Showing posts with label My Own Worst Enemy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Own Worst Enemy. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

My Own Worst Enemy, "The Hummingbird": Childhood's end

Brief spoilers for the second episode of "My Own Worst Enemy" coming up just as soon as I introduce Henry to the concept of Facebook...

Well, that was something of an improvement over the pilot. Both episodes have a fundamental logic problem where if you stop to think about anything -- why it would actually be advantageous to make agents with oblivious cover personalities, why Alfre Woodard would send Mike O'Malley out on a mission with only clueless Henry as his backup -- but the difference is that this one was just engaging enough that I didn't keep stopping to think. (Not as much, anyway.)

With the basic exposition out of the way in the pilot, we got to focus more on character this time. The whole experiment still doesn't make any sense, but at least we got to see Henry react the way an ordinary man might when faced with this ridiculous circumstance: he would do everything possible to prove the reality of his own life. That was kind of interesting, and Christian Slater did a better job of modulating between Henry and Edward than he did in the pilot. The show's still doing a lot of hand-holding about the identity switches, but that's the sort of thing you have to do early in a series. (See previous timeslot resident "Journeyman," which had to wait at least a half a dozen episodes before it could let its hero start treating time travel as a fact of life rather than an excuse to bug his eyes out and act confused.)

I still don't care enough about the show to want to watch it every week, especially with such a traffic jam of programming earlier in the evening, but maybe I'll check back in from time to time to see if it improves -- and/or if they can come up with some vaguely plausible explanation for the Jekyll/Hyde set-up.

What did everybody else think?
Click here to read the full post

Monday, October 13, 2008

Sepinwall on TV: 'My Own Worst Enemy' review

In today's column, I review "My Own Worst Enemy":
"My Own Worst Enemy" isn't remotely good enough to be as stupid as it is.

It's the sort of show where if you stop for even 5 seconds to think about what's happening, you'll realize none of it makes any sense. A Michael Bay movie can get away with assertions you might want to question -- Alien robots might talk like rappers! A 66-year-old Scotsman might be able to kill dozens of trained mercenaries by himself! Josh Hartnett is a credible leading man! -- because there are so many pretty pictures and loud explosions to distract your brain from properly rebooting. A mid-budget NBC drama starring Christian Slater doesn't have that luxury. There are plenty of dull passages where it's impossible not to ask who these people are, why they do what they do, and -- between this show, "Knight Rider" and "Kath & Kim" -- how much contempt NBC must have for its own audience's intelligence.
To read the full thing, click here. Not going to do a separate post tonight, so comment here if you watch the pilot. Click here to read the full post