Even this isn't the original cast

We started watching CSI back in 2000. I enjoyed the rejection of typical TV police tropes – specifically, jumping to conclusions at the scene of the crime and pursuing the investigation according to those initial assumptions. Instead, Gil Grissom (William Petersen) encouraged his team to focus on the evidence, and to leave the police work to the LVPD detectives.

In May, 2002, there was an episode in which Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) pursues the evidence to Miami, where she meets Lieutenant Horatio “H” Caine (David Caruso), Calleigh “Gun Girl” Duquesne (Emily Procter), Eric Delko (Adam Rodriguez), Dr. Alex Woods (Khandi Alexander), and Tim “Speed” Speedle (Rory Cochrane). That was the launch of CSI: Miami, and we switched our loyalty to sunny Florida.

Until this past week.

We Watched It

Normally, I would spell out the pilot for you, but when a show is 10+ years old, the pilot is less important than the body of work.

The CSI shows (CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: New York) are, ostensibly, about Crime Scene Investigation teams. These teams show up at crime scenes, gather evidence, analyze the evidence, and present their findings to the police – who investigate based on the evidence.

Certainly in the early years of CSI, the show gave a lot of screen time to science and to advances in technology. Gil Grissom, in particular, reveled in cool new ways to find and analyze clues like a kid in a candy store.

Detective work was the province of the police.

Dropped

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, my wife and I are self-admitted shippers. Our loyalty to a show is only as strong as the relationships between the characters on that show. I am far more character-focused than I am plot-focused – and I freely admit that’s why I still watch NCIS, even when they stoop to episodes about Real Life Superheroes.

CSI: Miami has dropped all the relationships that we liked at the beginning of the show. They’ve dropped or minimized a number of characters, and added new ones without bringing them into sharp focus.

From what little I’ve seen of the other CSI shows, all of them have deviated from the original idea. The CSI: Miami forensic team now makes snap judgments and then looks for evidence to support those judgments. A franchise that once attempted to be a haven for rational thought on national television now no longer makes the attempt.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against passion, motivation, or dedication. One of the things that attracted us to Horatio Caine in 2002 was how he saw red when a crime involved a child. However, back then, that meant that he pushed his team harder to find the most elusive evidence. Now it means that he goes off the rails and starts kidnapping possible suspects, terrifying them into giving him information.

Which brings up my third issue – Over the last twelve years of CSI shows, the forensics teams have become detectives. Where they once went into the field unarmed, with police escorts, they now carry pistols, interrogate suspects, push for confessions, and make arrests.

Change is fine, but shows lose their audiences when their characters don’t talk about the changes and how those changes affect them.

Then there’s the formulaic issue, which I won’t go into here, and the lame sunglasses meme they should have dropped years ago.

WTF

I’m just going to say it: The CSI franchise is ageist, and CSI: Miami is the worst offender. Emily Procter has been minimized. Khandi Alexander is gone. Eva La Rue is two years older than Emily Procter but looks younger – and now they’re bringing in some new young CSI field agent. Look out, Eva, your days are numbered.

Even if departures and reduced work schedules are voluntary, showrunners need to handle them carefully. Khandi Alexander’s Dr. Alex Woods got a nice exit from the show. Tim Speedle’s exit brought home the horror and danger of police work. The characters need to communicate to each other why these changes are happening, and then the show’s publicity should make it clear, too. We miss Maxine Valera (Boti Bliss). We haven’t seen Det. Yelina Salas (Sofia Milos) in three years.

The personnel changes have drastically altered the relationships in the show. I’ve been a fan of Christian Clemenson since The Adventures of Brisco County Junior, and he’s got a good character in Dr. Tom Loman. I really like Omar Benson Miller as CSI Walter Simmons, although he just kind of appeared on the show – especially contrasted with the gradual introduction of Ryan Wolfe (Jonathan Togo). We can handle change.

But now the show has changed enough that we can’t find a reason to keep it in our DVR queue.

Thoughts?

Have you ever noticed an ugly trend on a show, and stopped watching because of it?

I had to be dragged into watching this show.

First off, it’s on SyFy. As big a fan as I am of science-fiction and fantasy, and as grateful as I was to finally get access to a cable network dedicated to genre programming, SyFy is very hit or miss with its “original” stuff. Once, I would have watched anything they scheduled without question or reservation. Now, I’m more critical.

Second, nothing in the marketing looked original. I’m not bragging at all when I say that I’m too mature at this point in my life to buy a show purely on the sex appeal of the cast.

We Watched It

Bo (Anna Silk) works in a bar. One night she sees Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) leave with a guy right before Bo’s shift ends. Bo catches up to them at the elevator and can see that Kenzi has been drugged. She offers to join in for a threesome, which lets her get close enough to the guy to magically suck the life out of him with a kiss.

Bo takes the unconscious Kenzi back to her place. We see that Bo squats in an abandoned building, that she has multiple fake IDs, and that everything she owns fits in one bag that she can carry out quickly.

Kenzi wakes up before Bo leaves and convinces Bo to stay in town. During their conversation, we learn that Bo is an orphan, and ever since puberty she’s killed people during moments of high stress. It’s beyond her control. She can’t do it at will, and she can’t stop it once it starts. So she tries to distance herself from people to protect them.

They get picked up by Detectives Dyson and Hale (Kris Holden-Reid and K.C. Collins, respectively), only the detectives are clearly more than they seem. Hale gets them to come along quietly by whistling.

The detectives take them to meet the Ash (Clé Bennett), and Bo learns that she is a “fae,” a supernatural creature. No one knows who or what, specifically, she is, but there is a human doctor who studies the fae with their consent. Her name is Lauren (Zoie Palmer), and during her exam of Bo, we learn two more things.

Bo is a succubus.

Bo can influence people by touch. She knows it, and she’s used that ability for years.

There are lots of fae, and they’ve fought a very long war between the Light and the Dark. Currently there’s an uneasy truce between the Light and Dark sides. Bo, of course, is thrust into the middle of this. Something about Bo is going to decide the struggle forever, so both sides want her to choose. They can’t force her, because that would start the war again.

Bo chooses not to join either side.

Kenzi talks Bo into setting up a detective agency and helping people, and fae, with fae-related problems.

On the Bubble

First off, Lost Girl is unoriginal.

Bo is a magic orphan. Magic orphans are a literary archetype. Other examples include Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker. Magic orphans have power beyond other people, and some sort of destiny.

Using an archetype isn’t a bad thing. They exist because they resonate with us, so using archetypes can be a powerful thing. However, it’s also a predictable thing. The magic orphan, for example, must undergo trials and training to master her power, and then take control of her destiny. We know what to expect.

Expectations can be confounded, of course. Good writers do it all the time. However, successfully confounding us requires first that the writer demonstrate an understanding of the archetype and the rules surrounding it. After that demonstration, the writer starts inserting rule-breaking moments or elements. He “hangs a lantern” on unexpected traits or actions. If you’ve ever heard a courageous character defend being afraid of spiders, that’s hanging a lantern on just this kind of writing.

I’m not seeing any of that in Lost Girl. We’re just supposed to go along for the ride.

Continuing with its lack or originality, Lost Girl is recycling folklore, and we’ve got a lot of that this season. Between Lost Girl, Grimm, and Once Upon a Time, we’re overloaded.

In fact, of those three, I’m most pleasantly surprised by Once Upon a Time. It’s the least muddled. It’s clearly dealing with archetypes, and uses the past vs. present structure to confound expectations and create multi-dimensional characters.

Lost Girl and Grimm, on the other hand, grab from every culture, put them in a bag, and then shake the bag until something falls out. So far on Lost Girl, we’ve got sirens, werewolves, kappa, a succubus, and furies. We never know what to expect, and that robs us of any sense of suspense or wonder.

Second (and much less irritating), Lost Girl has no sense of place. Is it Toronto? Montreal? Vancouver? Chicago? New York? We don’t know. Granted, that makes it easier to market to a broad audience, but it also makes it less grounded.

In urban fantasy like Lost Girl, grounding the show in real places with real people is critical. It throws the fantastic into sharp relief. When the weird and wonderful intrudes into everyday contemporary life, we get a jolt.

It’s possible that the creators are doing that on purpose in an attempt to make us feel unsettled, as if we were in some Limbo between myth and reality. If that’s their intent, they need to up the voltage.

Witchblade was much better at combining the weird and the mundane, particularly in the pilot but all through the first season. Once we knew that the Witchblade existed, suddenly little elements of architecture took on new significance, and the cameras drew out attention to them.

Lost Girl doesn’t seem that ambitious.

Why not just drop it? Read on.

WTF

Let’s talk about sex, because Lost Girl is pretty frank about it.

First off, Bo is a succubus. Those mythological creatures are pure sex. They seduce men in dreams, primarily through sexual intercourse.

Second, Bo “feeds” through sex. She heals wounds and recovers from illness via sex. She’s so happy when she finds out that she can have sex with fae, feed, and not kill them. I believe it was

And yet…

Anna Silk is undeniably beautiful, and the show is happy to have her take her clothes off. However, the show also costumes her in ways that are supposed to make her blend in. She doesn’t show excessive cleavage. She doesn’t wear tiny dresses or extremely short skirts.

That seems extremely reasonable considering that Bo lives her life avoiding contact and relationships with other people. She wouldn’t dress to draw attention.

I have this suspicion that the creators want to make her seem like a real person, with a healthy interest in sex, who also has practical needs in terms of dressing to keep warm and safe and comfortable. However, it comes across as a mixed message.

My wife and I watch a show called Primeval. There’s a character named Abby Maitland, played by the lovely Hannah Spearitt. In the first season, her home life with a stolen flying lizard and her co-worker Connor Temple (Andrew Lee Potts) played a significant role. The writers thought it was perfectly reasonable for Abby to wander around her home wearing very little. Ms. Spearitt lobbied for spending less time in her underwear, and the show let her deal with roommate issues via dialogue during other actions. The show improved when it stopped pandering to adolescents.

I’m sure you’re thinking that straight men everywhere must tune in to see Anna Silk’s partial TV nudity, and you may be right. Lost Girl has already run for three seasons on Canadian television, and I doubt scenes like this hurt it:

It bugs the crap out of me.

First, I hate being manipulated. In fact, I find ham-handed manipulation insulting because it’s so disrespectful.

Second, Anna Silk is better than this. My wife and I agree that she’s doing a very good job in a not great show. Her eyes convey intelligence, and she conveys Bo’s internal life very well. She’s a better actor than this.

Thoughts?

So the question has to be, how long do we hold our breath, waiting for the show to gel? The answer is, probably not very long. There’s too much competition for our attention.

All they had to do to sell me on this show was tell me that Nathan Fillion was in it. Seriously. After Buffy and Firefly (and Two Guys and a Girl), we were going to watch.

When the ads showed off the character’s smarmy sense of humor, we were hooked.

We Watched It

Rick Castle (Nathan Fillion) is a best-selling mystery author who is killing off his bread-and-butter character. He’s not burned out. He wants to write more. He’s just uninspired. Divorced (multiple times), with a live-in mother (Susan Sullivan) and a high-school age daughter (Molly C. Quinn), Rick can’t just stop working.

NYPD Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) has two murders on her hands, and both of them were committed using methods right out of Castle’s books. Castle finds her attractive, and inspiring, so he calls his buddy the mayor and gets himself made a police consultant.

Castle is awkward, bumbling, and unprofessional as a detective, but his insight actually helps solve the case.

Three years later, he’s still solving them.

Sticking

The show is a well-oiled machine at this point. What Castle has going for it is a terrific ensemble cast. Jon Huertas (a fellow veteran) and Seamus Dever play two other NYPD homicide detectives. Tamala Jones plays Lanie Parish, the forensics expert. Plus there’s the professional and romantic tensions between Castle and Beckett.

The aforementioned Susan Sullivan and Molly C. Quinn round out Castle’s family life. The interplay between Castle, his mom, and his daughter, is poignant at times and hilarious at others. We’ve come to love them, frankly, and that speaks to the show’s strength: Its characters.

WTF

If Castle’s strength is characters, then its weakness is plot.

Now, I’ve spent years reading detective fiction, true crime books, and criticism of detective fiction. I’ve read many books on how to write detective fiction. That does not make me an expert. It just makes me informed. My information says that the more outrageous the crime, the fewer possibilities there are for suspects. In other words, the elaborate, locked room, mystery is usually the easiest to solve in the real world. The random, impulsive, killings are often the hardest to resolve.

The crimes on Castle are usually elaborate, and often bring in recent fads or are just plain weird. While this gives Rick Castle plenty of opportunities to display his humor and his childish side, it doesn’t make it intellectually challenging.

Seriously. You watch Castle for the characters and how they deal with events, and not for the plots.

Thoughts?

Are you aware of the social media blitzkrieg that is Castle? The character has Facebook pages and a Twitter feed. Have you ever watched a show just because of a particular actor? Who was it?

A spooky show about the most famous prison in America, that stars Sam Jurassic Park Neill, Sarah Jones from Sons of Anarchy, and Jorge Garcia from Lost? Okay, you twisted my arm. Sign me up.

We Watched It

SFPD Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and her partner chase a criminal. The crook gets away. Her partner falls to his death during the chase. Later, she gets evicted from a murder scene by FBI Agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill). To spite him, she steals a piece of evidence from the scene and analyzes it. She finds the fingerprint of an Alcatraz inmate.

She consults with a local historian who’s an expert on Alcatraz, Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia). He tells her that the inmate was transferred when Alcatraz closed, and died in prison decades ago. However, the last time he toured Alcatraz while researching his book, he found a locked room full of files. Maybe there’s more information there.

They go to the island, find the room, and get gassed into unconsciousness. When they wake up, they’re in the clutches of Agent Emerson Hauser, who explains (eventually) that when Alcatraz closed, it was because all the inmates and guards mysteriously vanished one night. No one was transferred off the Rock. The guy that he and Det. Madsen are looking for is one of the guys who vanished.

There’s lots of flashbacks, and at the end of the episode, we find out that Hauser’s career in law enforcement started as a guard on Alcatraz. he was part of the shift relief that discovered the disappearances.

On the Bubble

It’s tough to sit in judgment on a show after only three episodes, but let me give it a shot. I’ll start with the characters.

Emerson Hauser is a dick. There might be reasons for his dick behavior, but the very format of the show keeps the writers and director from revealing those to us. So he’s just a dick. Worse, Sam Neill portrays him with two postures and two facial expressions. He stands up straight when dealing with people “in the know.” Everyone else gets a kind of cocked lean, like a stork. His expressions are the Grimace, most common, and the Sneer, which he unleashes when he enjoys ripping some hapless character a new one. Somebody (I’m looking at you, director Jack Bender) needs to kick his ass and expand Mr. Neill’s acting vocabulary (note that I had similar complaints about Tim Roth’s performances in Lie to Me, and he got better).

Rebecca Madsen is a cipher. Her partner dies, and she has no emotional response except to refuse to work with another partner. Sarah Jones is certainly easy to work with, and she’s a good enough actor to be more than just a porcelain doll. Every now and then, she manages to get across some rebellious spark at Hauser’s treatment. Madsen’s relationship with Dr. Soto is warm and friendly, without being romantic.

I want to like her, but the writing keeps tripping me up. I mean, in Episode 1, she finds out that her family has lied to her for her whole life. Her grandfather wasn’t a guard on Alcatraz, he was an inmate – and he was the criminal she was chasing when her partner was killed. Yet, she hasn’t questioned her “uncle” Ray Archer (Robert Forster, who is awesome, as always) about it nor has she questioned whether or not Uncle Ray was really a guard. I mean, there should be an angry, recriminatory, scene in that set-up, and we haven’t seen it. Also, if I were her, I would pull out all the stops to find Grandpa, including staking out Uncle Ray’s home and bar.

Of all the characters, I like Dr. Soto the most. I think I’m supposed to. That said, his character still has irritating qualities. These come from the writers, and not from Jorge Garcia, who is a treat to watch. Soto has two PhDs, and runs a comic book shop. He even has his own comic book. He’s written scholarly books, but based a criminology book on Gotham City and lost his credentials among academics. An episode deals with a child kidnapping, so he was kidnapped as a child. An episode requires him to drive in a car chase, so he’s a bad driver. Basically, he’s whatever the writers need him to be, and that’s usually something that slows down the professional investigators.

Now, about the episodes. We’re three in and there’s already a formula. We flashback to Alcatraz before the mysterious event. In the present, a crime happens involving a criminal from the flashback. Something about the crime reminds Dr. Soto of a criminal from Alcatraz. That makes it the responsibility of Madsen, Soto, and the rest of Hauser’s special unit to investigate. Hauser is grumpy and refuses to share information. There’s a montage of investigation in the present day, and flashbacks that show us how Alcatraz was Hell on Earth because of its sadistic staff.

At the last moment, Madsen gets the drop on the criminal. Then Hauser shows up out of the blue and shoots the crook before Madsen can get any meaningful answers. Madsen or Soto gets a closing scene. Hauser delivers the crook to an Alcatraz replica hidden under a forest, and there might be a scene with the Alcatraz doctor, who’s still alive and working in the black site. Fade to credits.

Even the “play along with us” game on the Fox site seems like cookie-cutter marketing from the trained chimps at Fox.

WTF?

Okay, folks, you read it here first: I only watched the first episode of Lost. It wasn’t intriguing enough because I didn’t care enough about the characters. So Alcatraz already has Lost beat by two episodes. That said, something needs to happen for me to keep watching. We need some more explanations. We need to see some more humanity from the characters. We need to see some expectations fulfilled, and we need to see them surprise us in ways that, in hindsight, are completely consistent.

Thoughts

If you’re watching Alcatraz, I’d like to know what you think. Am I way off base, or am I echoing your own opinions? If you watched Lost, feel free to tell me what an idiot I am for not giving it more of a chance. I’ve heard it before, but you’re welcome to tell me again.

We completely bought into the marketing for Chuck back in 2007. I mean, how could we not? A guy who works the tech desk at Best Buy, I mean a guy who runs the Nerd Herd at Buy More accidentally becomes the greatest spy in the world. Chuck Bartowski was every kid’s dream come to life. I’d lost my job back in 2007, so watching a guy adrift in Life suddenly discover purpose was an easy sell.

We Watched It

Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) lives with his sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and her fiancee Devon “Captain Awesome” Woodcomb (Ryan McPartlin). Chuck works at the Buy More where he provides tech support as part of the Nerd Herd. When the series began, he got a package from his old college room-mate, Bryce Larkin (Matt Bomer). Chuck opens it and finds a pair of cool sunglasses. He puts them on, sees a flash of light, and passes out. When he wakes up, he discovers that the US intelligence database has been downloaded into his head via a program called the Intersect.

The CIA and the NSA are after the Intersect. Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) picks Chuck up, only it turns out she’s a CIA operative after the Intersect. Using more direct methods, John Casey (Adam Baldwin) presents the NSA’s case for access.

Together they discover that not only does Chuck know everything, but the Intersect programmed him with all the skills he needed to be the world’s greatest secret agent.

Sticking

Chuck never got stuck in a rut. There was always some huge challenge that the team had to overcome during the season, while accomplishing missions for the US government. They dealt with discoveries, revelations, betrayals, marriages, births, and even moving the Intersect. They kept us guessing every season.

Good-bye

After five wonderful years, it’s time to say good-bye. The final episodes air on January 27th, 2012.

Over five years, we fell in love with Chuck, his friends, and his family. We met his dad (played by Scott Bakula), and his mom (played by Linda Hamilton). We learned why Devon really is awesome. We suffered through the antics of Jeffster alongside the crew. We even got an on-screen reunion between Adam Baldwin and Summer Glau, who worked together on Firefly.

To the cast and crew of Chuck: Thank you. You brought a little extra light into millions of lives every week. I know this is an emotional time for all of you, as witnessed by Zachary Levi tearing up in this interview.

http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/widget/widget.html?vid=1380828

Thoughts?

What beloved show have you lost?

Last year, Hawaii Five-O relaunched. The original show, starring Jack Lord and James MacArthur, ran for twelve years (1968-1980), and who can forget that awesome Morton Stevens theme?

Plus, the cast has a long line of genre appearances. Alex O’Loughlin, who now plays Steve McGarrett, played a vampire in Moonlight. Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Chin Ho Kelly, was in Lost, of course, but real sci-fi nerds remember him as the telepath on the Bablyon-5 spin-0ff, Crusade. Grace Park, who plays Kono Kalakua, was in the recent Battlestar Galactica series. Masi Oka, who plays Dr. Max Bergman, was in Heroes.

Of course, Scott Caan, who plays Danny “Danno” Williams, was in Gone in 60 Seconds, the Ocean’s Eleven movies, and he’s the son of James Caan – which is awesome all by itself.

We Watched It

Scott McGarrett is a Navy SEAL and the son of a Hawaii police officer. When his dad is killed, McGarrett comes to Hawaii to investigate for himself. He’s soon getting help from a New Jersey detective (Danny Williams) who followed his ex-wife and his daughter to Hawaii, a disgraced cop (Chin Ho Kelly), and the disgraced cop’s cousin (Kono Kalakua). They track down an arms dealer. The governor decides that Hawaii needs an independent strike force pursuing organized crime, terrorism, smuggling, and other high-level crimes. She forms the Five-O task force, with McGarrett as team lead.

Sticking

Hawaii Five-O is popcorn television. It’s fun. It has great scenery and locations. The people are pretty and fun to watch. The episodes are fast-paced and exciting.

Guest stars have included Larissa Oleynik (Third Rock from the Sun), James Marsters (Buffy and Angel), Kelly Hu (The Scorpion King), William Baldwin (Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths), William Sadler (Demon Knight), Tom Sizemore (Strange Days), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Mortal Kombat), Sab Shimono (The Shadow, among many other things), David Keith (a long list, including Firestarter), and Mark Dacascos (The Crow TV series, and The Chairman of Iron Chef America).

Most recently they added another Lost alumnus, Terry O’Quinn

WTF?

This show really hasn’t had a chance to deviate from its initial formula. Mostly, they solve a case each week. There are some multi-part episodes. There’s an ongoing mystery surrounding the death of McGarrett’s father, but nothing that interferes with a newcomer enjoying the series.

Thoughts

What reboots have you enjoyed?

I don’t remember that we ever set out to watch Destination Truth. It was on after Ghost Hunters, which we watched, and occasionally SyFy (still a ridiculous branding decision) would do cross-over events, like when the host of Destination Truth, Josh Gates, would host the live broadcast of a Ghost Hunters Halloween episode. It was inevitable that we would see at least one episode.

We Watched It

Josh Gates and his team of investigators travel around the world in search of strange occurrences, mysterious beast sightings, and paranormal phenomenon.  Over the course of an hour-long episode, they introduce the viewers to the history of their subject, partake of the culture of the area they’re investigating, and then actually look for the subject of the episode. There’s lots of night-vision footage, running around, and accidents.

Dumped

With just a few episodes under our belt, we stopped watching, for two reasons.

First, Josh Gates comes across as an ass. He’s sarcastic, ironic, and sardonic. On TV, he seems contemptuous of the people and cultures he encounters during his travels. His smarm rubbed us the wrong way almost immediately.

Second, his team is incompetent. They know how to work their equipment, I’ll grant you. That said, I learned while still in ROTC that in the absence of external stimuli, our senses provide their own. In other words, the mind plays tricks. I once held off someone trying to sneak through our perimeter during a training exercise, only to realize after 10 minutes that what I thought was a person was really a raccoon in a tree. Josh’s team has never learned this. They constantly hear and see things. That wouldn’t bother me if any of them, including Josh, responded rationally instead of freaking out.

After four seasons, you’d think at least one of them would have learned something.

WTF?

What makes the team’s behavior even more irritating is that it’s so blatantly manipulative. Josh has been SCUBA diving since he was ten years old. He’s climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and Aconagua. As a photographer, he’s traveled to over 50 countries. He has a degree in archaeology and has particpated in sub-sea excavations off the coast of Israel. He clearly earned the right to host this show.

He certainly has the experience to know better. The only possible excuse for the silly, irrational, behavior of the team is that Josh wants them to act that way. Although reality shows deceptively refuse to credit anyone as director, Josh is one of the producers of the series. He has the authority to make changes.

Essentially, he’s refusing to play it straight. If I want to be lied to, I can just watch the news.

Thoughts?

The other night, watching a rerun of Tosh.0, I heard Daniel Tosh, the host, joking about theater. He said that what theater needs is more CGI. If he wanted to watch real people do what was possible, he could just go outside.

I feel similarly about Destination Truth. If I wanted to watch people run around like idiots and scare themselves, I could go to any political rally in the United States.

Has any TV host ever irritated you to the point where you just stopped watching?

This show has a terrific pedigree, and we spotted that right off in the advertising.

It stars Timothy Hutton, whose work we’ve watched for literally decades.

Gina Bellman also stars, and we knew her from the British sitcom Coupling and the wonderful drama, Jekyll.

Plus, for all the geeky fans out there, it stars Christian Kane. Come on. How do you not watch a show that stars the Evil Hand?

Beth Riesgraf and Aldis Hodge were vaguely familiar to us from shows they’d done guest shots on. That said, we certainly love them now.

Plus, the show premiered in December, 2008, as the whole world was just beginning to understand how greed and corporate stupidity had screwed the global economy into a black hole.

We Watched It

Nathan “Nate” Ford (Timothy Hutton) is a top insurance investigator with a tragic past. His son died because his insurance company employer wouldn’t pay for needed treatments. This led to divorce, drinking, and freelance work.

A man comes to him and asks him to recover some stolen property. The job requires him to supervise and control three thieves that Nate caught in the past – Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane), Parker (Beth Riesgraf), and Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge). It also offers a little revenge against Nate’s former employer.

Even though he doesn’t trust the client, Nate takes the job. When the whole team gets screwed, Nate puts the team back together for revenge, and brings in a ringer to even the playing field – Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman).

When the job’s done, they discover how good it feels to help the helpless and take down the powerful. Especially when they can make money doing it.

On the Bubble

It’s on the bubble because the show’s focus is shifting.

Here were the bad guys from first season – insurance company, government contractors, a Wall Street broker, real estate developer, corrupt judge, human traffickers, rival mob families, a corporation, a building contractor, embezzler, another corporation, the CEO of an insurance company.

Notice any themes running through there?

Here’s season two’s list: Irish mob, fight promoter, felon, investment banker, tabloid newscaster, agricultural business, a different band of thieves, diamond thieves, corrupt lawyer, sweat shop owner, loan shark, the Ukrainian government, psychic, politician, local mayor.

The theme (and I’ll get specific in a moment) is breaking down.

Season three: Jail warden, software magnate, Parker’s mentor, African kleptocrat, CEO of a pharmaceuticals company, recording studio executive, debt collector/private militia, car dealer, con artist, coal mining company, antiques trafficker, financier, a thief from a previous season, the season’s villain (Damien Moreau).

Be patient. My point is coming soon.

Season four: Financial executive, murderer, PR executive, agricultural business, Russian mob, funeral director, con man, defense contractor, embezzler, Venezuelan government, Irish mob, con artists.

And now my point.

WTF?

Season one was all about taking down big business. Sometimes the business targeted the Leverage gang’s clients on purpose, and sometimes the clients were just ground underfoot by a corporate giant that didn’t notice their insignificant existence. The Leverage crew were Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and as the real global economy continued its tailspin, we felt good watching it.

Even in Season One, we got background on the characters. We met Eliot’s childhood sweetheart, and Nate’s former pastor.

As the seasons have gone on, the crew has faced more and more criminals, rather than legitimate businesses whose completely legal behavior hurts people. Watching criminals (and the Leverage crew are criminals) take down criminals isn’t as satisfying.

Yes, we love the characters. Yes, the writing has been good (particularly in Season Two). That said, the whole point of the show was giving helpless people leverage against powerful businesses – corrupt or just uncaring and cruel. Losing that point makes the show less fun to watch. When a client enters McRory’s Pub to complain about a criminal hurting the family, we the audience wonder the client hasn’t gone to the police, or doesn’t wait for the police to do their jobs. Criminals aren’t untouchable, by definition.

Thoughts

Even though I’m aware of the shifting focus, I can’t look away…yet. I like the characters too much, and we have too much fun trying to figure out when and how the crew gained the upper hand. Are there any shows that you watch where you know the show has gone off the rails but you have too much loyalty to look away?

Learning from Movies

1. Indiana Jones franchise
2. Aliens
3. Die Hard
4. Big Trouble in Little China
5. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension
6. Hudson Hawk
7. Rocky franchise
8. Tremors
9. Conan the Barbarian
10. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
11. Ronin
12. Major League
13. Bull Durham
14. Kelly’s Heroes
15. The Magnificent Seven
16. El Dorado
17. The Replacements
18. Office Space
19. Secondhand Lions
20. Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man
21. Red Sun
22. Under the Rainbow

Then we pick up at Forces of Geek:
23. The Longest Day
24. Deep Rising
25. The Addams Family
26. The Princess Bride
26. Smokey and the Bandit
27. Kick-Ass
28. Time Bandits
29. How to Train Your Dragon
30. I missed this week. Still aiming for 52 weeks, but I guess that will take longer than I thought.
31. Silverado
32. Mad Max: The Road Warrior
33. The Mummy
34. Robin and the 7 Hoods
35. Fletch
36. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
37. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
38. It Might Get Loud
39. Grosse Pointe Blank
40. The Blues Brothers
41. Yellow Submarine
42. The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
43. Evil Dead 2
44. Dodgeball
45. Get Shorty
46. The Big Lebowski
47. Jackie Brown
48. True Romance
49. Dude, Where’s My Car?
50. Get Him to the Greek

Just Look Away

1. Against the Dark
2. Give ‘Em Hell, Malone
3. Armed Response
4. Shaolin vs Evil Dead 2: Ultimate Power
5. Steele Justice
6. Eliminators
7. Megapython vs. Gatoroid
8. Tremors
9. Gone in 60 Seconds
10. Leviathan
11. Circle of Iron
12. Mother
13. Marshal Law
14. Sherlock Holmes
15. Red Sonja
16. Highlander II: The Quickening
17. Latitude Zero
18. Hobo with a Shotgun
19. Timebomb
20. R.O.T.O.R.
21. Sunset
22. Sucker Punch

And at Forces of Geek, there is…
23. Lifeforce
24. McHale’s Navy
25. Red Riding Hood
26. Blade: Trinity
27. Battle Beyond the Stars
28. Hot Tub Time Machine
29. Skyline
30. Year One
31. The Chase
32. Every Which Way but Loose
33. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
34. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
35. Clash of the Titans
36. Dungeons and Dragons
37. Your Highness
38. The Last Airbender
39. The Hangover Part II
40. Conan the Barbarian (2011)
41. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
42. Rage of Honor
43. Route 666
44. Halloween Round-Up (Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Planet Terror, Deathproof, Route 666, Idle Hands, Slither, The Feeding, The Call of Cthulhu, Lo, and Vampire Killers)
45. Be Cool
46. Prowl
47. We skipped a week.
48. Psychomania
49. Keaton’s Cop
50. Dynamite Warrior

Television

• House, M.D. – Nope, still dumped. Still not seeing any reason to go back to it.
• Psych – Wow, this season is going strong. We really like how the relationship between Shawn and Juliet grounds his character. We’re very happy. Sticking.
• Ringer – Not even my wife will watch it anymore. Dumped.
• Haven – Even the Christmas special was good (not as good as Eureka, but better than Warehouse 13). Sticking.
• NCIS - Although I really like where they’re going with Tony, this show is on the bubble for me. I’m not sure why we’re still watching. Maybe its ultra-conservative message is finally rubbing me the wrong way.
• Person of Interest – This show gained strength through the season. The final episode did some things that really needed to be done, and I’m glad they had the balls to do those things, and do them well. Sticking.
• Burn Notice – I have to admit, the last episode of the season overwhelmed me a bit. In retrospect, though, Jesse still lacks a focus. Adding Dean Cain and Kristanna Loken to the episode was just stunt casting (still – glad to see both of them). Having Loken’s character betray the team was way too predictable. I really thought the betrayal would come from Jesse, and that would make narrative sense of his character. Still on the bubble.
• Covert Affairs – This season seemed like they were housecleaning and getting ready for a new direction. Annie Walker killed an enemy agent in the line of duty, and that changes things for her. We’re looking forward to seeing what’s next. Sticking.
• Supernatural - I can’t say too much in case you’re not caught up with the season, but with the fate of a favorite character in the balance, we’re totally sticking.

Summary

Three more weeks! Three more weeks! Can you tell how excited I am? 52 weeks of two posts about movies feels like an accomplishment.

There’s still more TV to talk about, including Leverage and Terra Nova.

See you next week!