Article first published as THE PLAYER Review on Seat42F.
NBC’s
THE PLAYER is about a man caught in a gambling ring. A secretive group
has developed a technology to predict crimes, and the rich and powerful
bid on whether the crime can be stopped or not. Our hero is recruited to
play the good guy in the game, and if they can justify to him morally
why he should participate, he may just have a new career. In this case,
twisting convention, viewers will be likely to hate the game, not the
player.
Based on that description, THE PLAYER
isn’t quite like any other series on television, but it has a lot of
similarities to other programs. Like Person of Interest or Minority
Report, it deals with future crime. And like a whole lot of other
series, it is a crime procedural, with a different case being presented
each week for the cast to work to stop. So while it does have a couple
of things to set it apart, at its core, THE PLAYER isn’t much different
from other fare.
The cast is led by Philip Winchester
(Strike Back), whose Alex Kane is the archetype of a hero. He is
intelligent, strong, fearless, and dedicated to saving lives. Why would
somebody like that participate in a game like this? A tragedy early in
the pilot rocks Alex, and while it takes the full first hour to get
there, he comes to see he can do good, even if he doesn’t quite agree
with what is happening. Thankfully, he has his friend, Detective Cal
Brown (Damon Gupton, Empire) to try to keep him grounded.
Make no mistake, the game in THE PLAYER
is sick. If a person can figure out when crimes are going to occur, they
could mobilize authorities to stop them. Instead, the game master, Mr.
Johnson (Wesley Snipes, Blade, The Expendables 3), makes it into
entertainment and serves the wealthy, not the victims. Mr. Johnson is
profiting off of the misery of others, whether the crime is stopped or
not. There is little noble about him.
While I root for Alex and jeer Mr.
Johnson, there is another main character in the middle that I can’t
decide if I should like or not. Cassandra King (Charity Wakefield, Wolf
Hall) works for Mr. Johnson, but serves in a capacity to assist Alex.
She certainly seems like a nice lady with a good heart, but looking at
her career choice, it’s hard to reconcile that with what she does.
That epitomizes the biggest problem that
THE PLAYER has going for it. The premise requires a few contortions to
try to make sense of it. Character motivation is dubious. Shows that
live in the gray areas of morality are often complex and prompt one to
think; this one does not, merely asking you to accept the duality of the
situation, and then enjoy the fast-paced, violent style. It’s basically
an action movie as a weekly series, with the same limitations that
genre usually provides.
THE PLAYER isn’t as bad as I thought it
would be. While certainly not high-quality, it is entertaining. However,
it will get old real quick, and without completely believable
characters, it will become more and more difficult to sustain that
entertainment over any significant period of time. I feel like this
works best as a flash-in-the-pan. For six episodes, I could really get
into THE PLAYER. As a twenty-two installments-per-year series, it has
very little chance of succeeding, and doesn’t seem worth the effort to
stick around and find out if it does, the prize being too minor to
cherish.
It has little hope of capturing the
viewers used to seeing Parenthood in this time slot, appealing to a
completely different group, but since Parenthood wasn’t that high-rated,
that’s probably on purpose.
THE PLAYER premieres Thursday, September 24th at 10 p.m. on NBC.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.