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Season premiere: Quantico – 2016/17

October 2 2016

Quantico had its premiere last weekend, and I was struggling to decide if I want to watch it this season or not. Don’t get me wrong, I think the premise is great. If the 22-episode arc from last season was boiled down to ten episodes, I would think, “Awesome!”. But it isn’t/wasn’t. It is 22 episodes. Of spin, and counter-spin, and just when you thought we were getting somewhere, they reset and started the spins all over again. Was it this student? That one? Pretty much all you could be sure of was if they suspected someone one week, they weren’t the real one.

At the end of the season, with everything wrapped up, Alex Parrish is all cleared — and trying to figure out where to go next. She’s tagged by the CIA for an op — infiltrate the CIA and run on op on the inside. In the season opener, you find out that it is about a year later, she’s been to the Farm (CIA’s equivalent of Quantico), run an op, and now everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

It’s the same format as last year — an event is happening in present time, with flashbacks to the training to figure out what lead to the current set of events. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here, or at least some of them. Miranda, Shelby, Ryan, and Nimah are all involved either in the past or the future, most in both.

And that’s the problem. It is “same time next year”, and while I liked Season 1, I didn’t like how slow it was to get to the actual plot. Pretty sure I can already elminate at least one suspect since the CIA thinks it’s him from the start. And pretty sure I know who will be involved somehow. But the rest will take 22 episodes to figure out, and I’d rather be watching some of the other cases they’ve worked on in the last year instead of another grand conspiracy slowly doled out in bite-sized chunks.

Series premiere: The Exorcist – 2016/17

September 28 2016

I honestly don’t know what to make of the premiere of The Exorcist. Based on the description, I figured it would go maybe 4 episodes and nose dive. I’m not as certain, but that’s still my prediction after watching the premiere.

Now, the Exorcist comes in with a truckload of baggage and name recognition, depending on your view. The premise for the series is the old priest, scarred by years of fighting and losing, somehow spiritually tied with a young idealized Latino priest who has never felt called by God before. Together they will take on a demon possessing a young girl whose friend died in a car accident a few months before. Mom is worried about her, including that there seem to be really weird things going on in the house. AKA demon possession.

The young priest doesn’t really believe at first, until he dreams about the old priest and his experiences, and then witnesses the girl himself in full battle mode.

The two priests are played by Alfonso Herrara (young priest) and Ben Daniels (old priest). I am not familiar with either one, but they had some gravitas in the pilot, some strong acting potential there.

Geena Davis and Alan Ruck as the girl’s parents? Thelma / Dottie (Thelma and Louise, A League of Their Own) and Cameron (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) would not be on my likely list. She only has one real scene where there is any emotional resonance going on, and another where there’s some character revealed. But Ruck is about as catatonic as Cameron was when the car’s odometer wouldn’t go backwards.

The only bright spot that I saw was the daughter, Brianne Howey. She was downright sparkly and creepy at the same time.

Now, to be fair, I was never likely to be a fan of this show as they up the horror factor. But the main reason I can’t tell what’s happening is that the show preview for next week makes it look like there will be two parts to the series:

Ongoing story trying to save Casey from the possession; and,
Cases of the week as the two priests investigate other happenings going on in Chicago.

Supernatural has the ground easily covered for the case-of-the-week in a far more accessible format, and when Constantine tried to tred the same ground two years ago, it was cancelled after half a season. I just don’t see either pillar carrying the show long enough for it to catch on with anyone.

Series premiere: MacGyver – 2016/17

September 28 2016

As I mentioned in my last post about Blue Bloods, I have a pretty high tolerance for a show with cheese factor, so I wasn’t immediately turned off by the idea of rebooting MacGyver. I figured I would give it one episode to test it out, but I fully expect it to not make it past the mid-season mark. Having watched that first episode, I find it hard to believe it got past the pilot.

Lucas Till plays MacGyver, and his acting and fight scenes are relatively okay. Not much more being asked of him than his X-Men outings. The bigger problem for him is that the reboot has taken the original narration device and kicked it into major exposition overdrive. Along with an odd documentary style text overlay where they label some of the things he’s building (like an episode of MythBusters or something). Highly disruptive to getting into the story. Way overload.

His partner is played by George Eads of CSI fame, and while I didn’t mind him on CSI, he is incredibly annoying here. Every relationship he has is irritating to watch.

Their boss is “Director Thornton”, played by Sandrine Holt. She’s been in a fair number of shows for a season or two, none of which I watched, and a lot of guest spots, many of which I’ve seen and didn’t really notice. She’s background for most of the guest spots, not key plot development potential, and I have no idea what her “role” is supposed to be in the team. Close, distant, completely weird dynamic and I never got a bead on her.

They have a new field analyst in the episode, Riley. Played by Tristan Mays who I’ve never seen before, she is the only bright spot in the whole dang episode. A bit sassy, a bit confident, a bit street. She’s great. Her character goes from “bad criminal girl” to “hey, thanks for giving me this great job” in a single episode, but hey, whatever. The writing sucked, the plot was worse, but she shone. I suspect her character turns out to be Eads’ daughter, but I won’t be watching to see it.

There are two baddies in the episode and I thought one might stick around. The first “baddie” is Vinnie Jones who was the heart of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but equally shone in his episodes of Elementary playing Moriarty’s henchman. I expected him to disappear in one episode perhaps, and he does. The second “baddie”, and this is a spoiler alert, is played by Tracy Spiridakos.

I really liked her as Charlie on Revolution, and as she is revealed to be a traitor to the group, I was hoping for some “oomph” from her in the episodes. Maybe some sort of super baddie for the future. She’s not listed for any of the other episodes though, so likely a future occasionally returning character. Too bad, she could have added some meat or gravitas to their weekly stakes. Equally unfortunate, the episode uses about a tenth of what she’s capable of doing. The opening scenes are very different from who she is later, and you could be forgiven for thinking it is really two different characters as the arc linking the two is relatively off-screen and a stereotype/action trope to boot.

Poor acting. Poor plotting. Bad dialogue. And way over the top exposition / narration. I don’t mind cheese, but stinky moldy cheese is too much even for me.

Season premiere: Blue Bloods – 2016/17

September 27 2016

I’d like to tell you that Blue Bloods is amazing TV. I’d like to tell you about the great plots, wonderful acting, scintillating dialogue. Or the action. Or anything that explains why I continue to watch this cheesy show. With almost only one exception, all of the acting is relatively basic. Tom Selleck is fantastic as Papa Reagan, and the rest are good, but rarely do I see any scene where I think, “Wow, give them an Emmy!”.

As BB enters it’s seventh season, it’s a pretty straightforward episode. Danny shot a serial killer at the end of the previous season, the department cleared him, but now the State AG’s office is convening a grand jury. And if Danny loses his temper with them and appears like a hothead, the grand jury is likely to send him to full trial. Meanwhile, Jamie is investigating a vehicular manslaughter case where the driver was intoxicated, but claims he wasn’t the one driving.

Neither case is particularly compelling, but it’s the standard fare for Blue Bloods. And I’ll tune in next week to see more of the same. Mostly cuz Tom Selleck does such a great job as Mr. Integrity and Honour.

Season premiere: Rosewood – 2016/17

September 26 2016

Last season, I started watching Rosewood and it kind of grew on me. It had a bit of a Castle feel to it, and I liked the vibe. Plus the always rosey Rosie was a bit of a change from the broody grumpy types that often inhabit procedurals. At the end of the season, the “will they or won’t they” storyline came almost to a climax, with the deed imminent. But in Castle-like fashion, Rosie dropped the bomb — he had looked at Villa’s dead husband’s case, and thought it was murder, not accidental death. No more lovemaking, no more romance, no more partnership.

The season opened with a dead college girl, and I confess I never felt anything for her all episode. Her story was cliche but more importantly, her scenes were scant of emotional resonance. The rest of the episode was about picking up pieces from the season finale. Pippi is off doing her music thing, so her romance was dead. The Captain is relegated to being a junior detective, and there’s a new Captain starting. And, just for fun, Villa and Rosie are trying to figure out how to work together now that Rosie blew the whole romance thing. Plus the whole elephant in the room — btw, your husband was murdered — drifts along undiscussed until the end. I have an idea of a potential twist coming later in the season, and I’m praying that I’m wrong or I’m going to kick a TV as a cheap gimmick. Or a Castle ripoff, not sure which.

Anyway, the investigation was almost secondary to the episode, while everything else roamed around in the interim. I hope the season focuses on the mystery part, not the 8 different love-lives. On the other hand, I like the new Captain, so it’s not all bad.