I, and my family, have long since held the idea that we never judge a television show by its pilot episode. In fact, if we're interested in the topic, we do our best to hold out through 3 episodes before we declare it a failure or a success.
And then there are some exceptions to the rule. The following include the exceptions.
The Exorcist: I knew this was in trouble the moment that the original author, William Peter Blatty, wasn't named in the credits as working on the project. That was a great big warning flag. The first ten minutes were atmospherics. I know that's a lot of the original film, but good God in Heaven, this is a pilot episode, not a movie, the two things operate differently. Eventually, we get to the primary family to be haunted in this particular incident, and we see them in church, with Father Charismatic, who is upbeat, and friendly, and does a reread of the gospel reading in layman's terms and modern English. He's not hippy-dippy, but this is just the opening, during a sermon. They try to set up a bit of the character dynamics of the family, and they do an okay job -- enough to give us a sense of how the family operates, including a hint of the reclusive daughter, and highlighting that the father is a bit of a flake who can't keep track of his hat. Okay, fine. This is all right. Then, we're whisked away to a Flavella, where an African Priest is hunting down an exorcist in Rio, who "hasn't checked in," and is supposedly in the midst of an exorcism....while hanging outside, in the sun, drinking a beer, while the person being exorcised is chained up inside. I'm a little curious at this point to see exactly what's going on, when Father African objects, claims that this is against Church policy, blah blah blah, and Father Burnout pulls a gun on him.
That's the point when I checked out of this particular fiasco.
Blindspot: This was on the bubble for me last season, especially when half the episodes were good, and the other half were agit-prop written by morons, for morons. Especially when they had an episode dedicated to Black Lives Matter, suddenly made one character a lesbian who had been involved in Prism, and had evil cops using body cameras for blackmailing gay sports stars. Yes, that was season 1.
Season 2 opened with our heroine, Jane Doe, being tortured by the CIA. We will discover that she was part of a super-duper black ops team that no one has ever heard of called Orion, and had been nuked by the CIA Director. They're pissed, and the tattoos on Jane's body are all part of a plan to bring down the entire government of the United States, BWAHAHAHAHAHA. And Jane has to spend all of her time undercover with these idiots.
Yeah. I'm done.
I'm going to be giving the following shows just one more episode to prove to me that I shouldn't ditch them and be done with it.
Conviction and Timeless only just aired this week, and they didn't immediately suck, as I was afraid they would. Give it time.
Blacklist: I enjoy James Spader as Raymond Reddington, but the original premise of the Blacklist, taking down the Bond villain du jour. seems to have been replaced by bad soap opera. Let's just say that it's become a cold bowl of ... Masha potatoes.
You may groan now.
I'm going to give them one more day before I just tell them to go to Hell already.
MacGyver, the pilot sucked, with bad acting, color-by-numbers writing, and their MacGyver moments were so poorly executed, I said "I miss Burn Notice, they did this so much better." The second episode was okay. The third episode is going to be the deciding factor.
Bull: I like Michael Weatherly, and I do like the premise. But I'm afraid they're going to SJW this to death. The first one was, again, iffy, with your standard alibi of "he's accused of killing a girl, so he's really gay!" I've only seen that about a dozen times.
Notorious: They haven't alienated me yet. If they haven't by the end of episode 3, I'll review it.
I'm currently watching: Scorpion, Lucifer, NCIS (the franchise), Hawaii 5-0, and Elementary.
More to come.
And then there are some exceptions to the rule. The following include the exceptions.
The Exorcist: I knew this was in trouble the moment that the original author, William Peter Blatty, wasn't named in the credits as working on the project. That was a great big warning flag. The first ten minutes were atmospherics. I know that's a lot of the original film, but good God in Heaven, this is a pilot episode, not a movie, the two things operate differently. Eventually, we get to the primary family to be haunted in this particular incident, and we see them in church, with Father Charismatic, who is upbeat, and friendly, and does a reread of the gospel reading in layman's terms and modern English. He's not hippy-dippy, but this is just the opening, during a sermon. They try to set up a bit of the character dynamics of the family, and they do an okay job -- enough to give us a sense of how the family operates, including a hint of the reclusive daughter, and highlighting that the father is a bit of a flake who can't keep track of his hat. Okay, fine. This is all right. Then, we're whisked away to a Flavella, where an African Priest is hunting down an exorcist in Rio, who "hasn't checked in," and is supposedly in the midst of an exorcism....while hanging outside, in the sun, drinking a beer, while the person being exorcised is chained up inside. I'm a little curious at this point to see exactly what's going on, when Father African objects, claims that this is against Church policy, blah blah blah, and Father Burnout pulls a gun on him.
That's the point when I checked out of this particular fiasco.
Blindspot: This was on the bubble for me last season, especially when half the episodes were good, and the other half were agit-prop written by morons, for morons. Especially when they had an episode dedicated to Black Lives Matter, suddenly made one character a lesbian who had been involved in Prism, and had evil cops using body cameras for blackmailing gay sports stars. Yes, that was season 1.
Season 2 opened with our heroine, Jane Doe, being tortured by the CIA. We will discover that she was part of a super-duper black ops team that no one has ever heard of called Orion, and had been nuked by the CIA Director. They're pissed, and the tattoos on Jane's body are all part of a plan to bring down the entire government of the United States, BWAHAHAHAHAHA. And Jane has to spend all of her time undercover with these idiots.
Yeah. I'm done.
ON THE BUBBLE
I'm going to be giving the following shows just one more episode to prove to me that I shouldn't ditch them and be done with it.
Conviction and Timeless only just aired this week, and they didn't immediately suck, as I was afraid they would. Give it time.
Designated Survivor: We all know the premise by now -- during the State of the Union, one guy in the line of succession stays away so that someone would stay alive in the event of an attack on the SotU. Part of the problem I have with it is that for every good moment they have, they added a subplot that looks like Seven Days in May, and I'm worried that it will be the punchline. If you don't know what that is, I'll explain when I do the full review.
Blacklist: I enjoy James Spader as Raymond Reddington, but the original premise of the Blacklist, taking down the Bond villain du jour. seems to have been replaced by bad soap opera. Let's just say that it's become a cold bowl of ... Masha potatoes.
You may groan now.
I'm going to give them one more day before I just tell them to go to Hell already.
MacGyver, the pilot sucked, with bad acting, color-by-numbers writing, and their MacGyver moments were so poorly executed, I said "I miss Burn Notice, they did this so much better." The second episode was okay. The third episode is going to be the deciding factor.
Bull: I like Michael Weatherly, and I do like the premise. But I'm afraid they're going to SJW this to death. The first one was, again, iffy, with your standard alibi of "he's accused of killing a girl, so he's really gay!" I've only seen that about a dozen times.
Notorious: They haven't alienated me yet. If they haven't by the end of episode 3, I'll review it.
I'm currently watching: Scorpion, Lucifer, NCIS (the franchise), Hawaii 5-0, and Elementary.
More to come.
Lucifer is becoming one of the few shows I watch. So much stuff just looks meh to start with.
ReplyDelete