In Plain Sight: Pilot
By fred | June 2, 2008
(S01E01) We didn’t had to wait long before seeing new series premiering this summer, as last night on USA was the series premiere of their latest original show, In Plain Sight. Now I’ll be honest, I’m still a little mad at USA for canceling The 4400 the way they did, and not allowing us to get any closure, conclusion, answers, anything. Especially for a show such such strong serialization going on, to never know how it ends / what it was about / what was really going on is always incredibly frustrating.
Still, why should that stop me from trying new shows, right ? Plus this show had at least two things going for it, one it’s not the usual USA show about someone with a “special ability” solving crimes or helping the police one way or another, like almost all their shows -although, don’t be a fool, it is still about cops… – and two, there’s just absolutely nothing else on.
So I tuned in and watched this new series, about Mary Shannon, U.S. Marshal working in the highly secretive branch of the witness protection program (WITSEC), who relocates Federal Witnesses, and from time to time of course do take things into her own hands and, you know, do some classic police work and solve crimes, arrest bad guys…
It seems this show aims to be a dramedy, a drama who’s not reluctant to do comedy when the time is right, and rely on its main character, Shannon, for that. Because she’s cynical and sarcastic and love throwing wisecrack remarks whenever she can come up with some. But the problem of the show, besides it’s poor writing which seems to consists of putting together as many clichés as possible, is that it doesn’t even work, you don’t buy it, it is (way too) forced !
Sometimes a line will work, the girl put in the program who’s getting new boobs in exchange did work, Shannon’s “assistant” repeating what she just said as his idea, how a witness failed to mention some “details” or how Shannon actually tried on some clothes before telling her her friend was dead, that I actually liked, but at one time Shannon goes into a bar and while at first things were kinda good, her getting out of the guys bathroom after questioning a guy and making time to stop to say some unfunny joke with no one but us to hear, basically, seems way too forced to be natural, funny, or anything really.
Shannon is the cliché of a cop, the cynical one who loves the wisecrack remarks, who cares about “real” justice but not things that “get in the way” like procedure, warrants, law, all those crap. Of course she’s got a comic-relief partner she loves to send back to the office while she’s doing the real work in the streets, and their boss is a stupid clueless tool who seems to know about Shannon even less after working with her for some time now (I would assume) than we did 5 minutes in the show.
Oh, I almost forgot : of course she’s having relationship issue, too, so when so goes to talk to hey “boyfriend”, you know that once she walks in next thing you know they’ll be having wild sex, just so that she can leave right after, especially if he dares talking about “them”. And her family, of course her family is there, with the drunk mother and the annoying sister who will give her a clue to resolve her investigation right on time (because apparently no one knew about the local Indian symbol…); but not before we get the scene where they all scream, and the boyfriend ends up just throwing the sister into the pool, because that’s funny, right?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: In Plain Sight
