The New Batch
As summer winds down, the advertising begins for this year’s batch of new television shows. One show that’s been getting a lot of press is Prison Break airing Monday nights on the Fox network at 9PM EST. Last night was the two hour “pilot” and we invited friends over to eat some noodles and watch the show.
Firstly, I have an issue with calling it a 2-hour pilot when it’s just two episodes played back-to-back. That’s cheating. Second, the noodles, as-concocted by dria, were excellent.
The show on the other hand was fairly uninteresting, or at least as not as interesting as the hype machine purported it to be. The main character, Michael Scofield is a structural engineer who robs a bank to get himself incarcerated in the same maximum security prison as his brother who is on death row, is somewhat bland and I find utterly unconvincing in his prison-yard dealings. I found myself thinking last night repeatedly that this guy should be gutted at any second for trying the shit he was doing but it didn’t happen. Ok, there was some conflict, but I didn’t buy it.
The characters are largely uninteresting and unlikable. They’re prisoners after-all so you’re somewhat aware while watching the show that anyone you’re introduced to is a criminal so as a viewer, you have to get over that and become somewhat complicit. That’s a bit of an icky feeling. It feels especially gross when the writers and director attempt to make a character likable. Michael Scofield’s cell-mate is a helpful, orienteering hispanic man who plays the part of a fixer, hooking people up with whatever they need. He has a subplot about writing a proposition to his girlfriend on the outside and a whole relationship thing is introduced. It’s weird and I don’t think it really works. The inclusion of a possible D.B. Cooper in the pen is cute. Stacy Keach plays a somewhat paternal warden who made it fairly clear that he can be a tough guy when he’s at work. “T-bag”, the requisite leader of the local white-power group who also happen to be the local scary homosexual group was pretty creepy, I’ll give him that, but man he’s got a lot of stereotypes to manage. (Oh, he’s also a southerner)… Abruzzi, the mafia guy on the inside doesn’t seem very italian to me… (and so on…)
There were a couple of girls in the show, but since the show takes place in a maximum security prison, their roles take place largely outside of the action.
I’m hoping the show will become more interesting. The actual prison break has potential and they did a decent job of explaining how the engineer was able to bring in enough information to be able to pull it off. Even though some of the information doesn’t make sense (why that particular bolt?, for e.g.). I’ll watch a few more episodes before pulling the plug.
They’re showing the two hour opener again on Thursday if you missed it last night and feel like wasting 2 hours.
3 Comments
Where’s the review of HBO’s Rome I’m waiting… slacker..
Posted by JI on 31 August 2005 @ 5pm
It’s… on my recorder. But first, Halo!
Posted by boolean on 31 August 2005 @ 8pm
I watched the 2 hour “pilot” last night on my Tivo. I liked it, but it didn’t excite me as I’d hoped. Overall, a very good review by our good friend Boolean, and spot on.
Rome is pretty good, I Tivo’d that up as well since it’s in HD and it watched the first couple episodes over the weekend. Overall, not bad, I’ll keep watching, though I’m too tired to post a review of my own now. I’ll let Boolean do that, he’s quite good at it.
Posted by Dr_Death on 6 September 2005 @ 2pm