Mon, October 3, 2005
Bizarro World
Commander In Chief
(ABC, 9:00 Tuesdays)
Arguably the season's most anticipated new show, Commander In Chief has every opportunity to be an interesting evaluation of our current political climate and where America stands as a society. Are we progressive, innovative thinkers – or do we remain bound by outdated ideals and biases, even while we dress ourselves up as citizens of the 21st century? But it could also be a sugary, faux-patriotic soap opera, with "math is hard" Barbie in the White House, pouting because the boys won't take her seriously. Based on the first episode, it's still unclear which of these it will be.
The show begins as realistically as it possibly can: Geena Davis is Vice President Mackenzie Allen and the president has suffered a debilitating stroke. "Relax," ABC coos to most of America, "we're not implying anyone in our lifetime might actually elect a female president. Continue cleaning your guns." Immediately, everyone demands that she resign, from the chief of staff to the cockney shoe-shine kid out front with the game leg. They feel it's for the good of the country that the (male) Speaker of the House ascend to the presidency. But, this is television, and Ms. Allen keeps a stiff – if luscious – upper lip. She's sworn into office after the president's aneurysm gets the best of him, and the moment she sits down at the Oval Office desk, the Rose Garden is filled with dozens of snipers each lining up for his shot, half of whom are wearing CIA credentials.
Ha ha, no. The show isn't that realistic. Everyone just kind of smiles and gets on with life. No riots or car bombs. The new President Allen even takes a meeting in the Situation Room with the Admiral of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all his military guys, and they listen to her and everything. I'm not saying this is how it should be, but you just know in real life those guys would either be home with their heads in their ovens or they'd have defected to North Korea by now. We're just not that enlightened a country – particularly not our four-star generals. (Prove me wrong in '08, America! Prove. Me. Wrong.)
The show sets up an interesting character in Mackenzie Allen: she was a university chancellor before being tapped for the VP slot, frustrated by a political landscape she describes as "survival by deception." (It's telling that all of our TV presidents-in-waiting share this outsider view of a corrupt and stumbling system – Arnie Vinick and Matt Santos being the prominent others. When are we going to get a real candidate like this?) The president is also full of contradictions: she's an Independent, but she was on the ticket with a Republican; she's an outsider, but she served in Congress for four years; she's fiercely independent, but as VP her husband was her chief of staff. Even her hot twin children are completely divided, from the embryonic stage onward: the smoldering male twin is her cheerleader, while the sexpot female twin is a staunch Republican and disagrees with her policies. The focus of Allen's first day in office is the release of a woman in Nigeria who's scheduled for public stoning because she committed adultery. She succeeds – implausibly swiftly – but it's a tightrope for the show (and the president) because this is exactly the sort of cause we make fun of doe-eyed college girls for weeping about in their Amnesty International meetings while there are real, actual terrorists out there – plotting to poison our drinking water, kidnap our children, and root for the Yankees in the post-season. (And, by the way, you'll notice that ABC goes for the jugular, implicating Nigeria's human rights record rather than using a safe country out of the Fictional TV Atlas the way West Wing does with Qumar. In the post-Cold War era, Nigeria is the new Russia – I guess it serves them right for all those e-mail banking scams.)
Geena Davis succeeds at narrowly balancing realism and melodrama, and the show shifts nicely between politics and family issues. There are some cute moments as the new First Gentleman adjusts to a somewhat marginalized role (accompanied by conspicuous admonishments from his new assistant that Mrs. Clinton tried to shake up the role of First Lady during her time in the White House and – it is repeatedly mentioned – "that didn't go over well"). Watching just the pilot, Commander In Chief seems to be a mixed bag, but next week's "scenes" are promising. There will be potentially compelling intrigue between President Allen and Donald Sutherland (as Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton, a role appropriately named after the rat in Charlotte's Web). He's mad he's not president yet, and determined to spoil her administration just for petty revenge, at the expense of the American people – sounds about right for a Republican congressman. It may take a few weeks to determine whether the show will live up to its full potential, but even if Commander In Chief is as bad as 2000's dreary Geena Davis Show, those weeks won't be entirely unenjoyable.
Night Stalker
(ABC, 9:00 Thursdays)
The original 1970s series Kolchak: The Night Stalker was part of Chris Carter's inspiration for The X-Files, but ABC's remake of the show is closer to MST3K's Track of the Moon Beast than anything Chris Carter would put his name on. Stuart Townsend plays the new Kolchak, and he's moody and withdrawn – obsessed with tracking down the werewolf that killed his young bride (although he may have imagined the whole thing). He's the new reporter at the Los Angeles Beacon, and he randomly pursues his own agenda without ever telling anyone what's going on, which is extremely irritating – too much mysterioso and not enough actual character. (It's the poorly written version of John Locke on Lost.) Townsend has been fun to watch in a few indie features, but here he's out of his element and working from a very splotchy script.
Wary of overwhelming the audience with the misanthrope/lycanthrope angle, ABC shoved Gabrielle Union (Kirsten Dunst's sassy nemesis from Bring It On) into the show as Kolchak's partner, inasmuch as newspaper reporters have "partners." She brings it on (as on as it can possibly be broughten), but struggles against the show's unfortunate setup: she's there as an audience proxy, to get Kolchak to explain what the hell he's up to, which means all she gets to do is chase him around, muddying her pretty shoes and whimpering skeptically at everything she sees. While there is some potential in the Night Stalker idea, we've got plenty of "mysteries from beyond" shows starting this fall – all of which are more consistent and more compelling.
Returning Shows
Grey's Anatomy broke my heart last year by further derailing the momentum of the year's second-best new show, the multiple Emmy-winning Boston Legal. However, I can't deny the jiggly charm of Katherine Heigl or the fiery intensity of Chandra Wilson, propping up an otherwise unremarkable cast. Now on crutches in its displaced time slot, Legal has committed the greatest travesty in television history, dropping Monica Potter and Rhona Mitra from its cast – although it promises to hasten us out of the mourning stage with the addition of Julie Bowen (she, a refugee from TV's previous travesty record holder). Its star-studded season opener proves all the best things I've been saying about this show. If it's canceled this season and you're not watching it, the blood is on your hands. (Emmys, people!)
Moving The West Wing to a time slot as bizarre as Sundays at 8:00 continues to astonish me so much I forget it was my own idea in the first place. The show's dialogue and policy are back at their rapid-fire best, but they split the show into three stories at the end of last season, and so far they're covering one and a half of them at best. If Vinick is meant to win, this is a sloppy final send-off for Santos; if Santos wins (as the credits hint, with the conspicuous absence of Stephen Root and Patricia Richardson, but maybe that's just to throw us), then the show is really giving Alda the short shrift. I'd expect no better based on the latter half of last season, but everything else about these first two shows is so good.
The Amazing Race is premiering its "Family Edition" concept this season, which rivals Survivor: All-Stars as the most fundamentally terrible idea in all of reality television, but it's still fun to watch – and mock – with friends. If you're already watching Arrested Development, Veronica Mars, and Boston Legal – and you should be! – then Without a Trace is the best show you're not watching.
The West Wing
Grey's Anatomy
The Amazing Race: Family Edition
McRace
Boston Legal
Veronica Mars
Alias
Smallville
Without a Trace
Premiering This Week
Take a look at this list, folks. There will not be a lot of stars on this page next week. I think I'll probably be able to get by with three, total.
Close to Home: CBS, Tuesday at 10:00
Related: WB, Wednesday at 9:00
Hot Properties: ABC, Friday at 9:30
© onebee · all rights reserved
Brandon — Mon, 10/3/05 12:52pm
I'll second the negative review for Night Stalker. Lots of bad writing (no explanation for why the little girl was abducted?) and poor characterization. And the Townsend/Union characters might as well be named Mulder, Jr. and Scully 2: Electric Boogaloo.
West Wing has been good, but if I were an actor on that show, I'd be concerned for the longevity of my speaking part, since each week seems to bring a new name-recognizable actor/actress. I suspect this will continue until every TV actor with a halfway-decent Q rating will be on the show, and they'll all have one line each, all spoken during one rapid-fire, White House corridor stampede. It'll be like the running of the bulls with snappy banter.
"Holly" — Tue, 10/4/05 12:06am
Watch it, boyo. I might have to refer you to my youngest sister, who headed up her university's chapter of Amnesty and engaged these critical issues in a manner that was neither doe-eyed nor weepy, and who would happily kick your ass and then reverse-mock you afterward (ask AC; he's met her)....
Bee Boy — Tue, 10/4/05 1:41am
If you thought you detected the faintest aftertaste of bait there, I won't deny it. My intent was not entirely to trivialize these causes, although as important as they are they wouldn't be at the top of my world priorities list. (This is why it's good for us each to have our own list.) I was also trying to crack a lot of jokes at the wide-eyed idealism of the show – in the real America, it would be a giant political liability for Allen to do a lot of the things she does. Whether or not I agree with that, I have to acknowledge the fact.
Also, I would not turn down an opportunity to be smacked around by any or all of the Moyer sisters.
"Holly" — Wed, 10/5/05 12:15am
And if you detected the faintest aftertaste of bait in my response, I won't deny it, either. I finally got around to watching the pilot of "C in C" myself, and I think you're mostly on the mark, though too generous. As you noted, why not just elect her? (That wouldn't feel like such a weird, glaring thing except that the writer clearly went to a LOT of trouble to manufacture a second reason for people to oppose her ascension to the White House, because I guess he felt that no one in his universe would realistically object on the grounds of her gender except the kooky House Speaker... so in that case, why not just elect her and play the unprecedented complexities of that? Why have the whole "you should resign" storyline at all if it's not gender-based?) Also, the rescue of the Nigerian woman was hilariously easy and implausible, and I think that, more than anything else, made it look trivial and silly. People being stoned to death because of their gender – or for any reason at all – really is up towards the top of my Important Moral Issues In The World list, and making it into a pesky little problem with an Insta-Solution only encourages people to disregard it, never mind that it makes for a goofy and less interesting storyline.
And FINALLY, these characters talk WAY too slowly. I should have to hit the TiVo replay button every third line in an attempt to grasp the complexity of what's happening. Jeez.
Bee Boy — Wed, 10/5/05 11:03am
He he hee! So true. I wonder if ABC's focus groups said, "We like The West Wing, but sometimes it can be so hard to figure out what they're talking about. Also, not enough menopause jokes."