Screen Rant » Reviews: TV

FlashForward Week 3: Puzzle Pieces in a German Prison

Mike Wilkerson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:29:21 +0000

The third week of ABC’s new FlashForward arrives inside the television review halls of Screen Rant.

The world view of what has taken place expands as we begin in a prison in Munich, Germany, where a long-term prisoner named Geyer and a guard begin a discussion that will change many lives and perspectives. What will we find out this time? Will we garner more puzzle pieces that are put in place or only glimpses at the 2 minutes and 17 seconds that had almost all of us spent frozen three weeks ago?

I’ll be reviewing this and future episodes of FlashForward in an ironic and incredibly-appropriate “stream of consciousness” format, giving you essentially what I’m thinking as the show airs. I encourage everyone to send feedback in regard to any of the points below and use this opportunity as a sounding-off point to tell the Screen Rant team what YOU think about this third episode of ABC’s FlashForward!

The secret knowledge of foreign language and subtitles:

I know that my viewpoint stems from a bias based on my continual hunt for open and closed captions in the entertainment realm, but I LOVE to have movies that feature partial subtitles. Here we meet an older inmate and a familiar guard who talk about their lives, past current and future and while it’s short, the information is passed along nicely in German which is subtitled for the audience. Great stuff! The reason? For those of you that don’t speak a particular language, the subtitles provided are a glimpse into secret knowledge being conveyed on screen. Rather than thinking of them as a hurdle to one’s movie-watching effort, think of them as a bundle of information you wouldn’t have had otherwise and you’ll see them in a whole new light.

The cause of the FlashForwards:

It’s great to see this information used as another always-dangling carrot and like so many other things in our pseudo-scientific lives, we’ll certainly be approached from a variety of sources as to why and how the Blackout happened, who was responsible and more importantly, how we can prevent it from happening again. Do YOU have a line on how the Blackout happened? Don’t forget to use the discussion items below to tell us what you think!

137 Sekunden:

This isn’t only the title of this episode (which again evokes the power and “mystique” of foreign languages), it’s the time period that the older inmate Geyer says he has many answers for. Like many arguments that occur online, here the Nazi’s/Holocaust/etc are mentioned/inserted and the scales of justice and knowledge begin moving and will eventually arrive at a decision. I like when we’re solicited to do so and can’t wait to see what decision awaits.

Information from Geyer will lead them to “them”:

I really like the tack the program is taking on providing us pieces of knowledge, and then moving on where we’ll get to see if the buy-in on [insert character/event] will pay off in the future as we head towards a known point in the future. The tension it adds to the program is really well done.

Outstanding German Prison Production Design:

I cannot wait to interview either the production designer or some of the crew that made this episode, mostly because I want more detail on where the prison scenes were filmed for this episode. The design of each of the scenes that centered around moving in and about the prison were spectacular, providing something literally colored differently for all to behold. It’s another piece of why many people see and love television shows that often goes “unseen”. Be sure to thank the production designers of the programs you watch. They are the true artists of everything seen on-screen and in a show like this one, can make or break an effort.

White-Bread Tightie-Whitie Hula Dance:

There are a series of words that I never thought I would envision or (GULP!) see in an episode of a network-based television program, but alas, here they are and here it is for all to see. We see the same gentleman that we’ve seen in numerous/previous FlashForwards dancing to music in his white-undeed glory. Frankly I know why I’m not a detective because I think I’d have shot him out of sheet fright. Later, we find out that he’s a man down on his luck (and dancing skill) and that the path is emblazed for him to journey into another white series of clothes (a guard shirt with a badge, etc). What can we expect in the future from this wayward soul? Will he have a part to play in the machine speeding towards late April next year?

Guilt-stepping your FlashForward Visions:

It was interesting to see that the future-guard’s vision was actually held as a reason to “do something” and made me think about how many people would use a “vision” as a crutch to ensure that things inside their own FlashForwards actually happen. It’s another facet that I love about this show and I can’t wait to see it utilized more. People have ALWAYS been driven by “what they must do” regardless of the facts, perspective and knowledge, and I can’t wait to see how that soup of factors is built, boiled and served to us here via FlashForwards.

Living by the future rather than for it:

Time Travel has been something that all of us have considered. Many of us have hoped for it. Others fear it because it means that someone else could be in control of OUR destiny, rather than being able to guide your own fate. While this bullet point sounds very much like the previous one, this one goes much deeper. Are you one who believes (as is hailed in the TERMINATOR films) that we “have no fate but what we make for ourselves?” I am.

Now consider the viewpoint of you knowing that things you’ve “seen” on a certain day in the future would come to pass. Would you go on living your life comprised of a fate “you make” or one where the events to come are the focus and you’re new intent is to make them come true/happen? I LOVE the questions this show asks of us as an audience and I cannot wait for more. I’m trying to remember a television show that asked me to think as much as this one and I just don’t have an answer. Great work, ABC!

The Screen Rant team is still wondering what YOU think of this week’s episode of FlashForward. Discuss below and share your thoughts on this week’s episode!

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FlashForward Leaps Into Week Two

Mike Wilkerson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:06:44 +0000

The second week of ABC’s FlashForward arrives with knowledge, action and intrigue! Read on below as I detail my thoughts from this second episode and remember – if you missed this evening’s episode, there is a scheduled encore edition planned tomorrow evening. Same FlashForward time, same FlashForward channel!

I’ll be reviewing this and future episodes of FlashForward in an ironic and incredibly-appropriate “stream of consciousness” format, giving you essentially what I’m thinking as the show airs. I encourage everyone to send feedback in regard to any of the points below and use this opportunity as a sounding-off point to tell the Screen Rant team what YOU think about this second episode, of ABC’s FlashForward!

– Stunning Visuals That Open The Episode: As we enter this episode of FlashForward, we’re gifted with some astounding visuals of planet Earth, from just outside of standard shuttle and space station orbit and – well, it’s just stunning. I’m eager to learn whether or not they’re pure CGI or perhaps something from one of the many recent and final missions of our space shuttle adventures.

– The Army is Always There: Every minute and a half or so as this episode starts, there is a great image of the military moving into place. During this episode, we see a variety of military-based vehicles and personnel taking up station in the city post Blackout and it’s great to see.

– Captain Harriman Inna’ House! Alan Ruck makes an all-too-short but credited appearance as the apparently-drunk AA-goer in this episode. Does anyone know if we’ll see more of him in this series? I don’t see anything additional at his IMDB listing so I’m going to assume no at this point.

– What did YOU see? This is an outstanding throw to more great fan-based discussion that really will stand the test of time. Just like knowing where you were for other real-life events (JFK assassination, shuttle disasters, 9-11, etc), this phrase and it’s context will last a good long time.

– Playing Blackout: “Role-playing like what happened after 9-11 and Katrina?”: Clearly I’m missing a piece and this will serve as the first call to the audience. What “role-playing” are they referring to for 9-11 and Katrina survivors here?

– Olivia and Mark and their Dialog: After seeing some of the worst train-wreck movies in recent history this last week (SlipStream, A Little Piece of Heaven, Fighting) it’s great to see some engaging, REAL life dialog here inside of FlashForward. Olivia’s dialog with both her daughter and the others around here in the hospital and more is wonderfully written and paid off perfectly by actress Sonya Walger.

– The Mosaic Collective: This is one of the best-ever pieces of story and series concepts I’ve seen in a while. As we were compiling our weekly FlashForward Podcast, we received a gaggle of email from our listenership that sent us a link to a dedicated, official Facebook application now available called “MOSAIC” that – not so strangely, allows you to interact and talk about the series, the story bits and perspective – with people all across the world. Be sure to check out the listing of cool sites that we’ve got compiling here and if you know if one like the Facebook MOSAIC Site on the web that we should know about, please let us know.

– The Perspective of Armed Soldiers Standing Guard: Call it a personal warm fuzzy here, but I’m all for the American military ensuring order. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures and it’s great to see something other than wide open chaos in a series that cultivates events that effect the entire world.

– The Autism Spectrum: Do you know it? I don’t. It’s another rare thing when a series can not only call attention to social goings-on, but make you want to seek out more knowledge. Another great push here is that while Autism is mentioned, we’re not bludgeoned over the head with preaching or down-your-throat details here as it’s introduced. It’s another showcase of writer’s skill that’s really appreciated and makes me want to learn more about what I’m listening to. Be sure to learn more about the Autism spectrum here.

– Again, quick-hitting subtle humor: An admitted bowel movement session by investigative team leader Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) suddenly becomes tragically even more funny. Another agent, Rafalski, was also in the restroom during the blackout, and apparently went face-down into a urinal in the bathroom. Wedeck, after waking up on the toilet from his blackout, then rescues his coworker, and – in true duty-filled fashion to provide then drowning of Rafalski – gives him mouth to mouth resuscitation to revive him. Just as in last episode, this is the one piece of quick humor that makes it’s mark and quickly moves on in perfect contrast with the rest of the episode.

– Deduction Begins: D. Gibbons: I have a feeling that we’re going to see lots of the kind of interaction with people like DiDi (short for Diedre) Gibbons in FlashForward. When you consider the people that will contact an investigational organization like this new one, the interaction with people via MOSAIC, and the inevitable cameo from guest-stars-a-plenty, you can bet that we’ll see more.

– Sounds from STAR TREK: Note to everyone watching. Agent Hawks (Janice) is keying in and mining through data and the soft touches you hear, are the same sounds that you’d hear from many-a-STAR TREK character in the Next Generation (TNG) and Deep Space Nine (DS9) eras when touching a data console of the Federation. Ahhh, mindless sound memory trivia.

– Another Team Investigating: This launches some of the same great rivalry potential that we’ve seen in other series and I’m really eager to see where they take us with it. Just when you thought we didn’t have a large enough cast, you can bet there will be more without a doubt. We also are told in this segment that there IS confirmation of a second known player operating during the blackout which constitutes the definition of a “conspiracy” – a magical little word that will make fans heads everywhere swirl with anticipation week to week. Any speculation as to why THEY’RE investigating?

– Conversation between Demitri and Janis: I was (sadly) watching a movie I really wanted to like called “Fighting” recently. While the venues in the movie featured wonderfully framed cinematography, the dialog in that movie, from GI Joe alum Channing Tatum and Zulay Henao was, well, horrid, forced and – no one talks like that. In stark contrast here in FlashForward, we see an outstanding scene between Janis and Dimitri that makes the eyes and ears swell, because – it’s conversational, moving and – it’s how people TALK to one another. Kudos once again to not only the writers but the actors that pull this one off wonderfully.

– Another unobtrusive Next Episode segment: I have to hand it to the people editing this program. It looks to me like we’re not going to get any “next time, on FlashForward” inserts that give away the farm. Let’s hope that all other programs (in particular 24) do the same and give us just enough to whet the whistle without blowing any and all surprise for next time.

– Encore Episode the tomorrow evening: For those of you that might have missed this evening’s episode, and don’t have dedicated, “at-least-44-minute-Internet access” there is hope! There will be an encore episode of this evening’s show tomorrow! Be sure to tell friends! While the ratings for this show were solid, the fact is that the studio is going to need to see sustained gangbusters from the fans of this series or it’s going to be potentially be a victim of walking a bit too close to chopping block later this year.

So what did you think? Discuss below!

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Ghost Whisperer Jumps Ahead 5 Years in Season Premiere

Anthony Ocasio — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:54:08 +0000

Last season on Ghost Whisperer we said goodbye to Rick Payne (Jay Mohr) and hello to Eli James (Jamie Kennedy). Melinda (Jennifer Love Hewitt) finds out she’s pregnant while Jim (David Conrad) is shot and turns into Sam/Jim. The Book of Changes shows up and we learn about “The Watchers.” As the season closes, we find out Melinda is having a boy whose abilities will be greater than her own.

Recap

As the season starts with the episode “Birthday Presence,” we find Jim and very anxious Melinda worried about the birth of their child. As the book noted last year, her child would be born on September 25^th, 2009. (Lucky for us, that is the air-date of this episode.) Worrying about the health of her child, Melinda heads to the hospital where complications arise and her child, Aiden (Connor Gibbs), must immediately be delivered via C-section.

After a commercial and a five year jump, we return to a child’s party. As more is revealed, we find out that it’s Aiden’s fifth birthday. Eventually, we meet up with all our favorite cast members and find out what they’re up to after so much time has passed.

Melinda is pretty much the same, but now a mother. Jim is a full fledged doctor. Ned (Christoph Sanders) is in college with Eli as one of his professors. Delia (Camryn Manheim) is now the belle of the ball with multiple suitors vying for her attention. Sadly, nothing much has changed with Eli.

After catching up with our familiar friends, we’re on to the ghost of the week. This ghost is a female who has been visiting Aiden on his birthday every year to sing “Happy Birthday.” After some “Scooby-doo-ing” from the team, we find that the ghost is of a woman who was pregnant and in the hospital at the exact same time Melinda gave birth. Sadly, the woman died while giving birth.

As the episode continues, we find out that the ghost woman believed her child died at birth and that Aiden had received the spirit of her child. What actually happened was that her child survived and was given to some adoptive parents that she had originally made arrangements with. There was some drama between her and the adoptive father pressuring her to hold up her end of the agreement and give them her child. The episode goes into it some more, but that was generally the gist of it.

The main thing we learn from this episode is that not only can Aiden see spirits, but he is an empath; meaning that he can sense, feel and relive emotions and events of those he connects with. He is also able to project events to his mother, Melinda. In this episode, he relives the moment of death from the ghost mother which causes him to stop breathing.

Review

Oh, Ghost Whisperer, what has happened to thee. Watching this episode I am hard pressed to find anything that originally drew me to this series. Not only can three people on the show interact with spirits, but now they’re having every child able to interact with ghosts as well. Mix that with the whole “Book of Changes” storyline and the addition of “The Watchers” and I have to make sure I’m still watching the same show. Sure, the whispering to ghost’s aspect is still there, but it feels less that and more of a super hero show.

Touching upon the “Five year jump” – I’m totally comfortable with the television series jumping ahead multiple years and showing us what the characters are up too… but at the end of a series when the show is completely over. The fact that they did it in the middle of the series is just mind boggling.

For the past four years, we’ve follow Melinda through all her ghost adventures. In those four years, we have seen everything and anything happen to her. Now, we’re led to believe that the five year jump in her life holds no interesting stories? She had a friend die, plane crash, evil brother, ghosts trying to killer her… and then all of a sudden her life goes quiet for five years? I’m not buying it and have no idea why they believe I would.

I feel like they cheated and instead of actual character development, they just jumped five years and since anything can happen in five years, they can write their way out of anything they didn’t like previously.

The whole child storyline has me perplexed, but I’ll give it a chance. I feel like the overall Melinda storyline of the show was never finished and now with the addition of her child, it never will be.

I apologize that my overall tone seems to be less that positive, but for the past year I’ve watch Ghost Whisperer go in the wrong direction. With the start of this new season, I don’t feel like that has changed at all, but…

I still have hope.

After watching, what are your thoughts on the season premiere? Do you like where they’re taking Ghost Whisperer? What did you think about the five year jump?

Let’s hear it!

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Dollhouse Season 2 Premiere – Ratings & Discussion

Bruce Simmons — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 04:13:50 +0000

Fox took a chance – a huge chance – when they ignored all the social media hype about The Sarah Connor Chronicles and focused on Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. At least at first glance, that is what it looks like.

Friday overnight ratings for the premiere episode of the fantasy TV series Dollhouse were rather miserable looking.

Which could make perfect sense if you count on the fact that it’s a Friday night and there were other shows premiering on other networks, but Dollhouse averaged 2.5 million viewers. At least they beat out the encore episode of America’s Next Top Model. LOL.

(Sadly, it also looks like Smallville only brought in 2.5 million viewers for it’s Friday night premiere… but that’s for another article.)

We still have the “Live + 7 Day” ratings to come in, but will they be reassuring? Who knows.

For me, the premiere of Dollhouse was fractured and yet satisfactory.

THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS SECTION. Skip Spoiler Section

Having watched last season, it was odd seeing what looked like a new feel of the relationships in the Dollhouse. The Dolls are having some form of subtle social interaction (Sierra (Dichen Lachman) and Victor (Enver Gjokaj) smiling and holding hands?) and that threw me for a loop, considering all of last season they just walked around between assignments in a haze, as they went to their yoga, swimming or other activities.

Echo (Eliza Dushku) was off on an assignment, being married to arms dealer Martin Klar (Jamie Bamber). If you saw the episode, that was not Jamie putting on an accent. That is his accent. It was refreshing to see… or hear, actually.

But Agent Ballard… sorry, former FBI agent Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) was using Echo to bust the arms dealer and Ballard has an uneasy relationship with the Dollhouse. He was the client, of sorts, for this assignment. Eh?

As if that wasn’t hard enough, Echo’s mind programming started to snap and other personalities were sparking up in the middle of her assignment. At one point, in front of Klar, Echo asks out-loud, “What did they make me this time?” That is until Ballard fixed her.

You know how sometimes thumping the copier machine helps it work? Ballard thumped the copier machine a few times before it kicked it in gear. Literally.

Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker) is flipping out. She found out at the end of last season that she’s a doll and this information is not going over well with her. At all. To distract herself, she’s playing practical jokes on Topher. At one point, she tries to sneak into bed with Topher (Fran Kranz), which creeps him out… considering that he programmed her to be repulsed by certain aspects of himself.

There was some serious deep conversation between these two that revealed there’s more character to Topher than met the eye last season.

** END SPOILERS **

Unfortunately, from what I can tell, you had to have watched last season to understand this first episode of season 2 of Dollhouse.

What I mean by that is not everyone is as involved in the show as some fans are. Not everyone cruises the internet looking for back episodes. Not everyone is a fan of Whedon. Sometimes, shows have to be able to grab uninitiated viewers and gently pull them along, as well as keep the seasoned viewers engaged. It’s a very hard mix to accomplish.

I get where Joss is coming from in this premiere episode as everyone is still picking up in the aftermath of Alpha’s attack. Yet I fear potential new viewers could be confused.

I asked a friend who watched this episode (at my bidding) and I think I’ve created a distant shell of conservative trust. He said it was an odd, dark and fractured episode. Too many things happened for him that kept him off-balance.

It was truly Dollhouse / Whedon as we know it. It did not disappoint this fan and yet the ratings are scary. The episode was dark and angst-filled for me, but that’s what I’d expect at this point in the story.

I just hope all those other ratings commodities help keep Dollhouse around for it’s full 2nd season run.

Did Joss make a mistake by shoving the uninitiated viewer into the show like this? Was he just focused on the veteran fan of the show?

Speaking of fans, Was Dollhouse all you expected it to be? Or have you even seen it yet? Let us know your thoughts. Screen Rant wants to hear them!

Ratings info source: TV By The Numbers

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CSI Recap, Review & Discussion

Anthony Ocasio — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:53:07 +0000

Tonight was the premiere episode of CSI’s 10th season. At the end of last season, we saw two things: Langston volunteering at a hospital in his spare time – and him having to use, for the first time, deadly force to kill someone. Let’s see where this new season picks up and what, if any, ramifications it has had on him and what the entire team has been up to.

My interest is more than a little piqued for this premiere episode as we see the return of Sarah. The episode descriptions promise that they welcome her return as they become tighter to investigate the death of a famous young actress killed in a dubious traffic collision.

As with my previous CSI recap, review and discussion, I’m warning you now that I’m going to spoil everything. I’ll even spoil the commercials for you (Target, Pepsi). See, already did it. If you have yet to watch the episode, tread carefully as everything below will be spoilers!

A New Light

As the episode opens we’re in the morgue with everything frozen in place. Dead bodies are all over the place, water is spraying everywhere and Doc is chasing after a man with a gun. As more of the lab is revealed we see bullets being fired, glass everywhere and that people have been shot. The opening concludes outside the lab with a delivery van carrying two men firing back at two unknown figures with guns. As the camera pulls back it’s revealed to be Nick and Sara.

With a bright flash we’re back in the lab staring at a tarantula with a subtitle reading “48 Hours Earlier.” We catch Catherine making a remark about Riley leaving the lab and sticking them with 100 open cases (In real life, the actress who played Riley, Lauren Lee Smith, was let go as the producers said, it was “an issue of how we were feeling the ensemble was working.”).

We find Langston in the lab doing stabbing ballistics gel with a knife. After some poking by Eickle, he congratulates Langston on making CSI – Level 2. With that happy moment out of the way Langston is paged to a crime scene where we find the main victim for this episode, actress Olivia Hamilton has been killed in a suspicious car accident.

After another wonderful Who concert, we return to the crime scene, but now it’s early morning. Catherine theorizes that markings on Hamilton’s car showed that she was stopped at the time of the accident. As per the usual CSI episode, a second, but smaller case arises and Catherine gives it to Greg who doesn’t seem too happy about that and a throws a little tantrum.

Finally, we catch up with Brass, for the first time this season, and he’s in his office with two men, a security consultant named Tom O’Neil (Garret Dillahunt) and his client, Hamilton’s boyfriend, Denny Ocampo. After Ocampo reveals no helpful information, we then return to Greg and find him in a hotel room taking pictures of a man who appears to have been killed in the midst of a robbery.

We return to Catherine and Doc in the morgue around the young where they find out she was 8 weeks pregnant. As Catherine walks off we catch up with Langston at the hospital, standing near Richard Wilkes, who is believed to be the person who killed Olivia Hamilton in the accident. As the lab reports come back we find out that Wilkes had a mixture of alcohol and GHB in his system. As Langston and Stokes search through Wilkes’ car they find a vial of drugs and a creepy book with cut up pictures of the actress. Clearly, he’s a stalker.

Shortly after, Langston receives a letter from the review board regarding his shooting from last season. Langston was cleared of all charges. He talks with Nick about how it hasn’t been bothering him and he doesn’t like that feeling.

Everything Changes

As Langston and Stokes turn their attention to traffic tapes of that night, they find out that someone pre-empted the traffic light to force Olivia into that specific intersection. With Nick interested as why they hadn’t found a traffic emitter in Wilkes car, Langston hurries back to Wilke’s hospital room where, after taking a closer look, finds hidden bruises caused by a seatbelt. The problem with the marks is that Wilkes wasn’t wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident. Someone else was driving the car.

Sadly, the team doesn’t get much time to revel in their new found knowledge as Eickle busts in with a newspaper showing Wilkes confessing to the murder. He then starts yelling at Catherine about how she’s not doing her job properly and cites Riley’s exit interview as something she should read.

With that, Sara finally pops up in the episode, but at the worst time. She’s alone (surprise, surprise) as Grissom is “guest lecturing.” While everyone is catching up with Sara, Catherine returns to her office to read Riley’s exit interview. Inside she finds that Riley believes there is no leadership or unity within the team.

Click to continue ‘CSI Recap, Review & Discussion’

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FlashForward’s Intriguing Launch on ABC

Mike Wilkerson — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:33:32 +0000

A specific, untold 2 minutes and 17 seconds has been taunting future audiences for months now. Tonight, we were finally served up not only a satisfyingly short back story but a ton of future knowledge to come in ABC’s new series FlashForward. The Screen Rant team is in the first row to offer you a review of what is arguably one of 2009’s most anticipated Fall television openings.

The FlashForward series opener, penned by comic book movie writer David Goyer and Star Trek journeyman Brannon Braga, begins with a proverbial smorgasbord of perspective. There were familiar faces: Joseph Fiennes, John Cho (the new Sulu) and Sonya Walger (Penny from Lost).

A quiet, common suburb where a family is parting for the day.

A pier featuring a man that’s lost all hope and can only see one quick, decisive path out.

A church, where a father laments the loss of his fallen daughter at a gathering of those who know addiction all too well.

A living room where two young people share intimate knowledge and feelings, albeit guilt-filled.

Two detectives capturing images of those that would do us harm, sharing details of the evening’s previous commonplace details. Time seems to stand still.

An operating room scrub tub, where two women share gossip, small-talk and all-too-short prep time as they continue a new regular day.

A car chase ensues, time accelerates our sight goes white and blurry and suddenly – fevered dreamlike blackness – blistered visions of time, both past and future?

Screams begin fading into our consciousness, car alarms, frantic screams for help. We witness literal bedlam of a city ablaze, people unsure of what’s going on, a torrent of death and destruction and you are center stage.

All of these perspectives, characters and more will all be collected together and form a grand new program, and I hope that you’ll tune in to Screen Rant to follow along during FlashForward’s first season.

I’ll be reviewing this and future episodes of FlashForward in an ironic and incredibly-appropriate “stream of consciousness” format, giving you essentially what I’m thinking as the show airs. I encourage everyone to send feedback in regard to any of the points below and use this opportunity as a sounding-off point to tell we here at Screen Rant what YOU think about this season’s launch, of ABC’s FlashForward!

– Outstanding effects of one of many beleaguered cities: One of the hardest tasks presented to a production designer in television shows in general, is to create reality – especially in a city. The practical effects used here in this initial offering of FlashForward are some of the best production design I’ve seen in a long time. For those of you that have captured the launch episode, go back and look away from the center focus of the frame and look at the level of detail achieved not just in the city scenes, but each scene. The production designer “paints the picture” of what you see in frame in every minute of the episode and Aaron Osborne has has broken out the big brushes…

Click to continue ‘FlashForward’s Intriguing Launch on ABC’

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CSI: NY Premiere Recap, Review & Discussion

Anthony Ocasio — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:14:42 +0000

At the end of last season Angell was shot and killed as kidnappers grabbed Robert Dunbrook’s son from police custody on the way to the court house where he was to testify against his father. Flack kills an unarmed, but very bad, man. Dunbrook tells Mac to “be safe” and we’re left with the entire team being shot at with a machine gun by some unknown gunman inside a car while they’re in the bar toasting their fallen comrade.

We’ve been waiting almost five months, but now we finally get to see exactly what happened. Who made it? Who did it? Who was the gunman? Will anything happen to Flack?

I should warn anyone who has not been able to watch this episode yet that there will be major spoilers and if you don’t want this episode ruined for you, turn away now. I mean it. I’m going to spoil everything. I will make things up and pretend that they’re spoilers just to trick you. Still here? Alright, let’s continue.

Assessing the Damage

The episode opens exactly where the last one left off previously; with bullets flying in the bar, people ducking for cover and glass breaking everything. We see Mac pull his gun and glance to the side to notice a pool of blood slowly growing larger.

After The Who plays mini a concert and some companies try to sell me laundry detergent, we’re greeted with Mac staring at a board, in the present, at list of suspects. We see a montage of what all the other team members are doing. We find out later that it’s been 3 weeks since the bar shooting.

Mac glances at Danny’s ID & Badge lying on the table. Moments later we see a wheelchair and as the camera pans up, it’s Danny. Oh, Danny… Why do so many bad things happen to you? They’re on a floor in the police building that’s being remodeled meeting with a female who wants to provide them information, but wants protection for her brother, Jake. How is he connected? She backs away without providing them information. She’s scared. As she turns to leave, a gunman appears in the elevator and proceeds to shoot and kill her. Mac runs after the gunman while Danny lounges out of his wheelchair in an attempt to find her. A sad ending. On the other hand, if they can ID her (CSI talk) then they can always ask her brother questions.

Flack’s on a leave of absence, but with a new lead, he’s brought back in on the case. He seems to be ahead of Mac and already review video tape of “the perp” entering the building which ended in the possible informant’s death the previous night.

The shooting seems to have really affected Danny. Obviously, it would anyone, but we all know how things to get Danny. There does seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel though, because it doesn’t appear that he’ll be in the wheelchair forever. They have left it open so that he could logically make a full recovery. While Danny first announced it was 60% chance of walking again, it turns out it’s only 10%, but 10% in TV is all the percentage he needs.

Mac seems affected by what happened as much as anyone else, if not more so. He’s taking it as a personal slight towards him and I pity the fool (Mr. T voice) that has put Mac in such a mood.

A New Lead

After an announcement of a similar shooting with the same MO as the bar shooting, they find bullet casings at the scene that match the ones collected at the informant shooting. While on the scene, the shooters hack into the Time Square billboard and replace it with text that says, “Pay us and we’ll stop!” Hmm… with a note like that, it makes me think of the kidnappers from last season, but it can’t be.

We have a new clean up tech, Hayden Becall (Sarah Carter), sticking her head in and helping out with some missed evidence. I’m happy with this addition, even if it is limited, as I really enjoyed her in the canceled legal drama, Shark. She finds a bloody print in the elevator because of some really nerdy things that are too nerdy for me to remember.

Click to continue reading ‘CSI: NY Premiere Recap, Review & Discussion’

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Torchwood: Children of Earth – Review & Discussion

Bruce Simmons — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:34:00 +0000

This is a spoiler free discussion

The regular readers of Screen Rant have a pretty good feel for how I look at shows and many of you tend to agree with my opinions in my different reviews. With that said…

In short, I’ve never been so moved or drawn into a show like this in my life. In fear of sounding like one of those fawning critics looking for studio media exposure, I have to say that Torchwood: Children of Earth was gripping, compelling and shocking, all at once. Oh yea, and incredibly entertaining.

Creator, lead writer and executive producer Russell T Davies brings a very good story to the viewers. When he put this together he said “I wanted to tell a story in which civilization snaps, in which we turn on ourselves, in which nothing is safe.”

He hit the target dead on.

The children of Earth are used like tools. All around the planet, each child stops in their tracks and then as one, they speak to the people of Earth, saying “We are coming.”

Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) return in Torchwood: Children of the Earth where we are brought into a story of global fear and earthly citizen distrust. Of governments put in harrowing situations and dark deeds that need to be done. Decisions are made that are morally questionable and yet undeniably necessary. The emotional conflict created within the show remained with this viewer way beyond the closing credits.

The 5 days that the mini-series covers is a well developed and strong story that draws you in and continued getting stronger with each passing scene.

Day one is used to introduce many parts of the story, including the Torchwood team. They weave together a lot of facts and history quickly and efficiently. If you don’t know anything about Torchwood, it’s OK. Details will be filled in for you throughout.

I kept waiting for the the tale to plateau out like most shows do as they get past the halfway point. Then the characters can deal with what has happened. But it didn’t. It just kept getting better with every scene as the story developed and revelations are tossed at us throughout, right up until the end. My damn adrenaline just wouldn’t quit.

The show hit on some themes I’ve never seen before in American television. Or at least on any of the shows I’ve watched. It came at us with dark themes, again, like I’ve never seen before. I was impressed with how they presented some of the story facets. During other times in the show, there are scenes that drew me completely in and I’ve never had such a strong emotional empathy for a story or the characters within it.

Schedule The Time

If you watch it on TV on BBC America, you won’t budge from your couch and you will probably think it’s cruel and unusual punishment to keep you waiting until the next episode. If you DVR or buy the DVD / Blu-ray, plan to sit for the entire 5 hours because you won’t want to play one episode and then not put the other ones in.

Torchwood: Children of Earth will air on BBC America on Monday, July 20th, 9:00 to 10:15 pacific, 8:00 to 9:15 central.

Try to catch it if you haven’t already. And commentors that may have seen it already, try to be cognizant of the readers who haven’t seen it yet! Thanks!

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The Philanthropist: Review & Discussion

Bruce Simmons — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:16:11 +0000

The Philanthropist, starring James Purefoy (HBO’s Rome, A Knight’s Tale, Resident Evil) as Teddy Rist, started off by confusing me a bit but by the end of the episode, I found the story to have a compelling emotional element that kept me tuned in.

The show opens in the middle of a chase scene where Rist is being fired upon by some locals while on a river bank, barefoot in a jungle somewhere. We then jump to a bar scene where he’s chatting with a young lady while she’s bar tending and he explains in a backtrack sort of fashion how he came to being shot at on this riverbank.

They use this venue of Rist talking with the bartender to recant a quick history of how he got to this point of time.

Up front, the opening scene flashing back to the previous scene, while all of this was a recanting in real time tripped me up at first.

The first 15 minutes was used in this fashion to develop the entire history of our main character, Teddy Rist. Rist is a billionaire yet he has a huge emotional void in his life from the tragic death of his son. A business trip to Nigeria changes him when he rescues a small child from drowning. This deed teaches him that he can find happiness from helping others and his philanthropy efforts are sparked by this little boy.

At Risk Of Losing Me

The show started out by overloading the viewer with a lot of detail about Rist. This background info was interwoven with events as they unfolded in the episode. At first, Rist’s actions seemed empty but the story development became tangible when the reasons behind his actions became apparent.

There is a unique aspect to the show that left me wanting a little more. I like my heroes to be able to defend themselves and fight back if the need arises. Despite getting shot at and beat up on occasion, Rist never fought back. He takes the punishment but he comes up with a way out of the scenario. It also helps to be stupid rich to be able to offer up things people need.

The show is a low-keyed type of thinking man’s adventure that presents a a refreshing new angle in a scripted drama, but that might also be its downfall. If there’s no action to spark some mindless engagement, we’re only left with the emotional fulfillment of Rist’s present mission. Is that enough to keep a show afloat?

Ratings And Supporting Cast

The Philanthropist followed America’s Got Talent which had over 10 million viewers. This lead-in gave the show its initial boost but by the end of the hour, viewership had dropped 17% and the show tied with a repeat of CSI:NY on CBS with just over 7 million viewers still tuned in.

The rest of the ensemble that makes up the cast of The Philanthropist is Neve Campbell (Party of Five) Jesse L. Martin (Law & Order), Lindy Booth (Cry Wolf, Wrong Turn, The 4400) and Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire). The show is executive produced by Peter Horton (Thirtysomething, Grey’s Anatomy).

Thoughts

Aside from myself, did anyone else catch the premiere of this show? If you did, we were wondering what you thought of it and if you survived the first 15 minutes?

Source: Hollywood Insider (Ratings)

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Virtuality: Review & Discussion

Bruce Simmons — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:47:37 +0000

This is a DVR spoiler-free review.

“Follow me through the mirror, down the rabbit hole. Trust me, it has to be this way.”

A rabbit hole indeed. Ronald D. Moore has done it again giving us some brilliant writing with Virtuality as far as I’m concerned and Fox not sticking to the original plan of creating a series out of his concept is not only their loss, but ours as well.

We have 12 astronauts on a 10-year journey that becomes a potential rescue mission to save humanity. Their space faring vessel is named the Phaeton.

The show opens with a scene that introduces the Virtual Reality system (VR) world from the ship. We’re also almost immediately introduced to the glitch that we’ve been told about in the studio press releases. I think glitch might be an understatement, but that’s just me.

Despite the youthful cast, there’s sufficient maturity portrayed from the characters to calm my concerns about a disconnect with older viewers.

We also know that the mission on-board the Phaeton is broadcast back to Earth as a reality television program. I thought that angle would be distracting but Moore used this angle smoothly to fill us in on character perspectives as they updated their personal video diaries for the show.

The interpersonal relationships are well done and are developed through personal interaction on the mission and also within the VR system. Yes, crew members can share their VR worlds with each other.

Moore employs the The VR system in a number of ways; It serves as an emotional escape for the crew, as well as a kind of control system with certain processes within the ship.

The VR system does have its issues that we’re introduced to early on and throughout the movie. Moore is at it again with his dark mindset as he broaches some sensitive social issues with the VR system. We are asked to ponder the idea of whether actions conducted within the imaginary VR world is really what it is, or not. He further uses the VR system to introduce even deeper issues but I’ll leave that for you to experience when you get to your DVR’d version.

In regards to the VR system glitch, I can’t decide what the source is but it’s fascinating and has captured my imagination.

The movie ended in such a way that Moore seems convinced that it will be picked up as a series. If it isn’t, we are left to our imaginations as to how the story continues.

After All Is Said And Done

In mid-2008, Fox was looking at Virtuality as a series. In January of 2009, Fox felt like the premise needed to be retooled because the story was too dense. (Why do they consistently need to change material from successful showrunners?) In May of ‘08, they reduced their order from a series to a 2-hour movie.

I feel like this has a ton of promise as a series. A lot was introduced to us in these two hours. Actually, it was only 1 hour and 25 minutes of movie in the 2 hours of air time. But it had to be jammed packed full of details – They only gave Moore so much time to present his vision, but he did so very well.

I like the fact that Ronald D. Moore could present something to us that was not Battlestar Galactica and make it as original or fresh as he did – At least in combining various facets of sci-fi into Virtuality.

Ideas On Carrying Forward A Series

What points could be used to further this project along as a series? Plenty.

We have the challenges of the long trip itself, the relationships between crew members, some of which were tense while others were inappropriate. We also have the challenges of the VR system: What’s wrong with the VR system and how do they dare use it with the present glitch? The VR system introduces the question of blurring lines between fantasy and reality.

It’s a shame NBC passed on this. They could have used this to help their ratings, but it was too “science fiction” for them. Fox thought it was too dense before having it rewritten. They obviously have a marketing focus that does not trust the viewer to get it. Alas, it is television.

Did I miss anything? Have you seen something I missed or overlooked? Let us know if you enjoyed this show like I did. We would love to hear what you thought.

With respect to those who DVR’d the movie, try to keep your comments spoiler free or include spoiler warnings at the front of your comments so time-shifted viewers don’t have the experience spoiled for them.

Thanks.

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Smallville Season 8 Finale Review & Discussion

Bruce Simmons — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:25:10 +0000

This season of Smallville was better than the last few – and yet the last few episodes were starting to force me to extend my patience bubble farther out than normal. Stilletto? It felt like it was trying to fall apart for me to some degree, yet I suppose what can you expect from a fantasy show that has inexplicable superpowered aliens?

This reflection on the Smallville season finale will have spoilers…

The Smallville season finale brought closure to some story lines, had some oddball hanging logic at spots, fulfilled some past tidbits on who was going to die and set us up for the next season.

Though I’m not sure what they intend to do with next season or if after this episode, they’ll have viewers coming back. I’ve already seen some comments about this finale and they haven’t been pretty.

Clark, You Are Going To Die

The episode starts out with Clark learning from Cosmic Boy that he’s going to die tomorrow. Cosmis Boy also gives Clark another time travel ring, asking Clark that he send Doomsday to their time where they are prepared to deal with him.

Meanwhile, back at the super large mansion, Tess Mercer loses her Kandor Orb. Here’s the issue with the Orb… if Doomsday dies, something worse is released from the Orb.

Clark’s big plan is to bury Doomsday but the Justice League double crosses Clark and dupes him into a trap where Green Arrow plugs Clark with a green arrow… really… a kyrptonite laced arrow. It really was green.

The Justice League Thinks They Can Take Doomsday

Then the Justice League of mortals (Note the fragility of that word?) goes off to do kill the invincible Doomsday. They walk away leaving Clark to lie in the street, subdued. Nice, real nice, and real odd.

The Justice League actually captures Davis but as they prepare to off him, Chloe gets in the way AGAIN and thrusts the black kryptonite at Davis, splitting him and Doomsday apart. It’s amazing how stupid this girl acts, and I mean it with the best intentions.

At one point Lois is snooping around Mercer’s mansion. How the hell do people keep getting in this place? Later on Mercer confronts Lois at the Daily Planet and accuses Lois of stealing her Orb.

They get into a cat fight. (This was probably the best part of the episode folks.) Finally Lois clocks Tess out cold. As this scuffle comes to an end, Clark’s time travel ring that he left on his desk, falls off his desk and as Lois picks it up, she vanishes in a flash. Obviously to the future.

The near iconic character of Jimmie Olsen finds Clark and pulls the arrow from his back. Suddenly it all begins to make sense as he pulls the arrow out of his back and watches Clark heal. Jimmie is cool with Clark’s secret.

Clark locates the Justice League battered and bruised by what was Doomsday, which really, they seemed less worse for wear considering they just went up against an unbridled, pissed off Kryptonian killing machine that had no human control.

It’s back to the original plan and Clark engages Doomsday.

As they come together, Doomsday clocks Clark, sending him flying through several buildings. As Doomsday comes after him, Clark does a leaping tackle where they land at the refinery where Clark had left the Justice League. As they land there, it would seem that Clark packed Doomsday in one of the tunnels that he had first planned to put him in, where then Black Canary would set off this multitude of explosions to bury Doomsday. There are big explosions but in no way were we shown that they were set off by Canary.

The next morning, Jimmy and Chloe have taken the humanity known as Davis to this loft Jimmy bought as a wedding present way back when. As Jimmy and Chloe start to make amends, the jealous Davis stabs Jimmy with a pipe. As Davis goes after Chloe in a jealous angry rage, Jimmy uses his last bit of energy to shove Davis into more pipes, killing him. Jimmy dies. JIMMY OLSEN DIES (what?). So the monster was Davis. Great.

After the funeral Clark and Chloe talk. Clark doesn’t know how he survived the explosion or seemingly what happened to Doomsday. Clark is mad at himself for not seeing that Oliver was right about killing Doomsday.

Clark said he tries to forget he’s an alien and yet, it’s his human side that makes poor decisions based on emotion. He decides that he is no longer going to be Clark Kent and declares that Clark Kent is dead and walks away.

Meanwhile, back at the mansion the Kandor Orb shows up and hatches a man on the front lawn, carving out a big Z in the grass. Zod, has returned.

Where Do I Begin?

This episode had so many oddball illogical scenes that happenstance seemed more like logic than the situations that took place here.

Leaving a time travel ring on your desk at work. Fine. Clark has a lot on his mind.

A batch of humans with some powers, looking to take on Doomsday. Fine. They have to. Right?

The fight between Clark and Doomsday was incredibly short and lame. Two hits. Three at the most? This should have been the payoff for this whole season of waiting. And it was two hits. Gimme a break folks.

At Jimmy’s funeral, we find out that his middle name is Jimmy. Jimmy is not his real name. Chloe gives “Jimmies” camera to his younger brother. Head slap. So Jimmy Olsen did not die. Just a guy whose middle name was Jimmy.

Clark saying that Clark Kent is dead – Is this what the showrunners meant when they tried to tease the viewers into any sort of anticipation about character deaths and the season finale? You’ve lost your credibility with this critic because that was a hollow lie. On both counts. If it’s not really Jimmy, then you’ve lied to us all along. Clark “dies” by a decision. I’m so over this it’s not even funny.

Zod is back. Cool. Sure. Why not bring Darkseid in the action as some sort of midget horticulturist while you’re at it.

Did I forget something? I’m sure I did. Are you as agitated as I am? As a show goes and if you’ve put on a thick skin of anti-logic, the episode was fine but the convenient scenarios and situations that led to some of the story closures felt contrived. Did someone quit and you had to get a fill-in writer?

I liked the premise that Jimmy found out Clark’s secret. Learning that information made a lot of things make sense to Jimmy and why he could start to forgive Chloe. In fact, the forgiving had started and bam! OK, you had me there. Watching someone in a passionate make up kiss and hearing the shthunk sound of pipe going through their torso sucked.

Smallville Season 9 Spoilers

Erica Durance will be back for Season 9. Sam Witwer may be continuing with the show as he might be playing Zod. It’s noted that Faora did say that Davis Bloome resembled his father.

Your Turn

Ok folks. It’s your turn. You can either back me up and show me more moments of “huh?” or tell me why you thought this was OK in your book. I’m totally open to any thoughts.

Now gang, I’ve asked for opinions on both sides, so this is my fault if you see things you don’t like. Don’t take it out on each other. This is a safe place to express your thoughts.

Images and Season 9 Info Source: Krypton Site

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Review: Heroes Season 3 Premiere

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:20:52 +0000

After a very long wait, and a somewhat disappointing second season, Heroes has finally returned for Season 3: Villains.

At the end of season 2, Sylar (Zachary Quinto) had just gotten his powers back, Noah Bennet aka “HRG” (Jack Coleman) had just gone back to work for “the company” in order to spare his family, and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) had been apparently fatally shot just as he was about to reveal his ability to fly to the world.

BTW, full-on spoilers in the review below.

Heroes is run by folks (led by series creator Tim Kring) who actually listen to the fans, take their complaints to heart, and use that information to improve the show. This season there will be no slow, dragged out story arcs, and Kring says there will not be any new characters introduced (although this episode seems to contradict that). This season will also be comprised of two “volumes.” The first half of the season will be called “Villains,” but there is no title for the second half yet.

Enough of that… on to the season opener!

The episode opens with Claire (Hayden Panettiere, looking all “Matrixed” out in black leather) trying to kill Peter (Milo Ventimiglia), four years after Nathan’s announcement of his powers. Peter goes back in time to change the past, since it seems that things became very bad for super-powered beings after Nathan’s revelation.

So yes, the assassin is Peter Petrelli from the future.

Cut to Japan, where Hiro (Masi Oka) now owns his father’s corporation. He’s quite bored by the whole thing and yearning for a new quest. Of course, the show is happy to oblige. He watches a video left behind by his father stating that he needs to guard the contents of a safe (without ever opening it), the contents of which could lead to the end of the world. It is half of some sort of chemical formula.

Of course, he opens it.

A blonde girl who moves as fast as The Flash promptly steals it. And here lies the first thing that bugged me about this episode: Why didn’t Hiro just go back in time 60 seconds and put that piece of paper back in the damned safe?

Instead he goes to the future, sees his best friend Ando (James Kyson Lee) who is now super-powered kill him, and the destruction of Tokyo.

Nathan was dead for all of five seconds, but came back to life somehow – and claims to have seen God. I’m curious how they develop this and how it comes across to fans as he comes across downright born-again. Linderman is also back despite the fact that he seemed definitively dead during last season. Turns out he healed Nathan and has big plans for him.

Sylar finds Claire, intent on once again trying to take her healing power. He does the skull slice trick on her, sucks her powers… but surprisingly, leaves her alive after a very creepy scene in which he talks to her while he has the top of her skull off. Sylar tells Claire that she is not like the others – she is special and she can never die. And now, neither can he.

Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) is with Maya (Dania Ramirez, who unfortunately is still on the show) and she still wants to be cured. He flashes on the idea that the abilities are not based in the blood but in the adrenal gland. Suddenly he shifts his research (and ridiculously quickly creates a serum) from curing super-powers to being able to give them to anyone via an injection.

(”Click here to continue reading Heroes Season 3 Premiere Review“)

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Review: Supernatural Season 4 Premiere

Bruce Simmons — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:04:53 +0000

I’m just going to say upfront that this is nothing but a SPOILER filled recap/review of the season 4 premier of Supernatural. If you’ve DVR’d it, then as I always say, avert thine eyes and return once you’ve seen it for yourself. If you are of the inclination, then read on my trusty readers!

Supernatural: Lazarus Rising starts out the CW’s 4th season of the popular fantasy show.

We get dealt with a nice compilation of the brothers Winchester, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), demon fighting escapades from last season. It ends with the Hell Hound coming and taking Dean away and getting sent to Hell.

It’s four months later and Dean wakes up in his coffin. He crawls out of his grave and the camera pans back and we see that his grave is in the center of what looks like a meteor strike. All the trees pressed down and away from the grave. This starts Lazarus Rising.

I immediately notice the eerie silence to the scene. There’s an absence of background music that lends to the tension.

Dean does what, well Dean does. After crawling from the ground he walks down the road a bit to find a closed mini mart. He breaks in for supplies, snags a girlie magazine and steals a car.

A few things happen in the store. He checks a mirror and he has not scars from the Hell Hound, and he has one nasty red welt in the shape of a hand print on his left shoulder. For no reason, all the electronics in the store turn on and the windows all shatter inwards. Interesting, indeed.

Dean has a heck of a time convincing Bobby (Jim Beaver) it’s really him and Dean has to cut himself with a silver knife to prove it. While he’s trying to tell Bobby about himself, Bobby splashes holy water in his face saying he couldn’t help himself. A nice comedic moment in the tense scene.

They locate Sam (With a girl no less!) and he needs a little convincing too. The one notable issue for the moment is that Dean can’t answer any questions about Hell… he has no memory of it. (Yet) But at least Sam dissuades them from thinking he had anything to do with the raising, even if he wanted to bury Dean whole so he had a body to return to. (Hmm?)

To figure out who might have pulled Dean out, Bobby takes them to a psychic, Pamela Barnes, (Traci Dinwiddie) to see if they can locate the demon who raised Dean. She’s a bit of a horndog as she makes a suggestive offer Dean who starts grinning as if to say, check it out, barely back and I’m in the game. She then extends her “offer” to Sam too. Dean turned to say something to Sam but I was laughing so hard I missed it.

Pamela tries to locate and summon the demon who pulled Dean out of Hell, but all she gets for her efforts is blood running out of her eyes and blindness.

It seems even the local demons won’t even touch Dean, out of fear of his benefactor. While Sam and Dean confront a few demons in a diner, Dean calls their bluff and slaps one of them a few times, and she does nothing. He feels vindicated that he is right… they’re afraid. The boy is brave on a nuts kind of level!

In their hotel, again, all the electronics turn on around Dean. His ears split from a sound and more windows break around him. This is driving me nuts. Not to mention he’s going to need a window repairman following him around everywhere.

Dean and Bobby are now contemplating summoning the demon while Sam is off on his own, looking for the demons from the diner. He’s on a serious mission to eradicate all demons it seems. But all he finds are bodies in the Diner, all their eyes burned out.

One is still alive, though blind. She attacks, but it seems she’s seen the “thing” and says it’s the end, but won’t tell Sam what he looks like. Sam dispatches her… by gesturing at her with his psychic powers. The same psychic powers that earlier, he told Dean he wasn’t using. There’s part of the rift that’s going to develop between the brothgers that’s been hinted at.

The girl that Sam was with earlier shows up at the diner saying good job and it turns out to be Ruby. Ruby in another body?? She says that what ever pulled Dean out is more than demon, like cosmic. Ruby?? Sorry, I’m fixating.

Bobby and Dean finally manage to summon the one who raised him. Despite every glyph known to them adorning the walls and floors, it doesn’t even phase him. Nothing fazes him, not rock salt, not the demon killing knife. He touches Bobby on the forehead and he goes to sleep. He tells Dean they need to talk, alone.

This is Castiel. He tells Dean he is an angel of the lord. Dean does not believe him. Castiel explains that the moments where the windows were shattering were times when he tied to speak, but now he’s tempered his voice through this vessel he found, so they can talk. He also explains that Pamela went blind because no human can stand seeing his true visage and that he tried to warn her.

Castiel says God commanded Deans resurrection and that they have something for him to do. Eesh. That’s heavy. The problem is the Dean does not believe that Castiel is an angel, and that nothing good happens to him. A conflict of beliefs, including one where he doesn’t believe in god.

Wow… good ending to keep me hooked for more of this new season of Supernatural.

My thoughts:

The episode had a dark intensity to it that was injected with humor here and there. There was a subtle sense of energy. The eerie stillness of no background theme or sounds in most scenes really lent itself to keeping me riveted.

What does tick me off is that while Ruby is in the story, she’s not played by Katie Cassidy – because they let her go due to budget issues. I think that’s either a really cheap stunt to pull, or Cassidy was asking for an awful lot. The only reason they can pull this off is because demons can possess who ever they want.

Regardless, if budget cuts force them to tighten their focus on characters and create the atmosphere of this episode, with this kind of intensity – this is going to be a whopping good season.

My thoughts are that if the longest running sci-fi show, Doctor Who, started out and survived on a shoe string budget, it is doable. But they have to be careful, make sure they stick to quality content and keep the character developments fresh and meaningful.

Then they just might have a real winner on their hands for this new season.

So now we have to wait to find out:

Will Sam tell Dean about his developed psychic powers? Is this Castiel really an angel from god? He seems to be immune to all the protective demon glyphs, so that lends itself to this new character. What’s Dean’s mission details?

My big concern is how big of a rift is going to be created between the brothers. We have Sam with his new ability to kill demons with his mind. We have Dean’s new mission. Not to mention we’ll be seeing Dean slowly but surely starting to remember or recall his time down below. How will that affect him?

Again, I see promise galore with this story thread.

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Review: Smallville Season 8 Premiere

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:31:08 +0000

So it looks like this is going to be it: The final season of Smallville. Will season 8 go out with a bang – or a laughable whimper? Let’s see how things start…

In the season 7 finale they actually went easy on the cliffhangers – all we had was Chloe (Allison Mack) being hauled off by Federal agents, Lex (Michael Rosenbaum) activating the device that would control Clark, and both he and Clark (Tom Welling) apparently buried under tons of ice in the Fortress of Solitude.

There are major, detailed spoilers in this review.

This episode opens in a makeshift camp in the Arctic set up by LutherCorp in order to find Lex. We soon meet a woman who is destined to take the place of Lex on the show as the manipulative baddie: Tess Mercer (played by Cassidy Freeman).

Mercer is a VP from some never before mentioned branch of LuthorCorp, and for no reason given – she has been left in control of the company. Immediately we see that she is not the nicest person you’ll ever meet as she asserts herself with Lex’s right hand man/bodyguard.

Soon a mysterious man arrives and it’s soon obvious that it is Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow, played by Justin Hartley). He is joined promptly by Black Canary (Alaina Kalanj) and Aquaman (Alan Ritchson) and of course they wreak havoc and soon have control of the camp. Unfortunately, it turns out to be no help in locating Clark (or Lex, who is still missing).

So far, so good… but come back from the first commercial break and we find Lois Lane (Erica Durance) sniffing around the Luthor mansion in no less than a French maid costume.

I kid you not.

Mercer shows up knowing who Lois really is and there’s a minor confrontation showing neither of them is intimidated by the other. It turns out Chloe was NOT arrested by the Feds, but was instead spirited away by Lex’s private army to a facility in Montana.

Chloe at this point thinks she is in the government’s hands and is given the choice to help track down terrorists or go to prison for 20 years. How can she help? It seems that she now has a new power – the ability to process information faster than a supercomputer.

Oliver refuses to give up on his search for Clark, even when the other two members of the soon to be Justice League throw in the towel. It turns out that Clark has ended up in Russia, without his powers, and is being held captive as basically slave labor. He tries to escape but without powers is no match for a bunch of armed men.

Meanwhile Chloe decides to help her captors, by decoding an encoded satellite transmission, pulling out cell phone numbers. When she gets to the third one, she recognizes it as Oliver Queen’s and refuses to help further (and figures out this isn’t the government).

Back in Russia, Clark demonstrates that even without his powers he still has balls as he tries repeatedly to escape and takes a two by four to his captor. These scenes were actually pretty damned cool, and actually made mild-mannered Clark look pretty bad-ass. At this point Queen shows up, fakes a fistfight with Clark and figures a way to get him out of there.

Clark is determined to rescue Chloe, powers or not so he and Queen head to the facility in Montana (where Aquaman and Black Canary are being held after Chloe helped track them down). It turns out that the “control” aspect of the Veritas device that was so much the focus of last season was that it would just remove Clark’s super-powers, not turn him into some super-automaton.

On a side note: So far, the only really silly thing was the French maid costume – at this point it occurred to me that the episode has been pretty solid so far. Also, the female replacement for Lex is going to have to grow on me… I’m still not sure about her as a character.

Of course when Clark and Oliver arrive, Lois also happens to be there (ah, coincidence) and she and Clark knock out a couple of guards, with Lois grabbing the handgun. She carries it like she knows what she’s doing, and I thought she was pretty convincing.

Lex’s bodyguard doses Green Arrow with a drug that makes him obey commands for a short period of time, and for some reason the bodyguard tells him to find out where Lex is. At this point I didn’t think any of the facility staff knew that Clark was there, so how the heck was Oliver supposed to find out where Lex is?

Anyway, in a cool scene that follows, Green Arrow confronts Clark and shoots him just above the heart with an arrow as a warning. When Clark says he doesn’t know where Lex is he is shot straight through the heart and it looks like he’s done for (yeah, right). Chloe shows up and is ready to use her healing power to save Clark – except that she no longer has it.

That was pretty effective, and Clark saw his life flash before his eyes: His mom and dad, Lana, the farm, etc. Just as he fades, Martian Manhunter shows up out of nowhere and whisks Clark into space, towards the healing power (for Clark) of the Sun.

Clark wakes up back in the barn with Martian Manhunter there – powers restored. Unfortunately the Sun takes power away from MM, and he’s now just a regular guy. I thought this was terrible, because MM is supposed to be a member of the Justice League… but of course on Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV shows everything is reversible.

Clark decides based upon his near death experience that it’s time to leave the farm behind – so at long last, we DO seem to FINALLY be moving towards the Superman mythos we know and love.

There were allusions to his need for a double identity and even a joke about him needing a form-fitting costume.

In the end, Clark has just gotten an entry level reporter job at the Daily Planet, sitting right across from Lois Lane.

Nice.

Overall I’d say this season is starting off as a VAST improvement over last season, and the ending actually left me with a sense that just MAYBE we’ll be blessed by having less soap opera-ish crap on the show. I really don’t have much to nitpick about this episode that I haven’t already mentioned, and considering my critical eye towards Smallville, that’s really saying something.

My only real concern at this point revolves around the fact that they MUST put some closure on the Lex/Clark situation: Lex is missing but we KNOW he’s not dead – and he finally knows about Clark’s powers.

I’m hoping this final season opener was not a fluke and the show holds up to a better standard of quality than it has recently. I’m actually looking forward to watching it this season with a little bit of excitement and anticipation.

Go figure.

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Knight Rider Series Premiere Review

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:28:19 +0000

Well… I just watched the online series/season premiere of NBC’s reboot of Knight Rider. I know the term “reboot” has been overused of late, but in this case it truly applies. Exactly 7 months ago to the day, NBC unveiled a pilot/TV movie of a new version of the well-known Knight Rider TV series from the 1980s. While I thought it was extremely cornball, it had enough nods to the original series to soften me up a little bit and not totally rip it.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Apparently many people agreed that it was pretty lame, because although NBC decided to move forward with it as an ongoing TV series, they also decided to scrap the pilot and start from scratch with a completely new story and concept.

So, we here at Screen Rant figured there might be a glimmer of hope for the new series. However earlier today I posted up a short preview for the new show and it looked bad.

OK, expectations lowered.

Enough prevaricating – what’s the verdict?

Well, it IS better than the two hour movie, but it’s still not very good.

The episode started out portraying our hero Mike Traceur (Justin Bruening) as a slick, James Bond-type character in a tux at a fancy shindig. He’s there with Sarah (Deanna Russo) daughter of Charles Graiman (Bruce Davison), the genius behind uber-car K.I.T.T.. She is captured and Mike goes after her with the help of K.I.T.T. (apparently still voiced by Val Kilmer).

Things go wrong and soon the gang is trying to outrun a heat-seeking missile. They are unable to do so, despite the fact that I would think a couple of hard turns down a street or an alley would take care of it. Anyway, there’s some sort of “molecular chemically enhanced” napalm that K.I.T.T. is unable to put out.

Back at headquarters, Charles exhorts the team to come up with a solution before his daughter and Mike are cooked alive. This is where the show drops quite a few IQ points with its cast of characters. We have a brilliant and under-appreciated tech geek (played by Bill Morgan), and and hottie Smith Cho (played by Zoe Chae, try to keep up folks) the MOST annoying “genius” I’ve seen as a character on a TV show.

She utters idiotic things like “cool!” and “awesome!” as a reaction to life threatening situations – specifically while Mike and Sarah are near death with no solution in site. Really, REALLY annoying and stupid.

It turns out that in this version of the show, Mike has some partial memory loss and was a Black Ops guy over in Iraq. In the show’s favor, at least they have him playing more of a serious character in line with his background than the goof-off he was in the pilot. He doesn’t know why, but some of his former associates are out to get him.

The main plot, getting hold of a highly classified “package” almost seems like an afterthought. And the package turns out to be a person – a guy who has written the ultimate cypher and has hidden the code to break it… in his DNA. I agreed with Mike Traceur who pointed out “that’s really stupid.”

In this version of the show, the car truly is a “Transformer,” able to not only morph into a beefier version of itself with more body ground effect panels and a pop-up air intake, but it can even turn into a pickup truck.

Neat trick, that.

At least they did bring back “Turbo-boost” although it’s so extreme as to border on ridiculous – acting almost as a VTOL (Vertical Take-Off & Landing).

Following my review of last year’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot, I’m a little gunshy about dismissing a series based on the pilot alone. If they got rid of the stupidity factor of the duo back at headquarters, knuckled down and tried to take this seriously, it might have the potential to be at least watchable.

But as long as they’re schizophrenic about it – trying to combine stupid goofy “laughs” with a character story (Mike’s) which is obviously meant to be very serious, this show will be in trouble.

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Fringe Series Premiere: Fox TV Has A Winner

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:59:06 +0000

Screen Rant reviews J.J. Abrams’ Fringe

We’ve given sporadic coverage to J.J. Abrams’ new TV series Fringe (which airs on Fox) over the last few months, and now I wish we’d done more. It can take a new TV show a few episodes to find its legs, but the series premiere of this new Fall 2008 TV series was great.

Let it be known that there are spoilers below. If you haven’t seen the show, the premiere will be broadcast this upcoming Sunday. I recommend you check it out.

The show opened with a nod to Abrams’ other hit show Lost, by taking place on an airliner with of course something going terribly wrong. One of the passengers starts freaking out, and we soon see that it looks like his skin is starting to melt. Not a pretty site.

Soon the rest of the passengers are infected and there are melting faces everywhere. One closeup reminded me of the now-famous “jaw-ripping” scene from this summer’s horror movie stinker Mirrors.

Our main protagonist is Olivia Dunham (played by the very attractive Anna Torv). She is an FBI agent in a relationship with another agent. Their relationship is hidden since it’s against protocol for them to be romantically involved. They are called in to investigate this airplane that has landed with no one alive onboard. Yes, I know… HOW did it land. I was all ready to go off on that plot point but they explained that this plane had the most advanced, state of the art autopilot in existance, able to safely land a plan automatically.

Olivia ends up having to work for Homeland Security agent Phillip Broyles (played by the intense looking Lance Reddick). To say he treats her disrespectfully would be an understatement. There is bad blood between them based on a prior case that she had worked on.

While following a thin lead, she and her partner find an impromptu lab set up in a cargo container, and stumble across the owner of the lab, connected to the disaster. There is an explosion and agent-man survives but is infected by the same chemical agents that caused the flesh melting deaths on the flight.

Olivia’s mission now entails tracking down someone who can save her partner, who has been stabilized by being put into a coma. She ends up tracking down Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) who was locked up in a mental hospital 17 years ago for manslaughter. Apparently he is a scientist and genius, with the slighly bad habit of having conducted experiments on humans – resulting in a death.

Our heroine has to track down his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) in order to get access and finds him half way around the world. He’s a bit of a scammer and has a few skeletons in his closet. Reluctantly, he goes with Olivia to meet with his estranged dad.

That’s probably enough about the plot – what you need to know is that the show was very well done all around. The acting was very good, story, direction, visual effects, etc. This is a quality effort and not a schlocky premiere that will be gone in three episodes.

Its lead-in on Tuesday nights will be the extremely popular series House, and in January the lead-in will be American Idol, so expect Fringe to do very well in the ratings department.

And yes, this does seem like a new version of The X-Files, but in this case that’s not a bad thing. Of course, being a J.J. Abrams TV series, there is some larger conspiracy and many other related events that all somehow mesh together. My concern is that the show doesn’t lead us all over the place by the nose like X-Files did and as Lost did for a couple of seasons. Hopefully he’s learned his lesson from the feedback he’s received from fans.

And on a completely unrelated note: Fringe solidifies my hope that the upcoming Star Trek reboot may in fact turn out to be excellent. Why? Because the team behind this show: J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are the same folks who are behind Star Trek.

Hopefully the quality remains high on Fringe – it’s off to a hell of a great start.

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Review: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season One

Niall Browne — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:35:03 +0000

Over the the last twenty-five years The Terminator franchise has set the standard for science fiction films – smart, action packed and filled with ground breaking special effects. The (first two) films are iconic and idolized by millions around the world. So when it was announced that the franchise would have a television spin-off many fans were unhappy, (myself included,) as it would not star Arnold Schwarzenegger (for obvious political reasons.) We feared that a TV series, sans Schwarzenegger, would cheapen the previous entries that had gone before it.

However, there is no need to fear Ye Terminator faithful: although the series does not equal the greatness of T1 and T2, it does expand on the characters, adding new twists, as well as some key references to the films.

All in all it’s enough to satisfy fans old and new alike.

The first season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles is set after the events of Terminator 2: Judgement Day, but in an alternate timeline from Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines (though they do keep the Sarah Connor cancer subplot mentioned in T3). The pilot starts in 1997 when a new Terminator named Cromartie (since when did they give these things names?) gets sent back from the future for another attempt at John Connor, this time when he is a teenager. Of course another protector for John also gets sent back: a female Terminator that appears to be around John’s age, (sixteen or so,) named Cameron (geddit).

With Cromartie relentlessly pursuing them, John, Sarah and Cameron use a device left behind by ‘time-agents’ to jump a decade into the future. (I guess that’s how they manage to discount T3.) Arriving in 2007, the Connor family, along with their new “household appliance,” charge themselves with the mission to destroy Cyberdyne Systems, along with anyone who helped create the super computer, Skynet, before the machine uprising can begin. There’s just one tiny problem – Cromartie follows them through the time portal, and will stop at nothing to terminate John.

While I was skeptical about the quality of the show before I watched The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it was. Lena Headey (300) makes a good replacement for Linda Hamilton, who was sorely missed in T3. Thomas Dekker is a pretty decent John Connor; for the first time we see that he could actually be a military leader, even if he still (on occasion) acts like a whiny teen. The one weak link in the series is Summer Glau as Cameron, the protector Terminator sent from the future. She just doesn’t feel like a Terminator; at times she manages it – but more often than not she appears like a cast member from the OC, acting tough.

The effects for the show are pretty good, and the future scenes due to their (relative) low budget mirror those in Cameron’s 1984 film. The music score is also first rate, bringing in themes and motifs from Cameron’s original features. For fans there is also the return of Kyle Reese (and the introduction of his brother,) which wasn’t as bad as I anticipated; the presence of Dr. Silberman (played this time around by Bruce Davision); with enough action, plot twists and continuity “Easter eggs” to keep Terminator fans (and avid TV watchers) entertained over the course of nine episodes.

I’m aware that the US Region 1 DVD has some pretty good documentaries, but they weren’t available for my review copy. However, there are a few good smatterings of deleted scenes that add to the texture of the show.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a decent addition to the Terminator cannon, surpassing T3 in terms of quality and story. The show is a must for fans, and it should keep you ticking until Terminator: Salvation hits next year. Check it out.

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Review: The Andromeda Strain

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:45:11 +0000

There’s nothing like taking four hours to tell a story that would fit into two.

I remember watching the original movie version of Michael Crichton’s story The Andromeda Strain and being riveted to the screen. I was suspicious of the A&E version when I first heard about it, even though it had names like Ridley Scott attached to it.

Well The Andromeda Strain 2008 managed to live down to my expectations.

First off, I’d like to know how the heck A&E managed to get a TV-PG rating on a show that explicitly shows a woman setting herself on fire, a guy getting shot point blank in the head and a guy cutting his own head off with a freaking chain saw for crying out loud!

Anyway, the show opens with what look like a couple of under-twenty-years olds parked out in the desert, with the guy dropping below the camera line telling her he’s “going where no man has gone before” (yet more PG-rated fun). What appears to be a meteorite streaks by, but turns out to be a satellite crashed to Earth. Brilliantly, the redneck loads it into the back of his pickup truck (aren’t satellites like, really heavy?) and takes it back into town. Very soon thereafter everyone in town is dead, except for an old disheveled guy and a crying infant. When a couple of army guys show up to retrieve the satellite, they die instantly.

Alternately we’re introduced to the cast of characters, including the super-calm Benjamin Bratt as Dr. Jeremy Stone, Ricky Schroder (yeah, he’s going by “Ricky” again) as Major Bill Keane MD who also happens to have some bad history with Stone. There’s also Eric McCormack as drug-addicted reporter Jack Nash. There is WAY more backstory laid with the characters than we even remotely need, and I’m a big fan of character development, mind you.

They’re gathered to go to the super-secret lab, and we are then put through an artsy, slo-mo decontamination sequence that is ridiculously long and only there to show peek-a-boo shots of the guys with no shirts and 3/4 shots of one of the female characters topless (cough, PG, cough).

As opposed to the original film, they find the source of the virus almost immediately but then the questions are how is it spread, how does it mutate, where did it come from and what exactly is it.

I have to say that I more than half expected to see in the credits that this mini-series was sponsored by a combination of Moveon.org, Al Gore and maybe Greenpeace just for kicks. It was chock full of “government is the secretive bad guy hiding behind homeland security” plus there was a scene totally tossed in that had nothing to do with anything where one of the characters lets us know he’s gay.

The purpose behind the arrival of the virus is ludicrous and while you might call it “timely,” I call it idiotic. Sending a virus that could destroy mankind encapsulated by some container that warns us not to destroy some obscure natural resource is beyond the pale.

There are more annoying scenes, like where Nash narrowly survives an attempt on his life, is wandering through the desert with no food or water. He drops to his knees and prays, promising to give up some of his vices (obviously not something he does very often). Minutes later, God, if you will answers his prayer with the arrival of an SUV from out of nowhere – he looks up and says “I take it back.” What an a-hole, but it’s totally in line with the flavor of the rest of this thing.

If you’re really interested in what is potentially a really cool story, I strongly suggest that you buy or rent the original Andromeda Strain from 1971 which was directed by the great Robert Wise and nominated for two Oscars back when that still meant somethin. Do that, instead of watching a version written by a guy with seven times as many acting credits as writing credits to his name.

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Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Premiere = Fracking Awesome

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:38:48 +0000

After a full year, Battlestar Galactica is back – and man was it worth the wait.

I had Tivo’d the season 3 finale just so I could re-watch it right before the season 4 premiere, so there it sat on the hard drive for a full 12 months. I planned on making tonight a BSG event.

It was almost like seeing the finale for the first time all over again, and I feel for folks who hadn’t recorded it. I’d forgotten about the emotionally packed episode’s highlights, which included the verdict on Baltar’s trial and the sharp falling out between Lee Adama and his father. Of course the BIG deal about the finale was the reveal of second in command Saul Tigh, Master Chief Galen Tyrol, resistance fighter Sam Anders and presidential chief of staff Tory Fostervas being Cylons.

This final season premiere episode picks up right where that one left off. Spoilers galore below, FYI.

To me, Battlestar Galactica is the most pure Sci Fi series that we’ve had on TV for quite a while. Sure, I enjoy Stargate Atlantis and I was a huge fan of Stargate SGI-1, but this show truly combines fantastic outer space/fantasy with gut wrenching, emotionally engaging and intellectually stimulating storytelling.

As I said, the episode opens right exactly where the last one left off: The Cylons are attacking the fleet in such numbers that it seems like the convoy is truly done for. Anyone on Galactica who knows how to pilot a ship is called into duty, and Lee Adama (who resigned in the previous episode) decides to pitch in and help in the face of such overwhelming odds. Along with him are newbie pilot Sam Anders, who was Kara Thrace’s love interest. While everyone thought she was dead (well, not viewers, who knew better) she suddenly appears in a showroom new Viper fighter, saying she’s been to Earth and knows the way there.

During the battle, Anders forgets to undo the safety on his ship’s guns, and during his hesitation a Cylon Raider scans him, determines he’s a Cylon and the entire fleet attack comes to an abrupt end.

Everyone of course doubts that she’s still herself and that she does in fact know where Earth is located. The assumption is that she’s a Cylon. Meanwhile the folks who’ve just learned they are Cylons are coming to terms with that. Colonel Tigh has a vision of blowing away Commander Adama, but in the end decides that he will never allow that to happen because he’s aware that he’s a Cylon and can therefore stop it before it happens. On the other hand Anders is having serious doubts that he’s in control of himself.

Kara seems to have been imbued with an intuition regarding whether the fleet is getting closer or further from Earth, and the problem is that the clues the fleet is following is taking them further away from Earth according to her. The president trusts the clues they’ve received to date more than Kara and Adama is backing her up.

In an interesting exchange between her and her former lover Anders, he consoles her by saying that even if she is and always has been a Cylon, that wouldn’t change who she is or how people feel about her. Her reply is that if she found out that he is a Cylon (and he is) she would not hesitate to put a bullet between his eyes.

Meanwhile Gaius Baltar has been taken in by a bunch of young idiots who believe him to be some sort of religious leader. On the good side, he finally seems to be caring about others more than himself, as evidenced by a prayer (when everyone was asleep) that God take him instead of a little boy who was terminally ill. He also cared more about a woman who was being attacked at the same time he was than he did for himself.

The cliffhanger ending had Kara storming into the president’s quarters with a gun pointed at her head with the intent of convincing her to turn the fleet around in order to head back to Earth.

It remains to be seen if Kara is in fact the fifth and final unknown Cylon.

I can’t wait to see how this final season of Battlestar Galactica plays out.

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New Amsterdam: Old Theme, Old Twists

Bruce Simmons — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:30:33 +0000

John Amsterdam has a problem.

He’s immortal, and like all immortals, he wants to have a finite life span while the rest of us mortals would all like to live forever. Did I mention the immortal is immortal?

As New Amsterdam, the new series on Fox TV starts, we are rushed through a number of explanations of the character’s background: He’s been sober since the mid 1960’s, he gets a new partner, he’s had a lot of cop partners, he’s had a lot of girlfriends, (In case we don’t get the immortality thing) etc., etc.

Early in the episode, while we watch John (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) chase down a “perp”, he drops to the ground from what looks like a heart attack and we get treated to one of the many flashbacks shown throughout the show. These let us see different aspects of when the shaman put the immortal whammy on him to repay him as a gift for protecting her from an attack back in the Dutch colonists days.

His buddy, a jazz club owner named Omar (played by Stephen Henderson) knows he’s immortal and they conjecture since he was pronounced dead at the hospital, that his pseudo heart attack came about because his perfect soul mate was in his proximity. So though he’s been looking for this true love for hundreds of years, he thinks he’s encountered her within the first 15 minutes of the series.

The show has a low key kind of energy much like the main character’s subtle presence as a New York Homicide Detective.

Did I mention we’re constantly treated to flashbacks with his shaman benefactor casting her immortality spell on him?? Sorry. I thought I’d give you a feel of what it was like to watch the show.

John Amsterdam’s angst (you know he has issues because they are going to pack this into the first episode for us) is that everyone he meets will die and pass on, leaving him behind (sound familiar?). “To be human is to die. Dying is what makes life worth living.” (As we get pummeled with more cliches, my cliche shields are weakening.) But his immortality can end if he finds hims true love, after which he will become whole and ready for mortality. (And that brings on a heart attack!!??)

During a murder investigation John is conducting, he comes across a very old woman named Julia who he knew from the past… how quickly we jump into each facet of his past life. Fortunately, she has degraded mentally, so when she shows her angst about how he left her, her condition explains this away to her family. As she says early on in their conversation, “Do I know you?” John says, “Not any more.” (Keptin’, she caunnot take aneemoh!!)

As John and his partner resolve their case, and being the top cop of the precinct, he apprehends the suspect quietly before his partner arrives, she asks, “I thought you were going to wait for me?”. Looking non-chalant, he replies, “Yea, I lied” .. Oh Mr. cavalier, I shudder at the o-riginality.

The show is brought to us from executive producers David Manson (Saved, Thief, Nothing Sacred), Allan Loeb (Things Lost in the Fire, 21), Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, The Hoax), Leslie Holleran (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, The Hoax) and Steven Pearl (Untraceable).

I hold no fantasies that this show is going to last and I’m not sure why we have a vampire/Highlander type show being tossed at us with such a cliche type outline. The fans get way too many details shoved down their throats in this first episode, giving me the sense that the Fox network does not trust the fans to get the nuances of the character. Fox needs to trust the fans to get the different aspects of the characters put out to us over a few episodes – people aren’t that stupid. They can follow a developing character line.

Then again, are they just worried it won’t last that long?

One last comment in this “rant”: If New Amsterdam starts to sound more like a Highlander ripoff, that’s one thing. It’s their death knoll. But if I hear one single Queen soundtrack in the background, I’m going to personally go down to Fox and give them a piece of my mind.. once I stop screaming from the cliche pummeling. Did I mention he’s immortal?

Never mind.

Official Site: New Amsterdam

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