I caught NBC’s Monday premieres tonight: the series premieres of Chuck and Journeyman, and the season premiere of Heroes. Here’s my quick thoughts:
Chuck was a lot better than I was expecting. It’s not the out and out comedy that the commercials make it out to be, but it was very well directed (by McG, no less) and had some excellent action scenes. The characters, especially the titular character Chuck, are sincere and believable (with the exception of Chuck’s nerdy sidekick, Morgan.) I’m especially looking forward to some post-Firefly-but-still-badass Adam Baldwin. The whole thing felt very much like a movie, including the typical silly fake computer stuff. I’ll definitely be checking this one out in future weeks, and hope that it stays interesting and doesn’t fall into a “problem of the week” rut.
Heroes was, well, Heroes. You’ve probably made up your mind about this show already, and this episode sure won’t change your mind- especially since there was very little actual superpowers used in this opener. I like that they’ll be delving into the “older generation” hero group and everything they’ve been done. Delving into the mythology is definitely one of the more interesting aspects of the show as a whole. It also looks like they’ll follow the formula of last season by having everyone’s stories start way, way apart (Peter Petrelli is in Ireland, Hiro is hundreds of years in the past AND in Japan) and slowly cross their paths as the series goes along. Best moment was Hiro: “Oh no. I broke history.” Second best was seeing Mr. Bennet break his manager at Kinko’s fingers. We’ll see… I may have to do what I did with the last season and skip a bunch of episodes until it picks up.
Journeyman is going to have to contend with being compared to Quantum Leap. The premise is still that a man is randomly jumping through time, trying to change something in the past (in this case, to eventually save someone’s life, so that person could go on to save other lives.) There are a couple of interesting hooks to grab onto: there are multiple people jumping through time (including the main character’s presumed dead ex-fiance) and there’s some kind of rules to the jumps. However, a big focus of the series is on the main character and his relationship to his family, and how jumping through time and seeing his old flame changes that. There was also a lot done about convincing everyone that he’s not crazy or on drugs. It seems unlikely that they’ll do heavy “time travel puzzle” type stories (despite the potential with being able to bring objects with him back in time), and focus more on the “figure out who you’re supposed to help”, so the general flow is like Quantum Leap. Like the other two shows before it, catching more episodes is going to be necessary to form a full opinion of the show.
Well NBC, you’ve done a good job at hooking me. Let’s see if you can carry through.
Can you view any of these online? Legality preferred, but not necessary.
Haven’t checked, but tv-links.co.uk probably has them…
It’s always good to see Jayne again…
If you go on to NBC.com, you can watch the full first episodes of everything I’ve listed (and I assume, the other big premieres of the week like Bionic Woman.)
I should add about the Heroes premiere: it’s not very friendly to totally new viewers. You’ll probably see all these characters and the situations they’re in and be like… so? But for those of us who know these characters from last season (and most of them were from last season) it did update on their whereabouts.
I was going to write a review for the premiere of Heroes, but that does not seem necessary. I thought it was fantastic. I’m hooked onto these shows that essentially slow roll characterization and plot piece by piece. Ultimately, I want to have every answer, but I want it to take 5-10 years to learn everything. These shows that do this (Heroes, Lost) sort of follow the George R.R. Martin style in “A Song of Ice and Fire.” When a story is told in a personal way, no matter the media type, I feel more connected to the context and characters. My only complaint is that I thought at least one of the Petrelli brothers would have certainly died in the explosion. I just assumed the older brother was dead, but apparently he’s just a drunk. I suppose this was common knowledge to people who pay attention to the cast list, but I didn’t bother to investigate what I thought was obvious.
Always feel free to put up another view.
I was surprised to see that nearly everyone survived too. It’d be funny if the only one not to survive from last season is DL (aka The Black Guy)
Mr. Bennet and Hiro still dominate the show in terms of awesomeness, but other characters are starting to grow on me (specifically Parkman and Suresh who I thought were pretty meh previously). I have to say *SPOILER* that I’m so sick of amnesia as a plot line that I’m immediately turned off to watching Peter Petrelli dick around Ireland. Besides, the city of Cork sucks.
Amnesia is really overdone, I agree, especially in superhero fare. BUT you know what would be awesome? If he burned out his brain and lost all his memories… forever! Now that would be new.
Anyway, I guess when you’re the most powerful, can use anyone’s power guy, you need to be nerfed. Ah well.