The original CSI was awesome, and it really started a whole genre of shows where it was not about a pathologist going rogue or detectives doing their thing, it instead put forensic science front and centre. It grossed some people out, inspired others to go into science, and tricked entire populations into believing you could do a full DNA test while someone was getting coffee. If the science said you did it, the science was always right.
With a relaunch of the series, technically a spinoff of sorts and hence the “: Vegas” name to distinguish it from other CSI shows in the franchise, they start with an idea to refute that premise…what if someone misused the science to get false convictions? It is clear to the viewer and the main character that it’s obviously a frameup, but there is evidence by the end of EP01 that all of the previous show’s cases could be in jeopardy because one of their techs seems to have been fabricating evidence and then using the fake evidence to support lab results that led to convictions.
I liked the original series, but it was never “must-watch” TV for me. I suspect I could binge it all at some point, but it’s not THAT compelling to me. I’d rather read a good novel about a forensic scientist than watch their shows, although the diorama episodes were pretty cool. Anyway, I watched the first EP to get a feel for it. There’s no real need to predict, since it is clearly going to get renewed, it’s an existing fanbase and existing syndication deal. No brainer.
Original CSI stars Jorja Fox and William Petersen are back as Sara and Gil, with the first episode tied to their former cop friend, Jim Brass, played by Paul Guilfoyle. They were good in EP01, as they always were, stepping back into roles they know well.
The current head of the lab, Maxine, is played by Paula Newsome and I found her EP01 persona confusing. She’s very open to Sara being there, yet guarded in other interactions with her own staff? Weird. I have seen her in lots of shows over the years — Castle, Heroes, Flashforward, Suits, No Tomorrow, and Magnum PI — but I have no real memory / image of her in any of those EPs. I also couldn’t place her as the wife of NCIS Director Vance, and she did 4 EPs at least. Meh then, meh now.
The various crew members — Matt Lauria (Josh), Mandeep Dhillon (Allie), Mel Rodriguez (Hugo) — are all fine, but it feels like you’re stopping by mid-show, like they’ve been doing this on their own for a while and we just happened to stop by to see what they’re doing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it doesn’t scream “Welcome to meeting your new characters!”.
I feel like the producers felt “Hey we know you’re going to watch, we don’t have to sell you on the show”, and they jumped into EP05, screw any backstory. Okay, but for me? Meh. I didn’t care about any of them and I saw nothing that made me want to learn more. Well, maybe the coroner. He was creepily interesting.
One of the pop YA novels in recent times is the book, “One of Us is Lying”. The premise? A merger of Gossip Girl and The Breakfast Club.
You may know that Gossip Girl was centred around an anonymous social media feed that dished all the dirt from the high school. Who was doing who, whose parents were having blowout fights, who was bribing who, etc. It didn’t stop with simple teen angst, it went deeper at times. The ultimate addiction. If you were in the school, you had to read it to know what everyone was talking about.
Switch to OoUiL, and the premise is adjusted. Instead of being anonymous, the author is known. Which is a ridiculous premise. Based on the stuff he’s posted previously, it’s clear that someone would have beat the crap out of him daily the entire previous year at least. Or a group of them. He talks to people who actually respond to him frostily as opposed to smashing him in his face or walking away the moment he opens his mouth. But whatever. He’s isolated except for a girl who has the not-so-secret hots for him, and maybe she did it, but hard to say.
Anyway, it’s the first day of the new school year, and he’s promising to reveal what they all did for the summer, starting with a big news dump on the upcoming Friday. The sports guy who has a huge secret; the skank who has been stepping out; the A student with another huge secret; and a felon who has been, well, felonious.
And what a coincidence, they all end up with detention on the first day. Enter the Breakfast Club. The teacher in charge is not quite as stupid as the BC teacher, but she is pretty rude and off-balance. There’s a distracting event, the student takes a drink of water, and BAM! down he goes choking. Yep, dead of either poison or some sort of allergic reaction, and the kids are the prime suspects. If the teacher doesn’t turn out to be the killer, I’ll be very surprised. I never read the book, but she makes the only obvious NON-suspect which means she’s my prime suspect.
I want to hate the show. I want to tell you it’s stupid, teen angsty, terrible premise, and totally unwatchable. The first three are true, the last one is not. It’s pretty good. If I was about 35-40 years younger, I’d probably tune in.
Marianly Tejada plays Bronwyn, aka the brainy A student with a secret. In the premiere, she also stole the dead guy’s laptop to protect her secret, and then someone stole it from her. Which pretty much eliminates her as a real suspect, I guess, but they’ll come back to her for awhile. I still think it’s the teacher, but hey, that won’t come until near the end of the series. Tejada doesn’t have a lot of previous experience, and I haven’t seen her in much, but if you want to know what she’s like, picture Kaylee Bryant from Legacies. She’s basically channelling an almost carbon copy of her academic intensity. Sounds bad, but it’s not, she’s watchable but you’ll have to wait to see if she’s given something else to do in the series.
Cooper van Grootel plays Nate, aka the felon. His character is the one that makes zero sense as the dead guy has been banging on him for a while, revealing secrets that could get him sent to jail, and he’s like, “Yeah, whatever”. Really? Not too likely. Anyway, whatever, I like his presence. It’s more than simple blonde hair dude, he has a bit of presence and gravitas. I haven’t seen him in anything before, but he’s decent.
Chibuikem Uche plays Cooper (yep, there’s an actor named Cooper on the set and a character named Cooper, so I’m sure that’s not confusing at all to anyone), aka the athlete with a secret. Which you find out pretty early on is that he’s gay, but doesn’t want to come out because then nobody will draft him to play baseball. I swear someone called Central Casting and said, “You know that show All-American? Find me a Daniel Ezra-like face to be our Spencer James”. Oh, but we’ll pair him with a dad who’s been training him rather than single mom. Uh-huh. And yet I like All American, so I like him too.
The skank, Addy, is not really a skank, just a blonde girl who is a bit superficial, has a healthy libido, and doesn’t quite hew to monogamy. Played by Annalisa Cochrane, I swore I had seen her in other shows before. She has one of those faces where you think, “I’ve seen you in 20 other shows playing the same party girl, right? Maybe as a scream queen in a horror flick?”. According to IMDB, nope. Of the 10+ credits she’s had, all the way back to soaps and before, I have never seen her in anything. I don’t want to watch her full time as the character isn’t very interesting, but the actress is fine. She looks like Tara Reid a bit, but isn’t so flighty.
And while there are various other actors running around, I’ll skip them to talk for a second about the victim/blogger aka Simon, played by Mark McKenna. He’s listed as appearing in multiple episodes, so I assume there will be flashback scenes. He is cast to look like John Cusack from a variety of John Hughes shows, and the script even drop-references Hughes at the start. He has the most presence of all the actors, annnnnd then he’s dead. But to be honest? He seems to deserve it. He fashions himself as the avenging journalist who roots out secrets, but his first reveal is a new girl who has started at the school and is trying to start her new life. So he outs her as having stabbed her English teacher the year before. Which no doubt is going to turn out to be some sort of sexual assault thing that she was avenging, and his reveal was just mean-spirited, but regardless, that’s already clear. As someone else confesses anonymously from his laptop (ignoring the fact that a hacker would have had it password protected, particularly as he was posting at school and could get expelled), he deserved to die and everyone hated him.
If I had to choose a killer, I’m going with the teacher. If I get two choices, I’ll throw in the girlfriend who has been following him around and would know he would need water during the detention. However, for plot, there’s only two characters who could guarantee all five of them would be in detention — the teacher or the victim. Unless it’s a revenge suicide, I’m going with the teacher.
Except, I confess, I won’t be watching. It’s well done. It’s compelling. And if I was in my teens, I could see a reason to watch. But I’m not the demographic for this show, and I’ll pass. Yet there is still one other factor that bothers me. All of the actors seem to be channelling other actors/characters. It is not a coincidence that I see Legacies’ Josie, or John Cusack or Tara Reid or All American’s Spencer…or any of the other derivative choices. Someone deliberately cast them that way, and that disappoints me. It’s almost like someone threw elements from seven different shows together and said, “Hey, let’s try this”. I’m also disappointed that it turned out well.
I think it is better done than Gossip Girl too, so I’m going to predict renewal. I have no idea what they’ll do for S2 as a premise, but hey, that’s someone else’s problem. I suppose they could pull the Cold Case episode that was Breakfast Club-like that led to a possible suicide that was actually murder and rip that show off too.
CBS has a new drama called Guilty Party, and it wasn’t in my upfront predictions as I thought I would skip it. The premise is that a disgraced journalist is trying to rebuild her life and gets invited to a women’s prison to meet with a woman who claims to be wrongfully convicted for murdering her husband.
When I heard of it, I was like, “Meh”. I mistakenly thought it was a true crime show, not drama, and I checked out early. Instead, no, it is indeed a fictional drama along with a whole bunch of other dramas in the last few years where you have a season-long mystery. Most of them hold little attraction for me. But then I saw it was Kate Beckinsale, and I started to rethink it.
She was awesome in Underworld generally, and I liked her in Serendipity. I almost skipped The Widow, and only hung on because she was in it. But she had some gravitas as the widow wondering what happened to her husband who supposedly died in a plane crash, until she seems him on TV in the background of a current news report. The show was okay, she was great.
Sooooo, she’s in this one, and I wanted to give it a try to see how it runs. Big mistake.
She is playing a pseudo-space cadet. She won an award, she was all good, but she’s disgraced for making up stuff in her article, and almost all of her acting around it comes across like a child. There’s nothing THERE for gravitas, the only thing that held my attention in The Widow. She’s married to an okay guy but there’s little chemistry; she interacts with writing people in ridiculously destructive ways; you’re supposed to feel something for her as she’s trying to get her life back on track, but well, the inmate is right. The “opportunity” she sees isn’t about her, it’s about the woman in prison. Except, well, that actress is new, a fresh face, sure, but ZERO presence.
The various friends and family are unrelatable, not sure why I would care about any of them. In fact, in the entire story, about the only person I even remotely cared about was the guy who got killed. Until I found out he was also a gun runner and an abuser of women.
I don’t know what the story arc will look like, but nothing seemed compelling. I’ll predict cancellation, and I definitely won’t be watching.
Ah, NBC. I know you really, really, really would have liked to have Lost on your network, but it was ABC that had it. So you created a new one, with a relatively similar tone…people are together, catastrophe happens, they wake up in a new land after passing through a very white light, and have to learn to survive with sharing food, building shelter, finding water, fighting off large ravenous polar bears, err, I mean wolves. Heck, the show even drops a ref to being in an episode of Lost. When the show was listed, I wrote the following:
La Brea on NBC premieres next week, and I would love to make fun of it. I mean, after all, there’s a lot of material to work with…a tar pit that collapses into a sink hole in LA? That transports people into another dimension? Really? I have to say cancellation on that basis alone. It isn’t LOST, and it ain’t even Manifest. But here’s the thing. The main star is Natalie Zea. OMG. I loved her on Justified, she is just knock down gorgeous to watch doing anything. On Unicorn, he was getting a girlfriend, and I thought, “meh”, until I saw it was her. Then I was like, “Yes! She has presence!”. The fact that I loved her all the way back to Dirty Sexy Money is not relevant to the conversation, is it? Okay, maybe it is, but I’m also excited to see Eoin Macken who I used to really enjoy on Merlin (oddly, I just binged it again recently). I expect cancellation, but I’ll be watching anyway.
Sooo, the tar pits part is relatively irrelevant. I’ve seen EP1, and I didn’t even recognize Eoin Macken as Natalie Zea’s estranged husband. Let’s recap the premise a bit now that I have more details.
Mom, newly-one-legged daughter, and brother are driving in LA when the world’s largest sinkhole opens in front of them, next to the La Brea tar pits, and sucks Mom and Bro into the giant hole. Sis manages to escape. But the hole is huge, like several city blocks by several city blocks big. Whole buildings collapse. The government shows up, says there’s nobody to rescue, they fell too far, the hole is too big, and well, too bad buttercup, that’s all there is. Except they then talk to each other about how they’re lying to everyone. Dun dun dun.
Mom and Bro wake up in a new land, lots of grass and trees, and after travelling a fair distance to get to a smoke column, they find each other and a bunch of other people. Now, let’s ignore the fact that the hole would have taken thousands of people and about 50 make it to this encampment. I mean, we have to ignore it, as there’s no explanation of where everyone else is or the fact that millions of tons of debris and concrete fell into this hole, and what’s around are some cars, a few trucks, a couple of signs, etc. Virtually no rubble. Huh?
Meanwhile, back in normalcy, the ex-husband is trying to get a job as a pilot, back in the air force. Except that he’s meeting with a senior air force person to get them to pull strings to get him back in after a plane crash led to him seeing things. Despite the fact that recruitment would be regular through recruiting offices or his post-military liaison, not cold-calling an air force bigwig like he’s applying for a private-sector job. Oh, and btw, the images he’s been seeing? They’re of the same place his wife and son are now trapped.
I wanted to give this show a fair shake, and all I kept seeing were scenes that looked like rip-offs from Lost. Oh, look, one of the guys taking charge is a surgeon. Really? REALLY??? At least they didn’t call him Jack.
Oh look, someone is injured and they have to find bandages, and meds, and medical supplies in general, oh my! They pool food, some people pull a Sawyer and try to hoard. And I swear to god, they find HEROIN in one of the cars. Good news if you’re an addict like Charlie. Oh, wait, that was Lost, right.
But there’s at least no one who seems to have been miraculously healed by the transfer and has the ability to lead others. Although that shrink was suicidal and now seems to be finding himself. Never mind. Let’s just call him Locke.
Now, I have to give a giant SPOILER ALERT. Normally, in a show like this, they throw the premise at you, like Lost did, but don’t really explain anything. The mystery pulls you back, trying to figure out where they are, what’s happening, what’s really going on.
Except this show tells you in EP1 that somehow they have gone back in time. Birds that are extinct came out of the hole; a boulder that the husband and wife had visited in present time is back in the past in his vision, along with her wedding ring lost in the past but able to found relatively unmarked lying near the boulder to prove they are somehow stuck in the past; and, oh yeah, Mom recognizes the Hollywood Hills without the Hollywood sign, and realizes she’s still in LA. So everyone knows what’s going on, including the viewer. And if you were still confused, a live sabre-tooth tiger attacks.
Well, at least they weren’t dinosaurs.
But the show is terrible. It is one ripoff after another, and as much as I would like to follow it, they even seem to have ripped off Star Trek. There is a light that they passed through, and I swear it looks exactly like the Nexus from the movies. Really? REALLY?
Sigh.
I can’t even watch it. Even with Natalie Zea in it. Hopefully, they’ll cancel early so she’s free for another show in the next pilot season. Maybe another romantic comedy or she can read the phone book for all I care.
I made a small typo in my predictions for this show, as I thought it was called “The” Foundation, but it is simply “Foundation”. For my prediction, here is what I said:
The Foundation starts on Apple TV+, a sci-fi series ruled by a clone not happy about a mathematician predicting darker times ahead. I am in like Flynn, and if it was on regular TV, I’d say cancellation; on Apple, I’m predicting renewal to Season 2.
Now that I’ve seen the first episode, I’d be tempted to predict possible renewal anyway. It’s hard to say. The show IS pretty hard-core sci-fi, and likely too dense for most casual viewers.
Here’s the skinny…a young woman has won a galactic math competition set up by a professor. She is from a conservative planet that shuns science and math, yet she has embraced it. She travels across the galaxy to the main planet to meet the professor and to take up a job with him, but upon her arrival, he tells her that she will be arrested the next day as one of his followers. The contest was really bait to find someone who could understand his mathematics well enough to verify that his predictive analytics are correct: the current civilization will fall within five centuries and may be followed by 300 centuries of dark conflict. He has a plan to limit the duration of the darkness — libraries to help people rebuild — but the current ruling dynasty is not happy to hear that his predictions have them dying off. The professor’s simple prediction comes true, they ARE arrested, and the trial basically accuses them of treason.
The professor, Hari Seldon, is played by Jared Harris, and I almost didn’t recognize him. Normally, he plays a bit of an oddball, emphasizing some issues with his eye alignment to make him seem a bit deranged and always a bit sketchy. Here, he’s very formal, sincere, respected, and speaks slowly and persuasively. In short, he is awesome. But he almost always is. Hodge from Mortal Instruments, Jones from Fringe, or Moriarty from Game of Shadows, he always delights.
Relative newcomer Lou Llobell plays the girl who won the competition, Gaal Dornick. She is generally solid, although in EP1, there are a few places where she seems a bit inconsistent i.e., either too light or too serious, although it could be the intent of the script for the scenes. Just seemed off a bit, pulling me out of the story.
There are a host of other characters…three leaders (clones), various people who represent the government (including Alexander Siddig aka Dr. Bashir as the government’s advocate), religious groups, and other supporters. It’s not clear yet who will make it through the series, and the direction of the series itself is unclear. The story has two time periods (present and 35y later), and both seem potentially compelling, although once you know it’s been 35y, I’m not sure the urgency of the interim period is as exciting.
Overall, it was a great Episode, really well done for production values, seemed more like a mini-movie than an episode. As I said in my prediction, I’m in like Flynn. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
