by Daniel Erenberg

Somewhere, in a saner universe than our own, Nathan Fillion is the biggest movie star on the planet. He’s got matinee idol looks, he looks like he could take you in a fight, he’s as good at slapstick as he is at subtler verbal humor and he forces you to immediately care about the characters he plays, no matter how morally ambiguous they are. Unfortunately for his career and bank account, Fillion has historically chosen roles in difficult, unconventional films and television series destined from the start to be universally beloved critically while being watched by a very few devoted followers. He was Captain Malcolm Reynolds in Joss Whedon’s cult space western, Firefly, and its companioning theatrical release Serenity. He was a murderous and possibly immortal priest named Caleb in the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He starred as a man entering a cross-country race in FOX’s wonderful Drive, which aired for two weeks before its cancellation. Last year, he brought his charm to theaters in the minor indie hit Waitress. But now Fillion has done something totally genius. Following a stint last year on ABC’s Desperate Housewives, he’s taken a role in a middling, but halfway decent, crime-of-the-week police procedural on ABC, which airs after Dancing With The Stars. If Castle is even remotely watchable on a weekly basis, it’s going to be a hit.

Castle is definitely watchable, but this is largely due to Nathan Fillion’s performance. The show feels like it was written for Fillion’s large personality, but Fillion may just be grafting his best personal tics onto a middling script by Andrew W. Marlowe, a screenwriter responsible for Air Force One (“Get off my plane!”), End of Days (“Maybe it’s not Christ In New York, but a name, like Christine York!”) and Hollow Man (Umm…”I’m Kevin Bacon, but you can’t see me!”). Fillion plays Richard Castle, a famous mystery writer, and a womanizer with heart of solid gold. The best scenes involve him taking care of his 15-year old daughter (the ridiculously charming Molly C. Quinn), a strait-laced high school student, who refuses both the champagne Castle offers her at his book release party and the snatch of whipped cream he wants to feed her like a baby bird, because she “already brushed.” Fillion has a better chemistry with her than he does with his obvious love interest, Kate Beckett, played by Stana Katic, an unmemorable actress who I’m not sold on yet. She plays Beckett like a huge stick in the mud, so it’s hard to root for her to end up with Castle. It’s also hard to see Castle want to pursue her, which he relentlessly does, going so far as to plant himself in her police precinct under the pretense of researching a series of books about a female police detective.

The crime stuff, involving a murderer taking his ideas from Castle’s lesser-read novels is standard broadcast TV procedural nonsense, and it’s populated with ciphers like the sassy black crime scene expert (a one-note Tamala Jones) and the wise old black police chief (Ruben Santiago-Hudson, probably missing being the creative force behind Lackawanna Blues). The thing to keep coming back for is Castle’s personal life, involving an ex-wife who remains his editor, that great father/daughter dynamic, and his live-in mom (Susan Sullivan, channeling Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth), who proves he’s a chip off the old block.

Castle is underwhelming as anything other than a perfectly watchable cop show, but it may finally turn Nathan Fillion into a household name, just like he’s always deserved. You gotta do the mediocre stuff before you can make your art. Fillion’s finally learned that. Maybe Castle can bring about another Firefly film. And wouldn’t that make you appreciate this fine little show on another level?

B

Tags: Nathan Fillion Castle tv review
March 11, 2009 at 3:41pm ∞

by Daniel Erenberg

I’ll give FOX the credit they deserve. Tim Roth is an inspired choice to headline a procedural dramedy, and the fact that the network was able to steer him away from the new Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds in order to appear in what is essentially House if they let Hugh Laurie be British is nothing short of remarkable. And Tim Roth does not let his network down. He earns what is sure to be his very large paycheck with an easy-going, no-frills star performance as the eccentric (aren’t they all?) Dr. Cal Lightman, a guy who specializes in telling whether or not people are lying. You might be wondering what the difference is between this and the similar-sounding CBS hit The Mentalist. Well, Tim Roth is a much better actor than Simon Baker, but that’s about it.

Unfortunately, Roth is the whole show here. Lie To Me is very defiantly rooted in the classic procedural case-of-the-week structure, and every time the show inches towards breaking out of it, it’s quickly pulled back in. There’s a good scene in the pilot where Roth recruits an airport cop to join his crack crime-solving squad. But that just allows this new character to make an important discovery later on about the case of the week (involving a teenage Jehovah’s Witness who may or may not have murdered his hot teacher). In another scene, Dr. Lightman answers his door to find his daughter’s boyfriend and asks him point blank, “Are you going to try to have sex with my daughter tonight?” This is, of course, so Lightman can use his skill of squinting at body language to decide whether the poor kid is telling the truth. It’s a cute scene, but it’s the only scene in the entire pilot that doesn’t take place in the workplace and it’s only about three minutes long.

Roth could also use better support from his cast. Kelli Williams plays his partner. You know the archetype. We’re supposed to be rooting for them to fuck. But we don’t really care, because Dr. Gillian Foster is such a boring, empty character. The new recruit, Ria Torres (Monica Raymund) adds some ethnic flavor to a cast that really needs it, but we haven’t really been given a reason to care about her yet either. The best actor of the supporting cast is probably Brendan Hines, who plays the compulsive truth-teller Eli, but even that’s not really saying much, as his performance pretty much amounts to a decent-enough Paul Rudd impersonation, and his dialogue is almost fully comprised of exposition.

With Tim Roth sitting pretty, Lie To Me could grow into something more than what it is. But with its seemingly unwavering desire to be the same thing every week, and to bring nothing new to its already tired genre, it’s hard to imagine how.

B-

Tags: TV review Tim Roth Lie To Me
January 24, 2009 at 1:51am ∞

by Daniel Erenberg

Toni Collette is going to win an Emmy for her performance in the new Showtime series, The United States of Tara. After all, this is the kind of performance that the Best Actress in a Comedy Series category was built for. As Tara, a woman with split personalities, she is also required to play three “alters,” including T, a 15 year-old lolita who is besties with Tara’s teenage daughter, and Buck, a chain-smoking southern hunter. In these three characters we see her inhabit throughout the pilot episode, Collette is heartbreaking and vulnerable one moment, and tough and hilarious the next. And we believe it every step of the way. As T, the tramp, she’s downright sexy, and then later, when she’s back to being simple old Tara, she proves she can be even more sexy in a subtler manner. Toni Collette’s performance in The United States of Tara is a marvel to behold.

The show, however, while exciting and extremely promising, isn’t quite perfect. After all, Diablo Cody (and I’m so glad we’re past the brand “Former Stripper Diablo Cody”), the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno is still learning, but getting better all the time. Her dialogue, while still at times forced, has gotten sharper and more natural, and this is largely due to the fact that the performers on screen aren’t playing up the stylized nature of the dialogue as the cast of Juno did. They are taking the still-just-as-stylized dialogue and performing it as though real people in the real world would actually say these words. “Dude,” T tells Tara’s daughter Katie at one point. “I have been digging around in your closet for an hour and I can’t freaking get to Narnia.” On paper, this line is awful. But Collette delivers it with such offhanded conviction that you’d never give it a second thought. I even chuckled at it.

 The heart of the show is in Tara’s supportive family. After the pilot, we still don’t know how long Tara’s had these other personalities and we don’t know just why or for how long her family has been this supportive, but we are grateful for it. That aspect of the show could have been gratingly melodramatic, but instead it’s a wonderful treat. The finest scenes of the show (and there are many) are when the whole family is at home together. John Corbett, an actor who too often looks bored on screen, is rejuvenated and totally charming, fighting his attraction to the “15 year-old” T, but holding off on sleeping with her until she turns back into his wife. The kids are great too. Brie Larson is fun and engaging as Katie, and Keir Gilchrist is the finest of the batch as youngest son Marshall, who is clearly the Diablo Cody analogue of this show.

 The United States of Tara could just end up being a great show. For now, we’ll just have to settle for entrancing and addicting. And I’m just fine with that.

A-

Tags: Diablo Cody TV review Toni Collette Showtime
January 20, 2009 at 7:46pm ∞