When the new TV season started, I was surprised to see three new shows with what sounded like similar premises — Valor, a failed copter mission in Somalia; Brave, undercover military heroes; and this one, about Seals and weekly missions. That’s not unusual, multiple shows with a similar premise, but the fact that it was all hardcore military seemed unusual, particularly as few shows of this nature ever make it. If there’s too much rah rah rah, people tune out; if it’s all about the family drama, people tune out. The balance is hard to find.

From the original description, my prediction was:

CBS: Seal Team – It was a toss up with S.W.A.T., but I’m not convinced David B is right for the series – CANCELLED;

David Boreanaz is the leader of the SEAL team, and as you can see from my prediction, I wasn’t sold on his casting. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him as Angel. But I hated him in Bones and a few other quick roles. Yet I have to say, he doesn’t completely suck in the pilot. He’s still a bit uneven in places, using some sort of manic look to indicate his inner emotional turmoil, but for the team leader role, he’s not bad. Lots of quick scenes, good action, fits his abilities.

The rest of the team has a bunch of familiar faces, including A.J. Buckley. I watched him through five or six seasons of Justified and never realized he was Adam Ross from CSI: New York. How did I miss that? Some others, all fine, no issues. I really like the casting for the female roles…Michaela McManus (Aquarius, Awake, L&O: SVU) is relegated to playing David’s wife, not sure how big a role that will be for the series, but she’s capable of more. So is Jessica Pare (Jack and Bobby), as a CIA analyst.

Ratings are pretty good now that they’re nine shows in, and TV Grim Reaper is predicting renewal. Might be the first one I get wrong all year, and if so, I’m okay with that. I underestimated the show, and Boreanaz. Not enough for me to keep watching, but I can see where it might have grabbed some eyeballs.

From the original description, my prediction was:

CBS: S.W.A.T. – With H50 and MacGyver not strong enough to continue in my view, I’m going to bet on another throwback continuing with this one, so RENEWED

When the original S.W.A.T. premiered back in 1975, I was seven. I don’t see how that is possible, that I was that young when it debuted and yet still was allowed to watch it, but I had an advantage over other kids — I had a brother who was six years older and often I got to watch a lot of shows simply because he was watching them. And the show was kick ass cool. Hondo as the guy in charge, played by Steve Forrest. Robert Urich was the baby-faced Street, Mark Shera was Luca, Rod Perry was Deacon, and James Coleman was T.J. As sniper, he was frequently the trigger for Hondo to say, “T.J., on the roof!”. It was high-energy, fun and campy, and at the time, new and different. People had heard of SWAT back in the 60s with riots and things, but here they were in urban settings applying their special weapons and military-style tactics against new and more heavily armed bad guys. Two seasons later, it was done. 

Samuel L. Jackson tried to reboot it with a movie version, and it was watchable for nostalgia, not much more.

And I thought my prediction was good enough for this new one, sight unseen.

The new series has some twists from the old crew. Hondo is no longer the whitest cop you’ve ever seen, he’s a black Hondo played by Shemar Moore (Criminal Minds, Young and the Restless, Birds of Prey). He’s watchable when he’s playing everything super serious, but since he’s dating his boss, you have to watch some excruciating attempts at interpersonal acting. Deacon is played by Jay Harrington, and I knew he looked familiar, which I attributed to him likely having been guest star of the week on a lot of procedural shows. Nope, he was Steve on Coupling? Really? Never pictured him as comedic, but you almost never see him either, his role is extremely limited. Luca is played by Kenny Johnson, and once I got over reminding myself he wasn’t a young Gary Busey, I started thinking where I’d seen him. I recognized him more from shows I haven’t seen — like The Shield. I knew he was on it, but it wasn’t a show I watched. IMDB filled in the missing trivia — holy crap, he was Dewey on Saving Grace. I loved him then, which is also partly why I like him now. It’s kind of the same character…good cop, not the brightest acting, etc. Good casting. Victor Tan is a new team member, played by David Lim, and other than being Asian, his contribution to the show is extremely limited.

The two additions to the team though that are pretty great are Alex Russell as Street and Lina Esco as Chris, a female member of the team this go-around. Russell has a bunch of roles in shows and movies I’ve never heard of, so mostly a newbie, but he seems a bit like Chris O’Donnell in NCIS: L.A. While he doesn’t do much in the opener, a later episode has him undercover and the Ep was great. Equally, I like just about every scene that Esco is in. She looked familiar, and it took IMDB again to help me realize it was from the TV show Cane back in ’07.

There are a bunch of other support characters, including Hondo’s boss / girlfriend, but they add little to the show other than exposition.

Is the show great? Not really. It’s okay, if you can excuse race riots and other complicated social issues all being wrapped up in 44 minutes by a relatively new team leader. The show debuted really late for premieres, holding off until November, but as far as ratings are going, TV Grim Reaper is predicting renewal.

Why am I watching? I don’t know. It’s not great acting, little action, and not much in the way of special weapons or tactics.

Maybe I’m waiting for the rotation of “let’s have a special episode with THIS character” to make it around to Escu. Or just nostalgia. I didn’t think I’d still be watching after 7 episodes, but I am.

From the description, my prediction was:

CW: Valor – I would like to leave this one on the list as making it, and if it wasn’t the CW, I’d put it ahead of Black Lightning, with a serialized story about a failed copter mission in Somalia and flashbacks, could be great – CANCELLED;

The basis for the show is a helicopter mission to Somalia to deliver some soldiers to bring back a Somalia warlord as a prisoner. Except as they get back on board the copter, the locals show up, open fire, damage the helicopter and they have to ditch. The show then jumps forward a month to them back in the U.S., the two pilots made it, their gunner didn’t … he is MIA with the other soldiers who ditched before the crash. Pretty soon you find out that the two pilots lied in their after-action reports, and they’re hiding something. By the end of the episode you find out that after the crash, they got to shore with their prisoner who was not a warlord but an American soldier. There’s something else going on, the remaining soldier / CIA spook wants to kill him plus one of the pilots, but the female pilot shoots him first. He died, the prisoner got away, and the pilots were rescued after being in the hills for a week. Then they lied about everything afterwards to cover up the murder of the spook. But if secrets stay buried, there’s no show, so the gunner turns out to be alive and a POW, with his captors wanting to trade him for ISIS captives. No deal will happen, so the only way to get him back is a rescue mission.

I have three problems with the show, and I won’t be watching past this pilot. Don’t get me wrong, the plot is vaguely interesting albeit obvious — it was clear it was an American prisoner before it was revealed, there was some sexual tension between the pilots before it was revealed, and there was a crutch leaning on painkillers that was obvious before it was revealed.

However, that just makes it formulaic, not terminal. For me, the first problem is the sexual tension between the pilots. It is abundantly clear why the “stud” lead is attracted to her, he’ll sleep with anything. But there’s virtually nothing to explain why she would remotely consider him. Plus she has a boyfriend, and of course they have to have a fight in the Ep to give her “permission” to maybe do something with this other guy, even if she doesn’t. But it isn’t the sex that’s the problem — it’s the fact that these two leads lied to cover up the death, they’re potentially cheating on their partners, they’re violating tons of orders, and they’re not that heroic. I didn’t particularly care about either of them, and while it focuses on her, dragging her down also drags down the show. While they mouth the words, I see neither integrity nor honour to care what happens to either one of them. This isn’t Top Gun in copters, there’s no JAG or NCIS duty going on here.

Second, and maybe related to the first, the entire mission is going to be about either overtly black and white simplistic solutions or morally ambiguous choices. Neither of which are going to be particularly interesting because the simplistic ones are boring and the characters they have so far can’t navigate the grey zones since they seem to have almost no moral compass or code to guide them. While they want to rescue their friend, it seems almost as much about saving their own reputations and careers.

Third, the show is a bit of a one-trick pony. Unlike Quantico that did the flashback training to inform their actions going forward, this is telling the story in two different timelines, and really more like telling two stories. When those timelines catch up to each other, what then? Will they do the same thing next year for a potential renewal? Or just turn it into Top Gun with copters. The challenge too is they made the copter part BORING. WTF? How do you take the most exciting part and make it boring? I’ve seen more exciting flying twenty years ago with early Apache shows. Heck, even AirWolf and Blue Thunder made some of it look cool. Here? Not so much.

For the acting, there are only really two of any note, i.e. the two leads. Christina Ochoa plays Madani, the female pilot, and she’s not bad. I hope she gets something else next year, cuz I’m pretty sure this one will be gone. Matt Barr plays the male pilot, Gallo, and the whole time I was watching him, I was scratching my head where I had seen him before. I was sure he wasn’t the lead, but more a secondary character. Couldn’t place him at all, and I was starting to think maybe just a single episode of some series. And while he might have twigged my mind from shows like Castle, it was on Sleepy Hollow playing Hawley, the general black market anything for a buck dealer who ended up hooking up with the sister. I liked him then, and I really like him here. Just don’t like his character much.

Too bad the show didn’t live up to the hype, but I think this one will get cancelled.

Ghosted is a pseudo comedy from Fox that is basically Men in Black, without the straight man. My prediction, sight unseen, was:

FOX: Ghosted – Men in Black, weekly? With extra comedy? Yeah, that’s going to need a lot of work to keep it fresh – CANCELLED;

The basic premise is that there is an organization called The Bureau Underground who does the X-files / MIB thing. One of their agents has gone missing, and his last transmission was to find two guys — one is an disgraced astrophysicist working in a bookstore and the other is a disgraced LAPD missing persons detective working as a mall cop. TBU needs them to help locate the missing agent, and in return, they’ll try and help them get their jobs back. Deal.

Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation) plays the nerdy believer; Craig Robinson (The Office) plays the cop. Who doesn’t want to be partners or involved initially. They are okay together, not too over the top, and their partnership isn’t completely unbelievable. Way more understated then K though.

Ally Walker (Profiler) is familiar to me, but more for Taxi Brooklyn oddly enough. I like her, but have no idea what she’s going for in this portrayal — serious, comic, surprised, skeptical, vacuous? Adeel Akhtar looks to be comic relief in the office (ooh, forensics are weird and funny) and Amber Stevens West will be their weapons designer.

The pilot is full-on MIB, with aliens with no heads, space ships, and multiverses in the first episode. Nerds should love it but not sure it was funny enough for mainstream audiences. I liked it, didn’t love it, but it was cute. I’ll try a few more episodes but I think it will either need to up the humour or find ways to stay fresh.

I am brutal on sitcoms, very few in my mind are worth watching. And is there anything attractive about 9JKL?

Let’s see…parents live in 9J. Newly divorced actor son is “temporarily” living in 9K. And a married surgeon son with Asian pediatrician wife and new baby are living in 9L while a duplex is being renovated. All of which you learn in the first 3 minutes of the show’s exposition dump. You meet THE ENTIRE MAIN CAST in his one bedroom apartment while he is still in bed.

Actor Josh is played by actor Mark Feuerstein, aka show creator, and he is apparently drawing from his own life experience. I loved Mark back in 2002-2004 in a show called Good Morning Miami about a guy who becomes producer for a show called GMM. Lovable, boy next door, very clean cut, the show had little to offer but I still hung around for 40 episodes before it was cancelled. He then moved on to – dun dun dun – Royal Pains playing another relatively clean cut doctor living in Miami Beach (I think), and treating wealthy elite tourists in the area. You know as soon as you see him, there’s going to be sunshine in the episode. And he’s okay here.

Linda Lavin plays his mom, and like most sitcom parents, the character is one-dimensional and over the top needy. She has comic pedigree, but I haven’t seen in her almost anything I liked except the original Alice (1976-85), but at least she has some really good lines in this one. Throw in Elliott Gould as his dad. Gould was fine in Friends, Ocean’s Thirteen, Eleven, etc, but not a draw for me.

For supporting cast, there’s Matt Murray (Rookie Blue) as a doorman, not bad. The sister is played by Liza Lapira (NCIS, Dollhouse), but seems way too stereotyped here to tell if she has anything to offer. David Walton (New Girl) plays the brother and is beyond annoying. Sally Pressman (Army Wives) plays a potential love interest, but hard to tell if she’ll show up again. At least she has presence.

Which leaves only one other character. Albert Tsai (Dr. Ken, Fresh off the Boat) plays a wise-cracking pre-teen, and he has some GREAT lines. Unfortunately, they are poorly delivered, and off-key. It’s like they only had time for a single take. Hard to believe they didn’t recast him or reshoot the scenes. He even stumbles over one of his lines. But he has pedigree, so he will likely find his footing, but likely to be limited to single line exchanges and zingers.

I gave it a shot, but I’m sticking with my original prediction:

CBS: 9JKL – I love the main star, and everyone wants their family sitcom to work, but not this one about moving to New York and living between parents and siblings – CANCELLED;