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Fox’s “Chicago Code” premieres Monday

February 6, 2011 – 3:55 pm

Fox has more than just football this week. On Monday, Feb. 7 at 9 p.m., the network that brought you “24″ will premiere the highly anticipated police drama “The Chicago Code.”

The success of ABC’S “Detroit 187” and CBS’s “Blue Bloods” and the re-imagined “Hawaii Five-O” have made the 2000s feel like the 1980s. It is safe to say, that the traditional cop show has been tweeked up a bit.

Fox’s next entry into police procedural drama comes in “Chicago Code.”

From the previews, this definitely is not “Hill Street Blues” Windy City style. It’s a harsh, gritty and edgy drama that probably is more art imitating life. Chicago’s politics figure centrally into the drama with less-than-honest politicians trying to look out for the bigger score and corrupt cops out to save the city and get something on the side for their own benefit. Others seek to avenge the deaths of family, while others struggle to prove themselves worthy of being a  police officer.

The series stars Jason Clarke (“Brotherhood”) and Jennifer Beals (“L-Word”, “Flashdance”). Clarke plays Jarek Wysocki, a legend in the Chicago Police Department (CPD) who has nearly free-range to do whatever it takes to get the bad guys off the street. His ability to do is granted (or overlooked) by Beals, who plays CPD’s first female police superintendent Teresa Colvin. Their main adversary is Alderman Ronin Gibbons (Delroy Lindo, “Kidnapped”) who has ruled his ward for the last few decades.

Rounding the cast is Wysocki’s partner, Caleb Evers (Matt Lauria, “Friday Night Lights”), Wyosocki’s niece Vonda Wysocki (Devin Kelley) and her partner Isaac Joiner (Todd Williams).

The series is filmed in Chicago to give it a more realistic feel and uses locations anywhere from Millennium Park and the south side, to Chinatown and Boystown. The latter two are locations often overlooked by location scouts. The characters themselves have connections to Chicago’s past, including its connection to organized crime back in the early 20th century.

The series also employs a real-life Chicago police detective to go over every script to eliminate the clichés that make most cops cringe.

“Chicago Code” is produced by Chicago native Shaun Ryan (“The Shield”).

The series will air Mondays at 9 p.m.

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Articles TV

Post premiere Monday recap

September 21, 2010 – 10:45 pm

PHOTO CREDIT: CBS / Alex O'Loughlin (l) and Scott Caan (r) start in the new CBS series "Hawaii Five-0" based on the 1968-1980 series starring Jack Lord in the title role.

My menu on Monday included watching NBC’s The Event and CBS’s Hawaii Five-0. Both shows in my opinion show some promise, but the former is going to have work harder to achieve a following do to its disjointed storytelling approach.

I didn’t watch Chase, as I was more interested in a show with far more positive reviews, Hawaii Five-0. NBC does have Chase available online and I’ll watch that tonight after NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles.

My review of The Event sums up my experience with the series. It’s good and has serious potential, but needs to build up a strong following. 11.2 million people tuned in to watch the premiere. Next week will tell just how much carry over they have.

Chase didn’t perform so well. It only captured 7.9 million viewers. In contrast, Hawaii Five-0 opened strong with 13.8 million and was the highest rated series among the 18-49 (the latter of whom probably watched the original series back in the day).

Hawaii Five-0 is the most promising of the new shows thus far. It’s got character development potential and lots of explosive action equally mixed in with the plot.  It’s not short on the hot guys, babes and dialogue either. Sometimes, high action cop shows go for silly dialogue in exchange for lots of explosions and car chases.

Another added bonus of Hawaii Five-0 is chemistry between the characters. A cop show can’t survive on action and plot alone. There has to be a clear connection with characters and the actors. No chemistry means a short lived show.

The actors have good chemistry and opposites do attract with McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and Danno (Scott Caan). The former is a former Navy SEAL the other is a New Jersey cop that moved to Hawaii to be closer to his daughter. Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim) comes aboard the newly created team with a backstory that left him relieved of duty from HPD. His cousin, Kono Kalakaua (Grace Park) rounds out the team as a recent graduate of the police academy. All of them possess skills needed to complete each mission. The actors mesh well together.

The pilot episode sets up each of the four principle characters in a nice little package. We know parts of their backstory and where they came from. This will get rid of problems that may show up later on as the series progresses.

In all, its starting out to be a strong season. The next couple of weeks and months ahead will show us the winners and losers of the new fall season.

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TV

Confusing The Event

September 21, 2010 – 2:12 am

PHOTO COURTESY: NBC | The Event is a Lost clone in search of a meaningful plot and less confusing storyline.

One word sums up The Event.

Confusing.

Its biggest problem is that it jumps around. The timeline is hard to keep straight. It goes from present time, to several minutes earlier to 11 days earlier back to 13 months earlier, back to present time. You need a score card just to keep which timeframe is currently on screen. To make matters worse, when the show comes back from commercial break, they replay a previous scene from the earlier act.

Confused yet?

Thought so, but there’s a reason for this.  A key reason for this—it’s to explain what is going to happen.

 If this sounds all too familiar—it should. Last year, ABC launched a series FlashForward that operated much the same way. Characters would get a glimpse of the future and then try to figure out what it means and how they got to that point. FlashFoward, while a good series, didn’t catch on with viewers and was canceled in May.

 There’s even some of ABC’s Lost quality to the series. Filling Lost’s shoes is no easy task. This is only one episode, so it’s hard to tell how this series will play out over the next several episodes if it makes it that far.

 It seems to me that showing the scenes in order, might make the episode seem less jumpy, but there’s an obvious plan to keep the viewer watching and ad some sort of mystery to the series. I think the common viewer might get annoyed and change the channel.

 The basic plot of the series centers on some mysterious announcement or event. All the characters in the episode are key players. Some characters are forced to do things they wouldn’t do under normal circumstances.

 Then there’s the president (Blair Underwood of L.A. Law) who wants to shut down a secret facility in Alaska. He intends to make a major announcement after visiting the facility in the middle of the night. (Again, this was another time shift.) After meeting one of the people “detained” (Laura Innes of E.R.), he apparently has a change of heart.

Part of me thinks they’re a bunch of aliens that came down from some far away planet and we’re harnessing their knowledge for sinister motives.

And just before the president is to make some big announcement, an inbound hijacked plane is descending upon the press conference.

But then… The Event happens.

And it ends just like that.

Despite the confusing storyline, it’s piqued my interest enough to give the series a chance.

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Watch thousands of movies and TV shows free

September 20, 2010 – 7:50 pm

PHOTO SOURCE: CBS | Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner starred in the hit CBS series 'Scarecrow and Mrs. King' which ran from 1983-1987. It is one of many shows available from slashcontro.com.

Miss that classic TV show you used to watch as a kid? There’s a new website that offers over 89,000 (yes, that’s right) videos of both full episodes and movies from the classics of yesteryear to modern favorites of today.

This is a totally legitimate site sponsored by AOL.com. It is only available to folks in the United States. It’s called www.slashcontrol.com. You can watch such shows all the episodes from the 1980′s series Scarecrow and Mrs. King, episodes from the 1960′s popular series Adam-12, and 1970′s Emergency and hundreds of other TV shows. Some episodes have limited availability, while others have only recent episodes and clips.

Some of the movies include Flyboys (2006) about American pilots during World War I, Harlan County USA, a documentary about the plight of coal miners to unionize, 1992′s Rudy about a boy with a dream to play football for the University of Notre Dame and hundreds of other films and a treasure chest of oddball titles and foreign films.

Some of the films and TV shows may be only available for a limited and content is regularily added to the website.

The website is much of the same way as Fancast.com and hulu.com, only with out the membership fees and availability to certain internet subscribers.

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TV

Spider and the Fly (NCIS)

September 19, 2010 – 11:34 pm

NCIS – Episode 8×01 – Spider and the Fly

In the eighth-season opener, the Reynosa cartel tries to hurt Gibbs by going after those he loves, and Gibbs must take extreme steps to protect them from harm

Original Airdate: September 21

Guest starring:
Marco Sanchez … Alejandro Rivera
Ralph Waite … Jackson Gibbs
Burton Perez … Esteban Lopez
Muse Watson … Mike Franks
Jacqueline Obradors … Paloma Reynosa

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