In this day and age, when everyone has so little time and shows can be cancelled within just a few episodes, most shows put all their cards on the table straight away, leaving the viewer an easy decision – to watch or not to watch, based purely on that first episode, which should be representative of all subsequent episodes.
But there is a reason for the existence on this blog of first The Carusometer and then The Barrometer: shows may be bad or even completely different in their first episode and then get much better and/or change scenario after a few episodes. VR5 was one such show, a show considerably ahead of its time that dared to have a story arc, to fool the audience and expect them to be observant, to kill regulars and to introduce much loved characters only after the fifth episode.
It starred Lori Singer (Fame) as telephone engineer Sydney Bloom. Sydney’s had a crappy life. Her computer scientist father, Dr Joseph Bloom (David McCallum), was killed, along with her sister, Samantha, in a car accident when she was just a child. Her mother, Dr Nora Bloom (Louise Fletcher), a neuroscientist, ended up in a vegetative state after overdosing on pills.
Sydney’s a bit of a nerd. She likes playing with this new fangled virtual reality equipment that’s all the rage in the mid-90s (remember Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms, anyone?). One day, while taking a phone call from someone, she accidentally connects to her virtual reality equipment at the same time and finds herself entering the mind of the person she’s talking to. There, her subconscious is able to interact with the subconscious of the other person and change their behaviour when they leave this shared experience.
Troubled and wondering how on earth this could possibly have happened, she seeks guidance from noted scientist Dr Frank Morgan (Will Patton), who tells her she’s achieved VR.5 – virtual reality level 5. After failing to convince her not to use VR, he offers her a job with an organisation called ‘The Committee’, doing spy-like work. To keep herself grounded, she confides in her Zen-master like childhood friend Duncan (Michael Easton) who guides her both inside and outside of VR.5.
And that’s the first episode.
So you might assume that that’s the show: a slightly touchy feely show in which a nerdy woman goes around helping strangers get over their traumatic emotions while wearing much sexier clothes in a Cell-like virtual reality, guided by her craggy, uninteresting scientist mentor.
And you might have switched off as a result because it sounds a bit like complete bobbins.
Mistake.
Because it’s not long before you discover that all is not what it seems in VR5. Will Patton’s character gets killed in the fourth episode, to be replaced by the much sexier, somewhat morally ambivalent Oliver Sampson (Anthony Head – Giles from Buffy). There are problems with story continuity that at first seem like poor writing, but turn out to be planned – to be clues that not everything is what it seems, as you might expect with a show about different realities.
Because there are other levels of VR, including VR8 – the ability to transplant or implant personalities and life experiences in another person. And someone has done just that to Sydney. Here’s the title sequence.
In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC. Starts October 10 In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living. To air this month
You’d have thought that NBC would have learned from its mistakes, wouldn’t you? Not three years ago, Trauma burst onto our screens, a bombastic tale of daring emergency services personnel – in that case, paramedics. That got cancelled. At the same time, it was airing Mercy, a tale of regular-type nurses and their professional and emotional lives. That got cancelled.
A year later, after removing most Law & Order shows from its schedules, it picked up another Law & Order from producer Dick Wolf: Law & Order: Los Angeles. That got cancelled.
Yet, here, bursting onto our screens in less than a week from now is Chicago Fire, a bombastic tale of daring emergency services personnel – in this case, fire-fighters and paramedics – from Dick Wolf. Starring House‘s Jesse Spencer trying his level best not to sound Australian, Justice/The Whole Truth‘s Eamonn Walker doing pretty well as usual at not sounding English and Sex and the City‘s David Eigenberg, who actually is American but still sounding very New York indeed, it revolves around a Chicago fire station and its group of buff manly men, and a couple of tough but nurturing female paramedics.
As with Trauma, there’s a terrible tragedy within the first few minutes that traumatises everyone and sets up tensions between members of the brigade. Also as with Trauma, there’s a newbie who needs to learn the ropes, there’s inter-staff sexual tension, one of the fire crew is hooked on drugs and everything comes all right in the end.
In fact, the only thing in Chicago Fire that’s new or different from not just Trauma but also more or less any other TV show you’ve ever seen is a lesbian, a silent cameo by Rahm Emanuel and firemen getting their tops off a lot. I understand that’s in the job description, though.
In the US: Mondays, 10pm/9pm CT, NBC In the UK: Not yet acquired
We’re talking about a Revolution, baby.
There – thought I should get that one in while I still could. It’s not just an idle song quote either, because NBC is having its best Fall season in nine years. Yes, nine years. And Revolution, which has just been picked up for a full season, is part of this revolution, since it’s more or less stabilised now at about 10m viewers – the last time NBC was getting drama ratings at those rarefied heights, it got the vapours and had to be taken to hospital, vowing never to do it again.
Bizarrely, NBC is doing this with programming that’s distinctly sub-standard, including Revolution, the most sub-standard, generic piece of post-apocalyptic action you could hope to imagine. It’s Jericho 2: Now The Electric’s Stopped Working, too. It’s The Tripods without tripods. It’s The Changes but with magic disguised as science. It’s The Fantastic Journey without being at all fantastic. It’s Terra Nova without dinosaurs. It’s Planet of the Apes without apes. And all of those shows had more originality in just their title sequences than Revolution has had in three episodes.
And it hasn’t got any better since the first episode. If anything, Revolution has managed the epic feat of maintaining almost exactly the same level of blandness with every single episode. Nothing happens. Each week, Kristen Stewart’s dad from Twilight (Billy Burke) goes walking from dystopian town to dystopian town, generic action heroine (Tracy Spiridakos), stereotypical nerd (Zak Orth) and generic morally suspect Brit (Anna Lise Phillips) in tow. One or all of them get captured by the evil militia. They have some sword fights and they escape so they can walk on to the next dystopian town. Meanwhile, Gianacarlo Esposito spends each episode wasting his talent, sitting in a chair, glowering at helpless captive asthma boy (Graham Rogers).
Each episode has tried its level best to help raise Revolution above the absolutely ordinary. Episode two saw the return of a character assumed to be dead in the pilot. Episode three revealed that Billy Burke’s character may in fact be completely evil and introduced the reliably excellent Mark Pellagrino to the story. The third, which was actually ever so slightly better than the previous two, also managed to flesh out nerdy character, while making generic action heroine even less the supposed star of the show than she was before.
But fundamentally, no matter how hard the producers try, this is a bland show based on a stupid idea – that a shadowy conspiracy could and would stop electricity by changing the laws of physics and yet not stop people’s brains, chemical reactions, et al at the same time. Without changing the show’s entire set-up (always a possibility with Eric Kripke, his Supernatural becoming a fundamentally different show by about its second or third season from what it had been in the first season), it’s always going to be about a bunch of pretty, well groomed quirkless people in a somewhat bucolic dystopia, wandering from town to town, having competent sword fights against not especially threatening militia members and a guest threatening villain of the week, and learning a little more about a ridiculous MacGuffin and the pointless conspiracy behind it.
So I’m giving up on Revolution. I’m sure it’ll entertain young teenagers and anyone who has to watch TV with them, has an iPad to keep them occupied for most of it and likes swordfights. Everyone else, steer clear
