Tag Archives: season

Series premiere: Rosewood

The PolyBlog
September 28 2015

One of the new shows premiering this year is a quirky Miami show called Rosewood. It’s the name of the lead character, Dr. Beaumont Rosewood, Jr., who runs — wait for it — a private pathology consulting firm. Apparently, in some jurisdictions, it’s a real thing. And it makes for an interesting hook…rather than a consultant who works with the police or with a medical examiner, he IS the consultant/medical examiner/forensics guy. And he works on contract with the police. Cool.

The lead is played by Morris Chestnut, who looks like a slicker version of Taye Diggs, and I’d swear I’ve seen him in other shows, and his impressive resume goes back 20 years, but none of the shows were ones I regularly watched. No idea who he is, but he had a presence in the first episode. His gimmick is that he has a bunch of medical issues going on from birth, and he grabs life and seizes every breath he can take. So he’s a ray of sunshine all through the episode, but somehow avoids being smarmy. He is consummate charm, with just enough self-deprecation and gravitas to avoid being a used-car salesman. Most of his moves are on the new Latina detective, Villa, played by Jaina Lee Ortiz. Her resume has a lot fewer credits, but she does a decent job.

Working with Rosewood is his sister and her lesbian lover (ooh, we can get the Latina, black and LGBT demographics, cool!), both lightweights, but his mother? Lorraine Toussaint. I liked her in Forever last year, and even more back on Saving Grace. or even way back to Crossing Jordan. I even like her when she pops up as cameos in various other series over the years. I have no idea what they’re going to do with her in this show, but I suspect basically waste her. There’s very little role for the mother of the investigator, I don’t think, even if she brings the case in the first episode (an old student, dead in a driving accident, except she didn’t like to drive, never would speed, and didn’t drive while impaired, and not at night either).

Another odd one was another detective at the precinct — Anthony Michael Hall. Really? They have him as fourth banana? Talk about bench strength. Let’s hope they upgrade him at some point. His character is basically a doofus though, so they would have to give him something better to do too.

Soooo, where does that leave me? The show was okay, a quirky premise. There was no chemistry between the two leads though, so if they are hoping for a romantic spark, it wasn’t there. I’m willing to watch, but I doubt it will make it past 5 episodes. However, I have no clue how they count demographics, and they were throwing out a lot of feelers to various communities. Maybe it will take.

Season premiere: NCIS: New Orleans

The PolyBlog
September 28 2015

Of the three NCIS shows, this is the one that I like the least for plots and acting, but the most for a few of the actors. I like Scott Bakula, and I really like Zoe McLellan in the series. Most of the rest I could take or leave, but those two bring something to the screen. Yet oddly enough, zero chemistry between them. I like the fact that they have few scenes together where it’s just the two of them as they do better with other supporting cast members.

Last season got a little bogged down with a conspiracy over several episodes, and none of the episodes were particularly compelling. They did, more or less, wrap it up at the end of the season. So the season premiere kicked off with a regular bad-guy-of-the-week premise. They made it interesting — lots of different militia types from around the U.S. united against the government, all working together. Would never happen, their basic zeitgeist prevents cooperation with others, but it was interesting at least. I’m more interested in seeing where Brody’s personal case goes over the season — someone is sending her photos from high school except she’s been photoshopped into them, she wasn’t there for the events, her sister was. Along with a musician guy who died around that time. Could be interesting, at least as long as they follow one of Gibbs’ rules — your case, your lead.

I’ve changed my watching setup for this year, and NCIS:NO is a perfect candidate for binge watching — it is not must-see TV any week, and the season premiere didn’t change that.

Series premiere: The Player

The PolyBlog
September 27 2015

Okay, I admit, I’m a sucker for the “one man against the world” storylines. Bourne. Bond. All the action hero movies ever made. The new show, The Player, is right up my alley. Let’s get to the elaborate premise.

Meet Alex Kane, ex-special ops soldier who was good at hunting terrorists and then killing them. He liked it too much and he was good at it. Until along came a pretty doctor lady who taught him to “do good” and thus he would “be good”. Fast forward a few years, him and the doctor lady are separated, but fraternizing with the enemy regularly and still in love. Alex is working as a high-priced security consultant, she’s a doctor in a local hospital again, all is sunny and warm.

Until a hitman tries to kill Alex and gets Jennie instead. Then things get weird. Remember in the Matrix when Neo meets Morpheus? Well, Alex gets to meet Mr. Johnson aka The Pit Boss. He runs “the game” where wealthy clients bet on crime outcomes, with heavy stakes. Minimum bid $1.5 million; maximum bid $100 million. He is aided by Cassandra, the Dealer, who handles data analysis. Think like Person of Interest, except the machine is controlled by the House. And they want Alex to be their new player. A single man, working alone and anonymously, to combat the forces of evil, or at least, the bad guy of the week. As an added bonus, he gets to target the man who killed Alex’ wife.

Alex eventually agrees, but only to avenge his wife and save a kidnapped girl. And that is the first episode. Alex Kane in Die Hard in Vegas. And (SPOILER ALERT), he does save the girl. Then gets sprung from police holding (a funny story actually, they think he murdered his wife), and the House offers Alex a full time gig. He says no. Then he discovers the body of his wife is not actually his wife (missing a secret tattoo). So he accepts the job, planning to bring down whoever “took” his wife, assuming she’s still alive.

Is the show fantastic? No, it’s not, and that’s the problem. Lots of other shows have tried to go down this road. Intelligence two years ago, the guy with a computer chip in his brain making him a super investigator/soldier working for Cyber Command. A few years ago, they tried it with Nathan Filion — it was called Drive. The premise was ex-wheelman comes home to find wife or daughter or some loved one kidnapped, and if he wants to see her alive, he has to play “the Game” err, no, that’s not right, he has to “win the race” where people bet on who will win Cannonball Run except the stakes are life or death. Intelligence ran the whole season, Drive only lasted an episode or two. A few years ago too, there was a Taye Diggs one where he kept having to relive the same day over and over again, one man against the odds, trying to save his wife.

It’s a good theory that the stakes will be compelling for viewers, but few have ever got the mix right. I like the show, but I’m not convinced this one has it right either. Maybe if they gave him super powers…that’s pretty hot right now.

There are three things going for it though. Alex Kane is played by Philip Winchester, and he has definite action hero presence without being giant ego man. Wesley Snipes is pretty good as the pit boss, although I’d be curious to see if all of his pay cheque goes to the IRS. But the real star of Episode One was Charity Wakefield as Cassandra aka The Dealer. She is in charge of data analysis, and is Alex’ one and only resource. She’s also likely the one who did something with Kane’s wife, since back in the day, they were friends at some point.

I’ll watch, but I suspect it will be cancelled before mid-season since it will be difficult to keep high enough viewership to justify the production costs.

Season premiere: NCIS

The PolyBlog
September 26 2015

It’s hard to believe NCIS is into its 13th season. When we left off last season, we were dealing with a terror cell called the Calling that recruited young children into their web. Gibbs tries to help one of them and in the cliffhanger, he gets shot for his effort. Fast forward to the new season, Gibbs undergoes serious surgery, and the rest of the team keeps hunting the Calling’s leader.

The episode was decent but wrapped up the Calling a little too neatly for my tastes. I don’t know if it is truly “dead”, but considering the investment in it last season, it all ended in one episode. Gibbs is restricted to desk duty, so it’s more of a DiNozzo and team show, but that was okay for the episode. Apparently, the trauma of the shooting is going to “change Gibbs” and he is going to have to deal with those changes this season, whatever that means. It’s not like in 13 years you have seen any character growth in Gibbs, other than he gets quieter and quieter each year.

The only real bright spot in the episode was Jon Cryer, jokingly referred to by Abby as Gibbs’ own Ducky (since he was called Ducky back in his John Hughes pics), as the surgeon who saves Gibbs’ life. I love when there’s a cameo and you see a character played so well by the actor that the character walks in fully formed, almost like they have lives off screen that are rich, complicated, exciting, boring, and everything in between. Some refer to it as gravitas, others just as presence, but Cryer has it in spades as the doctor, and supposedly he will show up for a few episodes to keep an eye on Gibbs’ health. A welcome edition, even if the EP wasn’t a hit out of the park.

Season premiere: Blue Bloods

The PolyBlog
September 26 2015

Blue Bloods is one of my guilty vices. The show is far from awesome, the plots are the ripped-from-the-headlines style, and every case is super hyped up so that it can justify the involvement of the police commissioner, a detective, a beat cop, and an assistant DA. It’s not as cheesy as Hawaii Five-O, but it’s not Shakespeare either. So I watch, and hope for the best.

The season premiere has Jamie still a beat cop, and the only good part of his storyline is his partner, Eddie. She’s awesome, and I’d watch if the show was just the two of them being beat cops. Adam-12 on foot patrol in NYC. Danny’s sporting a new hairdo, looking very G.I. Jane-ish, and Dad is looking very stern for the episode.

It was an odd episode as outside of Frank, Jamie and Danny, everybody else was notably absent except for the obligatory family dinner scene. The plot was ho-hum — suspected terrorist activity, somebody was bragging about 72 virgins in a strip club, and it turns out, the guy’s landlord saw a bomb too and reported it. Jamie catches the call for the strip club, Danny the landlord. And everybody tells Frank everything so he can run the show. But it wasn’t that interesting, no drama, no motives, no real policework with startling deductions. Slow methodical policework. Booooorrrriinnnnng. I hope this wasn’t the best the writers had in the tank.

The only interesting part was the kids at the dinner table — they started off being very young six seasons ago, and now are solid little actors. They rocked their meaningless scenes, which leads me to suspect we’re going to see more of them this year.