A Man. And His Blog.

The second season of ABC's fantastic legal drama aired between 2008 and 2009

Embrace the unexpected with “Eli Stone”, the critically acclaimed series that celebrates life’s odd and interesting adventures.
Eli Stone (Jonny Lee Miller) is a man you can believe in. The question is, can he believe in himself? When this successful lawyer starts having strange visions, his job, his relationships and his sanity are in serious jeopardy. Things get even more bizarre when his brother Nathan (Matt Letscher) confides that he has visions, too. Is this a blessing or some kind of family curse? And do this crazy illusions have a purpose?

Episode 01: The Path
A really good and interesting season opener, which lets the series bring more into the fantastic genre, after it is obvious that God or a higher power really has something to do with Eli’s visions. Other than that everything fits perfectly together – the visions, the law cases and the private life of the characters.
Eli doesn’t have the visions anymore, instead Nate gets them, who sees that Jordan (Victor Garber) gets trapped in a bank after a heavily accident. And together with Eli’s sessions with Sigourney Weaver the story of the visions has a complete deeper meaning now. She is only a “vision” and that for three months? Everything he said to her was part of a vision (and interesting to ask if he really went to that empty office and practically talked to an empty room)? More to that: Nate gets the visions and the aneurysm, because Eli neglected to have them at all. But the higher power doesn’t want that, they want Eli to have the visions, and this is an excellent episode to tell this story.
One thing was a bit over the top though: Taylor (Natasha Henstridge) goes into court, against Eli, and risks that her father could die. I thought she wouldn’t be involved in the case, after Jordan is in danger; and her change-in-believe at the end came a bit too fast and was a bit ridiculous. These are the scenes, in which I wish the former relationship between Taylor and Eli wouldn’t be mentioned all the time.
Sigourney Weaver’s guest appearance was interesting, and the rest of the episode was surprisingly really good. 8,5/10

Read the rest of this entry »

ABC's fantastic legal dramedy aired in the midseason 2008

Follow Eli Stone (Jonny Lee Miller) on his quirky quest for answers in this exciting and upbeat comedic legal drama. Eli is a stereotypical lawyer, ambitious, materialistic, and snarky, helping his San Francisco firm’s corporate clients fill their coffers at the expense of the poor and downtrodden. When he awakens to an unending George Michael soundtrack that only he can hear, gets dive-bombed by a WW I biplane on a busy San Francisco street, and faces a fire-breathing dragon outside his office window, there are two possible explanations: delusions caused by a potentially fatal brain aneurysm or the chance that something greater is at work. He might just be a prophet sent to change the world.

Episode 01: Pilot
Interesting start into the series with likable characters, an interesting case, and an interesting story.
First: I liked the fact that the writers wrote two reasons for Eli’s visions into the story: Not only is the brain aneurysm a perfect way out of the story, when the series would have been canceled soon or after the first season, but they opened a fantastic storyline about fate and belief with the prophet storyline. And we even have the two characters for these two stories: On the medical side, Eli’s brother Nate (Matt Letscher) stands for the aneurysm story, while Chan (James Saito) stands for the prophet story. And Eli has with both of them contact, so the writers have much opportunities to go both ways – which is probably the reason, why I could see the screenplay for the pilot episode as one of the best.
If there weren’t some boring and stereotype characters, the episode would have been really good, but Eli’s fiancée Taylor (Natasha Henstridge) is just a stereotype, while her father Jordan (Victor Garber) is pretty much one of the most boring characters in this episode.
The case was interesting, and not just because it had a serious topic and was probably taken from the real world. I liked the fact that Eli figured out days later, that his client Beth (Laura Benanti) was his girlfriend 15 years back, and I liked how the visions affected his case.
And with a bit of flashbacks with Eli’s father Jeremy (Tom Cavanagh), we even have another story opportunity: Eli’s father could see visions himself, like Eli.
It would have been a really good episode, but because of the boring characters in the second row, it is “just” a good episode. But for a pilot episode, it introduced the series really good.And not to forget the cameos of George Michael. Now I have an ear worm. 8/10

Read the rest of this entry »