From the commercial previews, Rainn Wilson plays an a**hole private investigator. “House, P.I.”…?
Rainn was great on “The Office”, and I also liked him in the movie “The Rocker”, so I’m thinking this show might have potential. Or it may just be terrible, and crash & burn. Whaddaya think?
I’m hoping it will be good.
I am! I like Rainn Wilson, I want him to be a more-than-one-trick pony.
That’s what it looks like. The only flat tire on this is that while doctors are assumed to be at least kindly if gruff - so a truly rude, asshole doctor like House was inherently funny - most private detectives are assholes to some degree or another. Whether it’s a tough, damaged Bogie or a burnt-out Harry O or Rockford, no one is surprised when they are jerks. It can go to an extreme like Cumberbatch’s Sherlock (or the woman on The Bridge), and there are contrary examples like Magnum (and the other side of Jim Rockford), but… the inherent funny isn’t there in “Hey, look, it’s a complete asshole who’s a really good detective.”
I hope Rainn finds more to build on than House-with-a-badge. I do like him as an actor.
I am also a little wary of the Scandinavian name. It smacks a bit too much of The Bridge (the original) and Lillyhammer.
It’s worth a look, although I hope that they temper the offensiveness properly. Backstrom doesn’t have to have a secret heart of gold; I just hope he can dial it down every now and then. I’m mostly remembering how charmingly impish House was at the beginning versus how completely wearisome his act was at the end. It kind of turned into a chore to watch.
On the one hand, Rainn Wilson. Really good actor. Based on a Swedish TV show and I’m a sucker for Swedish Noir. And the jerk main character. And hopefully not a nice guy with a gruff exterior but just a horrible person with one useful talent. That sounds awesome.
On the other hand… the show runner is the guy from Bones. Soooo… contrived and unrealistic yet formulaic plots… Actors who are way too good looking for the roles they are supposed to be playing… “funny” dialogue lines… one dimensional characters…
And yet. I can’t wait.
Isn’t the whole gimmick that Backstrom is a ludicrously competent profiler of the putting-yourself-in-someone-else’s-shoes variety?
So he cynically gets into character as the suspect du jour, and walks everybody through why he would’ve hated the victim and what he would’ve used as a murder weapon and where he would’ve stashed it – and so his bitter contempt is (a) the only reason he solves crimes in the first place, and (b) gets justified every time he’s right.
He’s not the open-minded guy who happens to be perceptive enough to spot evidence of arson; he’s the guy who figures, I’m a dateless single mom who’s hard up for money and sympathy, so of course I’d burn my baby to death in his crib for the insurance money. What? Don’t give me that look; this would solve, like, a whole bunch of problems.
Contrary opinion here.
I’m expecting it to be stupid, and hoping it dies an early death.
It looks like Fox is trying to hard to follow a formula. They want another brilliant detective with a quirk, but they are running out of quirks. We’ve had mildly rude (Sherlock Holmes), unliked (Goren, L&O:CI), OCD and unliked (Monk), schizophrenic and slightly rude (Daniel Pierce, Perception), schizophrenic and loner (Raines), and full jerk (House). I guess they thought it was time for full asshole.
I’d vote for brilliant and nice. That’ll never happen, I know.
I think the title is a tipoff that it is going to be poo-poo.
The Bones guy also created The Finder, which i quite liked even though it never caught on. I have high hopes.
One of the reasons “The Finder” never took off was that Michael Duncan Clark died before the second season. He was the glue that held the group together.
I’m reasonably sure that it was cancelled prior to his death. This article agrees with me: The Finder: cancelled; no season two
No thoughts? As first episodes go, I liked it.
It struck me as pretty trite and derivative.
At this point I think it would be more revolutionary to have a detective who’s nice, stable and who doesn’t go out of his way to insult others than the ones we’ve been getting since Cracker in the UK and Law & Order: Major Case Squad(and yeah I’m still a fan of Goren).
Did he ever get that cigar lit? You don’t just throw them away in a puddle either. At least on the reruns of Columbo that I watch regularly, he gets to enjoy the things instead of hating them.
I didn’t hate it, but it needs to improve. I’m hopeful that they laid on his character thick for the pilot, and will be dialing it back in subsequent episodes. Not that he will get nicer, exactly, just that it won’t need to demonstrate it in every single scene. I also hope that we will learn that it’s done for a specific purpose, that he’s using it to gets reads on people and not solely to be a dick.
He got it lit about half way through. Good thing, the attempt to make it a running gag was getting distracting. Glad they gave up on it.
Yeah. House with a badge. Has some potential, but the pilot is all rough edges and loose ends.
Wilson is channeling House so strongly that they need to hire an actor named House to play a nice-guy sidekick…
Try Midsommer Murders. And the Inspector Lewis mysteries also.
My husband thought it was hilarious. I wondered if I would have liked it better if they had showed a later episode, and skipped the pilot. Absolutely no cohesion yet between the cast, expected in the pilot, but a later episode might have taken us past that awkward “not baked yet” stage.
I think I’m going to hate “I’m a …” Stripper, drug dealer, etc. Somehow, until the last scene with his Hindu dr, Wilson wasn’t inhabiting those words in any meaningful way. Just being a smart ass. It didn’t didn’t come across as profiling or insight, just a con. Kind of creepy, actually. The last scene was the only one where it worked for me.
Based on the first episode, this is Brooklyn 99 crossed with House crossed with Mentalist. We’ll try it a few more weeks to see if it settles into its own creature.