Being somewhat dissapointed with the premier episode of Firefly I am glad to report that I thought John Doe was a pretty decent show. It reminds me a lot of the show Nowhere Man, which I always thought had a lot of potential but never went anywhere. Anybody else have opinions? I’m definately ready to commit to another two or three episodes of Doe, not so sure about Firefly.
Well, I’ve seen about the first half of John Doe and the last half of Firefly (It was postponed by baseball…beer-swilling bastards). And I’m impressed with John Doe as well. It’s a nice romp.
As for Firefly…well, I’ll have to see the first half to be sure, but it sadly looks like a lot of the main characters are just your run of the mill “Angry Gen-Xers.” I hope I’m wrong. But at least the heroes had the guts to actually KILL a villain who was threatening them.
Ranchoth
I liked it too. I’m not big on tv dramas, but decided to watch this one. Interesting. I just hope that…gotta be careful not to spoil, but that woman at the very end doesn’t show up like that on every episode, it might get annoying.
Saw some of John Doe, and something about it reminded me of The Pretender. Jarod and John know so much. Jarod seeks his family and John is seeking his own identity. Both cute, but Jarod cuter, IMHO.
I thought it was pretty interesting. I’m not sure where Doe is going, but the potential is good.
As for Firefly, I have to agree with the sentiment expressed. It wasn’t anywhere near what I thought it was going to be.
I didn’t watch Firefly. But I thought * John Doe* was pretty good.
John Doe has an intriguing premise, but I see two problems: 1) No matter what solution to the central mystery they might eventually present, it’ll be a letdown; they’ve simply started by writing themselves into a corner; 2) The story involving the police and the kidnapping was a truly annoying example of “Gifted Amateur/Stupid Cops Syndrome”. Some concerns (SPOILERS):
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Why the hell is the kidnapping being investigated by just the local police, and not the FBI?
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Why the hell didn’t the cops figure out about the hidden space in the school basement? They would have investigated the possibility that the girl was still in the building, and studied the building records and plans.
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Why doesn’t John hand over the coins dropped by the fleeing suspect? That’s withholding evidence. The police aren’t stupid; if he’d given them the washing machine token they’d have tracked it down in a couple of hours, gone to the motel, made the same sketch John did, and – because the file would include information about the girl’s family – they’d recognize the description as the girl’s father, supposedly dead. But no, we had to have it proven to us again how amazingly knowledgeable John is.
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We’re shown what is supposed to be a two-year-dead body; for some reason it’s completely skeletonized. They let John look at it instead of the ME, and he cleverly notes that the bones indicate a vegetarian – not the supposedly dead father. I noticed the teeth were intact, but there was no mention of dental records. (The father had faked his death in a car accident, with explosion; wouldn’t they have checked his dental records to make a positive ID?) Also, unless I missed something, we never find out who the Hell this man was. Nobody even asks. Did the father murder somebody and use the body? Did he steal a cadaver? The question is not even brought up, because the body only exists as a gimmick to allow John to prove that the father is still alive.
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Once they’ve got a report on the Impala, and a good reason to think the suspect is at a particular marina, do they send in two dozen patrolmen to converge on the area? Nope, just the one detective and the gifted civilian – in the civilian’s car, yet.
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When they get there and chase the suspect, the detective manages to fall down and hurt his leg badly enough to be life-threatening. It’s bleeding enough to need a tourniquet, but does John put the tourniquet on right away? No, he has to show off his knowledge that sugar is a coagulant first. I’m not an EMT, but I’m pretty sure the tourniquet would be a priority over the sugar.
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John tracks down the father and daughter at the place the wife had shown him a picture of. He saw the picture in color, indicating it was significant; the police could have staked out the place if he’d bothered to tell them about it. Anyway, he tracks down the father, figures out that the guy is dying of cancer, and takes the daughter back but lets the father go. He lies to the police, saying the man fell on some rocks and went into the water; apparently the police accept this, close the case and don’t go searching for a body.
So: intriguing premise, good acting, but then it becomes annoying. Maybe it’ll get better.
I thought that this would make a good Twilight Zone episode or mini-series, but I agree with the view that they can’t really maintain the mystery of “who” and “how” very long without getting into the layers and layers of increasingly stupid conspiracy theories that eventually killed the X-Files.
The bit with the laundry machine token really irritated me. One motel in San Francisco used that token/specific washing machine? Yeah, right. It would end up being more like 10,000 hotels and apartment buildings.
Agree that Firefly was a let down and John Doe was better.
My Q: Is it just me or … (asking for it starting off with that)
Do the stars of the above mentioned shows sound exactly like Nate from Six Feet Under. Is there a new generic American TV English dialect developing?
Yeah, it hit me about 20 minutes in that this was a Pretender retread, although it’s taken some turns from the Pretender formula (not least of which that John has no problem making a huge public splash whereas Jarod kept to the shadows). I don’t understand how his knowledge thing works and it seems inconsistent. He knows there are 157 purple Impalas registered in the city (any way to know if that number’s correct, BTW) but he doesn’t know, say, which hotels use a particular washer without calling them all? Why not?
Still, I’m willing to stick this one out for a few more weeks.
That bothered me, too. The washing machine token, for instance. He had to look it up on the internet just to find out what it was…shouldn’t he have known what it was if he knows everything?
And would he really be allowed to use the name “John Doe”?
(I know, it’s just the hook of the show, but it still bothers me)
And the “smart guy who figures it out vs. the dumb cops who don’t ever believe him” schtick is going to get really old really fast.
I might give it another 2 or 3 episodes, but that’s all.
I watched the Firefly/John Doe block. Unlike most people here, I really enjoyed Firefly. It could be my bias towards liking stuff Joss Whedon does but I still found fairly entertaining. Like all new shows it needs work to find its groove.
John Doe pleasantly suprised me. I need to see a few more espisodes to see if its something I want to continue with though. The Pretender vibe was pretty strong, especially with John learning how to drive and fly a helicopter very quickly. The idea of the show has a lot of potential but will they be able to keep it interesting for several years? Don’t know, hard to see how.
Lastly, this is my crazy out there theory. John exchanged memory and color vision for knowledge, kinda like an Odin thing giving up his eye. Especially with the opening shot looked like John was in a painted eye, white ring outside with a black circle center.