TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Kingdom Hospital was the short-lived, Stephen King penned television series that aired back in 2004 (or rather, Stephen King American adaptation of Danish miniseries “The Kingdom” penned by Lars von Trier). This is another case where I missed the first episode. I tried to watch the second episode but there were so many seemingly random things going on that it just wasn’t worth it. I figured that I missed way too much set-up in the first episode and if I saw it from the beginning things would make more sense.

I figured wrong.

As it turned out, Stephen King’s adaptation could have simply been titled “f*cked up fever dreams Stephen King had when he was in the hospital following his accident with as many inside references to his own works as he could fit in to a 13-episode series.” Surprisingly enough, this doesn’t work as well as you’d think.

The premise gives us a hospital, named Kingdom Hospital, in Lewiston, Maine. As it turns out, the hospital was built on top of an old, burned down hospital which which itself was built on top of an old, burned down textile factory. A group of children were caught in textile factory’s basement in the fire and died. As we all know, when children die on a site in a King novel, the site is poisoned forever.

As a fan of King’s works for a very long time, I have a feeling the series was written with people like me in mind… the problem is that a lot of the standard King archetypes work better in print because when you see them in reality they really seem kind of dumb. The crazy psychic old lady that no one listens to, the psychic people with Down’s syndrome, the creepy little ghost kid, the poisoned site: all of these things can be seen in various King works. They certainly don’t seem to work as well on the screen. I think there’s a reason for that: the picture that your mind paints when you’re reading about these supernatural things is invariably more realistic than what you can reproduce on the screen with a television budget. Think about King’s best “to screen” translations. Carrie, Cujo, and Pet Sematary were all very simple psychological thrillers. The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Misery didn’t really involve special effects. Think about some of the worst. It did not translate. Neither version of Salem’s Lot really translated. Maybe on the drawing board a scary monster anteater named Anubis sounded like a good idea but it really didn’t work for me.

Of course, maybe a lot of that could have been saved with a solid storyline that covered all the episodes. We’ll never know as this one really didn’t. At one point the people in the ER break in to song and no one really mentions why. Later a lawyer is admitted and either he is having a dream about people forcing him to sign waivers during a heart attack or the people are actually doing it. In another scene, the anteater rips the lawyer’s heart out of his chest and we never see him again. I’m assuming he died but we don’t really know.

And, if nothing else proves that it was an extending chance for King to just do what he felt like: there was an entire episode based around the hospital “setting right” the Buckner play from the 1986 World Series. In the episode, “Buckner” was brought in to the hospital and given the chance to travel back in time and fix his mistake. If that wasn’t enough, the fact that the hospital gave him the chance to travel back in time was never really addressed.

All said, the entire series was a mess. Nothing led to anything else. Character’s jump in between the real world and the in-between with no real explanation. King fans used a lot of explanations for why this show didn’t catch on. People didn’t “get it”. They broke it up and aired the episode after long breaks. It was none of that. It just wasn’t that logical or good a show.

Recommendation to avoid. Up next: Battlestar!

For all of the praise I heaped on Season One of Prison Break you’d think that season two would continue to deliver The Goodness (tm). Turns out, not so much.

I guess when you have a show called Prison Break, and the end of season one is actually breaking out of prison, you have to fill time with things other than the prison break… which is difficult in a show called Prison Break.

At the end of Season One, Wentworth Miller’s Michael Scoffield had convinced D.B. Cooper to tell him the location of his five million dollar stash and had either recruited or picked up seven other escapees. SPOILER ALERT: they escaped and made it to the airport. Unfortunately, the plane that was waiting for them took off without them. Season two, or as I’ve taken to calling it: “Everything that could remotely go wrong does go wrong and everyone who isn’t in prison is unimaginably stupid and don’t analyze this storyline too long or your head will literally melt off your body”, picks up right after this moment and follows the manhunt for the “Fox River Eight.”

There are two really bright spots in the otherwise predictable and annoying second season, so I’ll address them first. The addition of William Fichtner as FBI agent/profiler/manhunter Alexander Mahone was very well done casting. Fichtner plays the obsessive/compulsive Moriarty to Scoffield’s Holmes. Mahone is an expert on chasing down escaped convicts and uses Scoffield’s own obsessive need to plan against him. Mahone figures out that the entire escape plan is tattooed on Scoffield’s body and uses that to get ahead of him and track him down. As it turns out, Mahone is haunted by the demons of an escapee that he killed and The Company manipulates him using that and his family.

The second is the expansion of Paul Adelstein’s Paul Kellerman from “Random Goon In A Loosely Defined Conspiracy” to “More Well Defined Goon In A Loosely Defined Conspiracy.” In the first season, Kellerman was one of the Vice President’s government sponsored hitmen in the guise of a Secret Service agent. In the second season, Kellerman goes rogue after The Company tried to force him out of President Reynolds’s life. It’s hinted that the two of them either had a relationship or that she dangled the promise of a relationship in front of him to keep him in line. After The Company cuts his contact off, and he gets angry about it, they decide he’s a liability and try to have him eliminated. This turns him in to a badass traitor.

As for the rest of it… season two was kind of boring and predictably bad. The conspiracy, just a minor storyline in season one, comes to the forefront in season two and the show suffers. When you have a shaky conspiracy storyline as the hook that kicks off the action, that’s one thing. When you start to go in to that conspiracy, one that’s apparently so deep it reaches to all levels of government and is powerful enough to stage a suicide that covers up the MURDER OF THE GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS — and this is after the previous season in which Vice President Reynolds POISONED THE PRESIDENT with no repercussions — ya need to make a sanity check. Seriously, we’re talking about the murder of two high profile government people in the span of like four weeks and no one’s asking questions?

The season also suffered from what I call Ben Stiller Movie Syndrome. If you’ve ever seen There’s Something About Mary or Meet The Parents, you’ll understand this. All of the Ben Stiller movies (where he’s not playing a wacky Zoolander character) are based on one running punchline: his character’s unlucky. It’s funny for maybe the first half-hour of the movie. By the mid-point, it becomes obvious that anything wacky that could go wrong goes wrong. By the end of the movie, it’s like: “we get it. He’s unlucky.” That’s season two of Prison Break. All of Scoffield’s carefully laid plans are generally foiled by mundane things. He leaves his car at a parking meter and it gets towed. Mahone figures out one of Scoffield’s tattoos because he happens to look down in his car’s rear-view mirror at exactly the right time. To an extent, I understand why this happens and, really, these are just minor nitpicks at the gaping, overall problems with Season Two.

One of them in particular, and the hardest one to deal with, is the enormous problem with the show’s time line. The first season covers approximately six weeks from Scoffield’s incarceration in late April to May 27th 2005. The second season, when you look at dates, only covers about three weeks of show time. This wouldn’t be a problem if not for some of the insane plot points. For instance, a couple days after the escape, Billick is fired from Fox River for allowing inmates to pay him for certain privileges. The next day, Geary (the guy who turned Billick in because Billick had him fired) and Billick decide to try to get in on the $100k/head Fox River Eight manhunt. They find Cooper’s five million dollars and Geary turns on Billick, knocking him over the head with a tire iron and escaping to a hotel with the money. While Billick is in the hospital, he leaves Geary a threatening voice mail with the general idea “if I ever find you, I’m going to kill you.” While Billick is in the hospital, T-Bag finds Geary, kills him, takes the money, and frames Billick. While Billick is getting discharged from the hospital, Geary’s body is brought in. Billick is then arrested for this murder that he apparently committed while getting stitches.

Now, from the time Billick got knocked out until the time he’s out of the emergency room is, what, eight to ten hours max? Is there any of that time he isn’t accounted for? And he’s convicted of the murder and sent to prison by the end of the next day? And none of the detectives see any problem with this? Like, I don’t know, the time of death was when Billick was sitting in a hospital? That, I don’t know, he wasn’t on any of the cameras that high end hotels tend to have but, surprise, one of the Fox River Eight was? Their evidence is a voice mail and the fact Geary was pointing at Billick’s name on a receipt? And that’s enough to get him incarcerated at Fox River by end of business the next day?

This leads to another problem with all of the season two. The gaping stupidity of everyone who is not either a member of the Fox River Eight or a person chasing them. The prime example of this is T-Bag’s ex-wife. She was the one who turned him in and had him sent to prison. He tracks her down. You’re telling me this woman, whose children were threatened and was told, by T-Bag, “don’t you think when I get outta here I won’t remember what your front porch looked like” is going to stick around her home while he’s still on the loose? Or, at the very least, she wouldn’t have some sort of protection or system set up with a friend that says “If I don’t call you every day at 8:05 pm, there’s a problem and call the cops?”

And this is before you even get in to the conspiracy storyline that still makes no sense 44 episodes in. However, they did add a spooky old white man to be the face of The Company. The spooky white man does not talk, but instead writes down his questions and answers on pieces of paper which he then, presumably, destroys. This way his conversations can never be recorded.

I found the 2nd season of Prison Break to be a huge disappointment. I also found it amusing that, by the end of the 2nd season, most of the primary lead cast had been put in a Panamanian prison. So, I guess they plan to go back to the basics in season three.

Recommended if you want to play “find the plot hole.” Otherwise avoid and watch season one again.

My love of Netflix has been well-documented on this site. You can imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered that Netflix also had wrestling DVDs. The first one to find it’s way to the top of the queue (probably added about six months ago…. I have a long queue) was The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior. We’ve reviewed the bejesus out of these DVDs on on The Wrestling Site so I’m not posting it there, though I’ll probably put it up on The Wrestling Blog… where you should absolutely go read and comment if you watch wrestling.

I was a huge fan of The Ultimate Warrior when I was a little kid. He was always number 2 to Hulk Hogan, but he was a close number 2. I’m not sure, exactly, when the WWF really started marketing to little kids but The Warrior must have been one of the early successes. The music, the facepaint logo, the bright colors, the cartoony demeanor; everything about the Ultimate Warrior screamed marketing. It worked. Unfortunately, it turned out the guy was batshit crazy.

I’m trying out this review format… no idea if I’ll stick to it or not.

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- The earliest point made on this DVD is how crazy the Warrior’s interviews were. Back when I was a little kid, I didn’t really notice. Here, he rambles on about nothing and says random things about the heavens and Gods and Warriors. While I’m sure they cherry-picked some of his more insane moments, I can’t tell you one coherent promo he ever did. I mean, my memory from back then is spotty and all but I can’t remember one single big warrior moment that didn’t involve a two-minute squash. The best line they managed to find: “I found myself on a spaceship in th heavens fueled by the souls of the Warriors.”

- The sad part of this whole thing: I can even understand the character he was going for. He made insane references to a long line of Warriors and he could draw power from the gods and the spirits of Warriors past. He fancied himself the latest in a long line of spiritual Warriors. He was the Slayer.

- Sweet Jesus, I forgot the pop he got when he beat the Honky Tonk Man. Because of all the craziness that eventually destroyed his career, I forgot just how huge his random “come out and squash people” gimmick made him. Considering this was exactly the push that WCW gave to Goldberg, you’d think I’d remember.

- They touch upon the Rick Rude feud and pointed out that the only two good feuds the Ultimate Warrior ever had were with two guys (Rude and Randy Savage) who could bump their tails off and meticulously plan matches out ahead of time. Considering these are the ONLY two Warrior feuds I remember, I’ll have to figure they’re right.

- Heenan tells a story about the series of house show matches Warrior had with Andre The Giant. Apparently Warrior came hard with clotheslines on Andre on consecutive nights (which they show). On the third night, Andre put his fist out and knocked the Warrior senseless. Sadly, they don’t Andre’s stiff shot, but only show the Warrior looking dazed after it. Pretty crappy moment in the normally stellar WWE production here as they don’t show the one part of the story that everyone would actually want to see.

- I remember that the Warrior had some crazy hair, but sweet Lord did he tease his hair up to White Trash Church levels for Wrestlemania VI.

- BTW: For all old WWE videos I play a game called Crazy Or Dead. On the Warrior DVD crazy is dominating dead.

- Heenan makes the point that the Warrior sometimes seemed to think the WWE didn’t give him enough. Meanwhile, they handed him the IC title within two years after his debut in a squash match, then put him over Hogan. What else could they have possibly done to make happy?

- This is the first time I’d ever heard the story that Warrior held Vince hostage for more money before the Match Made In Hell… which explains a whole lot. How Hogan and Slaughter didn’t murder him in the ring is even more amazing. Vince’s story of just desperately waiting for the match to be over so he could savor firing Warrior is funny… because you can just picture it. Vince seething backstage, kicking puppies, just waiting to throw the guy out on his ass. This might actually be where Vince finally coined the term “YOU’RE FAAAHHHHRED”. As a note, there are two guys we know of that have done this to Vince. Warrior and Jarrett. How’s that workin out.

- The singlet with the muscles painted on it era… I’d forgotten about that!!!!

- Holy crap did I forget how much I was freaked out when Ultimate Warrior’s head just randomly started bleeding during an interview.

- I’m glad they addressed the horror that was the Warrior’s WCW run. In other news, I can’t believe it was only two years between the time he left the WWF and came back to WCW. It felt like 10.

- Hogan apparently had a huge problem when Warrior saying that Warrior had beaten him in the past. I don’t know why this was a problem… pretty much anyone watching knew that. Much more awful was the 10 minutes of rambling nothingness that followed it.

The Matches

Terry Gibbs vs. The Ultimate Warrior (Green Bay, WI: 10/24/87): This is Warrior’s debut on Wrestling Challenge. I also didn’t know that the WWE now bleeped the “F” out when guys say “WWF” in old match interviews. The rules to this lawsuit are so odd. The Attitude logo has to be blurred, they bleep guys from saying “WWF”, but the old WWF block style logo is still OK? This is a typical 80s style squash match that you’d expect on Wrestling Challenge. F-

The Ultimate Warrior vs. The Honky Tonk Man(c): Intercontinental Championship Match from SummerSlam (New York, NY: 8/29/88): They also blur WWF out of “WWF Intercontinental Champion” in Honky Tonk Man’s on screen intro. I would understand all this more if they blurred out the block logo on the turnbuckles, too. But they don’t. I’m dwelling. I actually remember watching this match… how I got my mom and dad to drop money on SummerSlam, I don’t know. The crowd in this match is amazingly hot because of how much people HATED the Honky Tonk Man’s title reign at this point. A year long title reign comes to a crashing end in 30 seconds. A+ for the booking, the surprise, and giving fans what they wanted. F- for the match.

The Ultimate Warrior(IC) vs. Hulk Hogan(WWF): Title vs. Title from Wrestlemania VI (Toronto Skydome: 4/1/90): I think it was Scott Keith that said this match was meticulously scripted before the actual event which is why two guys who are notorious for delivering awful matches were able to put together such a good match. I think I convinced my parents to get me this PPV, too. If I remember correctly, I even wrote a 12-year-old’s review of it in a spiral notebook that I forced my mom and dad to read. The Warrior’s hair is just unruly feathered and teased for this match and he is still breathing heavy even after Hogan’s 3-minutes of entrances and posing. Shoving and lockups to start with each guy getting some posing time. Test of strength follows for Warrior to finally regain his breath. Solid cardio there, steroid boy. Hogan gets to play come back first but with no clear-cut heel, no one gets to do the kick to the gut break, so Hogan ends the test of strength with a wrestling take down for a pin. Nice. Exchange of criss-crosses and scoop slams. Hogan goes out of the ring and “blows out his knee”. I remember Jesse making the comment here that the knee must have “popped back in to place” or something as Hogan completely no-sells the injury a few seconds later. Hogan control wearing down the Warrior with some headlocks and suplexes. Warrior eventually fights his way out with your standard elbows to the gut and go to a double clothesline. Both guys come up but Warrior is feeling it, shaking the ropes. Warrior takes control with clotheslines. Warrior Irish whips Hogan into the corner and follows with chops(?!). More whips into the corner and a vertical suplex gets 2. Bearhug follows as Warrior proceeds to kill the crowd’s energy with another rest hold. Hogan, surprisingly, is not knocked out by the bearhug and fights out. Warrior shoulderblock takes out the referee and Hogan gets a pin… then Warrior gets an uncounted pin. WTF is the point of a ref bump if both guys get an uncounted pin? Ref comes back to get a 2-count for the Warrior. Hogan follows with a roll-up that gets 2. THEY TAKE IT OUTSIDE… for not much action. Back into the ring, the Warrior looks like he was about done 10 minutes ago. Warrior goes for the gorilla press and his arms are shaking to the point I’m surprised he didn’t kill Hogan. Press and splash only gets two and it’s HULK UP TIME! Big boot but Warrior avoids the leg drop and gets the the splash for 3. Hogan kicks out at 3.2. No one is going to confuse with with Steamboat/Savage, but it was good considering the parties involved. How Warrior threw all this away so quickly after the WWF gave him this tremendous stamp of approval is unbelievable. Extra points for the appearance of the Skydome’s mini-ring styled ring-carts. B-

This match comes off very oddly and it took me a good three or four minutes to realize that Jesse Ventura’s commentary had been completely edited out of this match. Once you notice it, it’s impossible to ignore it. Gorilla’s commentary comes off weirdly because he’s interacting with someone who isn’t there. I remember reading about some sort of rights issue with Ventura but didn’t realize they’d taken this step. It hurts the match. Are newly produced Wrestlemania VI DVDs just Gorilla? What do they do if Jesse is on-screen?

Ravishing Rick Rude vs. The Ultimate Warrior(c): WWF Championship Steel Cage Match at Summerslam (Philadelphia, PA: 8/17/90): Surprisingly, the first appearance of “dead” on the Dead or Crazy. The rules are pinfall or submission. Commentary here is done by Vince McMahon and Roddy Piper. My favorite part of Rick Rude’s pre-match speech is that the WWF camera guys would invariably find the sketchiest, most inbred looking guy in the crowd and show him while Rude was delivering his speech… then they’d desperately pan the audience for any remotely cute women. Wrestling hot is much the same as army hot… all women get a base +4. Rude starts the match by bumping his ass off. Piper: “What’s it mean when he starts pumping his arms in the air and prancing like a pony” — Warrior misses a flying forearm and hits the cage — Piper: “It means he’s gonna miss. I see.” Bwahaha. Rude takes advantage by trying to climb the cage, but Warrior grabs an ankle. Rude’s bladed already 2 minutes in. I forgot that the old WWF-style cages were the original place to perfect the “agonizingly slow ladder climb.” Rude is in control now shoving the Warrior’s face into the cage. Rude hits the Rude Awakening and instead of pinning or escaping the cage he decides to climb to the top of the cage for a flying fist… which he hits. Heenan is screaming for Rude to get out of the ring. Rude to the top of the cage again but he went to the well once too often. Warrior turns the tide and goes for the door but Heenan slams the door on his head. Rude goes for the pin and we get our first patented Vince McMahon “1-2-3no!!!” of the evening. As bad as Vince was, he’s still not as bad as Michael Cole. Rude goes for the door and it turns into a Rude tug-of-war between Heenan and Warrior. Warrior pulls Rude’s tights off exposing that delicious rump. Heenan gets pulled in and Warrior abuses him. Warrior thrown him out. He does his little press-slam dance again. Piper: “I still don’t know what that means.” Vince: “He’s pulling his power from the heavens and all the Warriors in the arena” — Warrior gets knocked down — Piper: “Well where’s it going, then?” Warrior hulks up and gets the three clothesline and press slam and escapes the cage. Surprisingly awesome match which was entirely on Rick Rude being able to control the pace and Heenan and Rude bumping their asses off for the Warrior. B+

The Ultimate Warrior vs. The Macho Man King Randy Savage: Retirement Match from Wrestlemania VII (Los Angeles, CA: 3/24/91): Dead comes surging back to tie with crazy as both Sensational Sherri and The Lovely Miss Elizabeth are involved in this match. Did the Ultimate Warrior start the airbrushed clothing fad amongst white trash or did he just take advantage? Staredown to start. Savage bumps a few times for the Warrior before taking quick control with some forearms. Warrior shoulder blocks Savage and he rolls out of the ring. Sherri distracts the Warrior giving Savage a chance to come back with a double-axe handle. Warrior shrugs it off and takes control. This match is NOT no-DQ so Heenan rightly points out that Sherri has to watch herself such that she doesn’t get Savage disqualified and costing him his career. Savage takes control back with a clothesline and goes to the top. He dives off for a high cross-body and gets caught by the Warrior. Warrior puts him down and paintbrushes him. Insulting. Savage gets a chair and tosses it into the ring. Warrior punches Savage down and has control until Savage ducks away from a corner splash which sends the Warrior out of the ring. Sherri gets some cheap shots while the ref reprimands Savage. Then savage comes out of the ring and does some semi-illegal stuff, which draws more reprimands, which gives Sherri more time to get in cheap shots. Good stuff. Something lost in modern wrestling: no one is willing to admit that the other guy is stronger than him in a fake match with a pre-determined outcome, so no guy is willing to do what Savage is doing here… which is essentially saying: “I know you’re stronger than me but I’m going to stay away from you as much as possible and confuse you and hit you from ten different directions and have my manager take cheap shots.” Savage grabs a headlock. Warrior fights out for double clothesline. Sherri distracts the ref while the Warrior grabs a small package for about a 10 count. Ref bump and it’s time for chaos to ensue. Sherri goes to the top rope but Warrior ducks and she hits Savage! Warrior chases her outside the ring and back in time for Savage to grab a roll-up as the ref comes back. 2 count. Savage finally takes some semblance of control and hands out two top rope clothesline. Scoop slam gets two. To the top rope. Five Savage Elbows to the throat get two (god bless retirement matches). Savage looks horrified. Warrior hulks up. Clotheslinegorillasplash gets two. Warrior pleads with his Gods and yells at his hands. Warrior continues talking to hands and decides that the Gods have told him to retire. Instead of letting him get counted out, Savage attacks. He drapes Warrior over the rail and comes off with an elbow, but Warrior recovers. Warrior sends him back into the ring. Warrior shoulderblocks Savage out of the ring twice and gets the one foot pin. Again, God bless retirement matches. Sadly, they cut out the end of the match where Savage turns on Sherri and re-unites with Elizabeth, closing his WWE career with a face turn and a happy ending… but I guess that wouldn’t really be appropriate on an Ultimate Warrior DVD. Once again… Warrior puts on a great match with a guy who could control the pacing, plan the match, and bump his ass off. A

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Obviously solid DVD from the WWE.

Ah, the summer of 2004. I still lived upstate. Cable was free because of my roommate’s job with Time Warner. My mortgage was 1/5th of my current rent. I had a deck, a yard, a savings account, and a car.

And Lost had not yet made Sci-Fi on television cool.

When The 4400 was announced on USA, I really didn’t think much of it. The premise didn’t really interest me. In fact, I didn’t even really know the plot hook until part-way through the third season and no one had actually mentioned whether or not it was any good until a bit after that. When I recently discovered that the last season was the final season, I decided now was as good a time as any to watch it.

The Plot Hook: In 2004, 4400 people who have disappeared from the world over the last 60 years re-appear, having not aged a day, in Seattle. These people include a little girl who disappeared in the 1940s, a Korean War soldier from the 1950s, and various people from the 90s and 00s. They are returned with powers. The aforementioned little girl can see the future. An old man has the power of telekinesis. Steve Brady becomes a ninja. As we find out over the course of the season, these people were not selected for no reason. There was a purpose to who was taken, why they were changed, and when they were returned. This is the story told over the six-episode arc of season one.

The Good

- The show handles the reaction to these mysterious returnees very well. The reporting of the 24-hour news cycle filling hours and hours of stories of these returning people. The government illegally detaining these people. The ACLU filing for the release of the citizens. People trying to re-integrate into a society that really doesn’t want them. And then the sudden dawning on society that these people may not have come back completely normal.

- The character Jordan Collier is amazing. A rich man whose motivations are very uncertain after the first season he becomes the “face” on the 4400. He appears on the 4400 version of the O’Reilly/Greta/Nancy Grace/Wolf Blitzer show in the 4400-verse. He buys a gated community for every 4400 resident who wishes to live there. He’s rich, intelligent, and persuasive… everything a burgeoning cult leader should be. I don’t know where the guy is going to go over the next few seasons, but I know he’s going to be an important figure.

The Bad

- The ancestors of the show’s characters are obvious. The skeptic female scientist and the believer lead investigator tracking unexplained phenomena while working for the FBI Homeland Security had been done previously… and very well before collapsing under the weight of too many conspiracies. Although, by watching this show, you can certainly see the original inspiration for Heroes.

- They spend a lot of time making you hate just about every person on the show that isn’t either a 4400 member or a government employee. The families of most of the characters are two-dimensionally mean. One of the returnees returns to her husband’s house to see her her now 12 year old daughter (who was six-months old) to find her husband remarried and a daughter who was never told her current mother wasn’t her biological mother. Instead of allowing the returnee to get to know her daughter, he immediately files a restraining order and has her arrested. A man who was the partner at an insurance firm returns to find that his interest in a firm with his name on the letterhead is gone and the man who now runs the company won’t even give him a job. A brother treats his other brother like a freak. It’s very heavy-handed and, to a point, unbelievable.

- The plot gets a little heavy-handed at times… but I’ll forgive them because their first season was a run of six-episodes. They had a lot to communicate in six hours.

- Do we really need more “creepy little girl who can see the future” or “mystery baby might be the new messiah” plotlines? Haven’t these been done to death elsewhere?

- With the xenophobia of the 21st century likely well-documented by X years in the future, it isn’t really outlined why kidnapping people and grandly reinserting them into the timeline in 2004 is more effective than kidnapping someone, modifying them, and reinserting them into the timeline before anyone realizes they’re gone. Why is a girl from the 1940s more effectively creepy and omniscient than a girl from 2004?

The Verdict

I’m not in love with this show and am kind of surprised it made it through four whole seasons. I am, however, sufficiently curious to see where it’s going… and the idea of it being a closed world now (since it’s been cancelled) actually makes me more likely to grab the 2nd season somewhere along the line.

To this point, I give it a resounding “meh.”