Article originally published as PROOF Review on Seat42F.
TNT’s
newest drama is PROOF. Dr. Carolyn Tyler (Jennifer Beals, The L Word)
is a respected surgeon who has had a near-death experience and lost her
teenage son. She’s found a way to go on, putting thoughts of an
afterlife out of her head, until she is approached to study what comes
after living from a scientific perspective. She’s fundamentally opposed
to what she considers a waste of time, but for the right reasons, can be
persuaded to try to find PROOF of what happens to us.
The thing that gets a grounded person
like Carolyn to look into this is a little girl. Well, that and her own
experiences. When billionaire Ivan Turing (Matthew Modine, Weeds, Full
Metal Jacket) proposes the idea, Carolyn is quick to shoot it down. But
appearances aside, she’s not a heartless person, and she softens when
confronted with a kid who has recently visited the “other place.” It’s a
bit too cheesy and done-before an event, and it doesn’t exactly start
the show off on the right foot.
Carolyn is not alone in her quest, of
course. She has an assistant, young intern Dr. Zed (Edi Gathegi, House
M.D.), who brings a more open mind, and Janel Ramey (Caroline Rose
Kaplan), who works for Turing and so is probably a spy in her midst.
That’s it for now, Carolyn embarrassed for anyone to know what she’s
doing, but swayed by the extraordinary amount of money Turing is
offering (which of course will be used for charity because television archetype heroes cannot be the least bit selfish).
But she has other things pulling her
attention, too. Her boss, Dr. Oliver Stanton (Joe Morton, Scandal,
Eureka), doesn’t know about her extra-curricular activity, nor does
Carolyn want him to, though I doubt she’ll be able to hide it since
she’s doing her research at the hospital. At home, she has a daughter,
Sophie (Annie Thurman, Dark Skies), and spanning the two worlds, an
ex-husband, Dr. Len Barliss (David Sutcliffe, Gilmore Girls). There’s
also a man who claims to be in touch with the other side, Peter Van Owen
(Callum Blue, Dead Like Me, Smallville), whom Carolyn (no surprise!)
distrusts.
PROOF is an odd bird. It starts off with
a very serial concept, the main character being tasked to find proof of
life after death. The characters are decently well developed with some
driving forces that would lend themselves well to an ongoing story. Yet,
the way the first hour deals with a single patient indicates that it
will be a repetitive procedural, Carolyn finding one person each week
through which to continue her research, and the whole set up is rote.
Doing this makes the program far less compelling.
If Carolyn ever solves the essential
question at the heart of the series, it would be over. But I don’t think
she will, which is disappointing, PROOF setting itself up for failure
right from the beginning. No one knows what comes after death, and it’s
unlikely that anyone ever will. Those who are spiritual enough to
believe there is something don’t have a way to test that theory and
report back on it, and anyone who thinks they do is considered to be on
the fringe, possessing no concrete evidence. Yet, the pilot of PROOF,
from the start, tells us there is more than life. So how can Carolyn’s project possibly end?
The idea at the heart of PROOF is an
intriguing one and I like the pilot OK, I just have little confidence in
this series going forward. The central premise is too flimsy and
closed-ended, the procedural element is heavy, and the cast is just a
bit too much structured like practically every other show in the genre,
with no real surprises in the makeup. As such, I just don’t see this as a
series to get excited about
PROOF premieres Tuesday, June 16th at 10 p.m. ET on TNT.
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