My Summer Project – Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip

One of the things that I promised myself that I would do to try to get back in the swing of writing again was a summer recap project. I want to recap a single season of a show that I’m particularly fond of, and it would help if the show ran a single season, and that I had the boxed DVD set. Well actually there are a couple of series that I would have broken one of those rules for. I was tempted to do the first season of Life even though I don’t have the second season (I’m too cheap to buy it at the local HMV and I haven’t seen it anywhere else), and I would love to do the seventh season of The Amazing Race, and would have except that I’ve lost two of the DVDs (I do have the complete first season, and maybe next year I’ll write it up).

Realistically though the only show that I really wanted to do was Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. There are several reasons why I want to write about the show, besides the fact that I didn’t at the time and regret it. First up, I know that it has gotten a bad reputation in the years since it left the air and I don’t think that it is entirely deserved. It is a poor effort by Aaron Sorkin, but the fact that people usually won’t acknowledge is that a poor show by Sorkin is generally better than most of the stuff that’s on TV today, and I think that’s true of Studio 60. Some people regard the show as a ratings bomb, and to a degree that’s true, but if you look at the NBC ratings for dramas in that time slot (or indeed any time on Mondays) since the show left the air, most have not performed as well as Studio 60. Certainly the show did well with DVR users, with the highest gain in viewership on the “live plus seven” ratings of any network show. According to the Nielsen ratings at the time, “Studio 60 adds nearly 11%, or almost a million viewers, to its total every week as a result of these ‘live plus seven’ viewers.” But ratings at the time only included those who watched the show as it aired. Today, ratings are based on “Live plus Same Day” viewing figures. And this is despite the fact that I think that the network reached a point where it treated the show worse than what you’d scrape off your shoe after a run through a dog park.

Two other reasons why I wanted to revisit Studio 60 are that I think that a lot of the criticism of the show that I can remember was more about what people wanted the show to be than about what it was, and that it provided more than a bit of insight into the big picture of TV. Those are tied together, and I think they’re more than a bit important. The critics, or maybe just those who wanted to watch a show about a show like Saturday Night Live wanted to see the comedy and when they did they found it wanting. and to a degree they’re right, but a lot of the show isn’t about the comedy, it’s about the making of the comedy and about the bigger picture of network politics and control. The show talked about issues that are coming to the fore today: “incidental indecency,” product placement, and the bi-coastal nature of the medium just to name three (there are more). It maybe “inside Baseball” to a lot of people but it’s the sort of stuff that I find interesting.

So let’s start looking at Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.

Grey’s Grey’s, Grey’s Of The Jungle

I have been anticipating the debut of Shonda Rhimes’s new ABC series Off The Map. Anticipating it like a trip to the dentist. Where I know that there will be drills involved. And Novocaine.

From that I’m sure you can guess that my anticipation was mostly negative. Don’t get me wrong, It’s not that I don’t think that Shonda can’t carry three series. I’m not sure that she can, largely because I’m not sure that anyone who doesn’t have a factory behind him (or her) like Jerry Bruckheimer can pull off three series at a time. However I’m willing to give her the opportunity to try. No, my problem is that when I first heard the concept I thought that it was something that was a bit distasteful for some reason. The more trailers for this series that I saw the more convinced I was that I wasn’t going to like this. Maybe it was the scene with the one of the two female doctors claiming that they  “objectifying one of the greatest humanitarians of our time.” Somehow it just didn’t feel “right” somehow. Maybe it just came across as a trifle self-important? Or maybe just silly? Whatever it was, I came into this show predisposed to dislike it. What I wasn’t expecting to find something that felt, to me at least, more than a little familiar. Yeah, as I say in the title, this feels more than a little like Grey’s of the jungle.

The premiere episode opens with the three senior staff at a clinic “somewhere in South America” (but actually Hawaii for reasons I’ll get into later) watching local life guards struggling to rescue a swimmer and talking about a group of new doctors who will be arriving soon. They are Ben Keaton (Martin Henderson), Otis Cole (Jason Winston George), and Zitajalehrena – call her “Zee” – Alvarez (Valerie Cruz). Zee seems pissed about having another bunch of gringo doctors coming in to pad their résumés, but Ben and Otis seem more interested in the rescue, as if waiting for an excuse to dive off the cliff and lend a hand. And sure enough it happens. First Ben dives in then, after giving Zee his stethoscope so does Otis. And that ends the teaser scene, which I only really mention because it introduces us to the senior staff and because it is mirrored – minus the rescue – by a scene at the end of the episode with the three younger doctors.

The episode really begins with the arrival of an aged wreck of a car, conveniently labelled “jungle taxi” carrying Dr. Lily Brenner (Montreal based actress Carolyn Dhavernas), one of what Otis and Ben refer to as “the new shipment.” The driver’s reaction when he finds out that she’s going to be working at the clinic is to hand her his card and tell her that when she’s ready to go back to call him. She insists that she’s here to stay but as if on cue another young woman comes running out of the clinic building in a fury and demands that the driver take her to the airport. Inside Lily meets the rest of the “new shipment.” They give each other their names and their specialties. Besides Lily (Trauma) they are Mina Minard (Infectious Diseases) played by Mamie Gummer who is Meryl Streep’s daughter), and Tommy Fuller (Plastic Surgery) played by Zach Gifford, who most of us know as Matt Saracen from the TV version of Friday Night Lights. The three are quickly put to work by Ben and Otis. Because Otis heard Tommy say something that he didn’t like, he is given a house call, which Otis means as a punishment but which Tommy thinks is some sort of honour. Because Lily has brought her own portable trauma kit to the clinic she goes with Ben on an emergency call. This leaves Mina at the clinic with Otis and Zee to deal with patients at the clinic.

Lily’s emergency is Ed, an older man (played by Michael McKean) who slammed into some trees while riding a zip line over the jungle. The immediate problem is that he’s dangling in the middle of the zip line run since part of his arm has become stuck in the braking mechanism of the line. And because the zip line can “probably” hold the weight of two people at most, Lily has to go out on Ed’s line to attend to him – because she’s lighter than Ben – while Ben supervises her on the other zip line. Although the braking mechanism on Lily’s zip line malfunctions and doesn’t slow her down so that she crashes into Ed, she manages to calm down his panic and carefully cuts away the part of his arm that is jamming his braking mechanism. After they get him back on solid ground they take him back to the clinic. They determine that he has internal bleeding and probably a ruptured spleen. While waiting for Ed to stabilize Lily develops a bond with him, particularly after hearing the story of why he was in South America. Ed and his wife had come down to the region on their honeymoon many years ago and promised to come back. The everyday stresses of living prevented that, and then Ed’s wife died of just before they were to come down again. He’s there not just for his own memories but to scatter his wife’s ashes in Lago de Luz, a lake where bio-luminescent algae light up the lake when they’re disturbed. Lily it seems had lost someone too, her fiancé, which led her to quitting her residency program. Lily is there when they perform Ed’s surgery. A crisis arises when they discover that he is bleeding out and losing more blood than expected. They don’t have enough of his blood type or of Type O blood. Ben dashes out of the clinic taking Lily with him. He’s looking for green coconuts. According to Ben, green coconut milk has the same electrolyte balance as blood and was used as a blood replacement during World War II. Ben states that he has the most experience with coconut transfusions, which sound great to Lily…until she finds out that that means he’s done it once. The surgery is successful but when they prepare to evacuate Ed to the city, Lily begs and demands that they take Ed to Lago de Luz so that he can scatter his wife’s ashes in the water.

Tommy’s house call involves a long trek through the jungle led by thirteen year-old Charlie, who is also to serve as a translator for Tommy. Tommy is following up on a woman who Otis was treating for Tuberculosis. He had given her medication but after Otis left her husband decided that the drugs were making her sicker and stopped giving them to her. Tommy discovers that she has died. He wants to treat the man’s children, one of whom is coughing up blood, but the man refuses to allow it. Instead Tommy writes up a note that says that the man is refusing treatment AMA – Against Medical Advice – and goes back to the clinic. Otis explodes over this and reveals that he, Ben and Zee know all about Tommy and the others. In Tommy’s case this means that they know that while he is smart enough he’s always just slid by and devoted most of his time to drinking and strippers. Otis orders him to go back and “be a doctor,” or don’t come back. Fired as much by a desire to prove Otis wrong as anything else, Tommy and Charlie trek back to the husband’s shack and makes an impassioned plea to the husband – entirely in English (and without Charlie seeming to translate) in which he explains that his expulsion from the residency program he was in (as a result of the drinking and strippers) so disappointed his family that they tried to intervene. When they did he told them to get out of his life, and they did and now he’s lost his family. Tommy insists that if he treat the children the man will lose his family as well. The man lets Tommy treat the kids.
Mina’s story is the simplest. Her first clinic case is a man who is suffering from joint pain. She immediately thinks that it’s haemorrhagic fever because they are in one of the hot spots for infectious diseases. Otis tells her to treat it with an analgesic. She insists it could be an infectious disease but he response that it could be tennis elbow. When she asks how her patient could get tennis elbow, Otis responds “from playing tennis.” She backs down and treats the patient as Otis directs. Her next patient is an old woman who has trouble breathing. Mina immediately diagnoses her illness as a cold and tries to make it clear that there is nothing that a doctor can do for a cold. The woman keeps hanging around the clinic while Mina tries to get her to go home. Finally the woman collapses to the ground. Immediately Mina calls for epinephrine, and after this revives the old woman, Mina goes off to try, unsuccessfully, to find an corticosteroid to treat the woman’s asthma. In the dispensary she meets Lily who commiserates with her about the initial missed diagnosis, saying that “when you hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras.” Mina then explains that she was bounced from her residency program when she started working “at County Emergency” in addition to her regular shifts at her own hospital. While working at County for her third straight day without sleep she treated a boy for flu without tests because there were about twenty cases of flu coming through the ER every day. The boy died of bacterial meningitis and the death could have been prevented if she’d run a simple lumbar puncture. Because she was unable to find any steroids in the dispensary Mina, who is asthmatic, gave one of her inhalers to the old woman. A day later the old woman returns with her daughter (who speaks English) who explains that for the first time every her mother has been able to take a deep breath. The old woman gives Mina a chicken in return.

The episode ends with mysterious figure approaching Ben’s office. It’s Dr. Ryan Clark, the young doctor who took Lily’s cab from the clinic. Ben was expecting her back and asked how far she got this time. She made it all the way to the airport. It’s revealed that Ryan is sleeping with Ben, sometimes, but there is – or was – someone in his life before Ryan. Ryan reminds Ben that she isn’t coming back. The final scene is of the young doctors at the same cliff that the older doctors had been standing on at the beginning of the episode. One by one each of them leaps into the sea.

After watching this show, and thinking about it as I have been writing this, my overwhelming feeling is one of disappointment. This show could have been more than it was. The acting talent is there, particularly in the actors playing the young doctors, while some of the “older” actors (who really aren’t that much older than the “kids”: the oldest of the three, Jason George, is six years older than Caroline Dhavernas and nine years older than Gummer) have solid filmographies.

No, I think the problem lies with the concept. For most of the pilot episode at least I was thinking of just how much the characters on this show reminded me of some of the characters on Grey’s Anatomy. Ben is pretty much Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd, while Otis reminds me a lot of Dr. Webber (The Chief), which kind of leaves Zita as Bailey. The similarity is also there with the young doctors: Lily is definitely Meredith, while Tommy is Karev and Mina is…well Mina has a lot of Christina in her and maybe a bit of Izzy. I mean these comparisons aren’t exact, and future episodes may erase the comparisons and make the characters stand on their own, but as it stands the similarities in everything but setting seem rather obvious.

There are aspects of this show that strain credibility to the breaking point as far as I’m concerned. And I’m not talking about the whole “green coconut milk is as good as a blood transfusion” thing (though that is in the mix). The biggest problem for me is that none of the “new shipment” appear to be able to speak Spanish! Ben and Otis are hiring doctors to work in a clinic in Latin America who are treating people who often speak only Spanish, and yet Spanish doesn’t seem to be deemed an asset by them in hiring staff. We saw the problems that Mina had in communicating with the old woman; had she been able to ask the right questions and get an explanation from the woman it would have been easier for her to make proper diagnosis. Similarly Tommy had difficulty explaining to the husband who took his wife off of the medication that Otis had prescribed that the medicine was need for his children, even with Charlie available as a translator. And yet when he returned to the man’s hut the second time he had no trouble getting his point across – in English without Charlie translating – so effectively that the man eventually gave him permission to treat his children.

And speaking of Tommy’s case I had a lot of problems with Otis’s reaction when Tommy returns to the clinic the first time. He seems to blame Tommy for not forcing the man to let him treat the children, but Otis wasn’t able to get the man to keep up the treatment of the wife that he himself prescribed. In North America this sort of case would have at least had follow-up care from a nurse to make sure that the treatment regimen was being followed. Here follow-up consisted of sending a young doctor newly arrived at the clinic with no prior knowledge of the case out to check up on things a week or two after the initial visit and treatment. And then blaming the young doctor for not being able to get the patient’s husband to allow his children the treatment that the husband withheld from his wife.

And I guess all of this brings me to the part of this show that loses me. I know that for Tommy, Mina, and Lily – and probably Ben, and maybe even Otis – working at the clinic represents a second chance (and probably redemption, though we don’t really know enough about Lily’s story to know if she has anything to seek redemption for) in an exotic location. A lot of good fiction has been written about people seeking a second chance and redemption in an exotic location. It’s not uncommon in real life either. Robert Louis Stevenson sought a second chance in an exotic location, as did Gaughan. Where this idea falls apart for me is that I don’t really believe in these characters. If Ben is supposed to be “one of the greatest humanitarians of our time,” why are these doctors the “best” candidates to work in this clinic. In other words, why are they getting the chance to have this particular second chance? Surely there would be applications from people who haven’t quit their residency program or have been forced out because they were slackers or because of overworking themselves or missing diagnosis. Surely there would have been applications from people who speak at least enough words of Spanish to get information from their patients. Indeed you would think that more than one of the doctors working at this clinic would be from this South American country that bears a striking resemblance to Hawaii. And yet the clinic is largely run by Americans (Ben and Otis) and is staffed with young residents who are all Americans. My willing suspension of disbelief really falls apart on this point.

It’s a fact that I didn’t expect much from Off The Map. I was hoping that I was wrong about the show but I don’t think I was. Even though I am basing my opinion on just the pilot, and it is entirely possible that the show could improve, I don’t expect it to improve so much that I would be able to buy into the premise of the show. I may keep watching it for a while – my mother sort of likes it, and I can catch this and another show that is on in the same time slot thanks to time-shifting – but how long that will last is anyone’s guess. For those of you who don’t have this option, there’s at least one better show on in the third hour of Wednesday nights. Give Off The Map a pass this week and watch Blue Bloods instead.

Hawaii Five-0.2

I don't think that anyone will ever accuse CBS of really pushing the envelope when it comes to most of their dramas. Or at least the shows that work. The network has been willing, on occasion to try a show like Viva Laughlin, and replaced the marginally successful Moonlight with the disastrous The Ex-List, but for the most part the network seems content to build on and spin-off or copy (with some changes) their own successes. You can see this in the 2010-11 season. The three new dramas on CBS are Blue Bloods, a cop show merged with a family drama, The Defenders, a dramedy built around a pair of
lawyers who are just a couple of steps above being ambulance chasers (and which just might be the most innovative of this year's CBS dramatic crop), and the subject of this review, Hawaii Five-0.

Hawaii Five-0 is of course a remake of the classic CBS series that debuted in 1968 and ran until 1980. The original, which starred Jack Lord, James MacArthur, Kam Fong and a host of others, is one of the most iconic television series ever. The theme is so well known that the first introductory notes, before the theme really gets going, are enough to identify the theme and bring back memories of the show's title sequence and thoughts of Hawaii. It's an almost Pavlovian reaction. In fact when the new version of the show was announced with an "updated," more "rock oriented" version of the theme, the villagers were out like a flash with their torches and pitchforks to destroy the "monster," which was successfully accomplished.

The big question is how do you handle this sort of iconic series when you want to do a new version? You could got the "Next Generation" route; have the new series be a continuation of the old series set a couple of decades later with new characters and references to the past. That was in fact done in an unbroadcast 1998 pilot featuring Gary Busey as the current head of Five-0. That pilot also featured a number of members of the original series cast (including Kam Fong playing his old role of Chin Ho Kelly despite the fact that the character had been killed during the series; no one connected with that revival remembered). The other way to go is to simply use the characters names and the basic concept of the show but to ignore everything that had occurred in the previous series. It worked very well when they remade Battlestar Galactica and much worse when they remade Bionic Woman. This is the approach that the producers of the new Hawaii Five-0 have taken.

The pilot episode of the current Hawaii Five-0 set up the whole premise of the series. Navy Seal Commander Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Laughlin) is part of a heavily armed escort detail transferring terrorist Anton Hesse to a different facility. However Hesse's brother Victor (James Marsters) took McGarrett's father, John, hostage and forced him to call his son. This allows Victor and his gang to locate the convoy that is transporting Anton and direct another group of terrorists to attack it. During the attack, Anton manages to escape and gets a gun. Steve is forced to shoot Anton and in retaliation Victor murders McGarrett's father. Returning to Hawaii for his father's funeral McGarrett is brought to meet Hawaiian Governor Pat Jameson (Jean Smart) at a public area of Pearl Harbor. She has a proposition for him; she will appoint him to head a special state task force to track down Hesse and other criminals like him. He will essentially have carte blanche to pick his own people and a promise of immunity for just about anything that they might have to do in order to get the job done. McGarrett turns her down. He's after Hesse himself. While at Pearl Harbor, McGarrett meets up with Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim) who had been John McGarett's protégé at the police department. Although Chin Ho is now working as a security guard in the public areas of Pearl Harbor, he gives Steve some information about the case and how seriously it's (not) being taken. The Police Department has picked a "haole" (a word in the Hawaiian language which is usually taken as meaning Caucasian, although in this context it seems to used as a term of contempt for someone who doesn't have roots in Hawaii). Returning to his family home, Steve finds and observes several clues that tell him about the number of people who were involved in the murder of his father. He is interrupted in his search by an armed man who just happens to be the haole detective that Chin Ho mentioned. Danny Williams (Scott Caan) is a divorced cop originally from New Jersey who came to Hawaii to stay close to his young daughter. He's not very happy with Steve McGarrett becoming involved in his case. This leads Steve to call the Governor and accept her offer, even being sworn in over the telephone. Suddenly Danny is Steve's subordinate, and not in a position to give any orders. Clues found at the house leads Steve and Danny to a suspected arms dealer who supplied Victor with some of his weapons. The man is not exactly happy about the police coming around and a running gun battle starts. It ends when the arms dealer threatens to shoot McGarrett and is shot by Danny. Steve isn't exactly pleased with having his one lead killed but the discovery of a Chinese girl, tied up in the arms dealer's house gives them a new direction to try. Steve reasons that Hesse might be using snakeheads, or people smugglers, to get him out of Hawaii.

In order to get a line on the snakehead responsible for bringing the girl they found at the arms dealer's house, McGarrett turns to Chin Ho. He's happy to provide some information but when Steve asks him to help on the case he refuses. He's been shuffled off to the side – given a rubber gun as he puts it – despite fifteen years on the force, because of allegations that he took bribes. Steve believes in him though because his father believed in Chin Ho. At a meeting with one of Chin Ho's confidential informants, a Hawaiian seller of shaved ices, Steve and Danny are excluded while the informant gives Chin Ho the name of the snakehead. They need to get the man to incriminate himself. The problem, as Chin points out, is that on an island the size of Oahu, all of the bad guys know all of the good guys. They need someone who isn't known, and Chin Ho has just the woman, his cousin Kona Kalakaua. They meet Kona (Grace Park) at the beach where she's surfing. A former professional surfer, she blew out her knee which led her to enter the police academy. She hasn't graduated yet, which makes her an ideal candidate to go undercover to get information to incriminate the snake head. She goes in as a Chinese immigrant who wants to get her family out of China. Outside the rest of the team is waiting in a semi-trailer equipped with some of the latest electronics, including a special laser microphone that will allow them to hear through walls. To prove that she's not a cop wearing a wire the snakehead forces her to strip down to her bra and panties, but because she has beach sand in her hair the snakehead is convinced that she's a cop. Just as things are about to go very bad for Kona the semi smashes through the wall of the old warehouse where the snakehead is based. After a gun battle, the snakehead is defiant. He claims that McGarrett and his team are guilty of entrapment and that he'll get off. After Danny discovers a group of people locked in an shipping container, Steve has some leverage on the man. The threat of prison isn't going to break the man so he threatens to have his wife and son sent back to Rwanda, where the boy is just about old enough to become a child soldier. He gives up Victor Hesse's location – a Chinese freighter that is ready to leave Hawaii soon. McGarrett contacts the Governor and insists that she stop the ship from sailing. She's worried about an international incident if American cops invade the freighter, but McGarrett not only reminds her of her promise of full immunity for his actions but claims that if it becomes public that a known terrorist was found aboard a Chinese freighter they won't press the matter of the ship being Chinese territory. McGarrett and his team drive their car up a ramp and ont the ship. In a gunfight they wound or kill most of Victor's men. In a confrontation on top of a shipping container Victor and McGarrett manage to disarm each other but recovering a gun Victor seems to get the upper hand before Steve manages to get his hand on a gun and shoot Victor. He falls off the top of the container into the ocean, but as the body doesn't come to the surface there's some question of whether or not Victor is dead. The episode concludes with Steve surveying the new headquarters of his task force in Honolulu's Iolani Palace. As the group enjoys a beer, Kona brings up the idea that they need a team name.

In 1998 Kam Fong, who played Chin Ho Kelly on the original version of the show once spoke about the possibilities of a remake: "When you have a show that runs successfully and you try to duplicate it, people who watched the earlier version can't help but associate the current cast with the former one. If they did Five-O again, everybody would compare Jack Lord with the new guy. It's never the same. The original is always better than the remake." While anyone who compares the two versions of Battlestar Galactica critically would be inclined to disagree with the assessment that "the original is always better than the remake," it is almost inevitable that one would compare the various actors to those who played the originals. This presents a problem because of the differences in acting styles over the years. I was generally pleased with Alex O'Laughlin's portrayal of Steve McGarrett; it was looser and more relatable than Jack Lord's performance. In Hawaii Five-O at least, Lord always seemed to run the emotional gamut from A to A-; for the life of me I can't ever recall his McGarrett smiling, let alone laughing. O'Laughlin's version of the character not only smiles and laughs but he comes across as a more human character. The approach with Scott Caan's version of Danny Williams is also very different from James MacArthur's. Caan's version seems to be a more mature adult than MacArthur's even though his life off the job is probably more messed up. Caan's version of Williams comes across as more of an equal to McGarrett rather than a protégé which is how MacArthur's version of the character always seemed. Making the initial relationship confrontational created more of a "buddy cop" vibe than was ever achieved in the original series. There is big difference between Kam Fong's portrayal of Chin Ho and Daniel Dae Kim's. As portrayed by Kam Fong, Chin Ho was a garrulous veteran cop (his first line in the pilot of the original series was something like "Have no fear, Chin Ho is here!") who was very well connected, often through family connections. He also represented something of an institutional memory – he had a lot of facts at his command. Daniel Dae Kim's Chin Ho has some of these qualities. He's a veteran cop and he has plenty of connections. The allegation that he's a corrupt cop who took bribes is something that would never have been used for the original character. His link to Steve McGarrett, and the reason why McGarrett is willing to bring him into his task force is that Chin Ho was his father's protégé. John McGarrett believe that Chin Ho wasn't guilty and because his father believed in and trusted Chin Ho he's willing to trust him as well. The biggest change is of course the character of Kono/Kona Kalakaua. Zulu who played Kono was a big Hawaiian guy who quite frankly had limited acting ability. The character was essentially the group's muscle, and generally had little to do in most episodes besides providing the muscle. Grace Park place Kona (that's the feminized version of the name Kono, although apparently the show will use the name Kono for the character interchangeably), and the character has been give a lot more to do than her previous male counterpart. They've made the character a tough, capable kick-ass woman with a lot of potential for storylines. Just as an example, making the character a new cop, fresh out of the academy, and therefore unknown to the bad guys means that she is likely to be the character most likely to go undercover in many episodes. I'm impressed with the direction that they're taking with the character, making her far more visible and important than Zulu's character ever was. Where I have a problem is that they have not only made the character an Asian woman with a Polynesian name, and presumably some Polynesian ancestry, but they've reinforced this by making her Chin Ho's cousin. But as you'll see this is a problem that I have with the show in general.

I generally liked the pilot, although there are a few things that I had problems with. The decision to start the series with a pilot that explained how the "Hawaii Five-0 unit" (as it is going to become known, though I don't think that the "naming session" at the end of the episode actually got around to mentioning that particular name) was created was probably a good one. It not only gives us background as to why this particular group of people came together but it also gives the characters a back story. In what will not be the last reference to the old series in this review, that is something that was painfully absent from the original Hawaii Five-O. In fact we probably knew more about the private lives of the characters on Law & Order, a modern series that was notorious for focusing only on the professional lives of its characters, than we ever knew about Jack Lord's version of McGarrett and we knew more about him than we ever knew about any of his team members. There were other nice touches, such as an explanation of why McGarrett calls Williams "Danno" (it's the name that Danny's daughter used when she had first tried to say his name). More to the point we saw the origins of the McGarrett and Williams relationship. In the original we never knew how Danno became McGarrett's protégé/second-in-command. In this we saw the relationship develop from open hostility to grudging respect.

Turning to things I didn't like, my biggest problem with the show as a whole is that there seems to have been no effort made to use local Hawaiian talent in the show, particularly Polynesian-Americans. Of the four main cast members, not one was born in Hawaii, and none is a Polynesian American. In the original series Kam Fong and Zulu (real name Gilbert Lani Kauhi) were both born in Hawaii (in fact Kam Fong was a sixteen year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department) as was later cast member Herman Weidemeyer. Another later cast member, Al Harrington, was of Samoan ancestry. A bigger problem for me – and this is something that might improve in later episode – is the sense of pace. The episode seemed to race to a conclusion in the "hour" (including commercials; more like 45 minutes without) apparently winding up the entire case a lot faster than any other show on TV. When you consider just how many of the scenes in the episode were action sequences you have to wonder how smart a terrorist Victor was to be caught the way he was. The pace of the whole thing was frenetic, and to my mind this pace left too much unexplained. This is a show that would have benefited from slowing the pace down by either running the pilot as a two hour movie – not something that's done much anymore – or splitting the pilot between two episodes. Hopefully in later episodes they'll even out the pacing.

I'm not going to say that this version of Hawaii Five-0 is better than Jack Lord's Hawaii Five-O (the replacement of the letter "O" with the number "0" is an official edict from the show's producers). The original series was very much a product of its time, and is constructed in the way that shows at the time were done, without necessarily delving deeply into the backstory of either the people or the organization that they were working for. The viewers are meant to accept what is presented to us without questioning their origins too much. Because of what we've generally become used to in shows, this lack of exposition can make the original show feel old-fashioned. Viewing a few old episodes in a recent marathon that Spike TV ran prior to the debut of the new series, I couldn't help but feel that at times the show just didn't hold together well. Based solely on the pilot the new Hawaii Five-0 has given us many of the qualities that the original series didn't explore because they didn't need to. Where I find fault with the new series (besides the lack of local actors in leading roles) is that based on the pilot the pacing isn't right. This is something that can be readily fixed so that we aren't inundated with action with bits of exposition in between to fill in the gaps. I think that the show needs to be a bit more believable as a procedural in order to live up to its namesake. While in my opinion the show has some room for improvement, Hawaii Five-0 is still a solid performer that people are going to watch, and I doubt that few of them are going to feel short changed when they watch it.

As far as the network is concerned, Hawaii Five-0 is a safe bet for CBS in this time slot. It follows the networks formula of generally playing it safe and not taking too many risks. It builds off an established name and concept and doesn't do much in the way of pushing the envelope. This may be something that the professional critics, and amateur reviewers like me may bemoan on occasion, but I think that we all have to admit that this is a formula that works. It's a formula that CBS is riding, cautiously, all the way to the bank.

Frustration And Happy Town Swag

Sometimes it... well it doesn't suck to be Canadian but it can be more than a bit frustrating to try to produce this sort of blog when you're a Canadian. Take what happened the other day when I got my Happy Town press package – aka swag – from ABC.

I knew most of the details of what was coming because my good buddy Toby got his a few days before I did. Then again he's in New York and as a result doesn't have to cope with Canada Customs examining packages coming across the border. Still, there's a bit of a thrill in getting something like this, and since this is really the first time that I've received a package like this it was a bit special. The package included a one page newspaper talking about the disappearance of Entertainment Editor and well-known blogger Brent McKee and included a link to the online version of the news story.

Besides the newspaper, the package included this post card featuring scenes from around Haplin Minnesota – known as "Happy Town" to the locals – Miranda Kirby, your full service realtor. There's a certain sinister quality to the picture son the card. Maybe it's the strange colour to the photos, or maybe it's the clouds.

There's also a from Big Dave's Pizza Barn, where the New York style pizzas have an authentic quality: "The best way to do that is to use authentic New York City tap water in the dough – shipped to Haplin direct from New York, twice a week." The list of pizzas is small and rather pedestrian.

But the main feature of the menu is a map of Haplin and the surrounding district.

Next up is a scented candle (with an ABC logo on the top).

Then there's a two sided snow globe. On one side is scene on a lake with the woods behind (it also appears on the post card) and on the other a scene of downtown Haplin, dominated by the Our Daily Bread Factory – "The Bready" to the locals – looming over the town like a somehow sinister industrial-era castle. And there's something else that's a bit sinister on one of the buildings, the sign of the notorious Magic Man.

There's a bag of Our Daily "bread." Apparently it actually contains a T-shirt, but it's packed in there too tightly for me to get it out without damaging the bag.

There's a fridge magnet seemingly advertising a German movie - Die Blaue Tur (The Blue Door) which has the tag line "Betreten auf eigene gefahr" ("Enter at your own risk") - but really advertises the House Of Ushers movie memorabilia store.

Finally there's a coffee mug with the Magic Man's symbol on it.

There was actually one other thing in the package, a sheet of paper with a web address where I could watch the first episode of Happy Town online before the general public. And that's where the frustrations comes in, because when I went to the link I was duly informed that the video was unavailable to me. Because I live in Canada, or at least not in the United States. I mean I know why it happens; someone else owns the rights to Happy Town in Canada and they aren't participating in the ABC promotional campaign. Still would it really have hurt to send out a DVD or even a USB drive with the first episode of the show on it? I promise I won't make illegal copies and sell them on my front lawn

So I won't be able to tell you what I think of Happy Town before the show actually airs. Which I sort of think is unfortunate. Part of the purpose of a media critic is to give potential patrons an informed opinion about a TV show or a movie or a game before the material is released to the general public. The principle, which TV executives are obviously aware of, is that positive comments from critics even if they are bloggers will help to draw viewers to their product. And if critics don't like it, well there is still the chance that it might hit anyway "proving the critics wrong." But that only works if critics are able to see the show before it airs. The problem here is that while I am indeed a Canadian, my blog has an audience that is not exclusively Canadian. In fact according to Google Analytics the majority of the people who visit this blog in the past month came from the United States. The thing about the Internet is that you reach an audience without boundaries, unless of course you are dealing with companies that aren't aware of the fact. I guess what I'm saying is that would it have killed ABC to have included a DVD or a USB drive instead of tantalizing me with a website that I can't use?

As far as the press kit goes, I loved it, maybe because it was my first, or maybe because it seemed like fun. It might even be worth something someday, if Happy Town turns out to be a big hit. It might be worth more if the show has a short run and develops a small but devoted – even rabid – fan following. Will it influence what I write about the show? Well if that was why they sent it out it's a failure because when it comes to reviewing shows, I call them as I see them... when I can see them.

New Harper’s Island Trailer

Normally I don't post trailers for new shows that are coming up in the next few days, but I'm making an exception for Harper's Island. There are a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the show features one of my favourite character actors, Jim Beaver (Jim is a favourite of mine not only because he's a first rate actor but because he's an extremely knowledgeable guy who used to post a lot in newsgroups like rec.arts.movies.past-films; it doesn't hurt that he was Don Adams's son-in-law either). The show looks to be a great combination of gothic horror and mystery with a ton of atmosphere.

It's possible that the show could represent a fundamental change in the way that American network TV is done, if it's successful. It will tell a close-ended story in a thirteen week run which is similar to the way that British TV is done. It seems very close to the original concept of a mini-series. However, unlike a miniseries there is the possibility that the show could be renewed for another thirteen week run. If so, most if not all, of the cast would be replaced and the setting would be different. Even the name would change.

I have a couple of worries about Harper's Island. One is the way that the network has chosen to handle it. Starting the show in April and having the finale run on July 2 seems to me to be something of a vote of non-confidence in the series. If CBS felt sure about the show wouldn't they have started during the "February" sweeps (which happened in March this year) and ended it during May sweeps? Or were they worried, once they decided to put it in the prime Thursday night slot following CSI that the show would suffer against the final episodes of ER and wanted to put it against the (supposedly) weaker competition of NBC's new series Southland? My other worry about the show has to do with whether or not the serialized nature is going to have a negative effect on its performance. Will an audience that seems with only a few exceptions to be dialled in to procedurals (here defined as "a genre of programs in which a problem is introduced, investigated and solved all within the same episode") be willing to invest the time and thought needed for this type of drama which requires an extended attention span. A plus for the show in this area is that it will be running for thirteen weeks without a hiatus. Still, it does seem to be a risky move.

Anyway, here's the new Harper's Island trailer. (I hope to have the 1972-73 TV Guide Fall Preview material posted later this afternoon.)

Last Templar – So Bad It’s Actually Bad

Nobody in network TV really "gets" the miniseries anymore. In fact, I've always had the sneaking suspicion that the only person with power in Hollywood who actually "gets" the miniseries anymore is Tom Hanks. Take a look at the series that Hanks has done: From The Earth To The Moon, Band Of Brothers, John Adams, and the upcoming Pacific. What they all have in common is that they are epic stories. And that's what the mini-series should be – epics. Look back at the great mini-series from the '70s and '80s and they were epics – Roots, Rich Man Poor Man, Shogun, Centennial, The Winds of War, War And Remembrance. Somewhere along the line though, the networks and the producers lost the idea that a mini-series should be an epic. What they turned into was a dumping ground for stories that couldn't be contracted into a two hour TV movie but weren't strong enough for a feature movie. And because there were so many of these bad stories – presumably because the broadcast networks weren't willing to allocate multiple hours to epics. They were, on the other hand, perfectly happy to give over two 2-hour slots from time to time to show the latest pot-boiler from someone like Judith Krantz (not that I have anything against Judith Krantz; she was a close friend of someone I had tremendous admiration for, and the lady did write a really good sex scene). And that, more than anything else is what eventually killed the mini-series on broadcast TV. Not that they're above trying them from time to time. CBS had Comanche Moon last year which wasn't half bad. It was a hundred times better than the latest effort from NBC, The Last Templar.

Let me just come out and say it. It took me less than ten minutes to decide that this thing sucked pond scum. The defining moment in that time was after the four horsemen in chainmail armour burst into the museum (after one of them beheaded a cop who thought the whole thing was a publicity stunt) and smashed the display cases, grabbed various items from a collection of artifacts from the Vatican, and started to ride off. Tess Chaykin, played by Mira Sorvino, starts to chase after them and shout – I kid thee not gentle readers – "Hey, come back here! That doesn't belong to you!!" I mean just the absolute stupidity of shouting out that line at the backs of four people on horseback who have just beheaded a cop and grabbed the mayor's wife; are we are supposed to believe that she expects them to come back and return the things that they have taken? At that very moment I could have turned the TV off without any compunction, if I didn't feel obliged to write this review. The things I do for you. Then again we don't have TNT in Canada so I really couldn't review something like Trust Me, much as I would have liked to (and trust me I would have liked to).

Okay, so Tess Chaykin is a cut rate Laura Croft, an adventuring archaeologist who has set aside her digging boots now that she has a daughter (she doesn't want to subject her kid to the long absences that she had to deal with from her father). Since she's played by Mira Sorvino we don't have Angelina Jolie's face and boobs – and acting talent – to look at. Tess immediately abandons her English friend Clive to chase after any of the "knights in shining armour" that she can find, but preferably the one who stole the Cross of Constantine – an artefact that her father dug up during one of his many archaeological expeditions. She grabs a convenient brass (or gold) crosier, mounts a conveniently placed police horse and charges off to Central Park to joust with the knight who took the cross. Wearing Manolo Blaniks. Tess that is. And what does she get for capturing a thief and murderer and recovering the loot, and ruining her Manolos? Why she gets arrested of course, with more guns pointed at her than at the guy in the shining armour. No wonder people don't want to get involved.

Of course the arrest isn't totally without its compensation, because it's in the police interrogation room that she meets the male lead, and obvious source opposite attraction and unresolved sexual tension (at least until the end of the miniseries), FBI Special Agent Sean Dailey, played by Scott Foley (from The Unit, nearly unrecognizable in a show where he has actual hair instead of head stubble). While Tess is at best and agnostic, Sean is a believing Catholic who has given up coffee for Lent – along with swearing and a bunch of other indulgences – who quickly clears Tess. Of course it is painfully obvious that Tess and Sean are going to be bumping heads very quickly (and bumping uglies eventually). Because after all Tess feels that she has to get involved even though she's recovered the artefact that her father had found. Sure enough, after Sean has delivered a replacement pair of Manolos (he didn't know what they were; his partner tells him "if you don't know what they are you can't afford them"; and actual, deliberately funny line!) Tess heads for the hospital to question the man she defeated in single combat. She dresses as a doctor (in high heels) to get past NYPD security around the patient, because obviously there isn't a list of doctors who are allowed to go in to see the prisoner and gets the information she needs by pretending to be an FBI agent dressed as a doctor. As she leaves another man enters the hospital room, posing as an FBI agent. He has a foreign accent and a lot more severe interrogation technique than Tess's – he gets the information and ends up torturing the guy to death. It's left to poor Sean to be the third person in the door. She's less successful in getting to the second "knight"; the man (appropriately named Bronko – I swear I'm not making that up) who supplied the horse for the group was gotten to by the mystery man and ended up being hung.

Sean is under pressure, and not just from his bosses. The Vatican, represented by Monsignor de Angelis (played by Victor Garber and even he can't save this) wants the artefacts recovered, although he seems so conspicuously unconcerned about a 12^th century device known as a decoder and apparently built for the Knights Templar. This leads Tess to search for an old family friend who she calls Uncle Bill, played with wild-eyed abandon by Kenneth Welsh, who is an expert on the Templars. Coincidentally, it is the first anniversary of the death of his wife and daughter, so Tess finds him at their graves. It takes Tess about five seconds to figure out that Bill was the boss of the knights in shining armour. He takes Tess to an abandoned church where he has stashed the decoder. He has a document that supposedly leads to a supposed mystery of the Templars that is bigger even than the treasure that they were supposed to have taken with them. But before he can fully tell Tess about what he's found they're interrupted by the mystery man (who has disposed of the third "knight" just as Sean and his partner get to his apartment) who gets into a firefight with Bill. Tess hides in a conveniently located sarcophagus with the decoder and the document. Bill escapes from the foreign guy and heads through a secret passage. When Tess gets out of the coffin she heads out the same way. After beating down a gang intent on rape in the sewer that the passage leads her too (they're outnumbered – four of them against one of her, but it does give the chance to utter the line over their prostrated bodies: "I'm nobody's baby!"), she's captured by Sean. He found the church by searching for her car and figured out that she'd gone into the secret passage to the sewers. He just happened to be driving by the manhole that she was coming out of. She manages to escape him by claiming he's attacking her. She has to get away because she just got a call from Bill that indicated that he was threatening her daughter and wanted the decoder and the document in trade. She arrives at what turns out to be something of a party with Bill Clive and her daughter – because of course Bill would never hurt her daughter – but she gives him the decoder anyway. Soon after, Sean comes to take her back into custody.

So now we bring three of the major characters together in one of those absurd things we've quickly come to expect from this mess. Sean, his nameless female FBI boss, Tess and Monsignor DeAngelis are sitting in a huge conference room, and the four of them – the only people in the room – are sitting at the four corners of this huge conference table. De Angelis, seeming increasingly suspicious (and if you haven't figured out by now that he's behind the mysterious foreign killer, who I guess is some sort of Vatican hit man, well I'm afraid I pity you) is kind of irritated because even though he denigrates the idea of the Templar secrets, he wants to know what Bill has found and he can't do that without the document and the decoder. Well of course, as it turns out Sean knows how they can replicate the decoder (using 3-D X-Rays of the artefact courtesy of the Transport Safety Agency), and Tess has the document (thanks to the camera in her cell phone). Deus ex machina much?! The net result is that they are able to decode most of the document, which tells the story of three Templars who escape the recapture of Jerusalem by the Turks by taking a ship that sank (more on that in a moment). They took the documents to a chapel in a recently captured fortress. The name of the place is given but no one is able to find it... until Tess, in the privacy of her home figures out that the name was transcribed by the knights into Latin from the original Turkish. She isn't going to do anything with the information until her daughter persuades Tess that she's all right with her mother going off on an adventure... as long as she's home in time for her recital. Tess takes her expedition boots just as Sean arrives at the door. She avoids him somehow (no idea how she worked this one out) and gets to the airport. Sean sees her boots gone and meets her at the airport. She tries to escape him again, but he's brought his own cops this time. Still they have no reason to hold her so she gets on the plane. Also on the plane are Sean – who arranges to get the seat next to Tess – and also on the killer, who confirms his status as a Vatican hit man by talking on a cell phone with De Angelis.

I'm not going to spend too much more time on this steaming pile of crap. Actually I think I've wasted too much time on it already. It is awesomely awful, with a total disregard for the nuances of history or geography. A major point in the historical flashbacks to the history related the document that Tess decodes with the device is that the three Templars escaped from Jerusalem by sailing from the city in the ship Falcon Temple. In fact they say that they watch the fall of the city from the deck of the ship. Neat trick that, since Jerusalem is over 30 miles from the Mediterranean as the crow flies. And that is far from the only historical error in this mess. I'm not sure if this is as it is written in the original novel, which in turn is a pale imitation of The DaVinci Code, or whether the script writers have simplified the product for the market place. This is the sort of thing that no one with the slightest knowledge of medieval history would buy into. But that's not the thing that turned me against this miniseries. Nor is it the fact that it doesn't live up to what I feel is the need for a miniseries to cover epic material. If this thing was any good in terms of writing or characterization that part wouldn't bother me too much. I mean I liked a couple of those Judith Krantz minis. No what I found so unacceptable was the thoroughgoing absurdity of every situation in the piece, right from the point where the "knights" beheaded the cop outside the museum – like there'd only be one cop to guard something like that – or the coincidence of Sean being right in front of the manhole that Tess emerged from. The worst part is that they have an extremely talented cast in this. They are wasted in this material. The net result is so monumentally awful that, while it doesn't surprise me that Canwest was responsible for it – they'd do anything in a co-production if it can be manipulated to qualify as Canadian Content – it does shock and sadden me that NBC, the network that made Centennial and Shogun, actually lowered their standards to the point where they could air this mess. For shame Mr. Silverman, for shame.

Goodbye Grissom

One of my favourite TV characters is going away.

On Thursday night (which is tonight as I start to write this , but may very well be last night by the time I actually finish it) Gil Grissom will walk out of the Las Vegas Crime Scene Investigations lab for the last time and will probably go in the way he once told Warwick brown that he'd leave – no party with cake, he'd just be gone. William Petersen, who created the role of the smart controlled Grissom, has decided that – as Grissom said a couple of episodes ago – it's time to raise the ante.

For better or for worse, Gil Grissom is going to be one of the iconic TV characters of the first decade of the century, right up there with President Jed Bartlett and Jack Bauer. What is interesting is that when CSI began as a series few gave it much chance of succeeding. Though I can't find my TV Guide Fall Preview edition (about the only thing I miss about the death of the Canadian edition of TV Guide) from the year that the show debuted, I seem to recall that they thought that the show was "too smart" for the audience and too science oriented. They thought that the big hit for CBS that year would be the remake of The Fugitive which preceded CSI on Friday nights (before Friday night unaccountably became the "death slot" for most networks).

While the series began with an ensemble cast, something that has largely been retained, there was a clear leader of the group in the form of William Petersen as Gil Grissom. Petersen, who was probably best known at the time for his work in movies including Manhunter in which he played a forensic scientist, had a "pay or play" contract with CBS but wasn't able to find a project that he wanted to do. He feared being locked into a role that he would find boring. When the role of Grissom was offered to him he found what he wanted, a character where he – as an actor – would learn a lot and wouldn't get bored. It seems to have worked; in an industry where shows rarely go beyond seven seasons because actors become bored with the roles and drive costs up with salary demands, CSI has endured for nine seasons with Petersen being at least present in all but five episodes. Of those five episodes, one was built around the character of Jim Brass with only three other characters from the show appearing (Warwick, Nick, and Doc Robbins), one when Petersen had to deal with a death in his family and was unavailable, and three when he was appearing in the play Dublin Carole.

Over the years the character of Grissom has developed and changed. This tends to happen with many characters on TV shows of course but in the case of Grissom, and most of the characters in the original CSI for that matter, the development and changes have seemed organic and a logical outgrowth of previous events. In the first season Grissom seems far more outgoing, to the point of occasionally flirting with female characters, but as time went by he has become increasingly reserved; close to his friends and colleagues (who generally seem to be one and the same) but less open to outsiders. This change seems to coincide with the onset of his hearing loss; although he recovered his hearing he seemed to become more reserved. His relationship with Sara went unrevealed, if palpable, until it was finally revealed, first to viewers and only later to the characters on the show.

Grissom has a reputation as a polymath, someone with knowledge on a lot of subjects or perhaps more accurately an curiosity in learning about a lot of subjects. This has shown up in a number of episodes of the show. One of my favourites is when he has to deal with a murder at a convention of "little people;" we learn that he subscribes to the organization's newsletter. His understanding of deaf culture is more profound – his mother is deaf and he learned to sign at an early age. When he was younger he attended boxing matches to learn about bruise patterns and blood spatter, and became something of an expert on the science of boxing. Other interests are more personal. He loves roller coasters, to the point of setting up trips to work related conventions to be able to ride. He used to play poker and played well, to the point where he was able to earn enough money to finance his first body farm with his winnings, but in time lost interest in the game or maybe just in dealing with people. This is mentioned in the third season episode "Revenge Is Best Served Cold" and seems to have been forgotten only to be mentioned in the episode "Young Man With A Horn" earlier this season.

Grissom served as a significant influence to the younger investigators under his leadership. His relationship with Warwick Brown was at time adversarial, but still extremely closes. After his death Grissom and Catherine discover a DVD in which Warwick describes Grissom as being close to a father figure for him. Warwick was always worried about disappointing Grissom even in those situations where they disagreed. His relationship with Nick Stokes has similar qualities, although Nick's father is still alive. This relationship reveals itself in the episode "Grave Danger" (directed by Quentin Tarantino) where Grissom takes on the paternal role, referring to Nick by his childhood nickname of Pancho. More than that though, with the exception of Greg, Nick is the youngest of the CSIs and the one who has been taught the most by Grissom if only because he didn't have the same extensive science background that Grissom had. As far as Greg goes, Grissom is at once a mentor and a model. After all both have widely divergent interests, and both were scientists first before becoming field investigators. Grissom's has close friendships with both Doctor Robbins and Captain Jim Brass, although it's unclear how close either of these relationships is. Brass considers Grissom a close enough friend to give power of attorney to, and yet Grissom doesn't even know whether or not Brass owns a boat and they've never seemed to get together socially outside of work. His relationship with Robbins also seems to be primarily work related insofar as Robbins is always revealing new facts about himself to Grissom.

It is his relationships with women that are the most interesting. We don't know much about how he is dealing with the newest CSI of the bunch Ronnie Lake, but his relationship with Sophia Curtiss, who was briefly a CSI before transferring to the regular police department was quite cordial. His two big relationships though are with Sara Sidle, who was initially his protégé but in time became his lover. Petersen has stated that Sara "completes" Grissom. For Grissom the intimacy that they hove goes back much further than when they began their physical relationship. It is perhaps one of the reasons why he specifically chose her to come to Las Vegas after Holly Gribbs was killed in the pilot episode of the series. The hints about the relationship run through many episodes of the series, going back to the third or fourth season, and when the fact that they were together as a couple was revealed to viewers it didn't come as a surprise, simply as a confirmation of what we all knew for a long time (not that this made it any more palatable for some fans). The revelation moreover was done in such a way that it seemed natural. They didn't suddenly come together but rather it was as though we as viewers were being admitted into this aspect of Grissom's life.

I have to say right here that I am one of those people who doesn't totally like the Grissom-Sara relationship. In my case this has a lot to do with my preference for a Grissom-Catherine relationship. They seem to fit together much more readily. In fact there is a point where Grissom refers to Catherine as being like a wife. While the producers of the show prefer to describe the Grissom-Catherine relationship as being like brother and sister, I think there is more than a bit of truth in Grissom's description of it. I prefer to think of it as an almost platonic marriage, in which they share just about everything except sex. They complement each other; he's more driven by the data than she is while she's more willing to go with instinct, her real world experience has been more worldly than his while his academic knowledge is greater both in terms of degrees and variety of interests. Certainly he seems to have a deeper friendship with Catherine than any of his male colleagues – he's had her over to his apartment for dinner at least once that we know of – and the depth of their relationship has been explored a lot recently. She knows that she can talk to him about just about anything, apparently including her frustrations with her sex life, and she is perceptive enough to pick up on the messages he's sending even when he doesn't know he's sending them. She says that she knew that he was leaving, probably before he knew it himself. That remark in itself is telling, not unlike a woman who realizes that her long marriage is coming to an end, not because of the fault of either party but simply because the time for it to end has arrived. There are no recriminations or anger, simply a wistful sense of sadness and loss. I think that it is this aspect of the show that is most likely to be lost when Grissom leaves.

I have no doubt that CSI will be able to survive the departure of William Petersen from the show. The show has a strong ensemble cast and the addition of Laurence Fishburne as a permanent fixture on the series is a definite plus, while Marge Helgenberger, and her character of Catherine Willows, are both strong enough to become primary characters. What I do fear is that the departure of Petersen will significantly alter the personal dynamics of the characters in the series. The crimes will still be as intriguing – the writers will see to that – but the focal point of the relationships for nine years is being removed and it won't be possible to realign those relationships right away. In an odd way, that might be an advantage for the series if the writers are willing to spend the time showing those relationships changing. It may set the show apart from a series like Law & Order where characters are removed and replaced like cogs in a machine with only slight disruption in the day to day operation. I'm looking forward to seeing how the writers handle Grissom's departure and how long it take to deal with its repercussions.

The Doctor And His Companion

No, not that one, but as you'll see the comparison is probably more than a little apt.

I've been meaning to review Eleventh Hour practically since it began, but there have been problems. For reasons not related to the show – at least I don't think they were related to the show – I had a tendency to fall asleep during the episodes. Fairly quickly during the episodes as a matter of fact. This obviously constitutes a violation of my first rule of reviewing: "don't review a show that you haven't seen in its entirety". The repeated nature of it bothered me too; it made me wonder if I should add a fourth rule of reviewing (the other two being "don't review a show when you have a raging headache," and "don't give a good review to any show that gives you a raging headache"). The new rule would be something like "don't give a good review to a show that consistently puts you to sleep – it's obviously boring... or on too late for most folks." Fortunately, of late, I've managed to stay awake for the whole show, and while I can't say that it's the best thing out there I have to say that I'm really coming to like it a lot. It's not without its faults but there's something about it that grows on me.

Dr. Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell) is the special scientific advisor to the FBI, a biophysicist with what is obviously an intense interest in scientific ethics. Because his work has made him some dangerous connections FBI Special Agent Rachel Young (Marley Shelton) of the Bureau's executive protection detail has been assigned to both protect him and smooth his path with local law enforcement agencies. Hood is sent out to deal with science based mysteries.

TV critics – both professional and amateur – have a tendency to try to find something to compare shows too. When Bones first appeared with its non-scientist FBI agent and his science expert partner, the immediate comparison was made to The X-Files. Actually a lot of shows get compared to The X-Files. In fact Fringe was compared to The X-Files without anyone actually seeing the series. In that case at least the comparison was at least slightly valid; the scientific mysteries that Fringe deals with are the sort of things that Fox Mulder would believe in and would be perfect grist for the X-Files writers. However, the fact that the characters and the circumstances in which they come together and operate in are entirely different from The X-Files, is what makes Fringe totally different from The X-Files. Agent Dunham is not an unbeliever, and her group are not outsiders. Yes there is a conspiracy – actually it seems like more than one (and after the most recent episode I'm not sure if what seems to be the main conspiracy are good guys, bad guys, or – and I think this is both the most intriguing element and the most likely case – bad guys who are less bad than the other bad guys) – but the nature of the conspiracy(ies) has been clear from the beginning even if the aims are not, for now, completely obvious. And of course The X-Files never had a character quite like Walter Bishop.

I bring this up because Eleventh Hour gets compared to another show too. That show is Fringe, which I find rather bizarre for a number of reasons. For one thing Eleventh Hour is based on a British series that predates Fringe. The characters of the principal protagonists – Hood and Young vs. Walter Bishop and Dunham – are light years apart. The big difference though is that while both shows deal with "scientific mysteries" the cases that appear on Fringe are science fiction, pushing well beyond the realms of possibility now and in any foreseeable future. The mysteries in Eleventh Hour are eminently believable, with science that is either current or being talked about with more than a little real scientific validity. In fact the Biotechnology Industry Organization has started a blog called Eleventh Hour Facts
to discuss issues related to each episode of the show. It is perhaps that aspect – the idea that the cases that Jacob Hood investigates could be taking place right now – that makes Eleventh Hour both fascinating and maybe a bit frightening.

I the episode on Thursday night (which I'm just getting around to reviewing now thanks to painting a bedroom) a young woman dies of the bends... aboard an airplane at 30,000 feet! What's more, she's not the first person from her college to die of the same problem. And though the bends are inevitably associated with scuba divers, not only have the students who developed the bends not been scuba diving, the go to college in Tulsa! Hood and Rachel go to Tulsa to find out what's going on and quickly determine that it is physical exertion that triggered the bends. The girl on the plane had just finished joining the "Mile High Club" with her boyfriend before she died, while the other student who died from the bends just finished moving to a new apartment. Hood initially thinks that the deaths are being caused by a new designer drug that the couple on the plane had taken, which supposedly led to "great sex." The drug turned out to be a sugar pill. Something else is the cause of the situation.

What that something else is appears to become clear when a third person suffers the bends. He's a young engineering student who is out running with his older brother, the school's top football star who is leading the team to the Cotton Bowl for the first time ever. When Jacob and Rachel get the report of the new case of the bends they are able to order a decompression chamber from the nearest Coast Guard station. The problem is that although the chamber temporarily stops the production of nitrogen bubbles within the blood stream, unlike normal cases of the bends they can't gradually reduce the pressure. In fact after a time at a specific "depth" the production of nitric oxide recommences and he has to be taken deeper to stop it again. Unfortunately there is a limit to the amount of pressure the human body can withstand.

Once the "great sex" pill has been eliminated from consideration as a cause for the bends, Hood turns to other possible situations that all three patients have been exposed to. The one thing they had in common was that all three had flu shots recently and they start to think about possibly tainted flu shots. And yet none of the vaccine samples they are able to test is abnormal and no other students are suffering the bends. This leads Hood to look at the specific qualities of the gas bubbles in the blood stream. It turns out that the bubbles aren't the normal nitrogen as is normally found in cases of the bends but rather nitric oxide (NO) a compound which is used in the body as a "signalling molecule." In this case molecule serves as a vasodilator which leads to increased blood flow (it's part of what Viagra does, specifically focused on the penis). This discovery, along with the flu shot and an examination of the blood of the girl in the plane leads Hood and the college's leading geneticist to discover that the three people who suffered from the bends have a virus which is carrying a gene that leads to extreme production of nitric oxide. However the gene is poorly designed and once started (by production of lactic acid due to physical exertion) doesn't have an "off switch." And it turns out that all three of the people who have the bends are the siblings of top athletes at the school – the sister of the girl on the plane was an Olympic calibre diver until she was caught in a doping scandal. Two other students, one of whom worked as a volunteer during the flu vaccinations and another who works as a trainer for the athletic department, are responsible for creating the gene and testing it on the siblings of the leading athletes on campus. When the diver, filled with remorse over the death of her sister, threatens to reveal all of the details she is threatened by them. She then composes an email to someone (I didn't catch the name on the "To" line but I think it was the campus newspaper) but it is intercepted and deleted by the more dominant of the two students behind the plot. The diver commits suicide by doing a high dive into an empty pool. While Hood works with the school's geneticist to come up with a solution to the genetic problem – they eventually design their own gene which will counteract the effects of the original genetic modification – Rachel and college's head of security (a former FBI agent with whom Rachel shares a definite attraction) manage to track down first the guy who gave the flu shots to the siblings and then the one who was with the athletic department. Rachel finds out that he had injected the football player before they found out about the problems with the gene. Hood and Rachel manage to get to him just before the start of a football game and stop him from playing. Eventually they manage to cure both the football player and his engineering student brother, to the point where the football player will probably be able to compete again.

Key to this series is the relationship between Jacob Hood and Rachel Young. It has to be since they are the only two characters who are constants in the series. When I titled this post The Doctor And His Companion and then added "No, not that one..." the reference was quite deliberately to Doctor Who. One of my brother's girlfriends – it may even have been my ex-sister-in-law – once asked me what the purpose of the Doctor's companions was. My response was that their purpose was to be threatened by the menace of the serial, and to allow the Doctor to explain things to someone which brings the audience up to speed on the situation. Like Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Doctor's companions are a surrogate for the audience. In some cases Doctor Who companions also had a third role. Sometimes a companion would do physical things. That was particularly true during William Hartnell's period in the role and to a lesser extent in Patrick Troughton's. Hartnell was playing a version of the Doctor who was elderly (and his own health wasn't particularly robust), so the physical action was usually taken on by a younger male companion (Ian, Steven, Ben). I bring this up because Rachel's relationship with Hood fulfills two of these three "purposes;" she is our surrogate, the individual of essentially average knowledge that Hood has to explain the science to in a manner that we can understand, and she is the one who does things that her "Doctor" can't do – everything from chasing down a suspect to getting subpoenas, to invoking the Patriot Act to get information. (And yes, in one episode involving a possible Smallpox release, Rachel was under threat from the episode's "menace." It turned out that what she had been infected with was Chicken Pox.)

Inevitably there are potential questions of sexual tension in show like this. The writers and producers seem ambivalent about this potential. Initially (like in the first episode aired) the relationship between Hood and Rachel seemed to border on the adversarial – she ordered him to keep his panic button with him at all times, leading to a funny scene when it went off while she was in her underwear and she raced to him in a terry cloth robe – it turns out he sat on the panic button when he went to the bar for a drink. Subsequent episodes have made the relationship increasingly more playful. At one point when he liberates some macadamia nuts to illustrate something he discovered she says "minibar – expensive!" In the most recent episode she was with Hood at his nephew's birthday party and was so integrated and comfortable in this situation that she bought the boy a present (a football). Hood's sister even suggests that maybe her brother, who lost his wife to cancer several years ago, might consider a relationship with Rachel. Hood, it seems, has never considered the possibility. We're less sure about Rachel though. She seems rather protective when other women seem to be making approaches to him, giving "the look" when someone suggests possibly hooking up with him. At the same time any true sexual tension seems to be buried. Certainly Rachel seems extremely interested getting together with the former FBI agent who is now the college head of security in the most recent episode, and only the urgency of the case and the need to stick with Hood keeps her from doing something about it. To be sure the sexual tension between Hood and Rachel is far more hidden than the tension between Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon on The Mentalist.

Looking at this series with a fairly critical eye, I have to say that it must be described as a typical CBS series. It's very workmanlike and like shows such as Numb3rs and The Mentalist it has at its heart a criminal investigator who comes from a field that you would normally not think of. The shows themselves are very self-contained and like most of the CBS series Eleventh Hour is eminently repeatable. No one is breaking any new ground with this show, and this is doubly true since this show was based on a British series. Rufus Sewell as Hood is quite watchable and does well as the brilliant and just slightly arrogant scientist. Still it isn't a role that particularly stretches his acting muscles (beyond trying to suppress his normal British accent of course). Marley Shelton is probably more interesting for me, but maybe that's because she's a very attractive woman whose character tries desperately to maintain a business like air. Most of the time when we see her she's wearing her hair up in some way. The character is all business when she's working and we only rarely see her in a relaxed situation, when she literally lets her hair down.

I wanted to spend a little time dealing with the writing for the series. As I say it is not something that attempts to break new ground. At the same time the notion of dealing with scientific mysteries – not really crimes in most cases although deaths do often result – is an interesting one. These aren't the conventional subject for a television mystery, which inevitably deal with a deliberate murder and solving that sort of crime. Eleventh Hour has deaths but in most cases they are the result of a cavalier disregard for ethical treatment of scientific discovery. In the most recent episode (the one with the "gene doping") the "villains" don't set out to kill anyone but deaths result because they feel it is perfectly acceptable to test their "discovery" on people. You see the same thing in other episodes, where scientists or companies use science in a cavalier manner and take the attitude that the ends justify the means. The issue, that science is usually neither good nor bad but is used by people for good or bad ends, is a frequent theme in the series. More than in just about any of the CBS crime dramas questions of responsibility and ethics are an underlying but ever-present aspect of this series.

Eleventh Hour is a series that I find to be increasingly interesting as the show has developed, and it's not really because of the mysteries or the evolution of the characters. I suppose this might be something of an "old guy" thing on my part but I'm finding this series to be easy to watch because it isn't pushing the envelope. And in a way I find that vaguely disturbing. Pushing the envelope is how you get the innovative shows that in eight years are going to be what everybody is doing today. It's hard to remember after all that there was a time that CSI pushed the envelope; people, we were assured by TV Guide (at least in Canada), might be leery about watching scientists solving crimes. It was too smart. And yet the fact is that the innovative shows over the past few years that have been pushing the envelope haven't been pulling an audience – at least not the size or sort of audience that the corporate masters of the TV networks (and the companies that buy advertising from them) want them to produce. And when we come down to that, maybe there's something to be said for playing it safe and producing shows that aren't innovative that draw audiences. Whatever the reason, I find that Eleventh Hour keeps pulling me back in spite of its limitations.