7 Days - Did it ever get any better?

Cafe Society
#1

Back in 1998, I didn’t watch much television. Other than sporting events (mostly Friday Night Boxing, NFL, and pay-per-view English and MLS soccer), the only show I watched regularly was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So I was unaware of the show 7 Days when it first aired. In fact, I remained unaware of it until a couple days ago when I ran across it on the interwebs. I have a soft spot for time travel stories, so I grabbed the first season to take a look.

I’ve now watched half the first season and I have to say, it is godawful. The opening credits look like something from the '70s and sadly the writing feels that way too. The characters are cardboard cutouts who each have one or two “quirks” to let the audience know what they are; the dialog is pedestrian when it isn’t laughable; and the plotting is predictable and uninteresting. There is no season- or series-long story arc.

So. As the title asks, does it get any better? I know it’s possible. Supernatural’s first season was monster-of-the-week crap for a season and a half but was watchable after that. Season 1 of Angel was plodding but was near-brilliant at times for the rest of it’s run. This show ran for three seasons, so somebody must have been watching it. Is it worth slogging through the rest of Season 1 just to get to the second and/or third season, or should I just ditch it and hope for a second season of Continuum?

#2

Eh, it has it’s moments. Granted, these are the moments it rips off from other sci-fi stories that week, but still… :wink:

Seriously though, the show was never exactly high art, but it was dumb fun often enough.

One of the parts I “liked” was Parker’s continuing inner doubts about if their using time travel was the right thing or not. Despite reassurances from, as I kept count over the episodes;

That shaman in the rain forest; the aliens who’d built the ship the Backstep sphere was reverse-engineered from; the Pope; God; the very miffed Devil showing up and saying Parker kept ruining all his plans…

I’m sure there were a couple more that I’m missing. Clearly the man had some slight validation issues. :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks. I haven’t gotten to any episodes where Parker has doubts but it doesn’t sound much better than what I’ve already seen. That’s disappointing.

#4

I watched a bunch of the episodes, but I never took much effort to make sure that I saw all of them - the show never got all that good. There were a few standout episodes, but as you suggested, the characters were cardboard - particularly the security chief, who seemingly went out of his way to be a jackass. I will note that the show was cancelled just in time (Spring 2001) - otherwise, it would have been faced with some premise-breaking current events.

#5

That’s Nick Searcy, most recently (and much better) on Justified. I was kind of tickled by the character’s politics since Searcy’s personal politics seem to be rather conservative. If you haven’t seen it, check out his incomprehensible ad for Herman Cain.

That occurred to me as well, especially since the pilot episode had a terrorist-flown airplane crashing into the White House.

#6

Enjoyable TV, some fun episodes. My favorite episodes from memory:

The Pope was fun. The Groundhog day episode was fun as well. I liked how he saved the security chief’s cat in one episode.

My issue with the security chief was that he was so much of a Frank Burns.

#7

I was just going to post that there was a bit of a MASH dynamic on that show:

Parker = Hawkeye
Donovan = Trapper/B.J.
Talmadge = Col. Potter
Olga = Hotlips
Ramsey = Frank Burns
Ballard = Radar

#8

I had forgotten that detail (I remembered a DC disaster, but not the plane).

#9

I had never heard of this show when it first aired, but I saw most of it on Sci-Fi a few years back because it aired every morning at the exact time I was on the treadmill and/or stairmaster at the gym and they had TVs built into them.
At first, I thought it was a fun little show, but I was annoyed by the constant use of the reset button (which is, I guess, kind of funny given the show’s premise).

#10

My memory is that it did get good and I was disappointed it was canceled but I haven’t seen it since it first aired.

#11

I liked it for the fluff it was and am glad some eps are on YouTube.

#12

One cool thing about this show, that you only realize after thinking about it for a few minutes: Other than Parker, no one on the BackStep team has ever see a successful BackStep. Every time he Backsteps, he wipes out the future universe that he came from, creating a new one in which that Backstep never happens.

#13

Not to mention they sort of gloss over how Frank basically overwrites his past self (since there aren’t dozens of Franks running around after all the backsteps). So his past self must just vanish whenever he comes back (since he’s in a different location), but has anyone ever seen him vanish? They just kinda never touch the topic and hope no one thinks about it too hard.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say it ever really gets any better, but I did like the show a lot better than the OP seems to. I would say if you don’t like it after what you’ve seen so far, you probably won’t like it at all.

#14

Yeah, they never touched on it, even when it would have helped the plot (on occasion they doubted Frank when he said he was on a mission - but the fact that the Sphere had just disappeared would be a big clue).