I used to love watching Cold Case. The twists, the turns, the realization that something someone said was taken out of context, misinterpreted, and it led cops in one direction that ended up going nowhere. Some twenty years later, they get a new clue, a fresh perspective, something, and it leads them off in a new direction. Often, the solution starts with someone admitting something they knew back in the day but didn’t share…like maybe the dead guy might have been cheating, but his buddy didn’t want to drag it out and destroy the memory at the time, but now, 20 years later, he’s willing to share. Less emotional trauma.

Conviction has a bit of the same premise, but instead of a case that was never solved, these are ones where the case WAS solved…except the person claims, even years later, that they were and are innocent of the crime, despite having been convicted. These aren’t Innocence Project cases where DNA might save them, these are high-intensity cases where the person was tried, convicted, and everyone went home to a good night’s sleep. Except the convicted still claims innocence. Not claiming “not guilty beyond reasonable doubt”, they’re still claiming they were completely innocent. So the D.A. in NYC creates a Criminal Integrity Unit to go back and look at the cases one more time. Five days of review, start to finish, see if there is any merit to the claim. And at the end of the five days, they either recommend the conviction be vacated, or that the case was likely solved correctly and the conviction stands. Note they aren’t overturning cases, it’s not a judicial appeal, it’s seeing if there is enough evidence to completely vacate the conviction.

So the premise, generally, is interesting to me. The rub is how they package it.

The premise is that a former President’s daughter (aka Chelsey Clinton mixed with Lindsay Lohan) got into a lot of trouble with the extra limelight growing up, went to law school, worked as a defence attorney and now teaches law. Busted for cocaine possession, she’s blackmailed into being the head for the new CIU. Of course, that’s not great news for the planned head, a former ADA with years of handling gang cases, or the other members of the team — an ex gangbanger who has expertise in forensics, a former witness who got an ID wrong when she was a kid, and a former police detective. She’s hoping to be a figurehead consulting from a beach, but her Mom is making a Senate run (aka Hillary) and wants her to clean up her act. Make it work for three years or they’ll prosecute her for intent to sell. At least that’s the premise.

Of course, you know by the end of the first episode she’s going to find her “calling” and passion and dig into the cases. Which she does. Of course, the actress (Hayley Atwell) is used to playing the hero — she’s been embodying Peggy Carter in the Marvel shows for several years now. I confess I liked her better as Peggy, but she has more available range here, which is either going to be great or just chaotic to watch. Eddie Cahill from CSI:NY plays the DA in charge of everything, but that’s not a huge plus for me…he was one of the weakest elements for me on CSI:NY.

Shawn Ashmore plays the ex-ADA in charge of gang cases, and I really like the Ashmore brothers. I think Aaron is awesome in Smallville and Killjoys, and every time I see Shawn (the twin brother), I have to stop and remind myself it isn’t Aaron. Of course, when they are side by side, it’s obvious, but individually I think it is Aaron each time. I haven’t seen as much as Shawn’s work, but definitely a plus for me having him on the show.

Merrin Dungey, Emily Kinney, and Manny Montana round out the team, but they are all relatively new to full series status for me…although they were in other series, or guest starred on other shows, they weren’t on shows that I watched. I find all three a bit earnest in the first episode, but hopefully they’ll find their character.

When I did my early predictions, based on the premise alone, I thought I would give it one episode, and I’m willing to come back for more. However, unless it kicks up the quality pretty fast or has some gravitas like Cold Case, I’m still holding on to my “half-season” prediction with no renewal.

Series premiere: Frequency – 2016/17

October 8 2016

I should confess upfront that I didn’t see the movie that prompted this series. I thought, at the time, that it was some schmaltzy homage to fathers and sons, more Field of Dreams than Silence of the Lambs. “If you talk, he will answer” type storyline.Not so though. And apparently the similarities between the two storylines are pretty clear.

In both, it is a ham radio connecting across time. Child convinces Dad of veracity through knowledge of baseball games. Child tries to alter the past, succeeds, but it also changes other things too, including somehow increasing the success of a serial killer.

The real change for TV is Dad goes from being firefighter who died some years earlier to cop undercover who DIED TWO DAYS LATER in the original timeline. Randy Quaid as Dad gets replaced by Riley Smith, who has a long history of acting credits, particularly in shows where his storyline lasted last than a year (dun dun dun). The son though is now a daughter and played by Peyton List.

She first showed on my radar on the show Windfall (1 season and done) but the show didn’t excite me enough to watch. I was however watching FlashForward that was unceremoniously cancelled after one season and I liked her in it. Not awesome, but watchable. She showed up in Smallville as Lucy Lane, but wasn’t around long enough to really notice her. Then she made her big splash – Cara in The Tomorrow People. I have to confess though, she was one of my least favorite characters in the show…too angst-y for my taste, which is more about the character than the acting, and it shows here. She’s pretty good in this first episode. The writing has her overcome her disbelief pretty fast, but well, the show has to establish its premises early I guess.

I am, indeed, intrigued, but I am far from convinced the show has any legs. I said I would try 1 episode, and it’s good enough to keep watching, but I doubt it will get past the mid-season winnowing process.

Season premiere: Arrow – 2016/17

October 6 2016

Did someone in Greg Berlanti’s organization replace the Green Arrow TV series with a video game? There are at least three sequences in the opening episode of Season 5 where it is basically CGI-like fight scenes, straight out of the latest spy/fight games. Cool looking, but almost looks animated. Very disappointing scenes.

Meanwhile, basically there are three things happening in the episode. First and foremost, there’s a new baddie in town who wants to take on the Arrow so kidnaps some people to do it. Second, Team Arrow is seriously undermanned on the street side, with Diggle, Thea, and the Canary all gone. Speedy is around, but she doesn’t want to be part of the Scooby Gang on the street side anymore. She just wants to be the Mayor’s right hand.

Neither of those storylines is particularly compelling, but the third one is how Oliver became a member of Bratva, one of the flashback story lines from his third year missing, when he went to Russia to keep a promise to kill someone. Highly entertaining and potentially character-revealing.

The rest of the episode? Not so much.

Season premiere: The Flash – 2016/17

October 5 2016

If you follow TVGrimReaper on Twitter, you’ll know that the popular view for ratings is that once a show is renewed for Season 3, they are pretty much guaranteed a Season 4 because S4 is where the syndication money kicks in. My question is more “Is Season 3 good enough to keep pumping money in or will we do S4 on a small budget to eke out every last dime no matter what it does to the show” (Hello, Andromeda, I’m talking to you!).

The reason I mention this is that Season 3 of The Flash can either be “swing for the fences” with conservation and judgement or go crazy and do whatever you want. With the S2 season finale where Barry goes back in time and messes with the timeline to save his Mom, S3 was looking like “anything goes” might be the order of the day.

In this timeline, Barry is still a CSI but because Mom and Dad are alive and well in an idyllic world for Barry, he was never adopted by Joe, never grew up with Iris, etc. Instead, there is a “kid Flash” that turns out to be Wally and a rival Flash battling it out. Barry doesn’t even have to be the Flash, cuz someone already is.

He goes out of his way to meet Iris, sets it up so he can ask her out on a date which she surprisingly says yes to, and tries to help Joe (who’s a spiraling drunk). The problem is that Barry’s memory of the alternate reality is fading, and as he tries to let the new reality take hold, Wally gets hurt to the point of near death. In other words, Barry has traded his mother for Wally, Joe, Iris, Cisco, and Caitlyn.

In the end, he has to go back in time and let the other Flash kill his mom after all. Then when he returns to the new timeline, Reverse Flash basically teases him that it won’t be the reality he was expecting. Everything starts off the same, and then he finds out Iris and Joe don’t talk. Not the world he left. Reverse Flash changed something, which looked like how he killed the mother (perhaps a knife instead of a vibrating hand).

I confess I was shocked they reversed the timeline that quickly. I was sure it would run several episodes at least. But overall good yet not awesome.