Author: Kevin Watterson

Second Resort

I can save Last Resort.

My mildly-scathing take on why Last Resort won’t get a second season earned me a lot of criticism, particularly from fans who thought it was unfair to criticize the show for avoiding story lines when it ultimately had only one year to tell them. The reality is I wasn’t criticizing Last Resort for not resolving them, I was blasting the show for not pursuing them. We all understand a show is going to leave loose ends when it gets canceled in mid-season. Last Resort’s writers committed the mistake of not even creating loose ends.

This week’s penultimate episode rushed viewers to the mind-blowing end of the coup attempt in Washington that was supposed to clear the way for the Colorado’s friendly return to US shores. Shocking is the only word to describe the way the coup ended, and it shows that despite their storytelling failures the minds behind Last Resort know how to thrill an audience.

The big frustration I expressed in last week’s piece was the amount of dramatic material we weren’t seeing but had to be occurring in order to provide the plots we did see unfold. That frustration grew after Speaker Buell committed suicide on his rostrum. There’s no way the show can wrap up the Colorado’s fate and do justice to the story behind the man walking up to whisper in Buell’s ear. That’s too much for 42 minutes. I got to thinking how Last Resort really held two co-dependent dramas in one show. In one storyline, a United States submarine deals with the consequences of refusing a questionable order to launch a nuclear missile strike against Pakistan. In the other, a fight for control of the US government breaks out after the covert murder of a United Nations weapons inspector in Pakistan. Each plotline reacts to developments in the the other but can standing largel on its own. That’s when an idea hit me that could save the show.

“What if they brought Last Resort back, but the opposite?” What if, instead of episodes dominated by the Colorado, we get episodes – set concurrently with the season we already saw – focused entirely on what led to the mysterious fire order and the subsequent attempt to overthrow the president? Leading into the finale, we know that the US executed a weapons inspector in a plan to launch nuclear war on Pakistan, files on a cloaking technology are stolen to protect the knowledge of the Colorado’s location at the time of the order, a coup is planned and unravels at the last minute resulting in the confession and suicide of the man who would have been president. Most mysteriously, the suicide comes after a man in the appearance of a security agent interrupts the Speaker right before he declares himself the president.

See what I’m getting at here? Bring Last Resort back for a second season in which Marcus Chaplain and the Colorado are only relevant to the extent that their actions are necessary to explain what is happening in Washington. Make Last Resort into a political thriller (the likes of which ABC is already succeeding with in Scandal) about a corrupt president and the effort set out to depose him. Just like Chaplain and his crew had to decide between following orders and doing what they believed was right, Kylie Sinclair and Admiral Shepard can be shown in their crisis of conscience that leads them to go against their country’s government. The coup attempt obviously had a faction within it that doubted its course, just like the split that developed between Chaplain and the COB. Tell that story. There are enough similarities between the storylines to tell the second one in a completely different setting than season one but still maintain the core elements that let you know you’re watching Last Resort. And because it is happening at the same time as what we saw thus far, taking a season to tell the story won’t make us miss anything on the submarine. There may even be opportunities to add new material that boosts the Colorado’s story.

After the faux season plays out, the show would be ready to bring the two storylines back together in a third season. With a new audience and more practiced leadership, we could see the aftermath of whatever is set to happen in next week’s final episode.

Obviously, this is pure fantasy. Last Resort’s finale is in the can and set to air next Thursday. With all indications being that it will be a true ending, the show can’t be un-ended and re-launched. But maybe, juuuuuuust maybe, ABC will have a change of heart, pull the finale and give us a second Last Resort.

The Last Resort

This view of ABC’s soon-to-be-sunk Last Resort is so over the top in its praise of the show it reads like it was written by the show’s PR department. Last Resort is not “brilliant” – far from it – and it doesn’t have strong female leads. I could go along with saying it deserves a look from another network, but with all indications being that the writers had enough time to film a legitimate ending, it doesn’t seem likely.

Last Resort had a premise with loads of potential. How did it go wrong and not even make a full season?

The pilot was, in a word, fricking outstanding. Out. Standing. The submarine – the USS Colorado – under the command of Marcus Chaplain defied orders to make a nuclear strike on Pakistan due to Chaplain’s concern over receiving the message thru a secondary protocol that is only supposed to be used when the government has failed. When the apparently-not-failed government threatened to destroy his ship, Chaplain retaliated by firing a nuclear missile at the nation’s capital. The writers let several dramatic minutes pass before the nuclear warhead detonated…200 miles off the east coast. A commanding speech to the world by Chaplain near the end of the episode solidified him as the dramatic center of the show. Andre Braugher fulfilled the role with great deftness as the definitive authority of his boat dealing with an extreme crisis of conscience. Braugher is not the reason Last Resort failed.

Once the pilot ended and the show’s plot had to be unwrapped, the writers went at it like a greedy punk kid at Christmas, tearing through the story so haphazardly that they destroyed their present. This was its downfall.

There had to have been a reason the order to fire on Pakistan didn’t come through the standard chain of command. That’s a political intrigue. Viewers love political intrigue. Had the United States government been decapitated? The writers didn’t seem to care. They sent the show on a boring chase for some military tech developed by a powerful national defense family. How relevant that was to why the sub got questionable orders to fire a nuclear missile, I was never really clear. The tech figured prominently in getting the boat out of one life threatening situation and seems to have been forgotten about since. It was like watching Dogan in the temple all over again.

Finally, in the first episode of its four week sprint to eternity we got some hint of what happened leading up to the pilot. The president ordered an assassination on a United Nations weapons inspector which would be followed by the rogue order to launch nuclear war. Awesome! Why would a president do that? Was he being blackmailed? Was he a traitor? Was there an effort to stop it? How might that have played out? How did something like that affect the people involved? I have no idea. We have no idea. Maybe we will find out over the final three episodes, and I hope we do. But it’s too late. That’s just too much to leave out of a primetime show. It puts enormous pressure on what does make it into each episode. Last Resort couldn’t hold up.

The plan to manipulate LC Sam Kendall’s wife into turning him against Chaplain was obvious but still so poorly done as to be annoying. I completely expect a military wife to be fully devoted to her husband and vice versa, but you still have to earn it with me as a viewer. Last Resort didn’t. I’m not even sure it tried. Failing to invest in it was evident when their eventual reunion failed to deliver an emotional punch. (Desmond and Penny, anyone?) Her sudden death was surprising, but even that was undone by the end of the episode. Two characters in love don’t make a primetime love story. Two characters viewers love make a primetime love story. We were never made to love Sam and Christine.

Last Resort’s best storytelling may have come in the episode in which one of the sailors was tried for raping a woman from the island. Chaplain put Lt. Grace Shepard in charge of the case and by the end we learned that she is a rape victim. Powerful stuff that illuminates a character. We didn’t get much of that background for the other secondary characters even though it is all sitting there waiting to be told.

What did the French researcher leave behind live on this island and look for rare Earth minerals? How did the island’s despot come to power? How did a young woman come to run her own bar? Why is one of the sailors spying on her own country? If you enjoy good television, wasted potential like this should leave you seething. Much has been made of Shawn Ryan’s run of bad luck that now includes Last Resort. It ain’t bad luck. Hollywood should take out a restraining order against him on behalf of good material. He and anyone else responsible for how this story was told ought to have their keyboards confiscated by time travelers who can ensure they never touch them again.

Well then what did Last Resort have right that I enjoyed it enough to be disappointed? I think it did the drama exceptionally well. The trap of a show about a submarine is spending too much time threatening to sink the sub. Last Resort avoided that, creating dramatic situations that were intense and entertaining even in the absence of great character-based storytelling. Give the show credit for that. I would even say that alone could have been strong enough to overcome the show’s faults. Saying so only makes it that much more disappointing that they couldn’t put storytelling and drama together. They could have made the kind of show people hang on every spring and can’t wait for every fall.

Some have said Last Resort was too masculine and that it faced stiff Thursday night competition. Both probably carry a kernel of truth. Both are minor reasons compared to its overall failure to develop a better story. So, sorry, Yahoo Contributor Network bro, Last Resort didn’t take any chances, and that’s why it’s about to get dry-docked.

Revolution? Meh.

As I watched the fall season of NBC’s boldly hyped new drama “Revolution” I kept thinking that this isn’t really a show about how the world lost electricity.  What is it then?

Is it a show about life without electricity? Not really. The story takes place 15 years after the power went off, so everyone is beyond learning how to live in a post-electric world. We aren’t seeing them struggle with the give and take between the modern lifestyle they were used to and the pre-industrial world they were forced to live in.

Is it a show about reuniting family? Maybe. In order to get the power back on (in a way that prolongs his power), militia leader Sebastian Monroe kidnaps the son of a prisoner whom he suspects knows why it went off in the first place, hoping the threat to his safety will force her tell him how to turn it back on. This prompts the boy’s teenage sister, Charlie, to chase after him with her step mom and a friend from their cul-de-sac village. She reunites with mysterious Uncle Miles in Chicago and they trek east to the heart of Monroe territory on what seems like a suicide mission. So it’s sort of a show about reuniting family.

But that would only work if I actually cared about them reuniting, which I do not.

As Lost showed us so well, stress reveals characters. It can also change them. We don’t know how the blackout changed these characters because we only met them after it did. By starting the show 15 years later, the writers forced themselves to put that journey on the back burner. The show suffers because of it.

Except when it doesn’t. The only story with any emotional resonance during the fall season was the death of Maggie Foster, Charlie’s stepmom. Here the writers took the time to show us what she went thru after the blackout. Knowing what she lost, what she gained and what she had to give up on, bought her untimely death just as Lost bought Boone’s death in season one. A one-episode look at Aaron Pittman revealed that he is more than just a tech wizard wandering aimlessly in a no-tech world. Before we knew his story, he was the fat nerd with a beard. Now we feel sorry for him but also happy that he has found self-worth in this group.

The show doesn’t do as well with its main characters, and that’s where it really falls flat. The flashback stories that are supposed to draw us to them aren’t compelling. Charlie, for example, is driven to rescue her brother after her father dies. The writers then take us back to show her mom abandoning their family, creating a redundancy that fails to show us anything about Charlie we couldn’t have learned from the death of her father. They lost valuable story telling time showing it to us twice. Sloppy.

Swordsman extraordinaire Miles Matheson doesn’t deliver either. He is a whiny military burnout who constantly threatens to leave, and most of the time you find yourself wishing he would. His only purpose seems to be to kill bad guys when Charlie gets in trouble.

With its two main characters being so uninteresting, Revolution failed to get the payoff it was hoping for as the fall plot came to a head. Charlie’s reunion with the mother she thought was dead carried no emotional punch whatsoever. We only knew her father long enough to see him get killed; we’re supposed to feel something when she finds out one of her parents is still alive? After she spent the entirety of the season forgetting about that and chasing after her brother? Please. This would be akin to seeing Walt get taken from Michael without knowing what they each went thru before the crashed on the island. Makes Charlie’s reunion look pretty empty, doesn’t it?

Miles’ confrontation with Monroe had an exciting start, but it again fizzled because Miles just isn’t that likeable. The show missed an opportunity to bond you to his character when it revealed that the Monroe Militia logo contains to Ms to represent Miles and Monroe. Had the writers delved more into Miles than just showing him as a cranky former bad ass, that kind of revelation would matter. Instead, it is an afterthought.

I won’t be watching Revolution’s spring season. Considering that it features the unfathomably gorgeous Elizabeth Mitchell and guest spots from Mark Pellegrino, that should be an indication of how much I feel this show flopped. There are three timelines it can play with – pre-blackout, immediately post-blackout and the present day. All three can help it showcase its characters. If it sounds like the writers figured out how to do this, I might catch up with it. But I’m doubtful.

Once upon a flop

My original thoughts on Once Upon a Time with additions now that the season is over.

Emma Swan does not belong in Storybrooke.

Her look is all wrong. She wears red, deep and rich leather. Her hair falls carelessly across her shoulders. She wears a tank top. No one in Storybrooke even has a tank top. Storybrooke, Maine, has the visual style of a seaside small town. Its people are pleasant and content. Its colors are subdued in blue, green and gray. That is not Emma Swan. In the city, where she is supposed to be, she would not look the least bit out of place. But this is Storybrooke. Nothing is at it should be.

Addition:

Once Upon a Time really fell apart for me as the season wore on, in part because little things like this were discarded. Or maybe it wasn’t even there to begin with. /addition

ABC took this risk before, once upon a time. In 2004 it put a show on the air unlike any viewers had seen in some years, maybe ever. Perhaps because of their proven storytelling as writers on that show, the network gave Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz the green light for a project they conceived together before joining Lost midway through its first season. For Once Upon a Time to prove itself a success, they will have to have some creative magic left in their tank.

Addition:

I don’t think they do. The ratings say otherwise and it got picked up for a second season, but it lost my interest for being too juvenile. /addition

We meet Emma doing her job as a bailbondsman, er, person. She finds people. On her 28th birthday, she is found by the son she gave up for adoption 10 years prior. Henry is one of those children Hollywood always seems to find who is sufficiently smart. He convinces Emma to bring him back to Storybrooke, where he is the adopted child of a single mother, the mayor. With dark hair and grayscale fashion, Regina Mills is the epitome of an ice queen. She’s been the mayor of Storybrooke for as long as anyone can remember, and that’s exactly how she wants it to stay.

Henry wishes otherwise. We don’t yet know exactly why or how, but Henry believes his birth mother is the child of Snow White and Prince Charming, escaped from the fairy tale at birth right before the Evil Queen’s dark curse brought ruin. He brings her to Storybrooke on her 28th birthday, the time it was foreseen when she would return to break the evil curse. Emma sees enough to want to stick around, much to the delight of Henry and the despair of Regina.

Addition:

We never seemed to really get the why or how, one of this show’s many failings. /addition

Lost’s finger prints are all over Once Upon a Time. Like Lost, Time’s story bounces between to worlds — one the placid Storybrooke and the other a fairy tale. Although, Storybrooke is more like the flash sideways in that its inhabitants don’t know that their lives are not at all what they seem. Just like the escapees from the island, they are waiting to see, even if they don’t know it yet. The black smoke the Evil Queen conjures for her curse needs no explanation. And in probably the most blatant homage yet, Emma wakes up in jail after a car wreck in a way we saw someone on the island awaken and, ultimately, go back to sleep.

Kistis and Horowitz pledge Once will be a show steeped in character rather than mythology, and that’s good. Being based on one of culture’s most famous fairy tales gives the show all the mythology it needs. If it is going to keep viewers it will need the hooks that compelling characters provide.

Addition:

It doesn’t have those hooks. The characters are boring and shallow. It is as if they went too far away from complexity in trying to not trip in Lost’s pitfalls. In doing so they created a show better fit for Saturday mornings than Sunday nights./addition

Once Upon a Time is a daunting challenge. A fairy tale told to a prime time television audience? In 2011? Amidst the sprawling family of crime tech from CBS and more mature offerings of FX and premium cable channels? Once has to convince viewers to suspend their perception of what is and can be real so the show can have unfettered access to their imaginations, where it must and can only survive.

I will grant it because I like fantasy stories with unbelievable fictions, and my imagination is free to anyone who knows where to find it. Once Upon a Time has shown through two episodes to feature charming acting, intriguing curiosities and something else. Something not found in the gritty alleyways of dark and mysterious dramas. Something…Storybrooke.

Addition:

People are obviously buying it. I’m not. Once Upon a Time was too rambling in its week-to-week stories to keep my interest. The main characters are Emma, the kid, the queen, Mr. Gold, Snow White and Prince Charming. Way too many episodes about people other than them. In the aftermath of Revenge’s season finale, I can’t help but think how different and how much better the show would be if Madeline Stowe played the queen. 

Boring, meandering, shallow. It will be nice to have an hour to get things done on Sunday nights next fall before Revenge. 

Catching up with Person of Interest

CBS landed as many Lost graduates as any network in the post-island era. Daniel Dae Kim and Terry O’Quinn stayed in Hawaii for the seemingly dull remake of Hawaii 5-0, and now Michael Emerson is limping (literally – the character has a limp) his way thru Person of Interest (Thursday, 8pm) with Jim Caviezel. Emerson’s character is a billionaire technology wizard who developed a vast electronic surveillance network designed to catch terrorists. Now living off the grid, Emerson exploits a back door to the system that alerts him to people who are in the path of a possible crime. The kicker here is that the machine isn’t too smart for the show’s own good, it can’t tell whether a name it identifies is going to be a perpetrator or a victim.

Enter Caviezel, the reclusive former Jason Bourne-type military fighter who Emerson hires to be his brawn and creeper. He is, of course, a phenomenal combat fighter and a marksman. His job is to follow the names the machine spits out and determine their role in the crime the machine sees them committing or being the victim of. And the machine is never wrong.

Person of Interest is a variation of the crime-tech shows that CBS has perfected with CSI and NCIS. Lost snobs like me scoffed at those shows over the years for being too simplistic and lacking compelling serial stories, and thus far P of I doesn’t appear too concerned with satisfying us. But that’s not a bad thing here. It uses an inquisitive New York Police Department detective trying to piece together clues about this mysterious man who appears at seemingly random crime scenes to build a story that you can see lasting for the duration of the first season. The man is, of course, Caviezel.

Addition:

Got this one kind of wrong. I think Person of Interest is very much trying to not be a week-to-week who-dunnit cop show. I think it is succeeding at being deeper. /addition

Early episodes have also left enough open storyline possibilities that you can count on future episodes being more important to the larger story than the person of the week plot. At some point the machine will get a name wrong and either Caviezel or Emerson will have their sheltered world punctured by the inquisitive detective or the uber-character that is smarter than the usual villains.

Addition:

Bingo! /addition

If strong stories aren’t enough to keep Person of Interest on the air, Caviezel’s magnetic portrayal of his character will. He portrays his reserved but quietly tortured character with ease, giving him a mix of confidence and mystery that can’t be ignored. He’s simply someone you want to see on the screen as much as possible. Emerson’s character isn’t as strong – yet, which could be the show’s effort to lure fans with the more well-known Caviezel. Lost fans watching for Emerson will give the show enough time just to see him, so they can afford to neglect his character at the outset.

Addition:

They got more into Emerson’s character as the season went on. Ending the season with his apparent kidnapping shows they are ready to have him be the show’s most powerful storytelling character. /addition

With a curious premise, strong stories and impeccable acting, Person of Interest has a chance to curate the kind of loyal following that will keep it on the air for years to come.

Addition:

Person of Interest is the best new show of the season that I watched. It is more mature than Revenge but gives something back for straight drama. Now that both main characters are established I wouldn’t be surprised to see next season move toward more explanations of the machine and how it came about. The season finale and mystery women who made herself visible to the machine in order to find and kidnap Finch would seem to indicate that. I wasn’t wild about how they handled that character in the finale, but I’ll get over it. I hope she doesn’t displace the two cops – both of which are now in on the game – because I view them as very much part of the show’s core. 

Prediction: Finch will stay off screen for a notable number of episodes to start season two. We know they aren’t going to kill him off, but I think they will leave us wondering for a good long while so Mr. Reese can take a more aggressive lead. 

Carrie Preston had a spot role in season one, amusing of course because she and Michael Emerson are married. She had one scene in Lost playing Ben’s mom before she died shortly after giving birth. Here, she played Finch’s ex-fiance who thinks he is dead.