Tag Archives: series

Series premiere: S.W.A.T.

The PolyBlog
December 16 2017

From the original description, my prediction was:

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.

Series premiere: The Mayor

The PolyBlog
November 13 2017

From the description, my prediction was:

ABC: The Mayor – rapper pulls prank to get noticed, gets elected…normally I would say cancel, but also in-house for ABC with other producers they’re already in bed with, so likely RENEWED;

Then I watched the pilot. It is a completely confused mess. I love the general premise — someone who doesn’t know anything about governing suddenly gets a chance to govern. It can work as a premise, just like it did back in ’93 when it was a movie starring Kevin Kline as Dave, a presidential impersonator who ends up being president for awhile.

But for the premise to work, there’s something you need that’s solid from the start…the main character has to be someone who wants to help people, someone who wants to do something different. In this incarnation, Courtney Rose only runs for mayor to get his name out in the public to promote his rap career. And when he wins, he just wants to dump it and run. So his mama gives him a 2 minute speech and he’s all on-board. WTF?

The character is all over the map. One part rapper, one part Axel Foley, one part community agitator, one part worthless con artist using the election for publicity. The interactions with his mom are cute, but not enough to save the show, and they are too like mother-son bonding on speed. Every cliché in the book comes out of their mouths, and they think it’s some way of showing profound change. Yet I have no idea what the show is supposed to be — comedy-drama or farce?

His two side-kick buddies are disposable, and the one “solid character”, Valentina, is appropriately intense with a touch of light, which makes sense since she is portrayed by Lea Michele. But then in the final scene of the pilot, it’s like she’s a bubblehead.

A totally confused mess from start to finish. Not surprisingly, the ratings have suffered and it’s all but cancelled at this point. Looks like I’m going to miss my prediction on this one.

Observer’s Handbook, 2018 by RASC (2017) – BR00114 (2017) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
November 11 2017

Plot or Premise

This is the annual observer’s guide published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

What I Liked

One of the most obvious challenges for an Observer’s Guide of this kind is balancing the needs of newbies and moderate amateurs with the needs of advanced astronomers, photographers, and outright astrophysicists. However, I’m on the newer end of the spectrum, and I found the typical wealth of information such as using the handbook for teaching purposes and resources (p 17); observable satellites (p 25); filters (p 64); deep-sky observing hints (p 85); the sky month by month; and overviews on planets, dwarf planets, satellites, the sun, and various star options before getting to the deep-sky lists (which could benefit from better presentation). However, I think my favourite section was on the Moon. The entire handbook is “made” just having the info from Bruce McCurdy on lunar observing starting on page 158 as it is perfect for me. Relative shifts per day (p 158), Canadian content (p 160), the Hadley Rille (p 161), and the lunar certificate (p 161) are all great elements for me to try to see in the coming year.

What I Didn’t Like

I was surprised to see a number of errors in included URLs. While it is hard to stay evergreen, these were links that had not changed from last year and when I went back to the RASC website, the links worked just fine. Somehow they got edited in publication and never tested. Even links to the actual RASC website were wrong. There are also some highly technical pages on magnification, telescope parameters, night myopia, and exit pupils, and while correct, they are presented so densely that re-reading them left me more confused than informed. Finally, there is a strong economic bias that creeps into the texts in a few places — on binoculars, the only ones they mention as being good cost around $1500, and when talking about using Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes (often bought as they are quite portable), recommends just putting it in your backyard observatory, assuming, of course, that you have the money to have a house with a backyard with room and resources to build an observatory. In addition, there are numerous editing choices made throughout the text such as lists sorted by one variable instead of by one that might aid organization. I’ve already found myself copying lists from previous years online into spreadsheets so I can resort them into a more usable format.

Disclosure

I received a copy of the guide as part of my annual membership in RASC.

The Bottom Line

Solid guide but some editorial and tone issues throughout.

Series premiere: Valor

The PolyBlog
October 20 2017

From the description, my prediction was:

CW: Valor – I would like to leave this one on the list as making it, and if it wasn’t the CW, I’d put it ahead of Black Lightning, with a serialized story about a failed copter mission in Somalia and flashbacks, could be great – CANCELLED;

The basis for the show is a helicopter mission to Somalia to deliver some soldiers to bring back a Somalia warlord as a prisoner. Except as they get back on board the copter, the locals show up, open fire, damage the helicopter and they have to ditch. The show then jumps forward a month to them back in the U.S., the two pilots made it, their gunner didn’t … he is MIA with the other soldiers who ditched before the crash. Pretty soon you find out that the two pilots lied in their after-action reports, and they’re hiding something. By the end of the episode you find out that after the crash, they got to shore with their prisoner who was not a warlord but an American soldier. There’s something else going on, the remaining soldier / CIA spook wants to kill him plus one of the pilots, but the female pilot shoots him first. He died, the prisoner got away, and the pilots were rescued after being in the hills for a week. Then they lied about everything afterwards to cover up the murder of the spook. But if secrets stay buried, there’s no show, so the gunner turns out to be alive and a POW, with his captors wanting to trade him for ISIS captives. No deal will happen, so the only way to get him back is a rescue mission.

I have three problems with the show, and I won’t be watching past this pilot. Don’t get me wrong, the plot is vaguely interesting albeit obvious — it was clear it was an American prisoner before it was revealed, there was some sexual tension between the pilots before it was revealed, and there was a crutch leaning on painkillers that was obvious before it was revealed.

However, that just makes it formulaic, not terminal. For me, the first problem is the sexual tension between the pilots. It is abundantly clear why the “stud” lead is attracted to her, he’ll sleep with anything. But there’s virtually nothing to explain why she would remotely consider him. Plus she has a boyfriend, and of course they have to have a fight in the Ep to give her “permission” to maybe do something with this other guy, even if she doesn’t. But it isn’t the sex that’s the problem — it’s the fact that these two leads lied to cover up the death, they’re potentially cheating on their partners, they’re violating tons of orders, and they’re not that heroic. I didn’t particularly care about either of them, and while it focuses on her, dragging her down also drags down the show. While they mouth the words, I see neither integrity nor honour to care what happens to either one of them. This isn’t Top Gun in copters, there’s no JAG or NCIS duty going on here.

Second, and maybe related to the first, the entire mission is going to be about either overtly black and white simplistic solutions or morally ambiguous choices. Neither of which are going to be particularly interesting because the simplistic ones are boring and the characters they have so far can’t navigate the grey zones since they seem to have almost no moral compass or code to guide them. While they want to rescue their friend, it seems almost as much about saving their own reputations and careers.

Third, the show is a bit of a one-trick pony. Unlike Quantico that did the flashback training to inform their actions going forward, this is telling the story in two different timelines, and really more like telling two stories. When those timelines catch up to each other, what then? Will they do the same thing next year for a potential renewal? Or just turn it into Top Gun with copters. The challenge too is they made the copter part BORING. WTF? How do you take the most exciting part and make it boring? I’ve seen more exciting flying twenty years ago with early Apache shows. Heck, even AirWolf and Blue Thunder made some of it look cool. Here? Not so much.

For the acting, there are only really two of any note, i.e. the two leads. Christina Ochoa plays Madani, the female pilot, and she’s not bad. I hope she gets something else next year, cuz I’m pretty sure this one will be gone. Matt Barr plays the male pilot, Gallo, and the whole time I was watching him, I was scratching my head where I had seen him before. I was sure he wasn’t the lead, but more a secondary character. Couldn’t place him at all, and I was starting to think maybe just a single episode of some series. And while he might have twigged my mind from shows like Castle, it was on Sleepy Hollow playing Hawley, the general black market anything for a buck dealer who ended up hooking up with the sister. I liked him then, and I really like him here. Just don’t like his character much.

Too bad the show didn’t live up to the hype, but I think this one will get cancelled.

Series premiere: Kevin (Probably) Saves the World

The PolyBlog
October 10 2017

Well. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this show. From the description, my prediction was:

ABC: Kevin (Probably) Saves the World (formerly The Gospel of Kevin) – It has a Touched By An Angel feel, and there’s a demographic out there that might like it, but not enough to save it, and not at 10:00 at night – CANCELLED;

And that is probably still my prediction. I fully expected though that I would watch it, hate it, like Jason Ritter as the star, and move on.

So I watched it, wanted to fast forward a LOT, and liked Jason Ritter most of the episode. Except I’m not quite ready to move on. Because I’ve seen this show before.

It was called Joan of Arcadia and Amber Tamblyn starred, ran for two seasons back in 2003-2005. Cute, eminently watchable. A little like Oh God, without the actual God in this version.

So the basic premise is that Kevin tried to kill himself, didn’t take, came home to stay for a few days with his twin sister and his niece about 18 months after her husband died. They’re not that close but he has nowhere else to go. Then, the night he arrives, 36 meteors hit the earth all in the same day. He touches one, gets chosen to be one of the 36 Righteous that brings hope to the planet. And he also gets a guardian angel, err, warrior of God, who will guide and train him.

Most of the episode is about him stumbling around, trying to avoid his destiny, and generally mucking up the relationships with his sister, niece and an old love interest. In the end, he makes some progress, it’s all good. Despite the fact that he’s the only one who can see his trainer warrior, so he looks like a kook talking to himself.

Jason’s great, and always watchable. JoAnna Garcia Swisher plays the twin sister, although you could be forgiven if at first you think she looks like Amy Adams. Pretty good, but a bit one-dimensional so far. Relative newcomer Chloe East plays the daughter, and she’s quite good. And Kimberly Hebert Gregory plays the trainer, Yvette, but she is all over the map with her character.

I’ll likely give it a try for a few more episodes, although I don’t expect it to make it to season 2.