Comments on: UPDATED: Premiere Week 2010 – ABC

By: noname

noname — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:21:26 +0000

The plot of the pilot was as straightforward as a courtroom drama can be: vic murdered, suspect arrested, evidence presented, verdict delivered. Unlike Law & Order, where we’re just killing time until the wacky legal theory or implausible plot twist adds interest to the third act, or CSI, a show so infatuated with “evidence” that the microscopes and blood centrifuges should demand syndication residuals, The Whole Truth embraces the economical storytelling of an old Perry Mason episode. I frankly found it refreshing.

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 05:16:58 +0000

I dunno, man, this was pretty dire. No, scratch that — not pretty, just dire. I think sitcoms can be forgiven awful pilots, but I’ve never seen a great drama with a crap pilot. The show’s just so very impatient, wanting to set everything up in the pilot, and failing at setting anything up with even a modicum of skill in the process. It’s like the writers knew it was going to be canceled and thus tried to rush nine seasons into three episodes.

By: Derek Kompare

Derek Kompare — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 03:32:26 +0000

That’s OK. We’ve got most of the TV industry, and the President of the United States.

By: Anne Helen Petersen

Anne Helen Petersen — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:36:35 +0000

I too was initially attracted to this show because of its setting in Austin — but I hate the fact that it’s seemingly shot in Austin, but an Austin alternate universe, in which none of the actual landmarks (apart from one weird shot from the highway that shows the downtown and the power plant) are presented. Contrast this with Friday Night Lights, which feels so incredibly Texas (and, when the characters come to Austin, they *really* come to Austin).

Also: no one is sweating.
Also: one Latino/a?

Finally: the best thing about the pilot was the number of songs straight outta 2000.

By: Allison Perlman

Allison Perlman — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:03:47 +0000

You make some great points here, and I agree that it’s tough to integrate nine characters in one episode in a way in which their portrayals wouldn’t read as thin. I also love your take about the redefinition of the Gen Y here, though Amber nailed something that I felt while watching: that the gestures to the impact of political events on the lives of these young people read as both pat and implausible, especially since almost nothing that we learn of them in the pilot corroborates that they are indeed socially or politically conscious individuals.

I’ll confess that a big part of my interest in the show is its Austin setting, a city where I spent most of my 20s. I plan on giving the series a few more episodes, with fingers crossed that it’ll make nods to Tom Delay redistricting hijinks, the Texas Democrats 2003 stealth fleeing to Oklahoma, or some other event that takes advantage of its Texas setting. So far the the setting feels incidental to the story (save the Enron scandal, which irritated me probably more than it should have, but it’s just not plausible that an executive in a Houston-based company would be living in Austin, let alone sending his kid to a public school).

By: Nick Marx

Nick Marx — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 15:50:26 +0000

Alison and Amber: Maybe I was overly-forgiving after a week of awful pilot-watching, but I was kind of won over by many of the flaws you (and others on the innernette) point out. A lot of the “neatness” and groan-inducing John Hughes-y-ness of the high school stereotypes are, I hope, just a symptom of pilot-itis. They’re there for table-setting (9 characters!), and I imagine the “jock” and “overachiever” etc. labels won’t be seen again in future episodes.

Also, the good of what wasn’t in the pilot very much outweighed the bad of what was. I kept expecting a bunch of hacky and self-conscious references to social media throughout, but the one time we see it (the careerist D.C. type Facebook-stalking a former crush) is really subtly done. And yeah, the “I Love the 2000s” vibe had worn out its welcome by the 4th or 5th mention of 2000election9/11Bushistan, but it was nice to see the supposed narcissism of Gen Y treated with a little bit of the same gravity afforded Boomers for the past 40 years. (Sorry, Xers, your erasure from American cultural consciousness continues. But isn’t Thurston Moore supposed to be on Yo Gabba Gabba! or something?)

By: Derek Kompare

Derek Kompare — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:48:55 +0000

Ha! Indeed it was, aside from a half-dozen aerial shots of the Detroit skyline. The freeway chase near the beginning is particularly amusing for us locals, in that it’s heading both away from, and towards, downtown simultaneously.

We’re on our way to becoming the Toronto of Texas in that regard at this point, I suppose. :\

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:30:08 +0000

Random weird fact–your comment reminded me of ‘Robocop’–a movie set in Detroit, but shot entirely in Dallas.

By: Derek Kompare

Derek Kompare — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:58:15 +0000

I may just check this show out, if it grows out of its initial pilot-ness a bit, and can really dig into Detroit in a meaningful way. There are three series being shot in Dallas right now, but thus far the treatment has been either light (in The Good Guys) or incidental (i.e., both Chase and Lone Star are thoroughly produced here, but neither pilot was actually set here; Dallas oddly stood in for Houston in both!). Dallas, like Detroit and most other large cities, has its own mix of intriguing (and frustrating) ethnic and class divides, but a rich TV portrayal is unlikely. Perhaps we've been spoiled by The Wire, and our expectations of television representation of specific urban areas are too high.