Turns out when it comes to television, we can't stop policing, or at the very least integrating who-dunnit elements into every show. From FBI agents to rent-a-cops, a number of new programs have a hint of procedural in the mix. Here's a rundown on how successfully the formula works for four fresh small screen outings, prompting the question, maybe it's okay to back off from the crime slant sometimes?
LIMITLESS
Yes, it's from the creator of Elementary. How'd you guess?
"Your brain is a miracle but it's not efficient. There's a maze inside everyone's head,
a labyrinth of missed connections and untapped potential."
(Limitless, Season 1, Episode 1)
When I first saw the film Limitless, I assumed it was an adaption of a Philip K. Dick story I'd never read. I was wrong, but thematically, the concept feels in line with his fictional explorations.
A mysterious drug expands the mind so the user can access all past memories, and understand complex sciences. The comedown is crazy-harsh though—live hard, and die young. But not pretty. Hell no.
Here the opening chase scene is nicely adrenalized, but the episode loses its smoothness as the story unfolds, struggling between the possibilities the concept offers, and the show's desire to fit within a standardized procedural format.
The most jarring aspect is the voiceover. I blame Mr. Robot! As a television storytelling trend, VO use is out of control. Remember when audiences deduced aspects of the character's personality from what was happening onscreen? #thegoodolddays
The real issue is, these voiceovers are often reiterating exposition. In this case, we're clear on how the lead (Jake McDorman as Brian Finch) feels about the drug; having a voiceover tell us he needs more of the drug is overkill.
After a while the voiceovers are occasionally replaced with a doppelganger hallucination of Brian, who converses with himself. The mix-up is much appreciated.
There are a lot of onscreen graphics—someone's a fan of Sherlock—and time lapse to represent when he's (intellectually) high. The ideas are there for the taking, but the show is hamstrung by its insistence on a procedural path. Ironically, considering the material, this interpretation feels like wasted potential.
The FBI agents are presented as slightly dense, and prone to jumping to conclusions. Example? When one agent asks the other why she didn't take the shot, I thought, ahhh, because he was an unarmed man standing still on a train platform?? Is it really okay to randomly shoot someone who hasn't been questioned yet because they were in a room with a dead body?
The episode plot that lead to setting up the series dynamic was slightly flat, but to be fair, some of the audience has seen the movie, others haven't. A sense of deja vu was inevitable.
Script slip-up: Brian dials for help and says he's been shot. Later in the call the agent says, "Where is the bullet, is it in your leg still?" Considering they're on the phone, and he never told her the location of his wound, it's either a) a mistake, or b) she's taking the drug too and deduced from his voice that his leg is bleeding. Hint: Option B isn't the answer. Frankly, I would have appreciated the twist.
Script slip-up: Brian dials for help and says he's been shot. Later in the call the agent says, "Where is the bullet, is it in your leg still?" Considering they're on the phone, and he never told her the location of his wound, it's either a) a mistake, or b) she's taking the drug too and deduced from his voice that his leg is bleeding. Hint: Option B isn't the answer. Frankly, I would have appreciated the twist.
By the end, Brian can take the drug without negative side effects, and the ambivalent FBI agent becomes his handler so they can solve crimes together. (Nobody needed a mind-expanding drug to see that coming.)
Bradley Cooper puts in a cameo, and while he's fantastic, that's a problem in itself. He's a movie star for a reason, so in comparison, great performances from the rest of the cast become good, and good efforts suddenly seem lacking.
IN SUMMARY: A solid effort that fails to utilize the concept's potential. When you're the smartest person in the world, what do you do? Help local law enforcement, of course, cause hell, COP SHOW.
Blindspot runs into that modern mishap whereby it assumes a bold female lead has been created, when in fact interpretations are leaning uncomfortably in the opposite direction. Here, a woman's body covered in mysterious tattoos becomes an excuse for lingering nude shots, both in the promos and the pilot.
The amnesiac in question is strikingly beautiful, an impression exaggerated by the fact her eye makeup survives drugging and interrogation. (Either that, or federal agencies provide reall-y thorough care these days.)
It's important to state the cast does a good job. The Jane Doe character (played by Jaimie Alexander) just feels too damsel-in-distress; her emerging superhero-like fighting and language skills seem a nod to the modern desire for strong female leads, but it's perfunctory at best. She is still a victim, and one hard to deeply connect with, considering she offers the audience no real personality (yet). FBI agent Kurt Weller (played by Sullivan Stapleton) is set up as her knight in shining armor from the get-go, the show's truly powerful anchoring presence.
Putting these problematic issues aside, the procedural elements are not really innovative enough for a pilot.
I had problems believing no one in the entire American government had access to a translator for a particular Chinese dialect. Cue eye roll. Also, wouldn't the Jane Doe character be undergoing serious psychological assessment and study? When it's decided she can tag along with fieldwork, I couldn't help rolling my eyes.
Basically the pilot kept—hiccupping. My bro would say, chill, it's not a documentary, but there are elements of procedural dramas that need to feel real world enough for me to stay engaged.
Cinematically, the pilot was extremely stylized. Similar to a music video in places (dark and blue-cold), MTV shows came to mind. Occasionally stunning, with great editing and pacing, the visual style was intense. A number of shots were beautiful, but the constant camera motion and the spinning and out of focus elements blurred within the frame were almost too much for me.
Certain times the pilot appeared determinedly stylized, regardless of whether or not the scene benefited. For example—when an agent is questioning Jane Doe at a table, the edits were plagued by unnecessary subtle camera shake (or as I call it, "camera shiver"). Did that really work within the context of the scene? Was it really bringing something extra to the table? (Pardon the pun.)
On a side note: The cute British doctor or forensics type who makes quirky comments is becoming a bit of a trope. Not that I mind, just interesting to see. Also, there's a chance I may have watched too much Supernatural. When Weller found the sulphur, my immediate thought was, of course: the baddies are demons.
By the end of the pilot, the series had been set up for a procedural future. Our agent and woman-suffering-chemically-induced-amnesia will now solve the mysteries put forward by the tattoos on her body. Clues were also dropped for a narrative that would span the whole season, if not the series.
IN SUMMARY: Slightly let down by an uninspired dot-to-dot (or is that tatt-to-tatt?) procedural plot, and a problematic vision of a "strong" female lead. I really wanted to like Blindspot more, and will watch a few episodes to see how the show unfolds.
Minority Report is a great opportunity for a film-to-television transition, but it stumbles in execution. Once again, instead of strengthening the story, the procedural elements hinder it.
Out of all the new pilots, the lead character here (Stark Sands as Dash) felt the most real. His suffering was interesting, his attempts to grasp at fragments of the future were heartbreaking, and his loneliness was palpable. Earnest and troubled, I wish we could have just watched Stark alone for a few episodes in a not-so-brave new world before crossing paths with his future odd couple procedural partner.
The film Minority Report was based on a Philip K. Dick story and there are always many layers to his narrative. Here, the pilot hints at all these really complex, fascinating issues, then skims past them to provide time for clunkier set up scenes with the police characters, and it's an odd choice.
Someone really tried with this series; you felt it in the clever little gadgets and special effects representing future tech. But these snippets weren't enough to salvage the wreckage they were making throughout the script with the stale cop storylines.
Visually the show would have been better off adopting the camera and lighting options of Blindspot. Everything is too bright, and deserved more space and time, in terms of execution. The audience needed to brood. They needed to feel a little lost in the dark with Dash. The bright shots and slightly distant camera work kept viewers from connecting. And the cops, well, they are the least interesting pieces of the puzzle.
Mind-blowing elements skimmed over include: criminals who were incarcerated before committing a crime; the revelation that the precogs' visions didn't always match, inferring destiny wasn't fixed, something the government covered up; learning Dash's participation in the program wasn't voluntary; discovering how ill-treated the "criminals" were; and the different prejudices that had evolved since the period the film was set in.
Instead, we got to watch tacky police banter, with agents wearing rehashes of cyber wardrobes from the nineties. I kept having flashbacks to Razor and Blade from Hackers whenever the character of Akeela came onscreen, and it wasn't helping me take the investigative team seriously.
IN SUMMARY: Minority Report had the potential to be psychologically challenging, but the final product isn't brave enough, and sticks too tightly to a shallower format, which is a pity.
This is mash-up television. Lots of genres thrown together in a blender, with subtle and not so subtle stabs at beauty, sexuality, and of course, sorority culture. Chanel No. 1 (played by Emma Roberts) is equal parts intimidating and pathetic. Jamie Lee Curtis as the Dean is brilliant. I also thought the other Chanel's were well cast. (Yes, you read that correctly—IT'S A CHANEL WORLD OUT THERE.)
The creator list includes Glee and American Horror Story credits, and combines the best of both worlds in this outing. Granted, making fun of today's materialistic and shallow teen culture is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but nonetheless, there are lines here worthy of Mean Girls and Heathers level quotage. Speaking of Heathers, the scene with the girls buried in the lawn was a definite homage. Please let there be croquet in a future episode!
(And I'll never think of TLC's Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls the same way again, btw.)
It's important to leave logic at the door. I still don't understand why they hid Chanel No. 2's body (vale Ariana Grande, your death scene was HILARIOUS), when they had another body in the garden, but hey, logic isn't this show's strong point. It's all about sassy social commentary. Oh, and the slashing.
I like that it's sort of a procedural, but not really. I mean, there are murders, and everyone is trying to solve them. Or hide the evidence. Or find the bodies they've misplaced, but still, it's a who-dunnit at the core. So far the cops aren't getting much of a look in, and the rent-a-cops aren't doing too well either. (Should have kept to those laps around the Best Buy carpark, Shondell.)
The whole thing is rife with terrible stereotypes but to me it seemed like it was making fun of them, or their continued existence/employment in film and television. Audiences will likely be confused by Scream Queens to some extent, because it appears serious, and then seriously spoofs itself. #WTF Tonally, the show jumps all over the place, but that's part of its charm.
I love the strange hit-and-miss weirdness. This is one series that for sure isn't allowing itself to be weakened by the procedural/unsolved crime aspects. Scream Queens is strangely fun, and shows that you can include murders and unsolved crimes without hamstringing a series.
IN SUMMARY: Scream Queens is loud and bold and tackily gory, just as the name implies. Definitely fun viewing.
BLINDSPOT
Is there any way we can work in another shot of the lead naked? C'mon people, think!
Blindspot runs into that modern mishap whereby it assumes a bold female lead has been created, when in fact interpretations are leaning uncomfortably in the opposite direction. Here, a woman's body covered in mysterious tattoos becomes an excuse for lingering nude shots, both in the promos and the pilot.
The amnesiac in question is strikingly beautiful, an impression exaggerated by the fact her eye makeup survives drugging and interrogation. (Either that, or federal agencies provide reall-y thorough care these days.)
It's important to state the cast does a good job. The Jane Doe character (played by Jaimie Alexander) just feels too damsel-in-distress; her emerging superhero-like fighting and language skills seem a nod to the modern desire for strong female leads, but it's perfunctory at best. She is still a victim, and one hard to deeply connect with, considering she offers the audience no real personality (yet). FBI agent Kurt Weller (played by Sullivan Stapleton) is set up as her knight in shining armor from the get-go, the show's truly powerful anchoring presence.
Putting these problematic issues aside, the procedural elements are not really innovative enough for a pilot.
I had problems believing no one in the entire American government had access to a translator for a particular Chinese dialect. Cue eye roll. Also, wouldn't the Jane Doe character be undergoing serious psychological assessment and study? When it's decided she can tag along with fieldwork, I couldn't help rolling my eyes.
Basically the pilot kept—hiccupping. My bro would say, chill, it's not a documentary, but there are elements of procedural dramas that need to feel real world enough for me to stay engaged.
Cinematically, the pilot was extremely stylized. Similar to a music video in places (dark and blue-cold), MTV shows came to mind. Occasionally stunning, with great editing and pacing, the visual style was intense. A number of shots were beautiful, but the constant camera motion and the spinning and out of focus elements blurred within the frame were almost too much for me.
Certain times the pilot appeared determinedly stylized, regardless of whether or not the scene benefited. For example—when an agent is questioning Jane Doe at a table, the edits were plagued by unnecessary subtle camera shake (or as I call it, "camera shiver"). Did that really work within the context of the scene? Was it really bringing something extra to the table? (Pardon the pun.)
On a side note: The cute British doctor or forensics type who makes quirky comments is becoming a bit of a trope. Not that I mind, just interesting to see. Also, there's a chance I may have watched too much Supernatural. When Weller found the sulphur, my immediate thought was, of course: the baddies are demons.
By the end of the pilot, the series had been set up for a procedural future. Our agent and woman-suffering-chemically-induced-amnesia will now solve the mysteries put forward by the tattoos on her body. Clues were also dropped for a narrative that would span the whole season, if not the series.
IN SUMMARY: Slightly let down by an uninspired dot-to-dot (or is that tatt-to-tatt?) procedural plot, and a problematic vision of a "strong" female lead. I really wanted to like Blindspot more, and will watch a few episodes to see how the show unfolds.
MINORITY REPORT
Props for a future where selfie cameras can fly...
Minority Report is a great opportunity for a film-to-television transition, but it stumbles in execution. Once again, instead of strengthening the story, the procedural elements hinder it.
Out of all the new pilots, the lead character here (Stark Sands as Dash) felt the most real. His suffering was interesting, his attempts to grasp at fragments of the future were heartbreaking, and his loneliness was palpable. Earnest and troubled, I wish we could have just watched Stark alone for a few episodes in a not-so-brave new world before crossing paths with his future odd couple procedural partner.
The film Minority Report was based on a Philip K. Dick story and there are always many layers to his narrative. Here, the pilot hints at all these really complex, fascinating issues, then skims past them to provide time for clunkier set up scenes with the police characters, and it's an odd choice.
Someone really tried with this series; you felt it in the clever little gadgets and special effects representing future tech. But these snippets weren't enough to salvage the wreckage they were making throughout the script with the stale cop storylines.
Visually the show would have been better off adopting the camera and lighting options of Blindspot. Everything is too bright, and deserved more space and time, in terms of execution. The audience needed to brood. They needed to feel a little lost in the dark with Dash. The bright shots and slightly distant camera work kept viewers from connecting. And the cops, well, they are the least interesting pieces of the puzzle.
Mind-blowing elements skimmed over include: criminals who were incarcerated before committing a crime; the revelation that the precogs' visions didn't always match, inferring destiny wasn't fixed, something the government covered up; learning Dash's participation in the program wasn't voluntary; discovering how ill-treated the "criminals" were; and the different prejudices that had evolved since the period the film was set in.
Instead, we got to watch tacky police banter, with agents wearing rehashes of cyber wardrobes from the nineties. I kept having flashbacks to Razor and Blade from Hackers whenever the character of Akeela came onscreen, and it wasn't helping me take the investigative team seriously.
IN SUMMARY: Minority Report had the potential to be psychologically challenging, but the final product isn't brave enough, and sticks too tightly to a shallower format, which is a pity.
SCREAM QUEENS
Murder scene dialogue delivered entirely in text messages. What's not to like?
"You are an awful person."
"Maybe. But I'm rich and I'm pretty so it doesn't really matter."
(Scream Queens, Season 1, Episode 1)
The creator list includes Glee and American Horror Story credits, and combines the best of both worlds in this outing. Granted, making fun of today's materialistic and shallow teen culture is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but nonetheless, there are lines here worthy of Mean Girls and Heathers level quotage. Speaking of Heathers, the scene with the girls buried in the lawn was a definite homage. Please let there be croquet in a future episode!
(And I'll never think of TLC's Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls the same way again, btw.)
It's important to leave logic at the door. I still don't understand why they hid Chanel No. 2's body (vale Ariana Grande, your death scene was HILARIOUS), when they had another body in the garden, but hey, logic isn't this show's strong point. It's all about sassy social commentary. Oh, and the slashing.
I like that it's sort of a procedural, but not really. I mean, there are murders, and everyone is trying to solve them. Or hide the evidence. Or find the bodies they've misplaced, but still, it's a who-dunnit at the core. So far the cops aren't getting much of a look in, and the rent-a-cops aren't doing too well either. (Should have kept to those laps around the Best Buy carpark, Shondell.)
The whole thing is rife with terrible stereotypes but to me it seemed like it was making fun of them, or their continued existence/employment in film and television. Audiences will likely be confused by Scream Queens to some extent, because it appears serious, and then seriously spoofs itself. #WTF Tonally, the show jumps all over the place, but that's part of its charm.
I love the strange hit-and-miss weirdness. This is one series that for sure isn't allowing itself to be weakened by the procedural/unsolved crime aspects. Scream Queens is strangely fun, and shows that you can include murders and unsolved crimes without hamstringing a series.
IN SUMMARY: Scream Queens is loud and bold and tackily gory, just as the name implies. Definitely fun viewing.
