This week, there were a handful of new shows that popped into the line-up.
The only ones that really had me interested were on at 10 p.m. on Thursday. That one of the few blank spots that’s been on my schedule. I’ve been turning the TV off after Grey’s Anatomy for a while. Men in Trees just wasn’t doing it for me at all.
But this week there were two new shows that at least made me think, “Hey, I could enjoy that.”
After watching the pilot episodes of October Road and Rains, I can safely say that there won’t be a problem deciding which one to watch.
October Road intrigued me because I enjoyed Laura Prepon in the few things I’ve seen her in. Mostly That 70s Show. She’s the main reason I tuned in to the new show. She is not enough to keep me watching. In fact, she’s not even the best thing in the show. She’s the second best. The best is the young actor playing her character’s precocious son, Slade Pearce.
The rest of the show, unfortunately, fell very short of my expectations. Not very easy since I didn’t have a lot of expectations. The plot was shallow and well-traveled. The characters were mostly flat. The dialog was mostly uninteresting and only mediocre in its delivery. There’s no chemistry to the show. Well, none that wasn’t completely carried by the music.
Let’s talk about the music for a minute. I know that there’s a trend to use classic music in shows. It’s cheaper and carries a lot of accrued emotional impact with it. But there’s usually a lot more justification put forward in a show for the music the characters listen to. In Supernatural (one of the earlier in the night Thursday shows that uses a lot of old rock and roll), the 70s rock fits perfectly with the characters and, especially, their car and attitude. In October Road, though, where the characters graduated high school in 1997, they seem fixated on mid-80s heartland rock. It doesn’t fit at all with the characters or the setting.
The music makes the temporal setting of the show feel off. That anachronistic feel is cemented by the dialog. It also feels like it was written, at the latest, in the early 90s. The worst example in the pilot would be the afore-mentioned precocious child describing his nowhere near as precocious friend as the Lenny to his George (a wonderful Of Mice and Men reference). His not to bright friend hears this and says “It’s Squiggy, you fool.” How the heck would a modern 10 year old have a Lavern & Shirley reference be the first thing that pops into his head?
Things aren’t all bad with the show, though. There are a hearty bunch of literary references peppered throughout. Mostly because the main character is a writer. A writer who wrote a book that made everyone in his home town look like idiots. And then hadn’t come back in a decade.
I spent the whole time thinking “Didn’t I see this already?” To which the answer is, yes I did. About five years ago there was a short-lived show called Glory Days which had pretty much the same plot. Except it was set in the Pacific Northwest and was a whole lot quirkier and at least a little bit better.
Bottom line is, don’t bother crossing the street for October Road.
Now, the other new show, Rains… that was good TV. The premise may look familiar at first blush. You’ve got a cop who sees and talks with the victims of the murders he investigates. Many shades of Medium and The Ghost Whisperer flood through quickly. But it’s made very clear very quickly that he’s not actually seeing the dead people. He’s just got a very active imagination. And, maybe, he’s a little crazy.
Jeff Goldblum takes the lead and his quirky style and slightly off look make the character work. That character, Raines, was a big fan of the classic detective novels. At least until he became a cop. Then he got a bit weighed down in the non-glamorous reality of it all. In the pilot, he’s back on the force after taking some time off after a bust gone bad got him and his partner shot.
The victim, played by Alexa Davalos (last seen regularly in the canceled mystery/period series Reunion), shows up, constantly changing as his perception of who she actually was changes. She has no more information than he does. She offers no clues. She is, without a question, just a figment of his imagination, there for him to bounce ideas off of.
Some may be put off by the dialog of the show. It is very much pulled stylistically from Chandler and other noir authors and films. There are plenty of Sam Spade and Phil Marlowe like moments which are funniest if you’re a fan of the classic detective genre. Even those who are fans of the modern police procedural, though, will at least be entertained by the way the case plays out.
Rains left me with a smile on my face, which puts it way ahead of October Road which left me dozing off.
There’s no doubt at all what I’ll be watching Thursday night at 10 p.m. It’s Rains all the way.
Leave a Reply