In a TV landscape where even the failed shows have at least some redeeming qualities, it's rare to find a show as singularly uninteresting as "The Glades," the cop drama that premieres Sunday night at 10 on A&E.
Look, I love me a good cop show, and, despite the prevalence of such series on TV, I still think there are interesting things to be done with the genre. But "The Glades" does none of them.
The series centers on rakish plays-by-his-own-rules cop Jim Longworth (Matt Passmore), who solves murders in Florida -- in spite of the fact that he seems more interested in his golf games and his suspects' sex lives than in solving the crime.
He has a blandly jovial medical examiner sidekick (Carlos Gomez) and flirts tiresomely with a pretty nurse (Kiele Sanchez who, between this role and the part of Nikki on "Lost," needs to consider having a long, sad chat with her agent).
The pilot centers on a dead body found in the Everglades, and barely one thing that happens in the hour-long episode comes as a great shock. Jim seems like a screw-up! But really he's not! The killer thinks he's fooled Jim! But he hasn't! The nurse resists Jim's flirting, because she's a damaged single mom! But then gives in, because she's a lonely single mom whose kid needs a father figure!
The only mildly surprising thing about the episode is a twist at the end, but even that is kind of unearned.
I don't blame the actors. Passmore could probably be charming in the right vehicle (though, here, he comes off as a smug jerkwad), and Sanchez, bless her heart, manages to wring some humanity out of her cliched character. But it's all just so blah.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the show. After all, I only saw one episode. Maybe it gets better. But I don't see a lot of room for improvement here.
1 comment:
Take the swampy environs of "True Blood" and mix it with the anony-cast of USA Network leftovers, and what do you get?
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