I watched the pilot of Raines and found it on par with
standard TV police procedurals (like Law and Order) but
nothing special. The opening scene is excellent using the
famous Long Goodbye building but that's when the hard-boiled
ends and the tedium begins. Goldblum takes some blame by
toning down his usual manic performance to the point where he
mumbles through most of the scenes. He's still an odd and
interesting actor to watch but he hasn't found his comfort
zone in the character yet.
The "seeing ghosts"/"figments of his imagination" gimmick is
weak. The ghost acts as the typical "What's does that mean?"
girl from TV mysteries (Monk's nurse on Monk, Vincent
D'Onofrio's partner on L&O: Criminal Intent). The mystery
is poor with suspects practically wearing "Red Herring"
shirts. The culprit has a feeble motivation for the
murders.
In a key "action" scene the suspect evades the police because
of a poorly-timed trash truck blocking the alley. You'd think
Los Angeles is the cleanest city in the world based on the
number of times trash trucks thwart police from catching the
criminals in action movies. Also the producers found it
necessary to show Raines as a do-gooder so the mystery was
short-changed to add an unnecessary 10 minutes of putting the
ghost to rest plot.
The show is light on noir, even though it's trying so hard to
be noir. Raines is a carbon copy "House" curmudgeon and
doesn't face any whirlpools of despair or regret just yet. I
don't know if the ratings are strong enough to keep this show
around until it gets good. I'm probably going to check it out
again to see if it gets funnier or more interesting after the
pilot.
Channing
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