Hat Tips To "Do No Harm" and "Burn Notice"
In the next seven days, two great television series will bow out. One of them has only been on for a few short months while the other has been on for seven seasons. One will be remembered for years as the greatest TV adventure show of its era while the other will be remembered by nobody due to its epic failure in finding an audience. I'm about the only common denominator linking the two shows and perhaps it's my eclectic and eccentric taste in TV series that is leading to their mutual inclusion in a blog post, but whatever it is, I'm gonna be feeling pretty empty on Thursday and Saturday evenings without them on any longer.
"Do No Harm" premiered last January on NBC to the smallest audience for the premiere of any network series in history. Bad start! It was canceled the following week. And it's easy to see why....while simultaneously hard to see how the show ever made onto the air in the first place in the year 2013. The premise is straight out of the high-concept TV lineups of the 80s, featuring a modern take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with actor Steven Pasquale (who almost single-handedly makes this show) playing mild-mannered neurosurgeon Jason Cole (get it? Dr. J. Cole?) by day and drug-dealing bad guy Ian Price by night. It's a ridiculous premise, but something drew me to the show thinking it might be good old-fashioned fun. But even in my wildest expectations I couldn't have imagined how thoroughly entertaining and well executed it would be.
Critics, apparently too clueless to realize the show wasn't taking itself serious, panned the show, at least based on the pilot. But frankly the mythology has grown considerably more intriguing since that first hour. And what most likely had the simple minds of TV critics so befuddled was that the show was able to yuck it up with a very subtle wink, even incorporating some compelling medical drama subplots amidst the Jekyll-and-Hyde cartoonishness. There are a number of things that worked for me about this show but what worked best is the same story template that made the first seasons of "Prison Break" and "Revenge" two of the best seasons of network television in the past decade. In all three cases, a very intelligent protagonist was attempting to control an impossible situation, but ended up getting humbled by all the unpredictable detours that threw monkey wrenches into their well-laid plans. And the ensuing suspense of all the surprise curves in the road and the character's off-the-cuff, back-against-the-wall evasions of the detours destined to blow up their plans made for incredibly compelling episodic television.
"Do No Harm's" gimmick was never conducive for a long run, but it would have been fun to see what they could have done with a full 22-episode season. Even so, I'm grateful to NBC for airing the 11 unaired episodes postcancellation on Saturday nights during summer. They didn't know they were finished when they wrapped up production so I'm not expecting closure in tomorrow night's finale, but I'm hoping the show ends in a way that at least ties up some loose ends for fans....all 37 of us.
As for "Burn Notice", which premiered in July 2007, the USA Network action series was clearly a throwback to any number of 80s-era adventure shows ranging from "MacGyver" to "Miami Vice" to "The Equalizer", but updated for the storytelling style of modern television with a lighthearted tone that is difficult to pull off successfully. I must admit that I found the show's concept, about a spy disowned by the CIA to be fairly limiting at first. Writers did a good job finding ways to drag it out, but I've been concerned for the show for awhile that it ran too long the risk was very high for it to jump the shark. Thankfully, the showrunners recognized that risk and are bowing out after 110 episodes, which is the equivalent to five seasons on network TV and seems to be the tipping point for even the best action shows.
The sharp dialogue and chemistry between the characters are two of the elements that make "Burn Notice" work so well, but it's one of the few action shows I've ever watched that can leave you in stitches. Obviously "Knight Rider" and its ilk produced a lot of belly laughs during the day, but they were unintentional. "Burn Notice" actually tries to be funny and succeeds. Michael Westin's believability in peddling his elaborate hoaxes onto his amateur hour bad guy targets is a testimonial to the cleverness of the writing and the cool of the character. If the show had a weakness, it was exactly what I found to be its biggest potential liability from the outset. Every season, there was a new heavy in the CIA who was responsible for "destroying Michael's life". While all of them were individually entertaining and excellent foils for Michael, they seemed to exist merely as a way of prolonging the "burned by the CIA" mythology long after that plotline had outlived its usefulness. Of course, if that aspect of the show had ever been resolved, Michael wouldn't have continued to humiliate and lay waste common south Florida lowlives which was the show's core, so I was willing to play along with an overextended "burned spy" storyline.
I was lukewarm at best at the direction of this abbreviated final season until the last two or three episodes, which have been some of the best the series has made. With the momentum I've seen from the last couple of episodes, I'm pretty confident the show will go out riding very high with next Thursday's finale. The new fall TV season looks to have some above-average fare in the previews are any indication, but the new shows will definitely have some big shoes to fill with the departure of these classic series.
"Do No Harm" premiered last January on NBC to the smallest audience for the premiere of any network series in history. Bad start! It was canceled the following week. And it's easy to see why....while simultaneously hard to see how the show ever made onto the air in the first place in the year 2013. The premise is straight out of the high-concept TV lineups of the 80s, featuring a modern take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with actor Steven Pasquale (who almost single-handedly makes this show) playing mild-mannered neurosurgeon Jason Cole (get it? Dr. J. Cole?) by day and drug-dealing bad guy Ian Price by night. It's a ridiculous premise, but something drew me to the show thinking it might be good old-fashioned fun. But even in my wildest expectations I couldn't have imagined how thoroughly entertaining and well executed it would be.
Critics, apparently too clueless to realize the show wasn't taking itself serious, panned the show, at least based on the pilot. But frankly the mythology has grown considerably more intriguing since that first hour. And what most likely had the simple minds of TV critics so befuddled was that the show was able to yuck it up with a very subtle wink, even incorporating some compelling medical drama subplots amidst the Jekyll-and-Hyde cartoonishness. There are a number of things that worked for me about this show but what worked best is the same story template that made the first seasons of "Prison Break" and "Revenge" two of the best seasons of network television in the past decade. In all three cases, a very intelligent protagonist was attempting to control an impossible situation, but ended up getting humbled by all the unpredictable detours that threw monkey wrenches into their well-laid plans. And the ensuing suspense of all the surprise curves in the road and the character's off-the-cuff, back-against-the-wall evasions of the detours destined to blow up their plans made for incredibly compelling episodic television.
"Do No Harm's" gimmick was never conducive for a long run, but it would have been fun to see what they could have done with a full 22-episode season. Even so, I'm grateful to NBC for airing the 11 unaired episodes postcancellation on Saturday nights during summer. They didn't know they were finished when they wrapped up production so I'm not expecting closure in tomorrow night's finale, but I'm hoping the show ends in a way that at least ties up some loose ends for fans....all 37 of us.
As for "Burn Notice", which premiered in July 2007, the USA Network action series was clearly a throwback to any number of 80s-era adventure shows ranging from "MacGyver" to "Miami Vice" to "The Equalizer", but updated for the storytelling style of modern television with a lighthearted tone that is difficult to pull off successfully. I must admit that I found the show's concept, about a spy disowned by the CIA to be fairly limiting at first. Writers did a good job finding ways to drag it out, but I've been concerned for the show for awhile that it ran too long the risk was very high for it to jump the shark. Thankfully, the showrunners recognized that risk and are bowing out after 110 episodes, which is the equivalent to five seasons on network TV and seems to be the tipping point for even the best action shows.
The sharp dialogue and chemistry between the characters are two of the elements that make "Burn Notice" work so well, but it's one of the few action shows I've ever watched that can leave you in stitches. Obviously "Knight Rider" and its ilk produced a lot of belly laughs during the day, but they were unintentional. "Burn Notice" actually tries to be funny and succeeds. Michael Westin's believability in peddling his elaborate hoaxes onto his amateur hour bad guy targets is a testimonial to the cleverness of the writing and the cool of the character. If the show had a weakness, it was exactly what I found to be its biggest potential liability from the outset. Every season, there was a new heavy in the CIA who was responsible for "destroying Michael's life". While all of them were individually entertaining and excellent foils for Michael, they seemed to exist merely as a way of prolonging the "burned by the CIA" mythology long after that plotline had outlived its usefulness. Of course, if that aspect of the show had ever been resolved, Michael wouldn't have continued to humiliate and lay waste common south Florida lowlives which was the show's core, so I was willing to play along with an overextended "burned spy" storyline.
I was lukewarm at best at the direction of this abbreviated final season until the last two or three episodes, which have been some of the best the series has made. With the momentum I've seen from the last couple of episodes, I'm pretty confident the show will go out riding very high with next Thursday's finale. The new fall TV season looks to have some above-average fare in the previews are any indication, but the new shows will definitely have some big shoes to fill with the departure of these classic series.
posted by Mark at 10:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home