D
**DONOTDELETE**
Guest
I finally got to see the last 35 minutes of Jeremiah. I saw the first hour last Sunday. There are a couple of things that I focus on when I'm watching a pilot and trying to determine if the series will fly. They aren't too different from what I look for as a viewer. Characters, premise, originality, and execution.
CHARACTERS
When a show is named after a person, the titular character is usually the key one. I'm not sure who Jeremiah is supposed to be on paper or who he was in the original comic book, but he is embodied by Luke Perry on the TV screen. Mr. Perry underplays the role and he isn't a great actor. He makes it very easy for other actors to outshine and imbue their characters with more charisma than Jeremiah. This is not a good thing. Merely being taciturn doesn't necessarily translate to lack of charisma (look at Mel Gibson as the Road Warrior), but it does in Mr. Perry's case. This is not a good thing for the series.
I liked the character of Kurdy played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Kurdy seems intended to be the sidekick, but I'm already more interested in his character than I am Jeremiah's. Mr. Warner brings a vulnerability to the role that I liked. It would have been an interesting twist to the series--and this series NEEDS original twists--if Warner had been cast as Jeremiah instead of Perry and have the sidekick be the white guy.
Of the other characters who I assume to be semi-regular both Kim Hawthorne, playing Theo, and Peter Stebbings as Markus were decent enough actors and had good charisma, but I'm not sure I believed in their characters.
The nagging thing in my mind about all of the characters peopling this series is that I'm not sure they correspond to how I would imagine characters having gone through what they went through to be.
The bottom line is that this series has a deficit of characterization. Many series can succeed almost solely on presenting really interesting characters. The Guardian was a series whose pilot really impressed me almost on Simon Baker's charisma and character alone.
Though competent in some cases, none of Jeremiah's characters, particularly Jeremiah made me go "wow".
PREMISE
The post-apocolyptic premise of Jeremiah is a challenge because it's been done so many times, both well and not-so-well. The history of dystopian series succeeding is not a good one. Jeremiah needed to come up with something powerful and fresh, but I felt that I was watching pieces of other movies and series thrown together. Thunder Mountain reminded me of Earth II, for instance. Often when the series was reminiscent of other things I've seen, the comparison was that the place I saw it before did it better.
It also kept nagging at me that this was "Apoclypse Lite". Nothing seemed quite as bad as I expected. The only really strong sequence was with the skinheads, but that was brief. The world of the mob in New Jersey, as portrayed in the Sopranos scares me more on a regular basis.
ORIGINALITY
The derivativeness of the concept really required something bold or something really new to be done. It never did. It was competent.
EXECUTION
I believe the people in charge of the visual look of the show did a good job. Personally, I'm getting as tired of so many series looking like Vancouver's surroundings as I was in the 70's of every series looking like Southern California. But, that's not a nit.
Scriptwise, I was pleasantly surprised that few of the lines sounded like B5 to me. I have a nagging problem that most of the Kids sounded too articulate for how I believe a culture built on Kids would be, but I *was* glad it didn't sound like B5. I even wondered at times if MJW was allowed to alter his lines or adlib because his lines sounded pretty natural coming from his mouth.
I wonder if JMS consulted a cultural anthropologist specializing in youth in creating the world of jeremiah. Or just spend sometime at a school or something listening to pre-teens talk. I suspect he didn't. You have to think that from the time of the Big Death, these Kids had no mass media to listen to or no adults to acculturate them. They would just be listening to each other.
I don't harp too much on plot in pilots because I think other factors overshadow the importance of plot when I try to judge a series' potential. It's fresh, surprising moments I look for. The story didn't really have many surprising moments. The plot served to introduce us to the basics of Jeremiah's world and nothing more.
SUMMARY
Ultimately, I give Jeremiah a B-. (surprise) I've been toggling between a C+ and B-, but I'm giving it the push because I thought the skinhead scenes were good.
Still I think this series has an uphill battle in getting people past the premise and tune in to begin with. That was evident in last Sunday's ratings. Maybe things were better on Friday. It also has an uphill battle with Luke Perry as the lead.
Jeremiah was good enough to satisfy most SFTV fans and it was certainly the most competent work JMS has done since B5's fourth season. I don't think many viewers have been exposed to the things the show is derivative of and won't notice that deficit in originality.
Jeremiah was in development for a long time and had many people involved other than JMS. It will be interesting to see what the episodes produced out of the usual grind of producing episodes. I saw the preview for the next episode and the premise--a boy who thinks he's a superhero--made me wince. Every single show I've seen do that premise, I've hated.
CHARACTERS
When a show is named after a person, the titular character is usually the key one. I'm not sure who Jeremiah is supposed to be on paper or who he was in the original comic book, but he is embodied by Luke Perry on the TV screen. Mr. Perry underplays the role and he isn't a great actor. He makes it very easy for other actors to outshine and imbue their characters with more charisma than Jeremiah. This is not a good thing. Merely being taciturn doesn't necessarily translate to lack of charisma (look at Mel Gibson as the Road Warrior), but it does in Mr. Perry's case. This is not a good thing for the series.
I liked the character of Kurdy played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Kurdy seems intended to be the sidekick, but I'm already more interested in his character than I am Jeremiah's. Mr. Warner brings a vulnerability to the role that I liked. It would have been an interesting twist to the series--and this series NEEDS original twists--if Warner had been cast as Jeremiah instead of Perry and have the sidekick be the white guy.
Of the other characters who I assume to be semi-regular both Kim Hawthorne, playing Theo, and Peter Stebbings as Markus were decent enough actors and had good charisma, but I'm not sure I believed in their characters.
The nagging thing in my mind about all of the characters peopling this series is that I'm not sure they correspond to how I would imagine characters having gone through what they went through to be.
The bottom line is that this series has a deficit of characterization. Many series can succeed almost solely on presenting really interesting characters. The Guardian was a series whose pilot really impressed me almost on Simon Baker's charisma and character alone.
Though competent in some cases, none of Jeremiah's characters, particularly Jeremiah made me go "wow".
PREMISE
The post-apocolyptic premise of Jeremiah is a challenge because it's been done so many times, both well and not-so-well. The history of dystopian series succeeding is not a good one. Jeremiah needed to come up with something powerful and fresh, but I felt that I was watching pieces of other movies and series thrown together. Thunder Mountain reminded me of Earth II, for instance. Often when the series was reminiscent of other things I've seen, the comparison was that the place I saw it before did it better.
It also kept nagging at me that this was "Apoclypse Lite". Nothing seemed quite as bad as I expected. The only really strong sequence was with the skinheads, but that was brief. The world of the mob in New Jersey, as portrayed in the Sopranos scares me more on a regular basis.
ORIGINALITY
The derivativeness of the concept really required something bold or something really new to be done. It never did. It was competent.
EXECUTION
I believe the people in charge of the visual look of the show did a good job. Personally, I'm getting as tired of so many series looking like Vancouver's surroundings as I was in the 70's of every series looking like Southern California. But, that's not a nit.
Scriptwise, I was pleasantly surprised that few of the lines sounded like B5 to me. I have a nagging problem that most of the Kids sounded too articulate for how I believe a culture built on Kids would be, but I *was* glad it didn't sound like B5. I even wondered at times if MJW was allowed to alter his lines or adlib because his lines sounded pretty natural coming from his mouth.
I wonder if JMS consulted a cultural anthropologist specializing in youth in creating the world of jeremiah. Or just spend sometime at a school or something listening to pre-teens talk. I suspect he didn't. You have to think that from the time of the Big Death, these Kids had no mass media to listen to or no adults to acculturate them. They would just be listening to each other.
I don't harp too much on plot in pilots because I think other factors overshadow the importance of plot when I try to judge a series' potential. It's fresh, surprising moments I look for. The story didn't really have many surprising moments. The plot served to introduce us to the basics of Jeremiah's world and nothing more.
SUMMARY
Ultimately, I give Jeremiah a B-. (surprise) I've been toggling between a C+ and B-, but I'm giving it the push because I thought the skinhead scenes were good.
Still I think this series has an uphill battle in getting people past the premise and tune in to begin with. That was evident in last Sunday's ratings. Maybe things were better on Friday. It also has an uphill battle with Luke Perry as the lead.
Jeremiah was good enough to satisfy most SFTV fans and it was certainly the most competent work JMS has done since B5's fourth season. I don't think many viewers have been exposed to the things the show is derivative of and won't notice that deficit in originality.
Jeremiah was in development for a long time and had many people involved other than JMS. It will be interesting to see what the episodes produced out of the usual grind of producing episodes. I saw the preview for the next episode and the premise--a boy who thinks he's a superhero--made me wince. Every single show I've seen do that premise, I've hated.
