TV REVIEW: Happy Town: "In This Home on Ice"

Terror television boasts a long and noble history of escorting audiences to dark, mysterious burbs in out-of-the-way corners of America.

Starting way back on Dan Curtis's Dark Shadows (1966 - 1971), with a detour to David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990-1991), with a jog over to Trinity, South Carolina (in Shaun Cassidy's American Gothic [1995-1996]), right up to last year's slasher paradigm revival, set on scenic Harper's Island, it's been quite the exciting and imaginative tour.

This week, ABC introduced viewers to the latest strange destination: Haplin, or "Happy Town," Minnesota, a hotbed of intrigue, lies and dark secrets.

Directed by Gary Fleder, the first episode of Happy Town kicks off with bloody murder. In an ice shack on frozen Mack's Pond, a hooded killer murders an unpopular local by pounding a spike through his head with a mallet. This inaugural scene is assembled almost entirely out of quick cuts, but the violence is intense...and messy.

It turns out this fresh murder isn't the first major crime to occur in the normally quiet Haplin, either. Twelve years ago, a psychopath called "The Magic Man" began abducting residents; one a year for five long years. Locals now live in fear that this "Magic Man" may return, and continue his evil pastime. Some folks seem to think that he might even be of supernatural origin.

What I enjoyed about the premiere episode of Happy Town is the way the pilot episode establishes several mysteries. The first and most intriguing one involves the "eternally dashing" but highly-sinister, Luciferian figure played by Sam Neill, Mr. Merritt Grieves.

Grieves owns a movie memorabilia shop on Main Street, and discusses, in an impressive and unsettling sequence, his favorite movie from childhood: a 1921 movie called "The Blue Door," concerning a gateway "into the heart of man."

I have the feeling we'll be hearing a lot more about this fictional old film in future episodes, and hope we even get to see some clips from the production. Already, from first mention, The Blue Door got me thinking about Twin Peaks' malevolent Black Lodge.

Another mystery is even more simple, but equally interesting. In the local boarding house, new Haplin arrivee, Henley Boone (Lauren German), learns that the third floor is off-limits to all renters. We are provided a brief peek up a long, dark staircase (with an eerie blue light emanating from above...). As the first episode ends, Henley resolves to check it out, and I, for one, would like to know what's up there.

One element of the pilot I didn't care much for involved the local sheriff, played by M.C. Gainey, constantly disassociating in the middle of important police interviews and repetitively mentioning a mystery character named "Chloe." Personally, I think he's been hypnotized to do this by the sardonic Mr. Grieves, but still, some degree of subtlety in the subplot would have been a nice choice. The sheriff disassociates and mentions Chloe three times in just the first 33-minutes of the episode.

We get it.

Chloe's someone important and the episode's surprise ending revelation bears that out.

I can't say that I warmed much to many of the dramatis personae in Happy Town. At least not yet. The Conroy family, consisting of bread-factory worker and mother, Rachel (Amy Acker) and milquetoast cop Dad,Tom (Geoff Stults) didn't seem particularly interesting, impressive or intelligent. They are very white-bread indeed. Contrarily, I found the colorful widow's club at the boarding house and mysterious Mr. Grieves far more compelling. And besides, who wouldn't want to visit his movie memorabilia shop, called "The House of Ushers?" I don't want to say I'd sell my soul to get a look at the store's movie merchandise, because I feel certain Grieves would comply...

I caught CBS's Harper's Island on DVD not long ago and fell in love with that blunt, brutal, inventive show, but this season's fresh TV fare has left me cold. For the most part, it's been woefully stupid and pitched low (V, FlashForward, and The Vampire Diaries -- j'accuse!)

With a few exceptions, the pilot of Happy Town looks to be a bit smarter than those series, though I realize that's faint praise. I hope Happy Town doesn't rush to solve all of its mysteries too fast, but since the ratings for the premiere episode last Wednesday were pretty terrible, I have the feeling our visit to this unusual, but interesting town may be short-lived. I've been told, after all, that ABC stands for Already Been Canceled.

TV REVIEW: V: "It's Only The Beginning"

Last night, ABC's V actually remembered that it is supposed to be a science fiction series.

The episode, entitled "It's Only The Beginning," featured a tantalizing glimpse of a Visitor narcotic called "Bliss," a view of the mothership engine room and propulsion system, and then climaxed with galactic implications: a cosmic pull-back from Mother Earth. It was a CGI push away from our world, through the asteroid belt, to the fringe of the solar system itself -- a move designed to reveal a fleet of V ships...waiting for the order to colonize.

This final, impressive shot seemed like a spiritual heir (and homage...) to an iconic shot from the original 1980s series: a similar pull-back through orbital space that revealed a slew of Visitor saucers hidden behind our moon. It was a nice, ominous touch.

Contrarily, the episode last night opened with one of those hackneyed "Fourteen Hours Earlier" tricks that is tell-tale sign of post-production editing pickles. I know: I had to deploy the same tired gimmick myself in one episode of The House Between when fashioning a difficult third season episode almost out-of-whole-cloth. But once beyond that underwhelming beginning, this episode moved fast and revealed a lot; much more, in fact, than the previous three episodes combined.

For instance, we saw that the Visitors are equipped with suicide pills that disintegrate their bodies should they be captured or discovered. The suicide pill leaves nothing behind but ash, and is surely an homage to another alien invasion series, the brilliant 1960s endeavor The Invaders. As you may recall from that Roy Thinnes program, David Vincent could never prove his case about the aliens because the corpses of the invaders always went up in smoke and spontaneously combusted before authorities could arrive.

Also -- finally -- this new V acknowledged in "It's Only The Beginning" that "skinning" a Visitor could be the very thing to wake up our people from apparent mindless devotion to our new extra-terrestrial "friends." When this idea is brought up, however, Ryan goes ballistic and tells the Resistance fighters he better not ever hear them talking about such a thing again. The reason, ostensibly, is that the Visitors would retaliate with tremendous force and wipe everybody out. I don't know how believable Ryan's explanation is, but I'm happy to see that the issue was addressed. This was exactly what I was seeking; just a simple acknowledgment that skinning a Visitor on TV was a legitimate battle option.

Last night's show also revived the anti-Obama subtext of the pilot. Ryan -- a secret Visitor -- has a faked birth certificate showing he was born in "Hawaiian Gardens," California. As Orly Taitz will tell you, Obama's purportedly "fake" birth certificate names Hawaii as the state of (fake) birth. Coincidence?

Also, the episode's central plot -- a Visitor scheme to poison our seasonal flu shots with an alien substance called R6 -- clearly parallels the tea bagger furor and resistance over government-mandated flu vaccinations. Again, I don't agree with V's paranoid right-wing view of Obama (I'm still waiting for the FEMA concentration camps -- or at least our taxes to go up -- before I resist). But if you want a timely subtext or context, there it is, enunciated between the lines.

V clearly has a long way to go before it becomes "must see TV," but I do feel the series is clawing itself out of the deep ditch it dug in the first two awful weeks. Personally, I find Erica Mitchell's character, Agent Evans, difficult to warm up to as a lead character. She's more reptilian and cold than the Visitors, to tell you the truth. No wonder her son, Tyler is looking elsewhere for warmth.

Yet last night -- for the first time -- momentum was undeniably building. I actually found myself caring about finding what was going to happen next.

And, of course, that means we must now to wait till March 2010 for the next episode...

TV REVIEW: V: "A Bright New Day"

If you've been keeping up with this blog, you know I'm not the world's most devout fan of the new ABC version of V.

However, last night's episode, "A Bright New Day," was aptly-named by my reckoning. It seemed like the first installment of the series that was at all promising. In other words...a distinct improvement.

I feel this way because some of my gripes about the new series were actually addressed. For instance, instead of merely hearing about the general reaction of Americans to the Visitors, in last night's segment we actually witnessed some of that reaction.

Early in "A Bright New Day," we got a lightning-quick montage of various confused people in the confession booth at St. Josephine's. "Are the Visitors demons or angels?" "Is everything we believe a lie?" "Can they heal my sister's cancer?" They asked Father Jack. Again, this was a lightning-quick touch -- a token move, perhaps -- but it was nonetheless a start at constructing the larger global context that has largely been absent thus far.

We also met the wife of the U.S. Air Force pilot killed in the first episode, Mary Faulkner, and learned of her issues with the aliens. In the spirit of Diana, the tricky Anna co-opted this human leader and even (finally...) had a good scene (told in jump cuts...) during which she rehearsed the correct human emotions for dealing with grief. A very slippery lizard, this Anna.

"A Bright New Day" also afforded the series the first mention by name of the Visitor's Fifth Column, an important ingredient of the original series. And beyond that, we got more detailed glimpses of Visitor technology, Visitor written language...and Visitor's lady's underwear. These are all steps in the right direction and signs, I hope, that the show is making a much-needed course correction.

Most impressively, "A Bright New Day" featured at least two authentic, jaw-dropping surprises during the hour. I'm an old hand with genre TV, but I didn't see either of these shocks coming. Again, for perhaps the first time, I felt last night that V was actually making a concerted effort to entertain, rather than just kind of plodding around on automatic pilot.

My big concern with the series now is something that a clever reader brought to my attention last week. In the comments for the review of last week's episode, a reader named Pete noted "if the V traitor *really* wants to fight the V, why doesn't he just go on TV and expose himself as a reptile?"

As hard as I've tried to suspend disbelief since reading that comment...I just can't do it. This is the elephant (or reptile...) in the room.

The whole premise of V and a Visitor Fifth Column just crumbles when you consider this idea; that Ryan, the Fifth Columnist, could defeat the Visitors in one swift stroke by going on television and cutting open his human skin to reveal his scales before a live global audience. Last night, even Anna noted herself the importance of public opinion; and keeping public opinion in favor of the Visitors. Imagine how public opinion would swing against the aliens if Ryan went on TV and revealed to the world that the Visitors were a pack of liars? All the material in "A Bright New Day" about Ryan re-organizing the Fifth Column is a runaround; a time-waste., a cheat. If he wants to win in one fell swoop, Ryan would simply himself to the world.

Now two things. First, some people might say Ryan doesn't want his fiance to know he's a lizard. My answer: priorities, Ryan, priorities! How happy of a marriage can he hope to have if the Visitors are ruling the world? If their love is true, his girlfriend would forgive him his lizardly nature. Secondly, the series could get around this point simply by acknowledging it: by having a throwaway line from Ryan in which he says he can't reveal himself on TV because he's afraid of his girlfriend's reaction or something. It would still be stupid; but at least it would be acknowledged.

However, that's not the end of it. Here's my sinister, paranoid side coming out. There is one other way in which Ryan's unwillingness to reveal his lizard-nature makes narrative sense. What if the Fifth Column is not only anti-Visitor, but also anti-human? What if Ryan, as part of the Fifth Column, is actually carrying water for another malevolent force out to harm humanity, and thus can't reveal himself for that purpose? Remember, the original V miniseries ended with the Resistance sending a message to the Visitor's wartime enemy, another alien race. out there in space

So is V setting this subplot up with Ryan's refusal to strip for the camera? We'll see. I hope that I'm not being cleverer than the writers of the series here...

TV REVIEW: V: "There is No Normal Anymore"

Last week, I didn't have much complimentary to say about ABC's re-imagination of the 1980s classic V. The new series pilot was woefully flat; lacking in suspense, scares, visual distinction, and much by way of interesting characters.

The second episode, last night's "There Is No Normal Anymore," isn't much of an improvement. In fairness, the sophomore episode opens with a full-head of steam. We get signs that the Visitors are illicitly monitoring and intercepting earthbound 911 telephone calls, and also witness another Visitor seeker weapon in action (though it resembles a CGI version of the famous Phantasm ball...).

There was even one sequence last night that actually accelerated the heart-beat a bit. Specifically, the hunky, cussin' priest and Agent Evans were interrogated -- in separate settings -- about their individual encounters with the Visitors. The sharp cross-cutting here did a good job of building tension. At least until it was all bled away by the 20 minute mark...

But other than that aggressive start? The new V most decidedly lacks imagination and, perhaps more importantly, science fiction color. I wonder how long it will be before we get interviews with the producers declaring that V isn't supposed to be science fiction at all, because everything indicative of the genre is downplayed here to an alarming extent. For instance, there's been zero on-screen speculation about the Visitors' world of origin, their technology, or even the idea of parallel evolution, since the Vs apparently (on the surface...) so closely resemble human beings. Wouldn't someone on the 24 hour cable networks be talking about alien biology, alien ship design, anything?! How about civil defense matters in the case of a surprise attack?

Worse than this apparent oversight, our lead -- Agent Evans -- has apparently taken it entirely in stride that the Visitors are humanoid Lizards in men's clothing. She's very upset, you see, that her FBI partner of seven years is a traitor and possibly a terrorist. But she never expresses astonishment or horror that, gee, he's also a sentient reptile. In fact, nobody comments on that at all this week. It's almost like, behind-the-scenes, the makers of V are actually embarrassed by their very premise.

Damningly, the new V doesn't even seem to know what the Visitors are doing here on Earth yet, either. Perhaps the show is hedging its bets because of all the behind-the-scenes turmoil, but it means, in practice, that we get a lot of shots of High Commander Anna simply staring at underlings; possibly bemused; possibly sinister; possibly impatient. Your guess is as good as mine. But three or four of these shots an episode is just gilding the Lilly; at least until we have a better idea of what she's thinking.

Costs must be out of control on the new series too, judging by the dearth of effects shots and interesting sets in last night's show. In the original V, we saw more laser blasts, more alien make-up, more ship take-offs and landings, more mother-ship interiors in a single hour than we have seen in the first two episodes here. Again, there's just nothing in this re-imagination that remotely suggests "event" television or a sense of scope commiserate with the idea that aliens have arrived on Earth for the first time. Agent Evans declares "there is no normal anymore," but the problem with the new V is that, pretty much, everything is exactly as it was before. People still go to work; people still send their kids to school; everyone still watches 24 hour news and worries about TV ratings. The alien problem ranks about as high as illegal immigration, health care, or the winner of the next American Idol, it seems.

Honestly, if aliens hovered over our cities and wanted to open diplomatic relations, claiming to be "at peace, always," wouldn't our government (or the Chinese Government, or the Russian government...) respond: okay, space brothers, but in the meantime, how about vacating our sovereign airspace and backing the fuck off? If I were President, my answer would be: I would be happy to consider diplomatic relations with your people. Till I decide, all your ships and personnel are to remain in orbit around the moon. But the new V can't even imagine that the premise of the show is real, and thus the show itself doesn't feel like a thoughtful meditation on an alien arrival.

My gut instinct about the new V is that it is attempting for a fast, earthbound 24-vibe -- with aliens as terrorists -- but at the expense of the intelligent, science fiction allegory of the original.

Virtually by definition, that seems like dumbing down.

CULT TV REVIEW: V: "Pilot" (2009)

Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.

During the Bush years (2000-2008), a right-wing science fiction TV series from the late-1970s, Battlestar Galactica, was re-imagined as a liberal enterprise that commented on the bungling of the Iraq War and critiqued our government following the 9/11 attacks.

Individual episodes of the new Galactica series involved illegal torture, a West/Middle East-type religious-type schism and other trademarks of the 21st century's turbulent first decade.

Last night, a leftist science fiction TV series from the late 1980s -- and one that took dead aim at the Reagan Era -- was re-imagined as a paranoid, right-wing, anti-Obama production.

Yep, the evil aliens of the re-imagined V arrive on Earth offering three things: "hope," "change" and "universal health care." These reptilian invaders apparently don't appreciate "fair and balanced" news broadcasts, either.

Heightening the parallel to our President, these conquering aliens "spread the word" of their good deeds by "tagging" locations across the globe with one valedictory alphabet letter. No, not the ubiquitous "O" of 2008's Obamamania, but rather the "V" of the Visitors. The pilot episode culminates with a warning against seeking "saviors" anywhere but in a Christian Heaven; another thinly-veiled barb at our Muslim, Socialist Commander-in-Chief.

So basically, Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here has been transformed into The Glenn Beck Show.

If you read my blog with any regularity you know I'm unabashedly, proudly liberal, but you also know, I hope, that I don't always tow the party line. I was not the world's biggest fan of the new Battlestar Galactica, for instance, because I felt that even though it matched my ideological and political bent, it was lacking in imagination, crushingly obvious, and it became the tiresome equivalent of Clue in Outer Space. (The fifth and final Cylon was Colonel Mustard on the Galactica...). I think my opinion was ultimately vindicated by the dopey, disappointing way the series ended (basically an insulting wave of a magic wand that said "God Moves in Mysterious Ways.")

Thus far, I feel the same way about the re-imagined V as I did about BSG starting out, but only in this case I get the added bonus of disliking the show's politics too. Not because I believe Obama is above criticism (and I've already criticized him here on the blog for not pursuing a torture investigation...) but because it has only been eleven months since he took office and he hasn't actually done anything yet to merit the high level of hatred and wacky rhetoric we see coming from Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck and the Tea Baggers.

I mean, have we found the FEMA Camps yet? Are our children being forced into re-education camps and someone forgot to tell me? Hell, our taxes haven't even gone up...

At least when the new BSG took on the Bush Years, Bush had been in office for awhile and had actually done something egregiously stupid like, I don't know...invading the wrong country. Obama hasn't had that kind of Senior Moment yet, so the new V feels like a wacky pre-emptive strike from Sarah Palin. It's not responding to anything substantive in the culture...just hysteria and fear; the very fear and hysteria that NY-23 rejected last night.

Leaving aside the politics, the new V doesn't work for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it fails to engage the emotions; the heart. There's no build-up to the arrival of the alien ships, and therefore no suspense in the delivering of Anna's (Morena Baccarin's) message.

Worse, a resistance group (already formed, apparently to save the show's dull-as-dishwater characters the trouble of starting from scratch...), already knows that the Visitors are reptilian, which means we don't even get a good jolt moment out of the revelation here. True, fans of the original series know that the Visitors are reptilian aliens, so the surprise is ruined anyway. But that doesn't mean the new show shouldn't attempt to mine a little drama over the fact that LIZARD NAZIS ARE TAKING OVER OUR PLANET!!!! Why remake V if you aren't going to make it a little bit scary?

And -- come on! -- no gerbils were even harmed during the pilot episode of the new V. I'll never forget watching the original mini-series back in 1983, and mid-way through the show Diana's jawbone unexpectedly elongated and she swallowed that poor rodent whole. My heart practically beat through my throat for the rest of the show. The next day at school, it was all anybody was talking about. Did you see that?!

Again, you can't pull the same surprise twice, but it would have been nice if V had attempted to thrill in us in some little way; if it had turned expectations upside down, or staged a really wicked, macabre moment about the alien nature. Here, even the revelation of the green lizard skin is almost a throw-away; with no real impact.

The teleplay was pretty weak. On at least two occasions, protests against the Visitors are mentioned. What are people protesting? Why are they protesting? The episode never tells us. Is it because they are illegal immigrants, spreading leprosy? In the original mini-series, the scientists protested the Visitors because scientific evidence proved that the aliens were hiding things about their technology, about their biology. The Visitors then scapegoated the scientists, equating them with terrorists.

But in the new show...there's just "protests." Like almost everything else in the show, this feels like a throwaway plot device that we're supposed to forget about in five minutes anyway. Another example of inconsistent writing: the aliens arrive and pulp a U.S. military plane (we see the pilot land on the street, dead...), but moments later the people of the Big Apple (who just witnessed his death) are cheering because the Visitors "say" they come in peace. Huh?

If all this isn't bad enough, we get a little Twilight-lite in a subplot involving a horny teen kid and a hot Visitor "peace ambassador." Again, the original V involved a complex (and worthwhile plot) about a teenage girl who befriended and ultimately slept with a Visitor soldier. But there, the relationship functioned as a component of an Anne Frank allegory about a scientist's family seeking a place to hide; about collaboration and resistance. Here the teen angle plays like just a ratings grab with CW pin-ups.

So the new V is bad politics and bad drama. If I have to I'll live with the bad politics, but I'd like to see the show get smarter and scarier. The world has been invaded by evil aliens...and I wish the new V made me care just a little bit about that fact.

TV REVIEW: FlashForward (2009): "No More Good Days"

FlashForward -- a new series from executive producers Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer -- might more accurately have been titled "FlashBack."

While watching the catastrophic events of this new series unfold, the careful TV watcher will experience a distinct sense of deja vu for the ghosts of TV series past, notably ABC's powerhouse Lost, and the canceled ABC series The Nine.

Like Lost, Flashforward opens in media res, with utter pandemonium. A series of diverse characters (like, say, the passengers on a crashed plane...) awake to find themselves injured, confused and populating a vast disaster area. Only here it's urban. Sirens blare, cars are overturned. Someone is on fire. And a kangaroo (substituting for an out-of-place polar bear?) hops down a busy metropolitan avenue.

The presentation is similar to Lost too: immediacy-provoking shaky-cam and all. And yet, it's undeniable that these shots of a chaotic Los Angeles freeway (and skyline) resonant in this day and age: they are epic in scope and presentation, and successfully remind one of the stomach-wrenching terror of 9/11. In one impressive and horrifying shot, a helicopter hits a skyscraper, balloons into flame, and then careens down to the top of a smaller building. Where it explodes.

Clearly, no expense was spared.

Another reference to Lost also arrives early: a billboard for Oceanic Airlines is visible in the background of one shot. If you're awake, you can't miss it, and I guess that's the point. I can hear the announcer now: "If you like Lost, you'll love FlashForward!" Now, I don't mind homage, but this represents craven corporate synergy here. Marketing embedded as drama. It's sort of insulting.

Like the late, lamented The Nine, FlashForward introduces a variety of dissimilar characters going about their normal, daily lives when something traumatic and totally unexpected occurs to them. In The Nine, it was a hostage situation in a bank that affected the dramatis personae. Suddenly, life was scrambled, relationships were re-shuffled, fates were altered, and the experience "changed everything."

In FlashForward, we get a vaguely sci-fi variation on the format: a sudden global black-out -- replete with premonitions -- lasts for two minutes-and-seventeen seconds and is the catalyst for a whole new direction in life. A doctor planning suicide suddenly glimpses his future and realizes it's not his destiny to die now. An FBI agent (Joseph Fiennes) who has given up drinking sees an image of himself off the wagon...drunk. His wife, yet another doctor, sees herself in a passionate relationship with another man. Her marriage is apparently over. See? Suddenly, all of life is up for grabs...

The nagging feeling that you've seen all this before is heightened, alas, by FlashForward's insistence on hammering home the episode's salient points ad nauseum. A TV news report flat-out states (with accompanying images of destroyed European capitols...) that the black-out was worldwide. But then, a stranger watching the broadcast notes, "my God, it's the whole world!" Then, after the commercial break, Fiennes' Benford tells us again that the black-out affected the whole planet. Without exaggeration, the episode reminds us six or seven times in the first hour that the phenomenon was worldwide, just so we don't miss the obvious.

Much information is transmitted in this ham-handed, unskilled fashion, for those in the audience with attention-deficient disorder, I guess. For instance, Benford's wife, Olivia (Sonya Walger), experiences a vision of her "future lover." We see that mysterious future lover in a vision, in profile...and get a good look. Then, that mystery man appears in the present, and the episode swoops around to get a profile. The camera move triggers our memory, as does the man's physical appearance. We recognize him immediately, but that's not sufficient for FlashForward. Nope, the episode cuts back to the same vision footage we just saw, just to make sure the audience "gets" that it's the same guy.

During the commercial breaks too, the over-caffeinated voice-over announcer aggressively reminds the viewership of everything that just happened three seconds ago. Was that kangaroo -- gasp -- a clue? What is the importance of the date of the flash-forward (April 29, 2010)? There's nothing like attempting solve a mystery in which the clues have been spoon-fed to you with the subtlety of a game-show announcer calling down the next contestant.

The significance of the date April 29, 2010? Let me hazard a guess. Why, that just happens to be a Thursday night! The night of FlashForward's season finale! How convenient! In the book by Robert Sawyer, by point of contrast, the flash forward was twenty-years or so into the future, not a mere six months. I guess the makers of FlashForward are hedging their bets...

And well they should. This program is pitched so low that the creators must assume the general TV audience now consists entirely of cabbage. My concern: if they think we can't understand that the black-out was world wide, how on Earth do they think they can explain quantum theory, strange matter and the other esoteric aspects of Sawyer's novel to us?

Now, just the other day, I posted a quote by Jean-Luc Godard in which he noted that it's not where you take things from that's important, it's where you go with them. Given that philosophy, I don't mind all that much that FlashForward steals some thunder from The Nine (which nobody but me watched anyway...) or the popular Lost. Imitation is the name of the game in television more often than not. What I find much more troubling is the mind-numbing lack of subtlety on display here. This show doesn't trust the audience to pay attention at all.

As annoying as this "telegraph-and-repeat EVERYTHING" approach turns out to be, I still found aspects of FlashForward tantalizing. One character, Demetri (John Cho), experiences no vision during the black-out, and assumes that this can only mean one thing. That he has no future. That in six months, he'll be dead. Now that's a terrific wrinkle in the formula. In the episodes ahead, Demetri may literally be fighting for his life.

And, of course, underlying everything here is the exact same (fascinating) debate that informed the movie Knowing (2009): free will versus determinism. Can the future be changed? Does knowledge of the future, in fact, automatically change the future? These are fascinating notions and can make for some great TV drama. I also found the last few shots of FlashForward's pilot absolutely chilling. One man on Earth, it seems, did not black out at all. Does this mean he's not human? Immune? Protected? What? That's a very intriguing mystery, no doubt.

But I still don't have much confidence, at least not yet, that the writers of FlashForward are going to approach these concepts and mysteries in anything approaching an intelligent fashion. In some ways, FlashForward gives me deja vu for one other TV program: Brannon Braga's Threshold (2005). That alien-invasion series exhibited a great premise but by the second episode the execution of that premise had gone straight down the toilet. The whole thing lasted six or seven episodes, as I recall.

I bet Braga's hoping we all don't flash back to that traumatic experience.

TV REVIEW: Defying Gravity: "Pilot"/"Natural Selection"

Award-winning writer and producer James Parriott -- the talent behind the cult favorite Dark Skies (1996) and also Forever Knight (1989-1996) -- has landed back in the genre with his so-called "Grey's Anatomy in Space" prime-time venture, Defying Gravity.

The series premiered on ABC last Sunday night with a pilot and the first one hour follow-up, titled "Natural Selection."

Like Virtuality before it, Defying Gravity concerns a lengthy space mission. Here, the spaceship Antares embarks on a six year voyage to explore seven planets in our solar system, starting with Venus (a 43 day voyage...).

The ship's diverse crew-members include flight engineer Maddux Donner (Ron Livingston), ship commander Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba), biologist Jen Crane (Christina Cox), geologist Zoe Barnes (Laura Harris), pilot Nadia Schilling (Florentine Lahm), physicist Steve Wassenfelder (Dylan Taylor), and journalist Paula Morales (Paula Garces). The Grey's Anatomy comparison is operable because this series is a "workplace" drama featuring lots of sex and romance. Only the workplace in question is...the final frontier.

Based on the first two episodes, Defying Gravity is lively and bright, but also extremely schmaltzy. The writers opt for big, sentimental, even maudlin gestures in the melodramatic story lines; and position their astronaut leading characters as impulsive, romance-obsessed, top gun sorts. As a result, many individual story moments may leave the "reality based" sci-fi audience gasping in shock.

For instance, a husband-and-wife astronaut team engages in weightless sexual intercourse on the flight deck of Antares -- on duty! -- even though they both realize all the techs in Mission Control down on Earth can see them getting it on. The commander in that nerve center below exercises discretion and turns off the screen, but how did these randy astronauts know he would do so? Furthermore, isn't sex on the job (in the control room...) somewhat...unprofessional? Especially for a guy who was the ship's commander?

At another point in the pilot episode, a depressed and sidelined astronaut named Sharma steps out into space on a suicidal EVA. Down on Earth, our hero, Maddox, virtually leaps into a convenient space pod, blasts off, and goes into space to rescue him. Yet space travel -- as the episode suggests at least twice -- is quite difficult. There are meticulous schedules to consider, windows of opportunity to target, and space adventuring is extremely expensive to boot. Yet Maddox just impulsively mounts a rescue, apparently without mission control's approval, and successfully maneuvers his small spacecraft around the large Antares. In doing so, isn't he endangering the 10 trillion dollar mission?

This kind of grand, emotional, melodramatic touch only makes the astronauts seem....emotionally unstable. Think about it: In one hour-long show, a brilliant engineer attempts suicide, the ship's biologist and commander hump like bunnies on the flight deck, and Maddox, the flight engineer, impulsively punches out two people and goes against orders to stage a difficult rescue. I'm fine with sex in space (who wouldn't be?). I just worry this show should be titled Defying Believability. The teleplay constantly reminds us that only one out of a thousand candidates is selected for the rigorous astronaut training program. Based on the impulsive, emotional behavior of those who "passed," I'm afraid to see what the other 999 candidates were like...

Actually, I get it. I do. Way back in 1975, another near-future space series, Space: 1999, adopted a minimalist, intellectual approach and was roundly criticized because, essentially, all the astronaut main characters were...stoic and thoughtful. "They act too much like scientists and administrators," critics complained. "The main characters behave more like business partners than romantic partners!" reviewers admonished. Ergh!

Defying Gravity looks like it wants to avoid that pitfall (if it is a legitimate pitfall...) at all costs, turning the series' astronauts into horny, quipping, broody, colorful, hormone cases. My advice: tone it down. Just a bit. Keep the sex restricted to off-duty astronauts. And keep it in crew quarters...not on the bridge.

Because, honestly, the science fiction touches in Defying Gravity aren't terrible. In fact, they're moderately intriguing. For instance, there's a strange force called "Beta" at work pulling the strings behind the Antares mission. This mysterious Beta -- an alien intelligence or perhaps a computer -- apparently chose the crew members, overriding NASA's choices in certain circumstances. Why? What are Beta's motives? In the last moments of "Natural Selection," the ship's captain boards the Antares pod that houses "Beta" (or perhaps just a link to Beta...) and seems to go mad...experiencing visions of a tragic mission to Mars.

This is a sturdy enough mystery on which to build the summer series; especially as Defying Gravity has promised that all will be revealed upon Antares' arrival at Venus. Another Space:1999 coincidence: the opening episode of that series ("Breakaway") involved a strange mystery involving not called Beta, but rather Meta. Hmmm...

Anyway, I was also tantalized here by the brief, cryptic references to life in the 2050s, the era of Defying Gravity. Apparently, Roe v Wade has been reversed, abortion is illegal, and now even over-the-counter pregnancy tests are against the law. The show doesn't go overboard with this political background, merely dropping a few hints that the United States -- and indeed the world -- are in for some big changes in the next few decades.

I have decided to put Defying Gravity to the same test I put all other fledgling sci-fi series. I'm going to watch five episodes and see if I'm hooked enough to stick around. This approach worked in the past for The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse. But I dropped Fringe and Supernatural.

I hate to sound like a prude, but I certainly hope Defying Gravity goes more into sci-fi and less into lusty space sex. I know the producers want to draw in big audiences, but the program doesn't seem calibrated quite right yet. Grey's Anatomy is a bad role model, I believe. It's a big, stupid, overwrought, inconsequential series -- the Ally McBeal of the 2000s. Maybe Defying Gravity could aim higher, aim for the stars...

How about defying convention?

TV REVIEW: Dollhouse : "Ghost" (2009)

Ever meet someone who seems too perfect? Too beautiful? Too smart? Too witty? Who says all the right things in every situation? Who is -- in a phrase -- too good to be true?

Well, maybe that person is too good to be true; maybe he or she is actually an "Active" on a mission, a resident of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse...

Despite the plethora of harsh reviews clogging the web, this new genre series - at least judging from the pilot -- is certainly promising. So far, it's neither genius, inspired, nor revelatory...by a long shot. But for right now, promising is good enough. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was any great TV series.

So I'll take it.

It's tempting to comment now about the myriad ways, historically-speaking, in which pilots don't necessarily reflect the quality of the series that follow them. That pilots suffer under the weight of having a great deal to accomplish: both introducing a slew of characters and vetting a new, fresh, self-contained story. It's not an easy task crafting a good one. Let alone a great one.

Still, off-the-top of my head I can rattle off the titles of a good half-dozen brilliant pilots: Veronica Mars, X-Files, Millennium, Lost, Friday Night Lights, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Heroes, and so on. I can also recall some terrible pilots that signaled the badness and madness to follow. I still haven't recovered from the mediocrity of the derivative Fringe, the shockingly not-scary Supernatural, or the imbecilic Threshold. And actually, the Battlestar Galactica pilot (a mini-series) was actually pretty dreadful too, now that I remember it. (Anyone recall the Cylon cocktail waitress equipped with the unsightly "scanning" red eye on sinewy spine -- visible during hot sex with Baltar?)

But here's the sticking point for me: Dollhouse should have been a slam dunk. This pilot episode ("Ghost") was crafted after several episodes of the series were already in the can. Creator Joss Whedon famously went back and devised a new pilot; one that would more accurately reflect the narrative and arc of Dollhouse as a whole. Given that rare and valuable opportunity, it's a little baffling why "Ghost" isn't more involving, dynamic, and focused. It's clear here that the larger premise is better than this episode's execution; that the overall "ideas" or more engaging than the particular story.

To the specifics now. Dollhouse is the tale of a secret, highly-illegal facility called, you guessed it, The Dollhouse. There, ice princess Adele De Witt (Olivia Williams) oversees a cadre of agents called "Actives." Under her direction, these "Actives go out on missions called "Engagements." The Actives, however, aren't simply secret operatives: they are "clean slates." Their original personalities have been removed ("wiped") and for each new mission, they are "imprinted" with new personalities (and therefore new skills...) that fit the mission.

In "Ghost," for example, a gorgeous young Active named Echo (series star Eliza Dushku) is outfitted with the memories of an expert negotiator (or several negotiators, actually...) to bring quick closure a high-profile kidnapping.

Managing the programming and mental wiping is a nerdy young scientist, Topher Brink (Fran Kranz). Serving as handler to Echo is a veteran ex-cop, Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix). And acting as physician to the stable of physically-fit Actives is Dr. Claire Saunders (Amy Acker). Meanwhile, a resourceful cop, Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) is attempting to find and expose the secret Dollhouse, to the dismay of his superiors and cohorts on the force. Paul believes that wiping out a human personality is the same thing is murder, and desires to bring those at the Dollhouse to justice for human trafficking.

Living placid, memory-less lives in the gilded cage of the Dollhouse, the Actives are innocent, naive and truth be told, a little dumb. They seem like...dim bulbs. You may be unpleasantly reminded, alas, of the clone farm in Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979). There, all the physically-fit young clones dwelled in a Garden of Eden of ignorance until one curious clone tasted an apple from the tree of knowledge (or rather, a beer can from Milwaukee...). You get the feeling that on Dollhouse, Echo is destined for the same journey: one of discovery and self discovery.

Because Joss Whedon -- mastermind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly -- is the personality behind Dollhouse, I suspect Echo's odyssey is going to be an interesting, thought-provoking ride. And that's why I'm sticking around. You can detect the seeds of greatness in the Dollhouse pilot, even if little of the potential is yet realized.

For instance, the Actives -- when taking on the personalities of other people -- also adopt their weaknesses. That's an interesting notion, a sort of hidden brand of "kryptonite" that could pop up and impact an "engagement" unexpectedly.

I also appreciated the distinctive moral overtones: can a wrong ("wiping" and "imprinting") ever make a right (helping people in need)? There's something affecting and deeply sad about watching Echo talk about meeting the "right guy" only to, moments later, undergo a wipe and forget all about him. How can the people around her stand by and let this happen? How can they justify what they do? Inquiring minds want to know...

Ultimately, I suppose I must ask myself two important questions in regards to Dollhouse. First, does the pilot provide an adequate framework for Joss Whedon to present his trademark social commentary on women, society at large, and pop culture?

And second, do I want to watch the fetching, engaging Eliza Dushku make this journey of discovery for a few seasons?

The answer in both cases is a resounding affirmative.

So while I haven't yet warmed to the series regulars, and while I truly dislike the look of the Dollhouse facility (it resembles the Wolfram & Hart offices from Angel's final season...), I have enough patience and built-up good will for Whedon and Dushku to stick around and see what's next.

The epilogue of "Ghost" already points to a compelling story point and direction for the series. There, we see a pre-Dollhouse Echo in a high school video, discussing her life aspirations. Were those aspirations fulfilled by involvement in the Dollhouse? Or cut off?

In answering that question, we may have an answer to our burning question. Is Dollhouse Whedon's next Buffy or Firefly? Or is it his next...Alien Resurrection?

We'll see. And I'll be there.

TV REVIEW: Secret Diary of a Call Girl (2007)

I understand she apparently rubbed some longtime and committed Doctor Who fans the wrong way during her tenure as companion Rose Tyler, but neither actress Billie Piper nor the fictional character she played ever bothered me in the slightest.

Not even once.

On the contrary, Piper was so adorable, so committed and so spirited in her Dr. Who performances I felt it was absolutely natural for the alien time lord to fall head-over-heels for her.

I mean...I certainly fell for her.

Well, Piper now headlines a very different dramatic TV series, the scandalously-titled, highly-ribald, immensely-witty Secret Diary of a Call Girl. I just screened the first season (consisting of eight half-hour episodes) in its entirety on DVD and was impressed; even captivated.

Playing workaday “high class” London call girl Hannah (aka Belle De Jour), the actress is even more adorable and charismatic than I remember her. Piper's performance is full of wit, heart...and real bravery.

In one series episode -- one certain to become the stuff of legend in fandom -- Piper’s Belle du Jour beds down a drippy character played by actor named Matt Smith, who – as most of you now know – will be playing the Doctor in the new season of Doctor Who.

So if you ever wanted to see an historic bedroom scene between the Doctor and Rose, this is your opportunity. No, it isn’t Eccleston. Or Tennant.

But still…use your imagination.

If history-making sci-fi couplings aren’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of other excellent reasons to watch Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Prime among these is likely curiosity. If you have ever wondered what the day-to-day, job-to-job existence of a call girl might be like, well...you find out. Accordingly, each episode revolves around some particular sexual assignment. Perhaps an orgy, a threesome, or some old-school S&M domination. There’s even one installment about Belle fulfilling the (paid-for) role of “perfect girlfriend” for what’s termed an “all-nighter.”

As for Belle herself, she doesn’t possess many hang-ups. She’ll “go gay for pay;” she doesn’t object to the big "A" (anal sex), and she readily admits she enjoys her job because she likes: a.) sex and b.) money. Still, none of this means Belle is eager to tell her family -- or best friend, Ben -- about what, precisely, she does for a living. She claims, actually, to be a “night-time” legal secretary – whatever the hell that is.

What I find most compelling about Secret Diary of a Call Girl is the open-eyed approach it takes to Belle's job. Everybody does what they do, and there is precious little judgment or tsk-tsking. Belle is intelligent enough to do any job she wants to do, and this, apparently is how she desires to spend her time and make her dough. In one episode, Belle stops working as prostitute for a time to observe “normal people.” Her observations send her running back to prostitution in short order.

Even though Belle likes her job, she still has bad days. Like we all do. In one episode, a really scary john shows up at her apartment and is – if not threatening – then highly creepy. In another episode, Belle has trouble dealing with the fact that a client she sort-of liked opted to see a different girl on his next date, and so on.

Again, the approach is a workaday one. What renders the show humorous is the blistering observations Belle makes about herself, her world, her vocation, her johns and the never ending vicissitudes of human sexuality. Often, Belle breaks the fourth wall and directs her remark at the camera, a beguiling invitation to intimacy.

As you watch the first four episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, you may find yourself shocked (I know I was…) to see just how..um... graphic this show is in terms of nudity and simulation of sex acts. By about the fourth show, however, the shock slips away and you find yourself involved and engaged in Belle’s life, her travails, and her unusual perspective.

I realize some people might complain about a TV series that glamorizes prostitution, but that’s not the game here. As I noted above, prostitution is treated as a vocation, and all the characters are more-or-less handled as “real.” I guess if gangsters (The Sopranos), ad men (Mad Men), lawyers (Damages), politicians (Brotherhood), vampires (True Blood) and serial killers can have TV shows about them, prostitutes deserve the same treatment.

Fortunately, the sharply-written Secret Diary of a Call Girl is indeed in the same class as those other efforts. You shouldn’t miss it.

Watch it with someone you love. Or at least someone you want to have sex with.