Movie Box Review

We round out our survey of some of the more notable busted pilots of the season with the distinctive POE, produced by Warner Bros Television for ABC and written by Chris Hollier (a former writer for Kyle XY).  Unfortunately, this pilot stands for the proposition that "distinctive" doesn't necessarily equal "good."  

Poe's distinctiveness, for one thing, is decidedly second-hand.  It's clearly inspired by the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes movies, with a 19th Century literary figure being reconfigured as an anachronistic action hero.  Here, of course, the unlikely hero is an author rather than a fictional character:  Edgar Allan Poe (played by Chris Egan, who was the male lead in Letters to Juliet and a star of NBC's flop Kings).  We find him living in 1840 Boston as a dashing newspaper reporter (according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, in fact he was living in Philadelphia at the time, writing for literary journals and married to the 18-year old he had wed 5 years earlier, when she was only 13--but no matter). Just so we'll know this really is that Poe, the pilot includes a cask of Amontillado, a woman named Ligeia, and of course a raven.  (There's also a morgue, albeit not noticeably rue.)

The show's Poe is a true believer in the supernatural who solves seemingly impossible crimes for the police on the side, with a sidekick in the gorgeous Celeste (Natalie Dormer, The Tudors' Anne Boleyn), another reporter who's not-so-secretly in love with Edgar and who believes there's a rational explanation for any bizarre phenomenon.  (Mulder, meet Scully.)  They also have an African-American MD (Leslie Odom, Jr) to consult with them, and the inevitable authority figure (Kevin McNally) who sputters at Poe's reckless investigations but has to respect his results. 

The pilot never finds a viable tone.  It's even more anachronistic than the Downey Holmes (in a dance sequence, we watch the couples waltz while the soundtrack plays contemporary pop music), and Egan's performance seems to be a riff on John Barrowman's Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood; aside from whether Egan is in Barrowman's league (he's not), Captain Jack is very specifically a man living outside of time, which is why the original performance makes sense.  Poe, supposedly an actual person living in 1840, just sounds silly as he bounds around in period costume, but acts like he's just back from lunch in Brentwood.

The show doesn't have much to recommend it on any other level, either.  The pilot's plot is complicated without being satisfying (women seemingly possessed by demons are actually being drugged by the villain so they'll commit murders for him), and when the show has Poe giving little attention to Celeste in order to moon after ex-fiance Sarah (Tabrett Bethell), it seems to be asking us to question his intelligence.  (Although I guess this Poe shows better judgment than the real one, staying away from 13-year-olds and all.)  Director Alex Graves tries, despite what must have been a limited budget, to give the show a polished look, but it still feels pretty cheap.  

The word was that Stephen Gaghan's pilot METRO was in serious consideration for NBC's schedule until the very end (conventional wisdom has it that the final choice came down to Metro vs. Awake, and the latter made the cut).  That's too bad:  the pilot is an impressive piece of work, one that may have been a little too smart and ambitious for its own good.

Like Gaghan's scripts for Traffic and Syriana, Metro weaves together several strands of story around a broad theme, in this case the city of Los Angeles, its politics and crime and how the two can be interchangeable.  Top-billed Jimmy Smits is the city's fictional mayor, hungry for power and more than a little lecherous, but in the pilot his role is no more prominent than those of several others.  It seems like the series would have been to some extent a police procedural, with Noah Emmerich as an alcoholic cop newly moved to LA from New York to be with his teen daughter after his ex-wife moved them both across the country, and Danny Pino as his younger, more impulsive partner whose girlfriend (Daniela Alonso) is the Mayor's beautiful (and pregnant) aide.   

The crime around which the pilot turns is the broad daylight killing of a Brentwood teen at a pool party.  The victim turns out to have been doomed by mistaken identity, and the discovery of the real target leads to one of the Mayor's most powerful and influential supporters (Miguel Sandoval), a real estate mogul with ties to the underworld.  (In a topical detail, the Mayor appoints the man to his committee evaluating LA football stadium proposals.)   It seems that the city is about to be embroiled in a gang war that traces up to the mogul and his foe, another tycoon played by Ray Wise, and that battle would no doubt have made up much of the substance of the series.

Any show that tries to analyze the political workings of a big city from the viewpoint of the cops and the justice system is asking to be compared to The Wire, which is sort of like having your wall mural compared to the Sistine Chapel.  Certainly Metro wasn't in that league.  The pilot struggles to fit its story into the scant time left in a network hour after commercials, and one really has to pay attention to keep all the characters and their relationships straight--and "has to pay attention" isn't the kind of thing that scores well with TV focus groups.

Nevertheless, this was a show with genuine promise.  Gaghan directed the pilot himself, and the show moves with breathless speed but also knows when to pause for some sharp, incisive dialogue.  (One hopes, though, that the scene virtually duplicated from The French Connection was an intentional homage.)  The cast is strong across the board, and there were plenty of plotlines that would have been interesting to follow had the series gone forward.

Metro was produced for NBC by 20th Century Fox Television, and considering the quality of the project, there must have been discussions about trying to move it elsewhere after NBC passed; it may have been too serious and complicated for some potential buyers, and not edgy enough for others.  Whatever happened, this was one of the lost opportunities of the new season.  (The potentially happy epilogue is that Gaghan, moving on as TV writers must do, has just sold a new TV project, this time to FOX--perhaps it will fare better.)

SMOTHERED, which was produced for ABC by Warner Bros Television, falls into the category of "not as bad as you'd think."  The concept is Predictable Sitcom 101:  a young couple (Kyle Howard and Brooke D'Orsay) whose daughter is about to celebrate her first birthday, is invaded by both groups of in-laws.  His (Marcia Gay Harden and Adam Arkin) are pretentious New York Jews (he's a doctor, she drops French words into every conversation); hers (Julie White and John C. McGinley) are Southern Christians who vacation in Branson and watch Wipeout.  They compete with each other for every conceivable advantage with the little girl, from religion to clothing.  Do I even have to tell you that by the end of the pilot, both sets of grandparents are moving into town, so that had a series existed, the whole (as the paternal grandparents would say) mishpocheh would all have been living alongside each other?

All of this sounds eminently cringe-worthy, and rightly so.   But there was a lot of talent involved here.  The script was by Andrew Reich and Ted Cohen, who were senior writers on Friends (although it's been a tough road since then, with stops at Romantically Challenged and Worst Week).  More importantly, there's not a weak player in the cast:  White, Harden, McGinley and Arkin know how to time even the most obvious gag for maximum impact, and despite the broadness of their roles, they keep mugging to a minimum.  (Some credit doubtless goes to director Andy Ackerman.)  Howard and D'Orsay are straight men to the older experts, but even they manage to be amusing.  And Kate Micucci (she was the ukulele-player on Scrubs, and more recently, still with ukulele, she's recurred as the local daycare center manager on Raising Hope) has a schtick that shouldn't keep on being funny but somehow is, as D'Orsay's younger sister who's cheerful about always being in her sister's shadow and ignored by literally everyone.

Should Smothered have gotten on the air?  The show might never have been less hackneyed than its premise; on the other hand, it's not as though that cast was going to get any less talented as the show went on.  Compared to Last Man Standing, Man Up and Work It, all of which are getting on ABC's air, it starts to look better than OK.  Given its tone and senior cast, it might have found a happier home at CBS, but that network didn't have any need for second-hand sitcoms this season. 

The pilot for HOMEGROWN, produced for CBS by Warner Bros Television, seems determined to hit as many dysfunctional-but-loving-family cliches as it can.  We have one grouchy alpha male in a household of women (here played by Gerald McRaney), the multiple generations living in one sitcom (huge living room!) house, the single mom daughter (Becki Newton) and her seemingly perfect but actually neurotic sister (Tricia O'Kelly), the addled but still quippy grandma.  (The role of the slacker, maybe stoner, younger guy is apportioned to the single mom's boyfriend instead of being a younger brother.)  All bases are covered, even the dad of the single mom's son:  a hunky, irresponsible fireman who drives her crazy but still--no, really!--strikes sparks with her.

Admittedly, the bar for old-fashioned TV is a lot higher at CBS than at any other network not called TV Land, but Homegrown is so by-the-numbers that all it elicits is a yawn.  It was written by the team of Jackie and Jeff Filgo, who had huge success on That 70s Show and more recently worked on The New Adventures of Old Christine, and could have come out of a kit.  Will grandpa's suspicions that the 12-year old boy is looking at porn online turn out to be true?  Of course.  (Since this is CBS, the prudishness even extends to a website we never see--we're told he's looking at girls in bikinis tickling each other, which suggests that the boy could really use some tutoring in how to operate a search engine.)  Will everyone awkwardly try to tell the kid about the birds and the bees?  Sure.  Will it look like the single mom is spending the night with her boyfriend, but really she's somewhere quite innocent?  Absolutely.  Will everyone who's been fighting unite for hugs in the last minute?  Check.

Homegrown is no great loss, except that it wastes two genuine TV stars in McRaney and Newton.  Watching McRaney do his macho-but-softhearted schtick could teach Tim Allen a lesson or two, and Newton spent years stealing every scene of Ugly Betty that wasn't nailed down; even with the most hackneyed dialogue, they bring charm to their characters and rapport to their scenes together. They're a good team... just not on this show.

Sometimes it's not hard to see why a network passes on a pilot--CBS has limited need for new half-hours to begin with, and this year 2 Broke Girls and How To Be A Gentleman were clearly better.  The retro nature of the project would shut Homegrown out of most other venues, so the parties involved will move on to hopefully greener pastures in the new development season that's already getting underway. 

For those who like Six Degrees of Separation-ish linkages:  the protagonist of ABC's busted pilot GRACE is Michael Grace, an aging, womanizing choreographer who bears some resemblance to Bob Fosse--or at least to Joe Gideon, the center of Fosse's semiautographical All That Jazz.  The actor playing Grace is Eric Roberts--whose own signature role was in Fosse's final film Star 80, as the husband/manager and ultimately murderer of Dorothy Stratten.  Did Roberts model his performance on Fosse?  We'll never know, as Grace has deservedly gone to the busted pilot scrapyard.

Like NBC's Smash, Grace was intended as a quasi-musical, a drama set in a venue where musical numbers could fit with some degree of naturalism--in this case, a dance company.  But Smash this wasn't.  (My rave for NBC's show is here.)  The show was basically trying to be a hipper version of Brothers & Sisters, also centering on an extended family that was troubled but loving.  Although Michael was the spoke around whom all the plots revolved, the main character of the pilot is actually his daughter Sarah (Abigail Spencer, best known as the teacher who had an affair with Don Draper in Mad Men).  Sarah was brought up in her father's dance company and was a talented dancer herself, but opted for a safer lifestyle by going to law school and opening a firm with her husband Adam (Elon Bailey), who may or may not be having an affair; her avocation is getting her father and other family members out of scrapes with the law.  Sarah's half-sister Shayna (Sherri Saum) has an ex-husband who's trying to get back in her life now that he's sober, and a 14-year old son who needs to stay out of trouble.  Adding to the family complications is the pilot's main plot development (and the one most like a Brothers & Sisters storyline):  the revelation that Sarah and Shayna have yet another half-sister that they never knew about, Eden (Anabelle Acosta), who--guess what?--is an aspiring dancer who'll join Michael's company.

There was certainly enough going on to give Grace plenty of soapy story, but the pilot doesn't come together.  Despite the plotlines from  Brothers & Sisters, the pilot was actually written by a Grey's Anatomy veteran, Krista Vernoff, and quite a bit of the dialogue sounds like it's out of the Grey's playbook, especially when Sarah goes off into the kind of rambling, emotional, meant-to-be-lovable monologues that Shonda Rhimes does so well.  Michael just isn't as charismatic as he needs to be, and the fragmenting of scenes to present his subliminal bursts of choreographic inspiration--as he watches a banner waving in the breeze, or a couple arguing--gets filed under Must Have Seemed Like A Good Idea.

It's entirely possible that BAD MOM wouldn't have worked as a network TV series.  It represented an unusual attempt for a broadcast network (ABC) to step into the "edgy" sitcom territory that's been the property of cable networks like HBO, Showtime and FX, and the pilot was clearly uncomfortable about just how far over that line it could go.  Even if the show had successfully arrived at a tone, it's not necessarily one that audiences would have watched in the numbers that broadcast networks need.  That being said... ABC is the network putting Last Man Standing, Man Up and Work It on their air next season (see our pilot reports here), and Bad Mom was infinitely more promising and funny than any of those. (The network seems to have filled its "edgy" quota with the definitely enjoyable--if more conventional--Suburgatory.)

The single joke of Bad Mom is in its title:  Julia (Jenna Elfman) is a hopelessly incompetent, careless mother who's aces at her job selling barbecues, but has no idea how to take care of her 2 kids--and her husband Ted (Tom Everett Scott) is no better.  She's managed over the years by relying on her mother Marian (Frances Conroy) for childcare, but when we meet Julia in the pilot, Marian's been on a summer vacation, and Julia doesn't even know where her children are spending their days.  When it turns out that Marian's met a guy while she was away, and she's not going to be as available to Julia as she's been in the past, Julia stubbornly insists she can take over, with predictably disastrous results.  

Not all that surprisingly, the script for Bad Mom is by a British writer, Sharon Horgan--the casually anarchic tone of the piece is more like Shameless than Malcolm In the Middle. (Horgan is also an actress, and she appears in the Bad Mom pilot as another mother who sometimes helps Julia out.)  While American sitcoms that toy with neglectful parents (Raising Hope, Roseanne) are mostly at pains to let audiences know how loving, albeit dysfunctional, their families are, the best that can be said for Julia in Bad Mom is that she's occasionally well-meaning. (When their son's hamster is feeling ill and he demands a visit to the vet, Julia's advice to Ted is to drive around aimlessly until the pet expires.)  

This is potentially dark stuff, and the show doesn't have the nerve that a series like Louie or Nurse Jackie needs in order to work.  Had Bad Mom gone forward, no doubt it would have had a constant problem with drawing laughs from ignored children while not alienating a mass audience.  But even in its uneven pilot form, Bad Mom has some solid laughs, and an expert cast.  Elfman does her best work in years as Julia, and Frances Conroy (who's already joined the cast of FX's Ryan Murphy horror series) is a terrific foil.  Even the kids are allowed to be sharp-witted.  Chris Koch, who's been directing episodes of shows like Modern Family and Cougar Town does a good job driving it all forward--there's even a familiar slapstick stunt involving someone sliding on a wet stage but shouldn't work, but does. 

Bad Mom's failure to make ABC's schedule is understandable (if you don't compare it to the shows they picked up instead), but a missed opportunity.  This is a pilot that could profitably be redeveloped into a snappy star vehicle for a network with more appetite for risk.

A MANN'S WORLD isn't the usual run of busted pilot.  Produced by Warner Bros for consideration by NBC, it's quite skillfully written and directed by Michael Patrick King, and it has a dramatic vision that sets it apart from mere failed genre efforts.  It also has a very strong performance in the lead by Don Johnson.  And yet, it's not hard to understand why NBC didn't put the show on the air.

The shorthand way to describe Mann's World is that it's Shampoo 35 years later.  The protagonist is again a (very heterosexual) Beverly Hills hairdresser, Allan Mann (Johnson), but at this point in his life, he has a successful salon of his own, a beautiful young (second) wife Lei (Kelly Hu) and a young child with her.  He also has an affectionate relationship with his ex-wife Julie (Ellen Barkin) and two adult children with her.  Mann seems to have everything going for him--except the fact that he's 60 years old and the clock only turns one way.  

Much like Warren Beatty's character George in Shampoo, Allan has a grand ambition:  to open a luxury spa alongside his salon.  And like George, he can't raise the financing--this time, not because he's young and not taken seriously, but because he's past his prime.  Allan, who embodies a world of vanity and age-consciousness, is desperate to prove that's not so, and as the pilot ends, he's going to risk everything to go ahead with the plan on his own. 

This is fairly serious stuff, and Johnson really delivers in the lead.  He captures Allan's arrogance and underlying terror, while easily bantering with his employees and family and deftly keeping his salon running smoothly.  King's direction is smart and the show looks great.  So... what's wrong?

For one thing, despite the strength of its main character and star, Mann's World has a lot of flaws.  The other regulars--Allan's wife, and especially the co-workers, are thin and obvoius.  The salon is run by Nicky (Mario Cantone), doing a toned-down version of his character in King's Sex and the City; other employees are variously stoned, anorexic, or libertine, none in very interesting ways.  Storylines set in the salon, which probably would have been the main locale of the series, seem unpromising.  The only people who make an impression in the pilot besides Johnson are Barkin, who is marvelous as the ex-wife, and Michael Lerner as Allan's business partner--but both of them are only guest stars.  

The show would also have been difficult to schedule and market, since it would likely appeal, for the most part, to an older female audience, which isn't NBC's chosen demographic.  By broadcast network standards, it's pretty frank sexually, which probably ruled out CBS, not to mention that they're not really in the soap business unless like Good Wife the project has a very strong procedural aspect.  So the show's only hope after NBC passed was probably cable--and even there, a 60-year hairdresser lead isn't going to be catnip to many networks.  (By now, it's probably had its chance to be pitched elsewhere and failed to land a home--also, King, who was co-creator of the sitcom 2 Broke Girls, has taken on showrunner duties there since co-creator Whitney Cummings is busy with her own series.)

A Mann's World could have been a watchable, even quality show for some network.  Sometimes that just isn't enough.

Not even the presence of Michael Chiklis and Elizabeth Perkins could make VINCE UNCENSORED endurable.   Deservedly consigned by CBS to its trash-bin, this isn't one of those pilots you'll be likely to hear about again. 


The storyline of Vince Uncensored uses a contrivance to get to an even sillier-than-usual version of a very old sitcom plot.  Vince (Chiklis) is a building contractor who recently suffered a brain aneurism.  His doctor (Vincent Garber; not clear if he was meant to be a series regular or a guest star) was able to save his life, but in the process of brain surgery, Vince lost the internal "censor" that tells us what thoughts to keep to ourselves; consequently, he now blurts out everything he's thinking, no matter how rude.  As you'd expect, this leads to Vince saying nasty things to his parents (Paul Dooley and Georgia Engel), his wife (Perkins) and daughters Rachel G. Fox and Marcella Lentz-Pope), not to mention making things difficult at the job when he confesses to a potential client that he, like all contractors, lies about his bids. 

Vince's uncontrollable honesty is a rip-off of Liar Liar, but really, Vince is just a more cartoonish version of the sitcom dad who always says the wrong thing, but who's good at heart and for whom everything ultimately works out (see, e.g., Last Man Standing).  The show wouldn't dare take the chance of having Vince reveal genuinely subversive thoughts about his family, so his insults are mostly just one-liners (when Perkins asks if a pair of slacks makes her ass look fat, he tells her it looks fat whether in or out of the pants).  Even his one potentially hurtful snipe, calling the daughter who's left college after a month a "whiny quitter," just leads to her decision to re-enroll in a community college closer to home (so she can stay a series regular).  Meanwhile, the level of humor is having Vince's mother talk about having vaginal rejuvination surgery, because there's nothing more sophisticated than having senior citizens make references to sex.  She, by the way, is one of those characters who are supposed to be charmingly alcoholic, while Vince's father just eats junk food and watches TV reruns.

It's hard to understand why Vince Uncensored is as bad as it is, because there was certainly no shortage of experienced personnel.  The witless script is by Phoef Sutton, a pro whose credits go back to Cheers (although he's never successfully created a show).  Conan O'Brien's production company developed the project, and the pilot is directed by Kelsey Grammer, who knows his way around multi-camera sitcoms--and yet the show invokes every cliche of that genre, from the giant overlit living room set to the overcaffeinated studio audience.  Even the cast pushes too hard, slamming those punch-lines home.  (Only Dooley manages to keep a bit of dry distance between himself and his dialogue.) 

There's no point in belaboring Vince Uncensored; it's one of those pilots that go bad every development season, seeming to have the right elements but falling flat on its face.  At least it's a show that should appreciate hearing the unexpurgated truth about itself.

The Sked's Verdict:  The Network Was Right