I don’t know if “thick” is the problem…I didn’t think his character was all that funny and that’s what I was looking for personally. I’m not a big fan of crime dramas.
So is that his son that he lives with? He did refer to the kid’s mother but it wasn’t totally clear to me.
Argh, I go and make a post in anticipation of a tv show premiere, then I totally forget to watch it! :smack:
Oh well, will have to catch it On Demand.
I missed the first few minutes so I didn’t get all of the set up. I don’t think the character works at all. I just couldn’t see him being able to work in a government bureaucracy like the NYPD and keeping his job let alone rising to the level of Lieutenant. He would never have made it through the academy.
Maybe it’s just me but I found Genevieve Angelson as his sidekick to be distractingly beautiful. I expect TV characters to be more attractive than their real life counterparts but I just kept seeing her and not the role. But if asked for my ideal she would be pretty damn close so it probably is just me.
I get abrasive and self-destructive. Ok, that’s a meme now. And some great performances.
But racist? Naw, that dog dont hunt.
And- smoking is on my bad list.
Wasn’t particularly impressed with teh pilot. Not sure if I’ll give it a second go. But just so I’m clear:
This guy so screwed up at some point that he spent the last six years as a traffic cop. And apparently was able to do that sufficiently well to not get fired.
Then a new police chief comes along who knew him from the old days and immediately promotes back to being head of major crimes?
This is the world we’re to inhabit?
I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I was pleased with it. It wasn’t the best cop drama I’ve ever seen, but it was far, far from the worst. I’ll keep watching it, which means it’ll get really good and then be canceled prematurely.
I would probably watch anything that had Rainn Wilson and Dennis Haysbert in it. I didn’t really expect to like this show, but I liked it well enough that I plan to keep tuning in. Better writing would help, but that is true of almost everything.
Watched it last night. Wanted to like it, thought eh, it isn’t terrible, but I’d expect more from the pilot. I did have kind of a ‘seen it before’ vibe. The callbacks to the phrase “absolutely not!” were amusing.
The Backstrom character didn’t quite work for me. I don’t think it was Rainn’s fault- he seemed to be throwing himself into the character with conviction. Maybe it’s that the writing isn’t quite there. His character’s not balanced enough- too much “jerk”, not enough “genius”.
My wife and I were distracted by Dennis Haysbert, since all we’ve seen him in are the 20 bazillion Allstate commercials he’s done. At one point in the show he started saying a phrase, something like “in the past year…” And it sounded so similar to something he says in the insurance commercials I half expected him to say “in the past year people saved blah blah on their auto insurance from Allstate”.
I have some hope. Sometimes they don’t quite have a feel for the character in the pilot but find it after the pilot gets picked up.
I think he’s well on his way to developing the character. I tried to imagine him as Dwight Shrute with contact lenses and a career change and couldn’t do it. Both characters are jerks but Shrute was a tightly-wound oddball and Backstrom is a dissolute misanthrope. Hopefully the writing tightens up.
“Backstrom” still disappoints me. It is just so sloppy, a mishmash. Is anyone still watching?
I thought the second episode was a little more balanced. He admitted he was wrong gasp. Less jerk, more brains. I am still unreasonably distracted by the fact Gravely appears to be 18.
Thought it was good enough again. My main annoyance is the high number of extreme assumptions Backstrom throws out based on…nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m used to these types of detective shows making questionable leaps of logic, but it seems like too much of Backstrom’s running around involves no logic at all. Just random shots in the dark until something works out. Not really what one watches a detective show for.
I’m now picturing Columbo doing his usual schtick to every suspect in an episode, such that (a) it turns out he’s been pissing most of them off for no good reason, because that’s invariably how he also irritates the one guy who can be hounded into giving himself away; and (b) we only ever see it from the guilty party’s perspective.
“No, sir; you really did commit the perfect crime; I had no idea it was you; I’ve been acting like I knew whodunit, but I kept asking everyone Just One More Thing.”
Well, less bigotry, which is good. More smoking, which means that the briefcases full of coke and cash arrived at Fox.
I’m waiting for him to reassure a victim “you’re in good hands.”
Watched the first two episodes so far just because of Wilson and the nominal Portland setting. (Basically an occasional TriMet sign or some such. :()
A few bits here and there that seem interesting but most of it just doesn’t work. Unless they can turn it around, it won’t last.
I’m waiting for him to sacrifice a bucket of chicken to the voodoo gods for help solving a case. 
Watched the 3rd episode. A noticeable improvement but still has a ways to go.
E.g., how are they going to prove statutory rape if the victim is now dead and it happened years ago?
The addition of Sarah Chalke is interesting. But not given much screen time.
The “rules don’t apply” motif is getting heavy handed. The new pile-on is Sarah Chalke running the investigation into her ex-fiancee-that-she-still-has-a-thing-for. No PD at the level Portland would let anything remotely like that happen.
Can’t they at least buy some stock footage of Portland for bumpers?
I’m still watching and think it got better after the first two or three episodes. The plots are throwaway but Dwight’s schtick is getting funnier and all of the other characters have been developed well…IMHO.
You gotta be able to handle (and enjoy) politically incorrect humor.