A Man. And His Blog.

I wasn’t anticipating the new show. Neither am I a fan of too much crime procedurals, though it is always nice to have one, which is actually interesting, nor am I a big fan of Dana Delany. And even though I found the pilot script to be good, when I read it a couple of months back, I still wasn’t eager to have another crime show similar to CASTLE, which barely focuses on development, and instead relies on its main character, which rules the show and nothing else. If you want to have it this way: BODY OF PROOF is literally more a ripoff of CASTLE, and not BONES, but it’s missing elements, which could make BODY OF PROOF the best of both worlds.

The pilot was solid work. Nothing was complicated, everything was predictable. As if the whole 43 minutes were written and produced by every rule of TV pilot productions. Mistakes were missing, also were surprises, and the characters couldn’t be more known already, since similar persons are seen on every other TV show at the moment: The heroine, whose kick-ass attitude on the outside hides her emotional breakdowns on the inside; the (ex) cop partner, who doesn’t know anything about her, even though he’s already working with her for half a year; and the detectives and lieutenants, who absolutely don’t believe in the heroine’s work, because they are sceptic and have to be – otherwise the series would be missing the element of “the heroine has to be hated by somebody”.

And even though the pilot was solid as the script promised, it couldn’t grab me at all. Nothing was new, everything was old, and what I saw bored me most of the time. When I think about the character-depth in the pilot, mostly Megan’s back story, as well as everything involving her daughter Lacey (Mary Matilyn Mouser), I wanted to chuckle, and I never found myself to be interested in all of it. Megan’s family background might be developing into a nice story for future episodes, but for now, it was a typical element of having a background story for the main character in the pilot – filled with clichés and less than surprises. Though I have to say that the moment with Megan giving Lacey the key to her apartment was touching, but only because Megan was about to cry, and prepared the closing scene with the birthday cake. I  a real drama, it would have been a moving scene, but in a crime procedural like this, it is props to a genre, which overfills the TV schedule.

The murder case of the week was of course filled with false traps and predictable twists. Similar to HAWAII FIVE-0, the first half of the investigation barely has anything to do with the second half, and the final motive of the murder is not connected with what the detectives and Megan were thinking at first. As a TV junkie, the case couldn’t grab me at all, and I was burying my head in my arms, when Megan “suddenly” had the revelation of allergies in the final third of the episode. I hope that future episodes won’t be using those kind of revelations, which seem to be stolen from HOUSE (I’ve never seen that show), and which hopefully won’t be solving all the murder cases – otherwise BODY OF PROOF is growing ridiculous more faster than the camera is showing Delany’s naked legs.

The actors did a nice job. Delany is suited for the role, dominates the comedy and the drama part; Nicholas Bishop has the same character he had in PAST LIFE, but at least can deal with a more logical story; and the side characters, whose names I’ve forgotten already are all stereotypes, but as long as the writers have seen some episodes of RIZZOLI & ISLES, they could easily make even those characters more interesting, giving their actors more to do. But Sonja Sohn was already criminally underused in this episode, thinking back of the one season of THE WIRE I’ve seen years ago.

All in all, the pilot couldn’t have been more solid. Which makes the episode even less interesting than the script. I still don’t await anything, and the pilot didn’t introduce me to a new great series. Instead it showed me that the writers don’t want something special, instead they are giving Dana Delany a job for at least half a year. 6/10

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What a woman should have in her fridge