I see the future and it looks rather...
muted #MinorityReport #3WeekRoundup #PremiereWeek
All pictures courtesy of FOX
So much to say, yet few words to say it
with. FOX's Minority Report (#MinorityReport) is a difficult show to
pin down. On the one hand, it has all the cool futuristic sci-fi tech
that many of us hope to have come 50 years from now. That alone can
draw a geek in for a few episodes. On the other hand, it has a
plodding mystery so glacial-like in its movement that its hard to see
it as a mystery or half care about it. But I'm getting ahead of
myself here. Let's begin at the beginning.
Again, I mention that for those of you
not in the know, I wait to watch the first three episodes of a new
show before making my ultimate judgment on if I'll continue watching
that show. That means I will be having a ton of work to do blog-wise
this week as this is the third official week for the new fall season.
You can expect a review of Blindspot later on today and Limitless
even later. For now, we focus on Minority Report. Also, as a
refresher on why I looked forward to this show just click the
#PremiereWeek link up top and scroll down to FOX (the first section I
believe). But in short, I liked it because it was based on a
Spielberg movie and had him as an executive producer behind it.
To begin, the show is a sequel to the
Tom Cruise movie as I previously mentioned (if you haven't seen it
then you should rent or buy that from somewhere because it is
definitely worth a watch). While the movie trailed a future cop on
the run with an unusually gifted young girl, the show pairs her
youngest brother with a cop bent on solving crimes in part because of
her father's death--he also was a cop.
The series began with Dash--the precog
who can see crimes happening in the future--receiving the vision of a
woman being thrust out of her apartment window and plummeting to her
death. Though he tries to stop this crime, he's too late when he
darts into the wrong apartment building and finds a Tai Chi or Yoga
class going on in the room number where the woman is supposed to
live. Hoping to be of some help, he scopes the crime scene, discovers
who the woman is working the case, tracks her down and gives her
information on what he knows while staying as disconnected from her
as possible. No introduction, no exchanging of phone numbers, not
even a proper handshake, he instead injects her with some kind of
local muscle relaxant to paralyze her from chasing him--the same drug
he used on his facial muscles to disguise himself. She can't let this
go.
The detective, played by Meagan Good,
is name Vega. Not a slouch, she works very closely with her
lieutenant/captain boss and ex-lover played by Wilmer Valderrama
(yeah, he's back on TV and it's kinda cool). One of the lead
detectives in her department, she uses the high-tech facilities to
find the identity of the guy who gave her useful information on the
crime. She is helped by her female geek/nerd tech girl who seems to
work in that department completely alone but it's the future so I can
understand fewer people needed to do the work of a machine. And while
FOX does get brownie points here for hitting the minority
trifecta--Latino, Black woman, and Asian woman--some of those points
are taken away because of the fact that they made the Asian woman the
smart geeky tech.
With her small team, she manages to
track Dash down, though she keeps his identity a secret. He confesses
to being precisely what she theorized, a precog, and gives her more
info on another crime soon to happen. While Vega manages to track
down the first criminal, he dies from a falling beam right after
saying something big is about to happen. At first I thought he was
referring to a bigger mystery to run through the show, but in
hindsight I'm not sure he wasn't just talking about the infecting of
birds with a viral strain that would kill a crowd of people at the
outside launch of a new technology called Hawk-eye. A new computer
program, it comes into effect on the third episode and is essentially
Big Brother and the Patriot Act on steroids, able to monitor and flag
your every behavior and predict future actions based on a probability
rating. It can also do things such as shut down your car and restrict
your driving, and have your doctor-patient confidentiality waived if
you end up on the restrictions list, but I am getting too ahead of
myself again.
Back to the first mystery, the birds
attack was choreographed by a past precrime worker upset at the fact
that he lost everything after the division shuttered. One of the men
that was in charge of the entire operation has moved on to greener
pastures and is the brain (or money or both) behind the new Hawk-eye
system which does a similar job to the precogs. He is the villains
target.
Dash and Vega find the bad guy and stop
him but not without some help from Dash's twin brother--older by a
few minutes. Originally slated to be an identical twin and to be
played by the same actor as Dash, the brother looks insanely
different. He looks more mature, has a boxier face and exudes
suaveness. After his time spent in the "milk bath" that
enhanced the three siblings powers to have the visions, he spent his
life trying to monetize his gift, accomplishing that both in legal
and illegal ways. Why does Dash need to contact him? Because unlike
their older sister Agatha, Dash and his brother Arthur are a team.
Dash gets the visions while Arthur gets details like names,
addresses, times, etc. Embittered towards the police for his and his
siblings time spent locked in the cellar of precrime, he only helps
after his brother makes a promise to do something for him.
The crime is quickly solved and the man
and his accomplice daughter are both brought to justice; however,
Dash accidentally kills the man by pushing him from a height while
trying to save Vega's life. Though the show tries to display some
moral gravitas here, the writers throw up their hands and pretty much
conclude that, "eh, he was a bad guy," before moving on
their merry way. That was the first episode.
Sticking to what I thought it'd be,
Minority Report does become a weekly procedural where they are given
a case of the week to solve before the hour is over. And while that
may be what dominates the show, producers hope you come back for the
secondary mystery involving what the twins' sister Agatha sees. As
the most powerful of the three siblings clinically born brain-dead to
drug addicts, she receives not only the visions like her youngest
brother, but the details like her oldest brother. Unique to her, she
also sees multiple possibilities of what could happen depending on
environmental variables. In other words, she knows that the future
can change which is what the movie was about and the reason why
precrime was outlawed. As of late, her visions have shown her and her
brothers being re-submerged in the milk bath in the dungeon of
precrime at D.C.'s HQ. The vision also suggests Vega has something to
do with this new round of punishment as they see it. Unfortunately
she lives out in the country somewhere on what she's termed "the
island," and only interacts with her brother through hologram
calls.
Is the mystery of how they get back
into the vats of psychic juice great enough to keep me on the edge of
my seat in anticipation for even the smallest clues? Not really. It
doesn't hint at a greater catastrophe and hasn't really done much to
enhance or impair the show. Honestly, it seems like filler similar to
the first chapter of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or the last few
chapters of the book--it's a nice side-story but you can take it away
and the show loses nothing. In fact, I didn't even know they would
show the sister after spending the entire movie dwelling on her.
Funny thing, they didn't get the original actress to reprise her role
though I thought she was quite good and is actually the same age as
the current actress. She is set to appear in the Harry Potter
spin-off film Fantastic Beasts...
The only connective strand they do have
left over from the film is Wally the Caretaker who was the only
person to see the faces of the siblings before the events of the
film. A brilliant but frustrated scientist, he
My grade for the series so far? I give
it a B- to a C+. While I enjoy the future tech (funny, the profile
compatibility thing was what I wrote about in my serial novel
Unrequited near five years ago. It'll be out 2016), the overall
aesthetic of the show and the producers bravery in trying to turn
this concept film (based off a story by Philip K. Dick), I think
they've missed the mark on many fronts.
First, the film explored the moral
complexity of what precrime was and how to deal with it. The fact
that things could change and be willfully altered both by the
perpetrator on a personal level and on a machine level was where the
movie got its namesake. A minority report was explained as the random
times in which not all the siblings saw or experienced the same thing
concerning a crime, thereby clouding the precognition process. In the
show, not only is the moral weight seemingly absent but there's also
a strange duality of spirit coming from Vega who willfully uses the
abilities of Dash illegally but is skeptical of the Hawk-eye program
which does essentially the same thing but through a behavioral
predictive algorithm.
Then there's the characters which are
not very rich or interesting to me, at least not as much as I thought
they'd be. Dash is someone who has lived on the fringes of society
ever since he and his siblings were released. While he shows some
signs of ill adjustment, he isn't a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Asperger's savant or Rain Man genius or whimsically charming
fish-out-of-water character like Ichabod on Sleepy Hollow, but more
of a quiet guy who can be awkward every so often and sees visions of
people getting murdered. Everything about him screams that he should
be more maladjusted but isn't, which sometimes allows him to blend
into the background and not on purpose from what I can gather.
Meagan Good's character of Vega I also
find to be a little bland. She doesn't have the hard-nosed sex appeal
of Kate Beckett on Castle nor the playful and witty banter of Booth
on Bones nor the ability to diffuse a tense situation possessed by
Abbie Mills on Sleepy Hollow. She, too, plays the straight man on a
show that I'm not sure wants to be a straight crime show like CSI or
Law and Order. And while I'd be perfectly fine with a crime show that
doesn't focus heavily on the two main characters, the stories and
crimes must then be the draw. Minority Report doesn't grab
based on the crimes.
Should you be watching? Well, that's a
hard one to say. While my first instinct is to say yes because of the
B- score I gave it, I have a strong urge to say this is a take it or
leave it show. If you enjoy the case of the week such as on the
Mentalist, Castle, Bones etc., then you might like this but don't
count on the crimes being anywhere near a level of sophistication.
And while the science may draw you in, I doubt it'll keep you after
the novelty wears thin. Though the Hawk-eye program and its possible
failure and over-monitoring of the citizens looks to be a promising
story-line to follow, I'm not convinced it, along with how the
precogs end up in the goo again, can sustain a viewers interest when
so much other stuff is on.
The best thing about this show currently
is that it comes on at 9pm on Mondays only on FOX which is perfect
placement because it doesn't have much competition from other
scripted shows (ABC and NBC both have reality shows and CBS has
Scorpion), though the reality comps have proven themselves worthy
juggernauts. If, however, this came on at 10 or 8, I think it might
get killed and become a one season show. I haven't checked the
ratings of any show yet so I don't know what is and isn't doing well
but I can only hope the show picks up soon.
What do you think? Am I wrong and
you're absolutely loving this show from start to finish? Have you
tuned in to watch it or are you too busy with other things to be
bothered? If you are watching, what is your take on the characters
and the story about the siblings going back into the milk? Let me
know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button to
comment).
As
always, check out my books on Amazon (if you’re looking for
Halloween scares
check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or #ThePowerOfTen).
For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check
out #TheWriter.
The final episode of season one of The Writer is OUT NOW. Ahh! That’s
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Until next time, “do you remember
what you forgot tomorrow?”
P.S. Yeah, I confused the hell outta
you, didn't I? It's like that cell phone commercial where the guy
builds a time machine so he doesn't have to wait to get the newest
phone six months from now. You haven't seen that? Oh, you don't watch
commercials anymore. I understand. Man, my main character in my
latest book Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-boyfriend Cass
Clinton might not like you.
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