Lessons from Summer Burn-Off Theatre

At this time a year ago, "Knights of Prosperity" (then called "Let's Rob...") and "The Nine" were two of the most-anticipated new shows on any network. Now they're teaming up for ABC's microscopically-rated summer Wednesday lineup, and watching the two combined hours of both shows last night reminded me a little of their initial promise and a lot about why they both failed. Spoilers ho...

After Mick Jagger -- far and away the funniest part of the show -- refused to appear in any episodes past the pilot, "Knights of Prosperity" creators Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman spun their wheels for seven episodes before having Eugene and the Knights move on to a new celebrity target. In the last episode to air before cancellation, they briefly considered Kelly Ripa, but then Eugene fell in love with her and they turned their attentions to Ray Romano, who in the show's universe is in town starring in an off-Broadway show where he plays a heroin addict.

Now, Romano's a good choice: he's funny, he's available, and he's friendly enough with Burnett and Beckerman due to the Letterman connection (Rob and Jon were writer/producers on "Late Show," Worldwide Pants produced "Everybody Loves Raymond") that he's not likely to bail before they're done with him. And, like Mick before him, Ray proceeds to steal the show out from under the main characters, whether he's overacting in his play (which is so cheesey that its title is included in the dialogue) or whining at length about the burdens of celebrity.

(From what little I know about Romano, this doesn't seem like a stretch; the "Raymond" writers once described Ray Barone as being exactly like Ray Romano, only saner and nicer, and they weren't being sarcastic.)

But the fact that at least two of the celebrity targets (maybe three; I missed the Ripa episode) so easily upstage the regulars isn't a good thing, and it's one of several reasons -- along with the name, the premise, the timeslot and America's near-total mistrust of new comedies -- that the show failed. All of the Knights have their funny moments -- Kevin Michael Richardson as Rockefeller was a great "find" (in that most of his resume consisted of voice acting before this), and I hope to see more of him in the future -- but none of them, with the possible exception of Eugene, exist as anything but the broadest of stereotypes, there to do their schtick and drop whatever pop culture-themed punchline Beckerman and Burnett thought up at the time. A little of that goes a very long way, and if Jagger and Romano weren't written any more deeply, at least we had our prior knowledge of each to fill in the blanks.

The first of last night's episodes suggests that the creators were aware of this, as the script was devoted to humanizing Louis the intern by introducing his rich bastard father. (Played by one of my favorite Hey It's That Guy!s, James "If Cromwell's not available, I'm your man!" Rebhorn.) And, again, I laughed from time to time -- a rarity these days for network comedies -- but I'm not in any way surprised that the show didn't work.

As I mentioned when I wrote about "The Kill Point" the other day, it became obvious quickly that "The Nine" had a flawed concept from the start. The bank hostage stuff was inherently going to be more exciting and interesting than anything happening to the characters in the aftermath, and yet the flashbacks themselves had two basic problems: 1)There's no suspense about any of the broad strokes (how/when the siege ends, who lives, etc.), so all that's left to fill in are the smaller details like how Scott Wolf betrayed his girlfriend or why Kim Raver's hair got butchered; and 2)Even the filling in of said details was never going to live up to however we imagined it in our heads when the pilot had that amazing time-jump from the start of the siege to the end.

Last week's episode took place almost entirely in the bank and suffered from the no-suspense problem as it tried to create false jeopardy around Wolf's character, while last night's episode was largely about the survivors' present-day problems. The notion that they're all being watched because one of them was in on the robbery doesn't thrill me -- it's one or two steps removed from a silly "Prison Break"-style conspiracy theory -- and yet I suppose it's more dramatic than most of the episodes that aired back in the fall. Interesting isolated moments here and there, but this is one of the most dramatic pilot-to-series quality drop-offs I've ever seen.

Anybody play nostalgic masochist like me and watch either one? What did you think?

Speaking of Massive Attack...

... it's time for a massive catch-up, before I get too bogged down toggling between Giants-Cowboys and my regular Monday night shows. Really brief spoilers for, in order, "Gilmore Girls," "The Nine," "My Name Is Earl," "Kidnapped" and "Dexter" coming up in a jiffy...

Here's the funny thing about "Gilmore Girls": For all the deserved bitching about April as the Cousin Oliver and Lorelai sleeping with Christopher, I don't have a problem with either April or a Lorelai/Christopher couple in a vacuum. I just hated how April was used to make the Lorelai/Christopher thing happen. April as a character is fun, and she brings out a diffrent side of Luke. Meanwhile, Lorelai and Chris have always had chemistry, and the last year or so of the show established that he had finally grown up, so I can see them working together, even if the first six years of the show conditioned me to want Lorelai to end up with Luke. The "Snakes on a Plane" teaser was the most "Gilmore"-y scene we've gotten post-Palladinos, and Lorelai basking in Emily's arrest was close behind.

For all that Hank Steinberg has said he learned from "Lost" and "Prison Break" how not to piss off his audience with the slow reveal, it really feels like "The Nine" is dragging out its account of the hostage crisis. Three episodes in and we're still only on the first 10 minutes or so of the robbbery. It's especially frustrating because the robbery scenes are far and away the best part of each episode, making this show a kind of mirror, mirror version of "Lost," only instead of spending too much time on the past, they're spending too much on the present.

Despite featuring minimal contributions from Joy and Randy, this was probably my favorite "My Name Is Earl" of the season, thanks to TV-Kramer as the lead singer and another fine appearance by Vonnie Ribisi as Ralph.

And so "Kidnapped" begins its end on Saturday nights. I'll be curious to see whether NBC sticks to their commitment to air all 13. I believe Kevin Reilly would, but is he or Zucker calling shots like that? And because they're compressing a 22 episode story down to 13, I find myself not bothering to think too much about whodunnit and why. Instead, I just enjoy watching this group of actors work together. Damn shame they won't get to do it for very long.

Finally, I'm still loving "Dexter," but aside from Dexter himself, Flashback Harry and maybe Rita, I find myself not caring all that much about the characters. I understand the philosophy behind wanting to flesh out the supporting cast -- if this show runs for years and years, Dexter won't be able to carry every episode all by his lonesome -- but he's such a bizarre, unique, riveting character that the relatively normal concerns of Angel with his failed marriage or Doakes and his hassles with the mob or the Lieutenant displaying human emotion feel really pedestrian. On the plus side, the revelation that the security guard was still alive, albeit not all in one piece, was extra-creepy, and reminded me a little of Mr. Sloth from "Seven" or the William Hurt charcter in the original "A History of Violence" graphic novel. (When I heard the movie eliminated that story element, I was stunned: how do you get David Cronenberg to direct a movie where one of the characters has all of his limbs gradually amputated over several decades and then cut all the amputations?)

Back to football...

What'd the mama tomato say to the baby tomato?

Catch-up time, so look for comments on, in order, "Gilmore Girls," "Jericho," "The Nine," "South Park" and "Grey's Anatomy," just as soon as I figure out whethere I left my $8 million check in the pocket of those jeans I just put in the wash...

Now that's more like it, "Gilmore Girls." Amazing how just bringing back Richard and Emily makes the show feel more like itself, isn't it? (And that's even with Emily's cleverness quotient only at 80 percent or so of normal.) I've always preferred the fluffier stories to the more overtly soapy material, so an episode dealing with Lorelai's fear of cotillions, Rory's fear of text-sex and Lane and Zach's fear of the life-changing creature growing in her belly was right up my alley. I'm even in an optimistic enough mood to say I'm looking forward to Lorelai and Christopher giving things one last shot. Independent of the idiocy with Luke and April, last season did an effective job of transforming Chris into the kind of guy Lorelai might actually want to be with long-term (and that's not just because of his money), so while there will no doubt be Internet rioting if she doesn't get back with Luke eventually, this isn't a terrible avenue to explore.

I'm really riding the knife edge with "Jericho." Like the idea, love Gerald McRaney, like certain moments (the outcast kid discovering the train, the scattered TV images), am more often bored than not with the execution. It feels like the show only occasionally wants to act like the country has been nuked -- in particular, the stuff with the teenagers bear no resemblance to how anyone, even teenagers, would behave in this situation -- the crisis of the week stuff is rarely compelling, and McRaney's been reduced to delivering a speech at the end of every other episode. If there was anything remotely more compelling in the timeslot, I'd be long gone.

Well, "The Nine" absolutely cratered in the ratings in week two. And unlike the pitiful Nielsens for "Friday Night Lights" (my other favorite pilot of the season), I'm okay with that. I'd said all along that I had no idea what the weekly show would be like, and if this is an example of that, I could take it or leave it. Some nice moments, mainly involving Egan acting out all those "Dead Poets Society" life lessons and Felicia realizing that her 911 call created all the problems, but overall it was meh. Because of the time-cut in the pilot, we had to imagine most of what happened during the robbery, and our actual glimpses of it aren't really living up to that.

"South Park" has come back with two duds in a row. The "World of Warcraft" episode was like an "SNL" sketch: funny idea that just kept going and going and going. (And there wasn't even a good payoff to all those images of the fat loser player; how did he react to getting killed?) The 9/11 episode, meanwhile, felt built on a strawman premise ("Ha ha! Look at all these idiots who don't think Al Qaeda caused 9/11!"), and the only parts that made me laugh at all were Mr. Mackey's quest to find the dookie-dropper, and the tumescent hijinks of the Hardly Boys.

And this was the first "Grey's Anatomy" all season where I didn't once feel the need to yell at the TV. I think the whole "Derek is The One" stuff is fairly lame, but at least the show finally acknowledged that he's an asshole who's probably going to cause her more pain, and at least Finn escaped with more dignity than, say, Aiden did on "Sex and the City." I like that McSteamy's even more of an overt jerk than Derek, and as soon as I saw the salesman patient's face light up real good, I turned to Marian and said, "Well, it's a good thing the hospital finally hired its first plastic surgeon so they'll have someone to deal with this," in the same way that any case remotely involving a woman's reproductive organs or children gets assigned to Addison, anything in the head is Derek's and everything else goes to Burke.

So Denny's father is Remo Williams? Huh. No idea where they're going with Izzy's newfound fortune, although realistically, the only way she could actually get back into the surgical program after, you know, killing a guy, would be through bribery. Callie and McSteamy are an interesting pairing as the two odd hotties out, and Korev and McSteamy are made for each other, professionally.

So what did everybody else think? Off to watch "Survivor" and "Ugly Betty."

The Nine: Great start, but what's next?

I review "The Nine" in this morning's column:

Reviewing a new TV show requires a certain gift for prognostication. I have to comment on the quality of the first episode, but also guess where the quality level is going from there. Some series pilots give me enough information that I feel like I'm sitting in the command center of the National Weather Service, with real-time barometric pressure data at my fingertips. The pilot for "The Nine" makes me feel like all I can do is spit on my thumb and hold it up to see which way the wind is blowing.

As a self-contained pilot episode, "The Nine" is one of the two or three best -- probably the best -- of an outstanding new season. The characters are vivid, the concept exciting and the execution flawless. And yet it gives me absolutely no clue how good the show will be next week -- or even what it might look like.

To read the rest, click here. We'll also use this as the place to comment on the pilot tonight

Pilot Watch: ABC's people who need people

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition! The ABC pilots have arrived! And the nice people in the ABC PR department have even thoughtfully grouped them thematically. On the first disc, and the only one I watched, were "The Nine," "Six Degrees" and "Help Me Help You" -- all part of the network's latest attempt to duplicate the success of "Lost." With the failure of "Invasion" and "Night Stalker" (not to mention "Surface" and "Threshold"), someone in development realized that maybe it isn't the skiffy elements that made "Lost" a hit, so now they're trying to borrow another theme: a diverse group of strangers brought together by unusual circumstances.

Will these work any better than the last batch of clones? We'll see. Some first impressions -- remember, these aren't reviews, as many, many, many things about these shows can and will change between now and September -- after the jump...

"The Nine"
Who's In It: Tim Daly, Chi McBride, Kim Raver, Scott Wolf, John Billingsley, Owain Yeoman, Jessica Collins and many more
What It's About: Nine survivors of a 52-hour bank hostage crisis find themselves inextricably bound to each other long after the ordeal ends.
Pluses: Novel concept and a tense pilot, well-directed by "West Wing" alum Alex Graves. The writers (primarily Hank Steinberg from "Without a Trace") do a very cool thing narrative-wise, skipping over virtually the entire bank robbery outside of the first and last minutes -- which makes the crisis seem much scarier than if we had to sit through all the usual hostage cliches. (I have little doubt that frequent flashbacks to fill in the gaps will be yet another gimmick lifted from "Lost.") Good cast, notably McBride, one of the great underrated actors of the last decade.
Minuses: While I have nothing against Scott Wolf, did we really need another "Party of Five" alum to make the "Lost" comparisons more obvious? Does Lacey Chabert have a sitcom deal at ABC? Not sure where the show goes from here; is it just a soap opera about the lives of people who wouldn't have otherwise met, or is there more?

"Six Degrees"
Who's In It: Jay Hernandez, Campbell Scott, Hope Davis, Bridget Moynahan, Erika Christensen, Dorian Missick
What It's About: Like the game says, we're allegedly all connected to each other by only six people. This is the story of six people -- an idealistic public defender, a burnt-out photographer, a widowed single mom, an ad executive, a limo driver with a gambling problem and a young woman on the run -- who eventually won't need Kevin Bacon to be connected to each other.
Pluses: That cast. Hernandez, Scott, Davis, Moynahan and Christensen all have healthy film careers in their respective niches, and whether they're in it because they wanted to work for JJ Abrams or because they all have big mortgage payments, it's impressive to have them all on one show. Good performances, potentially interesting characters, good cinematography and use of New York locations.
Minuses: Like "The Nine," I'm not sure what the show is long-term. Unlike "The Nine," the pilot wasn't exciting enough to keep me from asking that question every 10 minutes or so. Are these six people all best friends and hanging out at a coffee house by mid-season? And how do Campbell Scott and Hope Davis (who've worked together on four other movies, notably "The Secret Lives of Dentists" and "The Daytrippers") not share a frame of film in the pilot?

"Help Me Help You"
Who's In It: Ted Danson, Jere Burns, Charlie Finn, Suzy Nakamura, Jane Kaczmarek and more.
What It's About: A group therapist tends to the needs of his patients while suffering a mid-life crisis.
Pluses: I love Ted Danson. There, I said it. While I rarely watched "Becker," I enjoy the guy in pretty much anything else, and he gives a funny performance as a pompous, pretentious twit struggling to deal with his wife (Kaczmarek) leaving him for Biff Logan. Nakamura is also very good as a social incompetent who can't control what comes out of her mouth.
Minuses: It's shot on film with no laughtrack, but the writing frequently has the set-up/joke rhythm of a multi-camera sitcom, making an awkward fit.