sheer potentiality

Thanks to Canadian TV, I was able to watch both of these often-conflicting shows in the same night without mucking about with BitTorrent.

24…I’m not sure what to say. I mean, clearly all the major crises were averted and Jack Bauer continued to defy capture and adversity. It’s not a terribly unpredictable show in that respect. Oh, and James Cromwell died.

Heroes was just great. I mean, it was a little less-than-awesome to have 40 minutes of characters having heart to heart dialogues about their heroism and only about 90 seconds of climactic battle with Sylar. But most of the heart-to-heart dialogues were good, and climactic battles are expensive to do the special effects for.

Also, it was nice to see Hiro thrown into the past to meet his hero. Almost better than seeing Nathan sacrifice himself to save the city from Peter.

(You might notice the lack of spoiler warnings. That’s just how I roll.)

(This is my review of the “Conviction” pilot, which I’ve also posted to iTunes.)

Imagine, for a second, that “Law and Order” had around five prosecutors instead of two, that they were all in their mid-20’s, and that the series followed all the prosecutors around all day instead of watching a single case from investigation to trial, and you have “Conviction”. The idea seems intriguing, but is ham-handedly executed. The supposed premise of this spinoff—that of developing the prosecutors as fully-rounded characters—is, as of the pilot, a tragically unrealized ideal. In trying to portray the young prosecutors as overwhelmed by taking their first cases, creator Dick Wolf overshoots and takes the series straight into farce. One prosecutor leaves evidence in the courtroom (evidence which incidentally includes crack cocaine), vomits from sheer stress, and apparently forgets how to correctly question a witness and has to get tips from the baliff.

There are some redeeming performances but overall nothing worthy of note. If you want a legal drama with interesting characters, “Boston Legal” is a much better choice. If you want to watch a realistic, focused, and compelling legal drama, “Law and Order” is still the gold standard. And if you want to watch a compelling character drama, simply look elsewhere.