When The Onion A.V. Club looked at the 2004-05 TV season last fall, we were impressed by the number of new shows with unique premises, promising casts, and smart writing. Now, in the thick of midseason, we're finding more shows with fresh concepts but faltering executions. Some are entertaining regardless, but few of the shows below are worth bumping Lost or Veronica Mars off the TiVo.
Numb3rs (CBS)
The Premise: FBI agent Rob Morrow solves crimes with the help of probability models designed by his math-prodigy brother, David Krumholtz.
The Difference: The most high-powered supporting cast on television–including Judd Hirsch as the boys' father, Sabrina Lloyd as Morrow's partner, and Peter MacNicol as Krumholtz's mentor–brings confidence and color to a show that could've been all about the whizzy special-effects sequences. But it would be a bad idea to dismiss those whizzy special-effects sequences, which show how math affects our daily lives.
The Future: Just about every episode of Numb3rs to date has followed the same pattern: A grabby opening crime, a cool explanation by Krumholtz on how math could help, a few scenes of warmly funny personal interaction between the supporting players and leads, then a routine cops-and-robbers segment, with clichéd cackling villains and bloody action sequences. So far, the producers keep finding ingenious ways to work math into the story each week, but they can't seem to figure out how to make the stories compelling beyond the first two acts.
Point Pleasant (Fox)
The Premise: With her adorable blonde locks, pleading moony eyes, and a face still rounded by baby fat, Elisabeth Harnois comes to the sleepy coastal town of Point Pleasant looking like a downy innocent, but deep inside lurks a bad widdle girl. After being rescued from the ocean during a mysterious storm, Harnois takes shelter with a kindly doctor (Richard Burgi), his wife (Susan Walters), and their outcast teenage daughter (Aubrey Dollar), who's thrilled to have a new friend. As she searches for her family, Harnois discovers that she has dark supernatural powers–and that the town brings out the worst in her. Turns out she's the devil's daughter, but her mother seemed like a nice lady, so she's an embodiment of the conflict between good and evil.
The Difference: Point Pleasant writer/co-creator/co-executive producer Marti Noxon was a key player on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and the similarities are obvious: A teenage girl empowered yet confined by special gifts, an idyllic town rife with poisonous secrets and evildoers, and battling demons (inner and outer) as a metaphor for the trials of adolescence. But in practice, Point Pleasant is more like a witless goth variation on The OC, with adopted outsider Harnois as an exotic replacement for the delinquent from Chino. The idea of updating a horror soap opera like Dark Shadows for prime time offers all kinds of possibilities for heightened drama and social commentary, but the show delivers little outside a pouty fire-starter and a town full of glass-eyed Kens and Barbies.
The Future: Unlike Buffy (with its Scooby Gang) or The OC (which has Adam Brody and Peter Gallagher), Point Pleasant lacks strong personalities that would lend meaning or urgency to the maelstrom of cut-rate digital spooks threatening lives every week. And the writers can only come up with so many gothic effects before the well runs dry: By now, the poor guy in charge of replacing the stained glass on the church must feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick that football.
Unscripted (HBO)
The Premise: Three struggling Hollywood actors—Krista Allen of Emmanuelle and dating-George-Clooney fame, Bryan Greenberg of minor WB fame, and Jennifer Hall of, well, no fame—play three struggling Hollywood actors, with an emphasis on the "struggling" part. Botched auditions, humiliating day jobs, and all-too-small successes abound, as do cameos from real-life stars like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Frank Langella oozes pretension as an acting teacher, offering nuggets like "Be actors! Don't just be people!"
The Difference: Switching out Washington D.C. for L.A. and insider-y lobbyists for Hollywood outsiders, K Street executive producers Clooney and Steven Soderbergh have recast their shaky, reality-drama shots in a golden California hue, and successfully cribbed themselves. Like K Street or Curb Your Enthusiasm, Unscripted has no written script, just a rough outline of reality-based, fictional situations for the actors to play. That technique ran K Street into the ground, but it seems perfectly suited for Unscripted's über-subtle humor. Allen, Greenberg, and Hall don't have the comedic snap of Larry David or Jeff Garlin, but their fictional real lives often smack of absurdity. In one scene, a casting director tries to spur a more passionate performance from Greenberg at a soap-opera audition: "Have you ever been to Santa Cruz? Okay, it's a very passionate place. There's a lot of woods there… where people go… to be passionate."