Joel In One-Hostages

Well, this was rather disappointing.  They took a pretty badass plot: A rogue FBI agent(Dylan McDermott) and his team are holding a brilliant surgeon’s(Toni Collete) family hostage until after she operates on the US president, a routine procedure, by the way.  Her job is to make sure he dies or else her family gets it.  I was expecting 24-ish intense scenes of interrogation and espionage, and instead I got flat reveal after flat reveal.

I really don’t like the cast very much.  I was just hoping the premise could lift them above my dislike for them.  I was throwing shit at my TV when Toni Collete won the Emmy for The United States Of Tara.  Uggh, that show was awful.  Tate Donovan( who plays Collette’s husband) has bored the ever loving shit out of me in everything he’s been in, yet somehow continues to get plenty of work.  And then there’s McDermott, who I was always indifferent towards until he starting treating my darling Connie Britton the way he did on the initial season of American Horror Story.  Now he’s on my shit list.

They couldn’t have fit anymore tired tropes into this if they tried.  The surgeon operating under duress was already done last year.  It was called the Mob Doctor and it was putrid.  McDermott knows all the family’s secrets already through the pilot episode.  Husband fooling around on wife? Check.  Daughter secretly pregnant?  Check.  Son and buddy secretly dealing weed? Check and check.  You had what could have been a really cool show here, CBS.  And you still might.  Maybe you just decided to pour out all this exposition at once to make room for the craziness down the road.  I hope so.  I’m watching you.

 

3/10