Eli Stone: The Path [season premiere]
By fred | October 15, 2008
(S02E01) Last season, I started watching Eli Stone and did not like it, so much that I came this close to giving up on the show. But being the TVoholic that I am I still watched a few more episodes, and then something amazing happened : it got better. Week after week the show was improving, each episode making you love the show a little more. And so, as many of you I imagine, by the end of the first season I was expecting an Earth quake long before it happened, yes, I was a believer, I believed in Eli Stone.
And the one thing that I would say was the more characteristic about the show during its first season, it wasn’t the legal business, it wasn’t his dealing with faith either, and it wasn’t even the musical numbers we got regularly. No, what I really think made this show so special was his constant evolution. Not just because it was getting better, but because it was never settling into being just a procedural with the vision of the week, the main plot was constantly evolving, as were the characters.
To me, that’s what set this show really apart from the rest, because most of the shows on TV have characters that don’t evolve. They can’t, change is bad in TV land. People love a show because of who the characters are, and what they get every week, so often the rule is to never change that, and nothing changes, nothing evolves. But here, it was the opposite, it was a constant evolution, and that was so refreshing and felt so good!
I was happy to see Eli Stone back on the air, now that I’ve watched the episode, I’m even happier because the show is the same, in that it is not in the same place it was during last season’s finale, and I’m sure it will be in another place by next week, and another one the one after that, and another the next one, and…
Sadly, all my prayers to George Michael have been pointless, the singer isn’t the one Eli looks up to for answers, so I guess that explains why, despite all my efforts, Maggie was still around. To be fair, this week she was okay, she didn’t sounded particularly dumb and she didn’t annoy me, here goes to hoping that will last.
On to the big question now : Was Sigourney Weaver really God’s fiduciary ? From the looks of things, there’s no doubt that Eli does get his vision from a higher power, a higher power that awaits from him to make good use of this power and helps people. When you think about it, it’s amazing how long “they” waited to ask Eli for his help, maybe “they” were so disappointed by what his drunken father accomplished that they had lost faith in the Stones men ?
Now, the big moment of fun : Nathan had one of Eli’s vision! Now I didn’t see that coming in a million years, and I loved it! That was pretty cool, but that also means the show seems to make a point: Eli is not crazy, he truly is on a mission. I’m really not fond of anything religion myself, but the great thing here is that it’s not about religion, just faith. But Eli can’t be just crazy and those notions of higher power are not all in his head, somehow.
