An interesting example of a TV series that fails on a number of counts.
It tries to hit all the notes, and subsequently sounds like wind chimes in a gale. It tries to be funny, campy, dramatic, sexy. In the end, I sort of see it as a TV snack that strains to be seen as "smart". The problem is that it's not really that smart; the stories are larded with disconnected bits of sloppily presented sci-tech stuff, straight from the kitchen sink and loosely anchored. One gets the feeling that the producers figured that if they bound the loose bits together with a pudding of over-the-top characterization, the mess would hold together. Well, it doesn't.
Hey! Vince Gilligan is the "Breaking Bad" guy, right? A good way to highlight the shortcomings of Gunmen is to compare it against BB. Breaking Bad does it right: Tho occasionally marred by over-the-top direction, BB is anchored by an abiding interest in keeping it real, warm, human... plausible. Would it even be possible to tell a story of storybook geek/misfits teaming up to crack conspiracies, while "keeping it real"? Interesting question. At any rate, Gunmen feels like a puerile geek fantasy, in the sense of being rather cheap, in the sense in which Breaking Bad is *not* cheap.
That the Pilot neatly foreshadowed 9/11 *is* kinda spooky: I'll give 'em that.
It tries to hit all the notes, and subsequently sounds like wind chimes in a gale. It tries to be funny, campy, dramatic, sexy. In the end, I sort of see it as a TV snack that strains to be seen as "smart". The problem is that it's not really that smart; the stories are larded with disconnected bits of sloppily presented sci-tech stuff, straight from the kitchen sink and loosely anchored. One gets the feeling that the producers figured that if they bound the loose bits together with a pudding of over-the-top characterization, the mess would hold together. Well, it doesn't.
Hey! Vince Gilligan is the "Breaking Bad" guy, right? A good way to highlight the shortcomings of Gunmen is to compare it against BB. Breaking Bad does it right: Tho occasionally marred by over-the-top direction, BB is anchored by an abiding interest in keeping it real, warm, human... plausible. Would it even be possible to tell a story of storybook geek/misfits teaming up to crack conspiracies, while "keeping it real"? Interesting question. At any rate, Gunmen feels like a puerile geek fantasy, in the sense of being rather cheap, in the sense in which Breaking Bad is *not* cheap.
That the Pilot neatly foreshadowed 9/11 *is* kinda spooky: I'll give 'em that.